Of all the pleasures of historical study, historical irony thrills me the most. It might be weird to put it in such terms, for the consequences of this irony are quite grim, but I have a favorite historical irony. I first caught a fleeting glimpse of this irony quite early on in my academic studies and it is to a large degree what drew me to study early republic and antebellum American history. Though it took me more than a decade to understand it in these terms and it might take me a few more decades to fully grapple with Read more