HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-04-08T15:31:04.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: What are history's biggest misconceptions? 9 experts reveal what we get wrong about the past
items: Oh, Mary! makes a monster of Mary Todd Lincoln – but has history been too harsh?
items: What is Juneteenth, and why is it celebrated? A historian explains the significance of the holiday today
items: Who was the greatest President of the United States in history?
items: 13 famous cowboys and gunslingers from the history of the American Wild West
items: How Abraham Lincoln's 1860 election victory set America on the path to Civil War
items: What was a scalawag, and what does it have to do with the American Civil War?
items: The real history of Mary Surratt's controversial role in the Lincoln conspiracy
items: The slave who stole a ship and sailed to freedom
items: Gone with the Wind: how a 1936 novel explains modern America

What are history's biggest misconceptions? 9 experts reveal what we get wrong about the past
type: item
date: 2026-04-08T15:30:41.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: British prime ministers
subject: Civil rights
subject: Death
subject: Medieval life
subject: The royal family
subject: Viking life and culture
description: Our team of historians, broadcasters and authors take aim at the most egregious fallacies about the past
encoded: Ancient Athenian democracy was democratic There’s plenty to criticise about that ancient approach We wouldn’t recognise the system practised in ancient Athens as democracy in the sense we understand it today. Women did not have the vote, and the entire society depended on a massive slave population to be able to function. Yet in other ways it was also more democratic than our democracies today. Every (male) citizen took an active role in governing the city, and every major decision was taken by a vote involving every citizen who attended. An even more egregious misconception is the idea there is an unbroken link between ancient and modern democracy. Athenian democracy lasted for only around 200 years; since then, through most of the rest of antiquity, the Middle Ages and more modern historical periods, democracy has not been practised. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-1155876683wbebready-ecda02a-e1775040845111.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration of an ancient Greek orator standing on a raised platform, wearing a robe and laurel wreath, gesturing toward a crowd of citizens and soldiers gathered below. Classical buildings and hills appear in the background" title="Demosthenes, a defender of Athenian democracy in the fourth century BC, pictured in a c1880s illustration (Image by Getty Images)" /> In more recent times, Athenian democracy has been held up as a system to avoid rather than imitate. During debates between the founding fathers about the Constitution of the United States in the 1780s, many argued that “even if every Athenian had been a Socrates [ie very intelligent], Athenian democracy would have been little more than mob rule”. It is only very recently that we have come (again) to admire Athenian democracy, and want to link our own system of government to that ancient ideal. Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick Most people in the past had…

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Oh, Mary! makes a monster of Mary Todd Lincoln – but has history been too harsh?
type: item
date: 2026-04-07T07:14:30.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: Industrial revolution
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: Mary Todd Lincoln has been much maligned for her erratic behaviour ever since she stepped foot into the White House, and stage play Oh, Mary! leans into that, portraying her as a drunk, cabaret-obsessed drama queen. But the story of the real First Lady is one of enduring tragedy after tragedy
encoded: The legacy of US President Abraham Lincoln is beyond reproach: he emancipated the slaves and saved the Union in the American Civil War. That’s enough to enshrine him as one of the best to have ever served in the Oval Office. When it came to his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, however, the history books have been less kind. The First Lady is remembered as a tragic figure with a troubled mental state, which worsened throughout her life as she endured a series of devastating personal losses, including Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Prone to depression, headaches and tempers, she battled inner demons within and censure without. Her own son had her committed to an insane asylum. While that does not sound like a story filled with laughs, Mary Todd Lincoln has inspired the darkly comic and deeply silly stage play Oh, Mary!, currently playing on Broadway in New York City and in London’s West End. *Warning: spoilers for the stage play ahead * Leaving historical accuracy far behind, it gleefully reframes her as a miserable alcoholic longing to escape her closeted homosexual presidential husband and become a cabaret star. Who was the real Mary Todd Lincoln? Mary Todd Lincoln was the wife of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who served from 1861 to 1865. Following his assassination, she would live for another 17 years, although she was consumed by her grief and deteriorating mental health. Her sad end was the more poignant given that, in her youth, Mary had the makings for a successful role in the political landscape of Washington, DC, thanks to an upbringing that fostered her education, intelligence and social standing. Born on 13 December 1818, she was the fourth child of a wealthy and well-connected businessman, Robert Smith Todd, and Eliza Ann Parker Todd, daughter of a prominent family. Mary lost her mother at the age of six and her father quickly remarried. With a total of 16 children, there was little affection in the Todd household. Yet Mary r…

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What is Juneteenth, and why is it celebrated? A historian explains the significance of the holiday today
type: item
date: 2025-06-19T16:14:58.000Z
creator: Professor Adriane Lentz-Smith
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Civil rights
subject: Slavery
description: Each year on 19 June, millions across the US gather to commemorate the day in 1865 when the last enslaved African Americans finally learned of their freedom. Professor Adriane Lentz-Smith explores how the celebrations have evolved over the past 160 years – and the long campaign to have Juneteenth formally recognised as a federal holiday
encoded: Every summer, the Juneteenth holiday offers Americans an opportunity to celebrate visions of black freedom in the United States. ‘Juneteenth’ refers to 19 June 1865 – the day that victorious federal troops read out a General Order to the inhabitants of Texas’s Galveston Island declaring that “all slaves are free” – but enslaved people knew the date was a bit arbitrary. President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had ended slavery in the Confederate states more than two years prior, and the ratification of the 13th amendment six months later would end it throughout the US. Emancipation came to the South not as a dramatic, singular event but, instead, agonisingly slowly over space and time. Yet, for all the news that black Texans had passed to each other about slavery and the Confederacy being on the ropes in the years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Union victory, slaveholders in the Confederacy’s western frontier held fast to their regime until the Union Army’s arrival made emancipation enforceable. Within weeks, the more than 250,000 black people enslaved across Texas began seizing their freedom. Within a year, they had begun commemorating it. And by 1900, historian Quintard Taylor notes, Juneteenth had become more widely celebrated among black Texans than the Fourth of July. Read more | Abraham Lincoln: the greatest US president? Resistance through celebration The holiday served as part of freedpeople’s self-fashioning. Juneteenth is now a national American holiday, but it began as a Texas Emancipation Day, conceived and institutionalised by the formerly enslaved and their descendants. Black women’s clubs, churches and civic organisations marshalled resources to secure spaces for public celebration. In Houston in 1872, for example, they purchased 10 acres that they named ‘Emancipation Park’ and began holding annual celebrations. Black residents in Austin did the same in the early 1900s. In these cities and elsewhere, African Americans celeb…

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Who was the greatest President of the United States in history?
type: item
date: 2025-01-23T10:59:20.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: US presidents
description: Seven historians put forward their nominations for the most accomplished leader to have sat in the White House
encoded: George Washington In office: 1789–97 Party affiliation: none Nominated by: Thomas Kidd, historian and author of Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (Yale, 2022) George Washington was the first president in US history – and I’m nominating him as the best, too. I am basing this on his success as a leader, his ability to negotiate conflict in his administration, and most importantly the example he set for future presidents. Americans at the time of the Revolutionary War were enamoured with the ideal of the virtuous republican leader, in the model of the ancient Roman general Cincinnatus. Washington was no perfect man, of course, and like many elite southern Americans he was a slaveholder. But in politics he came the closest to manifesting the republican ideal of any American president. Washington became president after serving as the commander of the Continental Army during the fight for independence from the British. His leadership of the army was not uniformly positive, but his tenacity ultimately led to a successful outcome. Many suspected he might simply remain in the position as a kind of benevolent autocrat, but he resigned from the army in late 1783, returning to his Mount Vernon home in Virginia. Befitting the respect that he commanded, Washington was chosen to preside over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where the US Constitution was drafted. Then he became the first president to be elected under that Constitution in 1789, in a unanimous vote of the electoral college. Washington dealt with major political conflicts in his administration, especially between the treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, and secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who bitterly disagreed over economic policy and the direction of the new republic. Washington was largely (if not completely) able to rise above the partisan bickering, and always believed that the republic and its leaders needed to manifest consensus for the public good. He assiduously reached out to m…

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13 famous cowboys and gunslingers from the history of the American Wild West
type: item
date: 2024-12-30T05:00:13.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Evergreen
subject: Historical people
description: Saddle up and discover the most famous cowboys who shaped the American Frontier, exploring how their stories intertwined with the broader history of the Wild West
encoded: Through the lens of idealised romanticism, the Old West continues to capture the imagination as a wild and untamed frontier ready to be harnessed by those with the determination, courage and grit required to endure it. And despite the dangers – from an unforgiving terrain to the pervading lawlessness – there were great opportunities for a handful of big personalities to make a name for themselves. They robbed banks and stagecoaches, proved their speed and skill with a pistol in a gunfight, and embraced the chaos and change of an era marked by clashes between incoming settlers and Native Americans, farmers and businessman, the past and the future. They are some of the most famous figures in American history: cowboys. What was a cowboy? Symbols of the Wild West, cowboys could be all things, from frontiersmen, ranchers, farmers, wranglers, marshals and, of course, outlaws. It was an identity as much as it was an outright occupation. Beyond the bluster of the ubiquitous anti-heroes of Hollywood movies, their real-life stories provide insight into the broader forces underlying the expansion of the American frontier. Through their deeds, we can see the land disputes, the end of indigenous sovereignty, the rise of the railroad, and the slow march of federal law into a space once thought to be uncontrollable. 13 famous cowboys from the American Wild West Billy the Kid Jesse James Wyatt Earp Butch Cassidy Calamity Jane Wild Bill Hickok Doc Holliday Bass Reeves Belle Starr Black Bart John Wesley Hardin Bill Doolin Charles Goodnight Billy the Kid c1859–1881 Is there any name that evokes the outlaws of the Wild West more than Billy the Kid? Born Henry McCarty, the gunslinger was an orphan by his early teens and quickly turned to crime to survive. He went by a number of aliases, including William H Bonney and Kid Antrim (the latter a reference to his slight build and youthful features), before making his first recorded killing in 1877 at the age of 17. But it would be his involv…

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How Abraham Lincoln's 1860 election victory set America on the path to Civil War
type: item
date: 2024-11-04T11:09:23.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
description: Richard Carwardine explains why Lincoln's election victory in 1860 was so important and how he managed to trounce his rivals in the polls...
encoded: Q: What was the political prelude to the 1860 election? A: Ever since the drafting of America’s federal constitution of 1787, the question of slavery had given rise to political contention and compromise. In the early years of the new American nation, several northern states adopted statutes of emancipation, while new technology and the international demand for cotton gave slave labour deep roots in the south. Plantation agriculture spread from the Atlantic states into the Gulf region. As a result, slave numbers would grow to four million by 1860. Most Americans deemed that the constitution gave individual slave states alone the right to determine the future of their ‘peculiar institution’. However, the westward movement of settlers and the extension of the nation’s boundaries – through the purchase of Louisiana, the annexation of Texas, and the wresting of California and other parts of Mexico by force – prompted periodic crises over the status of slaveholding in the territories and the new states carved out of them. In 1820 and again in 1850 threats of civil war between North and South prompted compromise, while the Democrats and Whigs – the dominant national parties during the 1830s and 1840s – worked in the main to keep the issue at bay. But in the 1850s it arose again. By then growing intransigence, and each faction’s sense of its moral and social superiority, put political compromise beyond easy reach. Read more | The story of the American Civil War: 32 key moments in the landmark conflict Q: Why does the presidential election of 1860 matter? A: Abraham Lincoln’s victory in November 1860 as the Republican candidate for the White House forever changed the relationship between the American government and the institution of slavery. It wasn’t that Lincoln was the first nominee for the presidency to run on an antislavery platform. Minority parties, alarmed by the increasing entrenchment of plantation slavery, had fielded emancipationists in every presidential elect…

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What was a scalawag, and what does it have to do with the American Civil War?
type: item
date: 2024-07-30T14:21:29.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Evergreen
description: Today, we use the term ‘scallywag’ to describe a distrustful rascal, but it stems from a different word, ‘scalawag’, which has its roots in the aftermath of the American Civil War
encoded: Immediately following the American Civil War (1861–1865), during the period known as the Reconstruction era, a new pejorative term came into use. A ‘scalawag’ described a white Southerner who supported the US government’s plan to reorganise the 11 states that had seceded from the Union (the Confederacy). The origin of the word dates back further, to at least the 1840s or possibly the 1850s, when it initially referred to a worthless farm animal. Southern supporters of the Democratic Party and journalists later popularised its association with Southern-born white supporters of the Republican Party during Reconstruction, viewing them as traitors to the South. Reconstruction refers to the period following the civil war that aimed to rebuild the South, integrate freed African Americans into US society and reform Southern states’ governments. It involved federal efforts to enforce civil rights and reshape the political landscape and was opposed by Southern Democrats who resisted changes to their traditional social order. What kind of people were accused of being scalawags? Scalawags came from diverse backgrounds and included Unionists (those who had supported the North during the Civil War), secessionists (advocates of the breakaway Confederacy), former slaveholders and Confederate veterans. Small landholding farmers who had long resented the hegemony of the slave-owning planter class over Southern society, accounted for many scalawags. These farmers had also mostly opposed the region’s secession from the Union. Read more | A battle of wills: why the South lost the American Civil War Reconstruction was welcomed as conducive to their interests and an obstacle to the restoration of the antebellum system of slavery. They were driven by a desire to modernise the South – that is, to remake it in the image of the Northern states. Others were simply opportunistic, seizing the chance to gain power and influence in the new political landscape. How did scalawags differ from carpetb…

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The real history of Mary Surratt's controversial role in the Lincoln conspiracy
type: item
date: 2024-03-22T09:02:03.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Historical people
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: Mary Surratt’s involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, as seen in the new Apple TV+ series Manhunt, is fraught with controversy and ambiguity. What is the complicated truth about her role in the plot, how much did she know, and was she really guilty?
encoded: Mary Surratt is known for her contentious role in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, in 1865. Prior to Lincoln’s murder, Surratt would have been regarded as an ordinary woman living a typical middle-class existence. However, her implication in John Wilkes Booth’s conspiracy to attack several members of the Union government – as well as Abraham Lincoln – led to Surratt becoming the first woman to be executed by the federal government in the United States. Now, with the release of Apple TV+ historical drama Manhunt, a seven-part series focussing on the immediate aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination at the effective end of the American Civil War and the pursuit of the conspirators by officials including Edwin Stanton, we explore the true story of Mary Surratt’s role in the conspiracy, including the ambiguity as to her guilt. The true story of Mary Surratt’s involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln Mary Surratt, born in the early 1820s, was a widow who owned a boarding house in Washington DC. She had moved there in 1864, after encountering substantial financial difficulties following the death of her husband in 1862. Her boarding house was used by John Wilkes Booth and his fellow conspirators to plot the abduction and assassination of President Lincoln, and by Confederate agents more broadly. However, it wasn’t the conspirators’ use of Surratt’s boarding house as a place to organise themselves that condemned Surratt. Rather, it was her close personal connections to the conspirators, quotes attributed to her, along with her suspicious activity, that established her involvement in the plot. Mary Surratt’s son, John Surrat Jr, was a confidant of John Wilkes Booth, and he introduced Booth to his mother. She saw Booth regularly coming in and out of her boarding house, which became a hive of Confederate activity. Additional evidence against Mary Surratt, in the trial that led to her conviction and eventual death, further cemented her as a figure who w…

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The slave who stole a ship and sailed to freedom
type: item
date: 2022-10-17T11:58:13.000Z
creator: Jonny Wilkes
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Historical people
subject: Slavery
description: Robert Smalls pulled off one of the most courageous escapes from slavery in history, and followed that by becoming a war hero and trailblazing politician
encoded: The steamship slowly drifted across the harbour, as quietly as the paddlewheels slapping against the water and the chugging and grinding of the engine allowed. A fog helped to hide them, and those on board knew it was imperative to stay inconspicuous. They were on a secret and dangerous journey that dark May night, one that could change their lives – or end them. While there were no officers, a man in the captain’s coat and hat stood on the deck. His name was Robert Smalls, and on this stolen ship he intended to sail himself and everyone below decks to freedom from slavery. Smalls had been born into slavery 23 years earlier, on 5 April 1839, to a domestic named Lydia Polite in Beaufort, South Carolina. He actually had it easier, relatively, than the other enslaved children – possibly since his master, Henry McKee, may have been his father – but his mother wanted him to understand the horrors faced by black people in the United States. Her harsh lessons included putting him to work in the fields and forcing him to witness a whipping. Download your essential guide to black British history, from BBC History Revealed Available to HistoryExtra subscribers, join us here The man planning to commandeer a 150-feet sidewheel steamship, the CSS Planter, was shaped by these experiences. He was also one of the best pilots in the harbour, who knew the waters so well that he could navigate the sandbars and shallows even in the dark. This would be handy as his escape would be in the early hours. While his white officers had refused to call him a pilot, instead using the term ‘wheelman’ for a slave, Smalls was plotting to be the captain on his own voyage. He would be escaping Charleston. Family commitments Smalls had been 12 when his master first sent him to the town. Over the years, he worked a number of jobs, from waiter at a fancy hotel to a rigger and stevedore, before being enlisted on the crew of the Planter. Smalls enjoyed being near the water and, what’s more, he was allowed…

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Gone with the Wind: how a 1936 novel explains modern America
type: item
date: 2022-08-03T11:25:21.000Z
creator: Rachel Dinning
subject: 20th Century
subject: 21st Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Sarah Churchwell discusses the controversial legacy of Gone With The Wind and what it can reveal about American history and culture today
encoded: Professor Sarah Churchwell discusses her new book The Wrath to Come, which re-examines the controversial legacy of Margaret Mitchell’s immensely popular 1936 novel Gone With The Wind. Speaking with Rachel Dinning, she considers what it can tell us about American history and culture today, from the mythmaking that sprung up following the Civil War to the origins of modern debates over racism and the far right in the United States. Sarah Churchwell is the author of The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells (Apollo, 2022) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones

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