James A. Henretta is a Professor Emeritus of American History at the University of Maryland, College Park. His publications include "Salutary Neglect": Colonial Administration under the Duke of Newcastle; The Origins of American Capitalism; and an edited volume, Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750-1850. His most recent publication is a long article, "Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America," in Law and History Review, derived from his ongoing research on the liberal state in America, and in particular, New York, 1820-1975.
Rebecca Edwards is Eloise Ellery Professor of History at Vassar College, where she teaches courses on the Civil War era, the West, environmental history, and the history of women and gender roles. She is the author of, among other publications, Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era; New Spirits: Americans in the "Gilded Age," 1865-1905; and the essay "Women's and Gender History" in The New American History. She is currently researching the connections between westward expansion, high frontier fertility, and nineteenth-century political ideologies.