President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. The order freed all slaves in the U.S. effective on Jan. 1, 1861. The country was still in the grips of the Civil War, though. Though Lincoln’s order applied to the states that had joined the Confederacy, there...

On July 30, 1975, a man drove—or was driven—to the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a suburb of Detroit. And disappeared from the face of the earth. He did not come home that night, and his wife reported him missing. His car was found at the restaurant. And that&rs...

Two recent newspaper editorials illustrate the double-mindedness some feel about President Obama’s decision to provide small arms and ammunition to Syrian rebels. The Washington Post headlined an editorial: “No time for half-measures: Syria’s rebels need a robust intervention from...