For the most part, my high school history classes consisted of names, dates, documents, and battles. What I’ve learned since then — through historians like Doris Kearns-Goodwin, David McCullough, Ken Burns, and others — is that history comes alive when we discover the human stories behind the events. One of those stories belongs to John Hart of New Jersey, a...

Note: apologies to readers who were expecting a different commentary. I’m tabling it to Friday. Yesterday, I received a rundown from our citizen reporter, Stephen Ambra, on the ground in Concord, New Hampshire. In past elections, Ambra has described “the gauntlet” that he and other voters face in front of the polling station, where acolytes for candidates holding signs politely...