The nature of American constitutional politics was forever changed during the Progressive Era. In the nineteenth century, the process of constitutional interpretation was a vague and decentralized enterprise balanced between the courts and the public square. The meaning of the Constitution was decided as much at the polls or on the battlefield as in court opinions. This balance started to give way at the turn of the century as federal courts began asserting greater authority in the definition of constitutional bounds. “Bench over Ballot” illustrates how the assertion of judicial supremacy in the Progressive Era precipitated a fight that upended the traditional dynamic of American politics. Populist-progressives championed the people's ultimate right to correct judicial decisions while traditionalist-conservatives stood for judicial supremacy to ensure a “government of laws.” The outcome of the political battle in 1912 was a consensus between Wilsonian progressives and Taftian conservatives in favor of judicial supremacy that banished the notion of popular supremacy and transformed the nature of constitutional politics from a popular, decentralized process to a vicious battle over the personal composition of the bench—a phenomenon deeply familiar over a century later.

In the early twentieth century, many states turned to convict road labor in response to the clamor for good roads and the contemporaneous crisis of imprisonment. States, guided by the federal government that served as an information broker, developed two main types of convict labor program—the honor and guard systems. These systems differed by regional and local context. Colorado developed the honor form of convict labor based in Progressive principles. The Colorado system offers a case study in local conditions that took on national importance as Warden Thomas Tynan became enmeshed in a national network of Progressive penal reformers helping define state-run convict labor systems. This essay follows the reform ideology and financial incentives that drove Colorado's honor program, showing how capitalist labor motivations were balanced with ideals of reform. The honor system spread across the United States, and the story of this system complicates regional paradigms while highlighting national patterns. The story of honor guard convict labor and infrastructure development connects Progressive Era reform, penal reform, labor history, and regional and demographic patterns.

Against the backdrop of the Great War a seemingly unlikely transatlantic romance blossomed between the deeply imperialist Round Table journal founded by “Milner’s Kindergarten,” a cadre of young former colonial administrators in Great Britain, and the American progressive standard-bearer The New Republic. The rhetoric of The New Republic in these years was deeply influenced by political Anglo-Saxon thought, as exemplified in The Round Table. Political Anglo-Saxonism was the belief that Anglo-Saxons were uniquely prepared for both self-governance and colonial governance. Adherents judged others’ capacity to self-govern against idealized Anglo norms. Both The Round Table (1910) and The New Republic (1914), from their inaugural issues on, sought national solutions for national problems utilizing a shared rhetoric of national efficiency. During the Great War this shared nationalist-progressivism drew the two groups together facilitating The New Republic’s founders’ early (1915) embrace of American intervention in the war. These connections are illuminated here through the interactions of The New Republic founders: Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and Walter Weyl with key members of the British Round Table set, including Lionel Curtis, Philip Henry Kerr, Alfred Zimmern, and the prominent American “imperial school” historian George Louis Beer.

Since its release in October 2018, Red Dead Redemption 2 has generated considerable controversy. Redemption 2, Rockstar Games’ highly popular video game set in a sprawling open world that resembles America’s southern and western states at the turn of the twentieth century, has attracted criticism from players who have disliked the perceived political messages the game presents. With numerous interactions with people of color, Native Americans, and feminist (suffragette) characters, the game prompts players to engage with the ongoing effects of colonialism, sexism, and racism, as well as the rising problems of an industrial and financial capitalist society. As such, the game’s depiction of Gilded Age and Progressive Era politics has resulted in a large amount of online criticism from a group of traditionally white, male, right-wing players. This article argues that Redemption 2 utilizes the Progressive Era as a vehicle to capture and speak to the current political climate, and that it is the game’s dual relationship with the past and the present that has aroused animosity from part of the game’s audience. Ultimately, it demonstrates how contemporary mainstream progressive politics can be interpreted within and projected upon the politics of the Progressive Era.