Remembering Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox”
Our country’s Revolutionary War lasted eight years, from 1775 to 1783. Many historians contend that the War was won in no small part in a series of skirmishes and battles in the final years of the...
Remembering Quanah Parker
Most of us learned in school something about the most famous Native-American tribal leaders during the period of the settlement of the American West: Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Red Cloud, to...
Remembering Frederick Douglass
We have posted before about the Civil War era and Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Much of the impetus for Lincoln’s Proclamation came from the radical abolitionists in the...
Remembering Cotton Mather
A major church leader in early America was Cotton Mather, who died this day on February 13, 1728 at the age of 65. He was one of the most controversial Puritan clerics of his era, known for his...
February 1623: Jamestowne Colony Tallies Up the Grim Statistics of the “Livinge & Dead in Virginia,” Following the Massacre of 1622
(contemporaneous engraving of the Massacre of 1622) Looking back 400 years, we often read about events that were defining moments in the history of our earliest American settlements, be they the...
Remembering John Hancock
One of the most famous leaders of the rebellion that led to our American Revolution was John Hancock, born this day on January 23, 1737. Hancock was an unlikely warrior—he was not a military man,...
Remembering John C. Fremont
Born this day in 1813, Major-General John C. Fremont was one of the most popular men in America in the mid-1800’s: a soldier, an explorer, a gold speculator, a territorial Governor, a U.S. senator,...
Remembering John Winthrop
One of the most important political leaders in early New England was John Winthrop, who was born this day on January 12, 1587/1588. Beginning in 1630, Winthrop was the long-time Governor of the...
Remembering Alexander Hamilton
You see his face every day on our $10 bill. A Broadway musical is named after him. And he’s known as the man who was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804. Alexander Hamilton is a truly iconic...
January 1863: President Lincoln Signs the Emancipation Proclamation, Extending Freedom to Enslaved Persons
This month in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, one of the most important Presidential acts in American history. Since the enactment of the...
