The history of the American West is replete with stories of atrocities committed by Native-Americans against white settlers, and vice-versa. There is no escaping that our U.S. government failed to stop—and perhaps encouraged—some of the more heinous attacks by American troops against Indian men, women and children, and the displacement
Most Americans know that the battle that effectively ended the American Revolution was the Battle of Yorktown, pitting British General Cornwallis against General George Washington and his French counterpart, General Rochambeau. There was no escape for Cornwallis and his troops, due in significant part to the ability of the French
Just two months after the United States declared independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776, America’s military forces were badly beaten by British troops in the Battle of Long Island, sometimes called the “Battle of Brooklyn,” for it was at Brooklyn that General Washington and his troops were corned
This year we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which we think of as the “bookend” to the ultimate end of the War in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris. That’s true, but that was not the end of hostilities between America and Great
As we head towards the Fall season, and prepare for Thanksgiving celebrations, we honor the memory of the Pilgrim passengers on the Mayflower, who landed at Cape Cod in November 1620, and founded Plymouth Colony. We sometimes overlook, however, two momentous events that took place the following year: the actual
The morning of August 20, 1794 broke humid and gray over the Maumee River, in present-day Indiana and Ohio. A storm had torn through the forest through which the American Legion under the command of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne was marching to confront the Native-American warriors who comprised the “Native
This month we commemorate the 150th anniversary of Thomas Edison’s invention of an “automatic pen,” which historians credit as the first step toward the invention of the mimeograph machine. Like many other patents that Edison was awarded, this one transformed how people communicated, and represented another paradigm-shifting step towards the
Today we commemorate the birth of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America, who came into this world on August 18, 1587. Virginia, her parents, and her fellow settlers of the Roanoke Colony have all become mythic figures, because over 430 years ago, they simply disappeared from
The man many historians credit as being one of the most reliable first-person chroniclers of the early days of the Jamestowne Colony was William Strachey, who was buried at St. Giles’ Church in Camberwell, England on this day on August 16, 1621. Strachey was one of the passengers on the
Founded in 1902, the town of Goldfield, Nevada experienced a meteoric rise over the next five years to become a center of the mining industry In the United States. By the winter of 1907, Goldfield stood at the height of its power—Nevada’s richest mining camp, a boomtown of electric lights,
Collis P. Huntington was an important American businessman and railroad leader during the 1800s – one of the “Big Four” tycoons of the western railroad industry. He was born in 1821 in Harwinton, Connecticut, and later moved west during the California Gold Rush. Huntington became involved in business and eventually
Albert Gallatin was an important American statesman, diplomat, and financier who helped shape the early United States. He was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on January 29, 1761, and immigrated to America as a young man. During the American Revolution, Gallatin supported the Patriot cause and later became involved in politics.
American Heritage Partners is pleased to announce a new book by Michael Auslin, an American Heritage Partners Fellow at the Society of the Cincinnati’s American Revolution Institute and the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His new book, “How the Declaration of Independence Made America”
In the early seventeenth century, when England strained under religious division and political uncertainty, one family quietly set in motion the creation of a new society across the Atlantic. The story begins with George Calvert, a man whose ambitions were shaped as much by faith as by politics, and continues
While most Americans know that the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress in July 1776 in Philadelphia, the story about how the news of that momentous event was spread to the rest of the world is less well known. Several recent books have covered this subject, and
After the expansion of the New Mexico Territory in 1853, the fate of the nearby Arizona Territory was in question. In 1856, a petition was presented to the U.S. Congress requesting organization of the territory, but the proposal was defeated on the grounds that the population was too small, and