Article, Collections and Site Search
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Civil War Chronicles, the American Heritage column that’s devoted to this nation’s greatest conflict, has expanded and taken new shape in the following pages. The idea for the department began two years ago with a simple premise: give readers an idea of how events unfolded in the lead-up to the Civil War by documenting events that occurred 150 years ago during the exact months in which that issue...
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The Floor of Heaven: A True Tale of the Last Frontier and the Yukon Gold Rush
By Howard BlumThis quintessentially American story is packed with larger-than-life characters straight out of a John Ford western: Soapy Smith, a scoundrel and con man, whose great goal is to become rich; the former cowboy Charlie Siringo, who hates the range and yearns to become a famous writer; prospector George...
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When I opened the recent issue of American Heritage and turned to Edward G. Lengel’s incredible account of the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne, tears filled my eyes. The story looked in part at the contributions of 13-year-old Pvt. Ernest L. Wrentmore, the youngest U.S. soldier to serve in that conflict. He was my father.
Not only was I overwhelmed with pride, but the photograph of the young man in...
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Three years ago a tattooed, half-naked bodybuilder crashed a Boston conference to announce . . . something having to do with the Smithsonian’s Luce Foundation Center for American Art. For those in the know, his (temporary) tattoos depicted art objects from the center’s collection, the first of many clues in a new scavenger-hunt type of game based on the center’s collection of art and artifacts....
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Many people said we couldn’t do it: build a website in which you could search through hundreds of museum collections across the U.S. Without any government support. “Too ambitious,” said many archivists.
Well, we invite you to visit our revolutionary new Web site—www.AmericanHeritage.com and the National Portal to Historic Collections, created with our partner, the American Association for...
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On the Beach With BurnsI was much interested in James Mac-Gregor Burns’s article in the Fall 2010 issue, “The Naked Truth of Battle,” about his experience as a combat historian during the World War II battle for Saipan. I was a Marine Corps combat correspondent attached to the 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, during the Saipan-Tinian campaign. Like Burns, the Marine Corps CCs carried...
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“Lightning never struck in the same place twice,” an overly confident George Pollard told a midshipman in November 1822 after assuming captaincy of his second command, the whale ship Two Brothers, in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Pollard’s earlier exploits were legendary: a sperm whale had rammed and sunk the whale ship under his command, 1,000 miles west of the Galápagos Islands. He and the crew of...
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In a masterstroke of cultural diplomacy this past October, the Russian-American Working Group on Library Cooperation engineered an exchange of rare films between the Library of Congress and Gosfilmofond, the Russian state film archive in Moscow.It turns out that Gosfilmofond has meticulously cared for nearly 200 American films given to them between 1910 and 1941, many of which are now the only...
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Recently, while conducting some routine Internet research for her biography on a granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson, historian Ann Lucas Birle stumbled upon an obscure but intriguing reference: an 1880 bequest recorded that St. Louis’s Washington University was to receive a 3,000-volume library, which contained many books that were “rare and of great value.” The original owner—the granddaughter’s...
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On March 15, 2011, Army Cpl. Frank Woodruff Buckles was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, the last surviving American World War I veteran. He joins Albert Woolson (d. 1956), the last Union Civil War veteran, and Lemuel Cook (d. 1866), the last official veteran of the Revolutionary War, whose deaths signaled a major turning point in our history.
A 16-year-old Buckles lied his way into...
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By Louis Segesvary, Ph.D
Public Affairs Director • Appalachian Regional CommissionWVU’s Jackson’s Mill
Weston, WV
The Confederacy’s famous tactician, General “Stonewall” Jackson, grew up at his uncle’s West Virginia farm and grist mill, above, after his mother died. Today the Mill serves as an educational, arts, and 4-H center.While material written about the Civil War could easily fill a...
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“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.” It was 2:38 PM Central Standard Time, Friday, November 22, 1963, when Lyndon Johnson, right hand raised, repeated those words in a stuffy, cramped compartment aboard USAF 26000...
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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS came to Paris for the first time in 1867, the year it seemed the whole world came to Paris for the Exposition Universelle, the grand, gilded apogee of Second Empire exuberance. He arrived on an evening in February, by train after dark and apparently alone. He was 19 years old, a redheaded New York City boy, a shoemaker's son, who had been working since the age of 13. He was...
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The air at 20,000 feet above Schweinfurt, Germany, was icy cold, but the bombardier crouching in the nose of the B-17 hardly noticed. Sweat poured down his forehead as flak rocked the aircraft, periodically spattering his compartment's Plexiglas bubble with fragments. He focused intently on preparing for the final bombing run. He bent over the Norden bombsight, making adjustments with one gloved...
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As the editor of the papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, I have the privilege of intersecting with many people who come bearing documents supposedly signed by the first president. More often than you might think, I have the unenviable task of informing them that their letter‚ often lovingly framed and passed down for decades in their family is a fake. An...
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In 2006, conservator Ralph Wiegandt flipped on his Zeiss Axio stereomicroscope and peered at the surface of an 1848 daguerreotype. The Cincinnati Public Library had entrusted him to clean its prize possession, a rare five-and-a-half-foot-long, eight-plate panorama photograph of the city’s waterfront. Working out of the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, he found the image’s surface...
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AT 9 O’CLOCK ON THE morning of September 25, 1775, a French Canadian habitant banged on the main gate of Montreal. The Americans were coming, he blurted breathlessly to a British officer. As drums began to rattle out the alarm and a panicky crowd filled the Place d’Armes, the farmer told Sir Guy Carleton, governor general of Canada, that an American army had crossed the St. Lawrence during the...
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Northern
Source Boston JournalIn late August, an amphibious expedition under Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler attacked the Hatteras Inlet batteries of Forts Clark and Hatteras, the first step in the North’s strategy to shut down blockade running, control the South’s coast, and deny the Confederacy access to foreign trade.A reporter from the Boston Journal put together this account of the action.Time 9...
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We are delighted to welcome an old friend back into our pages. Longtime readers will remember that David McCullough cut his teeth as an American Heritage book editor in the 1960s, then published articles in our pages that would develop into those first-class books about the Panama Canal, the Johnstown Flood, and Harry Truman. (Incidentally, we’ve introduced a new feature on our website to search...
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Lighting the HunleyMy local newspaper recently quoted Editor-in-Chief Edwin Grosvenor about his concerns that schools today were not adequately teaching the Civil War. My co-worker Fred Lutkus and I wanted to bring to his attention the work done by 12 of our students at the Hamburg Area High School in eastern Pennsylvania: over the 2009–10 school year we built four replicas of the lantern...
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LIKE A CURMUDGEON who writes cranky letters to the editor, retired president Thomas Jefferson wanted to get the news without editorial bias or commentary—the Good News, that is, because he was reading the Bible. Whiling away his dotage at Monticello, he finally had time on his hands to finish a task begun decades earlier, namely to compile and edit a personalized version of the New Testament,...
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Northern
Source Frémont Emancipation ProclamationA career army officer, politician, and western explorer who had helped the United States secure California during the U.S.–Mexican War, John C. Frémont won a commission as a major general in 1861 and took command of Union forces in Missouri. The controversial proclamation he then issued claimed that any slaves...
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Northern
Source Douglass EssayOne of the strongest voices for abolitionism came from former slave Frederick Douglass, whom Lincoln invited twice to the White House to discuss slavery. In this essay, Douglass continued to push Lincoln and other Northerners whom he believed were moving far too slowly in recognizing the rights and abilities of African Americans.Why refuse the aid of colored men?It...
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Southern
Source Ross AddressFearing that his powerful rival Stand Watie would fracture the Cherokee Nation, Principal Chief John Ross pushed for an alliance with the Confederacy in 1861, successfully arguing for its ratification in the following address. Two years later, Ross renounced the alliance and pushed for emancipation of slaves. Confederate Brigadier General Watie became the last...
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A scouting mission turned into a rout at Ball’s Bluff on October 21, 1861, when a fierce Confederate attack and a shortage of boats on the Potomac left Union soldiers terribly exposed.Northern
Source Abbot LetterAbbott wrote to his father about his unit's engagement at Ball's Bluff, in which the 20th Massachusetts Volunteers would suffer a third killed or wounded and another third captured....
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My paternal grandfather, Edward St. Lawrence Gates, was buried on July 2, 1960. After the burial my father showed my brother and me scrapbooks that his father had kept. Within the pages of those scrapbooks was an obituary of my great-great-grandmother, a slave named Jane Gates. It was dated January 6, 1888. And then he showed us her photograph. The next day I bought a composition book, came home...
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IN 1864, THE SAME YEAR that Congress mandated funds for Arlington Cemetery, Abraham Lincoln commissioned $25,000 for construction of Washington, D.C.’s first naval hospital just blocks from the Capitol. Two years later, the 50-bed facility received it first patient, a 24-year-old African American seaman named Benjamin Drummond. Over the last decade, the Old Naval Hospital Foundation has raised...
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This May the Library of Congress started streaming some of America’s oldest recorded music on its new National Jukebox website, which features more than 10,000 audio tracks produced by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. Among the offerings: John Philip Sousa marches, early Tin Pan Alley rags, Black Broadway tunes, Irving Berlin numbers, and Enrico Caruso arias. See www.loc....
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TO READ THE MAY 13, 1900 dinnermenu at Rector’s, the midtown New York lobster house, is to engage in a little virtual hedonism: the fare includes 57 cuts of meat, 24 oyster dishes, 16 variations of lobster, and five kinds of duck. Some of the well-heeled diners on a weekend evening may have come from the Broadway Theatre’s hit production of Ben-Hur, which featured a live chariot race staged by...
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On July 19, 1941, when Gen. George Catlett Marshall, Army chief of staff, stepped before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, his gray civilian suit could not disguise the proud bearing of a soldier and commander of men. His shoulders squared, but not conspicuously so, his chin receding slightly, and thin lips compressed with resolution, his tall figure exuded dignity, authority, and...
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In June 1833 President Andrew Jackson, visiting the brand-new factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts, watched as 2,500 female mill workers marched past the balcony of his hotel. The “mile of gals,” as one male observer dubbed the spectacle, bore no resemblance to the ragged, sickly paupers crowding English cotton mills of Manchester and Birmingham. These were proud, well-behaved Yankee farmers’...
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On February 6, 1965, Vietcong guerrillas attacked the U.S. base at Pleiku, killing eight American soldiers and wounding 126. The Johnson administration quickly retaliated, commencing another vicious cycle of lightning reprisals and military escalations. Suddenly U.S. “advisers” in Vietnam were recognized as combat troops; 23,000 U.S. personnel grew to 181,000 by the year’s end. On March 8 CBS...
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For decades, Yale history professor David Blight, an award-winning author and a preeminent scholar of the Civil War, has studied the legacy of Bruce Catton, the historian/writer who significantly shaped our understanding of the Civil War by bringing it into exhilarating, memorable relief through his books and magazine articles. “Few writers have grasped the transformative effect of the war so...
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In late March 1807 Aaron Burr arrived in Richmond, Virginia, in a vile mood, filthy and stinking. He had just endured a month of hard travel under heavy guard through the dense forests of the Southeast. “It is not easy for one who has been robbed and plundered till he had not a second shirt,” he complained to a friend, “to contend with a Govt having millions at command and active and vindictive...
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The director of the Census Bureau doesn’t often pay house calls for census enumeration, but in the spring of 1940 William Austin stopped by the White House to find out who was home. Franklin Roosevelt himself helped fill out the form claiming nine in a household that included personal secretary Marguerite “Missy” LeHand, one cousin, a governess, and four “Negro servants.”The page that FDR helped...
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The Fledglings, a painting of a 1908 air meet in Morris Park in the Bronx, New York, has the feel of a single frame of a comic strip, with a lively crowd surging across the scene, milling around the aircraft, and even climbing into trees. That would make sense: the artist was 31-year-old Rudolph Dirks, a German immigrant already famous for creating the pioneering comic strip The Katzenjammer Kids...
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On January 6, 1912, New Mexico became a state, followed 39 days later by Arizona. A 62-year-long quest for statehood—the longest in U.S. history—had finally ended.What may seem today like a foregone conclusion about statehood was nothing of the kind at the turn of the 20th century. Fearing higher taxes, powerful railroad and mining interests lobbied hard against admission, while cattle barons...
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Many plans are afloat to commemorate the 1513 landing of explorer Ponce de León in Florida. He was said to be looking for the fountain of youth, but instead found a land so full of springtime flowers that he named it “La Florida.” The Sunshine State is eager for visitors to appreciate its rich history, so Secretary of State Ken Detzner is heading VivaFlorida 500, a commission to help...
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When Paul Jaskot, a historian of architecture and art at DePaul University in Chicago, started researching the design of Nazi concentration camps, he confronted immense stacks of archival materials. The Germans, after all, were meticulous record keepers—and the data included construction drawings, freight manifests, and purchase orders. How could he possibly mine information from such a diverse...
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1812: The Navy's WarBy George C. Daughan 1812: The Navy’s War recounts the familiar tales of how American captains—men such as Stephen Decatur and Isaac Hull—bloodied the nose of Great Britain’s powerful navy. The exploits of the USS Constitution rank among the most famous: it dismasted and captured the HMS Guerriere in one skirmish and later defeated the HMS Java in an intense three-hour...
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From very personal experience I can tell you it’s tough to sail against winds of change in publishing and the difficult economic times of recent years. After surmounting many challenges, our publishing company must end its run of 61 years. In its place, a new organization—The American Heritage Society—rises to the occasion. As a nonprofit, the Society will be able to secure...
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Unlikely FriendshipI truly enjoyed reading Timothy C. Ruse’s “An Unlikely Friendship” in the Summer/Fall issue. It’s nothing short of amazing how men like his grandfather survived the horrors as American POWs. Having just finished reading Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, which is the story of another hero, Olympic runner Louie Zamperini, as well as his own account of what he went through in Devil at...
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On the morning of December 19, 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower strode into the gloomy school building in Verdun that housed the main headquarters of General Omar Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group. He had called a meeting of all the senior commanders under Bradley. More than just the building was gloomy; the weather outside was a dark gray, and the tactical situation facing the American Army in...
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You wouldn’t know Piedmont anymore—my Piedmont, I mean—the town in West Virginia where I learned to be a colored boy.
The 1950s in Piedmont was a sepia time, or at least that’s the color my memory has given it. People were always proud to be from Piedmont—nestled against a wall of mountains, smack-dab on the banks of the mighty Potomac. We knew God gave America no more beautiful location. I never...
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American Heritage is proud to host the
National Portal to
Historic Collections
Recently added:
- American Revolution Center
- National Museum of Civil War Medicine
- National Museum of the U.S. Navy
- Manassas National Battlefield
- Maryland State House
In association with the
American Association for State and Local History
Why do we need a national nonprofit membership society for American history?
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“Save America’s Treasures” has been totally eliminated—the largest Federal program supporting preservation of such treasures as the original Star Spangled Banner and George Washington’s tent.
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65% of Americans don’t know what happened at the Constitutional Convention, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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The “Teaching American History” grants—the largest Federal program supporting history education—have been completely eliminated.
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Visits to the Top 20 Civil War battlefields have dropped in half from 1970 to 2009 according to official National Park Service statistics.
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40% of Americans can’t identify whom we fought in World War II, according to a recent survey by Newsweek.
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A quarter of Americans believe Congress shares power over U.S. foreign policy with the United Nations, according to a recent Annenberg survey.
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“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country,” John F. Kennedy wrote in American Heritage.
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The “We the People Program,” which touched some 30 million students and 90,000 teachers over 25 years, has been completely eliminated.
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Two-thirds of Americans could not correctly name Yorktown as the last major military action of the American Revolution, according to a recent national Gallup survey.
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The National Heritage Areas and Scenic Byways program, the only major Federal program encouraging visits to historic places, has been completely eliminated in Congressional committee.
