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Amelia Found?
At 9 A.M. on the morning of Tuesday March 20, 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stepped to a
 podium in the State Department’s Benjamin Franklin Dining Room and addressed a roomful of reporters, federal officials, and a sprinkling of female military aviators. Behind her sat the Secretary of Transportation, the foreign minister of the nation of Kiribati, the CEO of Lockheed Martin,...
[Stories]
Osceola Fights to Save the Seminole
The story of Osceola and the Great Seminole War in Florida seems so fantastic at times that it is hard to believe it is all true. One warrior with courage, cunning, and audacity unsurpassed by any Native American leader masterminded battle tactics that frustrated and embarrassed a succession of U.S. Army generals. Osceola initiated and orchestrated the longest, most expensive, and deadliest war...
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High Stakes at Antietam
The day of Antietam—September 17, 1862 — was like no other day of the Civil War. “The roar of the infantry was beyond anything conceivable to the uninitiated,” wrote a Union officer who fought there. “If all the stone and brick houses of Broadway should tumble at once the roar and rattle could hardly be greater … and amidst this, hundreds of pieces of artillery, right and left, were thundering as...
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Digging Up James Smithson
Alexander Graham Bell did not spend the Christmas season of 1903 in the festive tradition. On the contrary, the inventor of the telephone passed the holiday engaged in a ghoulish Italian adventure involving a graveyard, old bones, and the opening of a moldy casket. Accompanied by his wife, Mabel, he had traveled by steamship from America at his own expense and made his way down to the Italian...
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Baltimore's "Sailabration" Honors the War of 1812
Square-riggers, schooners, and sleek gray warships from around the world converged on Baltimore the second week of June for the “Star Spangled Sailabration” commemorating the bicentennial of the War of 1812’s start.“It’s finally here,” said Jeffrey Buchheit, director of the Baltimore Heritage Area and one of many who helped plan the week of festivities. “We’ve worked four years on this, and all...
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Turned on by History
The room was abuzz. More than 2,000 young historians milled about, setting up exhibits featuring Harvey Milk, Charlie Chaplin, and hundreds more.For the 32nd year, middle and high school students from around the country competed in the National History Day competition, held this year at the University of Maryland.“The event is a wonderful chance to celebrate their work,” said Crystal Johnson, a...
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"Oh Doctor, do what you can!"
It was the discovery of a lifetime. Helena Iles Papaioannou, a researcher with the Papers of Abraham Lincoln project, was meticulously combing through 1865 correspondence of the U.S. Surgeon General when she came upon the long-lost report of Charles Leale, the doctor who treated the president on the night he was shot.While Dr. Leale’s later testimony at a congressional hearing was known to...
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50 Years Ago
Ernest Hemingway told a wonderful story about his liberation of Paris. He claimed he was one of the first to enter the city, taking over the bars at the Crillon and Ritz hotels. Famed World War II historian S.L.A. Marshall corroborated Hemingway’s account in American  Heritage. —The EditorsFrom the war there is one story dear to my heart of which I have never written a line. There are...
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25 Years Ago
My father was a very robust, powerfully built man. But strangely enough, his hands were delicate. One of the stories around Chadds Ford was about a milk train he would meet and how he would help the farmers lift their enormous 10-gallon cans—one in each hand—up onto the platform beside the tracks.He was a man who admired many arts—literary, dramatic, musical. From being hardly a reader at all in...
[Stories]
Letters to the Editor
 Bruce Catton TributeDavid Blight's enjoyable and penetrating article on Bruce Catton stirred some personal memories. I began writing for American Heritage in 1962. I had published my first book, Now We Are Enemies, the Story of Bunker Hill, in 1960, with some success. In one of my visits to the magazine, I was told that Mr. Catton would like to see me.          I...
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Editor's Letter
In June Baltimore’s Sailabration kicked off the War of 1812 commemoration (see page 10). What a defining moment it was 200 years ago when our our tiny democracy was threatened by the world’s most powerful army and navy, hardened by 20 years of global warfare. Over a span of two years, 110 British warships would wreak havoc up and down the Chesapeake Bay.Our forefathers showed future generations...
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