Stephen W. Sears
Stephen W. Sears is an American historian who specializes in the Civil War. A graduate of Oberlin College, Sears has written Chancellorsville, Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam, Controversies and Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac, and, most recently, Gettysburg, released in 2003.He was employed as editor of the Educational Department at the American Heritage Publishing Company.
Articles by this Contributor
June 1963
Long before Frémont, Jedediah Smith mapped huge regions between Salt Lake and California. He ranks beside Lewis and Clark in the annals of American exploration
August 1975
IT’S A PETRIFIED MAN!
IT’S A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY IDOL!
IT’S A HOAX!
ITS THE CARDIFF GIANT!
December 1977
The Date: April 12,1862 The Place: Big Shanty, Georgia The Time: 6:45 A M. Thus began …
October/November 1979
How Americans Met the First Great Gasoline Crisis—Nearly Forty Years Ago
June/july 1980
The first transcontinental auto trip began with a casual wager and ended sixty-five bone-jarring days later
April/may 1982
The great sit-down strike that transformed American industry
June/july 1985
The Civil War ignited the basic conflict between a free press and the need for military security. By war’s end, the hard-won compromises between soldiers and newspapermen may not have provided all the answers, but they had raised all the modern questions.

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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.




