Skip to main content

Featured Articles

President Johnson shocked the nation when he ended his bid for reelection in 1968. As early as 1964, Lady Bird had suggested that he might not want to run for a second term.

Enormous crowds greeted the Marquis de Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolution, during his visit to all 24 states nearly 40 years after the war ended.

In a momentous couple of years, the young United States added more than a million square miles of territory, including Texas and California. 

We can’t let the home of one of the great heroes of the American Revolution be demolished.

Classic Essays from Our Archives

The Man of the Century | May/June 1994, Vol 45, No 3

By Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Of all the Allied leaders, argues FDR's biographer, only Roosevelt saw clearly the shape of the new world they were fighting to create.

American Heritage Logo

Range Practice | Februrary 1968, Vol 19, No 2

By Dean Acheson

Our former Secretary of State recalls his service fifty years ago in the Connecticut National Guard—asthmatic horses, a ubiquitous major, and a memorable

horse-drawn artillery

Herbert Hoover Describes the Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson | June 1958, Vol 9, No 4

By Herbert Hoover

The great tragedy of the twenty-eighth President as witnessed by his loyal lieutenant, the thirty-first.

woodrow wilson

Did Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson Love Each Other? | Fall 2008, Vol 58, No 5

By Annette Gordon-Reed

To call it loaded question does not begin to do justice to the matter, given America’s tortured racial history and its haunting legacy.

hemings jefferson

A Few Parchment Pages Two Hundred Years Later | May/June 1987, Vol 38, No 4

By Richard B. Morris

The framers of the Constitution were proud of what they had done but might be astonished that their words still carry so much weight. A distinguished scholar tells us how the great charter has survived and flourished.

framers

Did Castro Okay the Kennedy Assassination? | Winter 2009, Vol 58, No 6

By Gus Russo

Incriminating new evidence has come to light in KGB files and the authors' interviews of former Cuban intelligence officers which indicates that Fidel Castro probably knew in advance of Oswald's intent to kill JFK.

jfk

    Today in History

  • Henry Hudson discovers Manhattan and the Hudson River

    English explorer Henry Hudson, sailing for the Dutch East India Company, sails into New York Harbor and discovers Manhattan Island.

    More »

  • Continental Army defeated at Battle of Brandywine

    British soldiers under General William Howe win a decisive victory over George Washington and the Continental Army at the Battle of Brandywine.

  • 911 attacks

    Terrorists hijack four airplanes and attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing almost 3,000 people. A fourth plane, United Flight 93, was heroically retaken by the passengers but tragically crashed outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 

    More »

  • Battle of Plattsburgh

    In the final day of fighting, the Battle of Plattsburgh, also known as the Battle of Lake Champlain, sees a combined American land and naval force gain control of Lake Champlain and halt the British invasion of New York and Vermont.

    More »

SUPPORT THIS WEBSITE BY BUYING A NEW EBOOK!