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Recent rehabilitation of this important site at the Gettysburg battlefield provides a much improved experience for visitors.

A Chinatown cook's fight to re-enter the U.S. in 1895 went up to the Supreme Court, which upheld his claim to birthright citizenship and guaranteed it for all through the 14th Amendment. 

Dickinson played a pivotal role in our Nation’s founding, from the Stamp Act to ratifying the Constitution, but his contributions are largely forgotten by history.

Some delegates at the Constitutional Convention wanted a strong executive, while others feared the American president might become a king.

In the Age of Discovery, maps held closely guarded secrets for the kings, adventurers, and merchants who first acquired them.

Classic Essays from Our Archives

The Day The Civil War Ended | June/July 1978, Vol 29, No 4

By Bruce Catton

At the Gettysburg reunion fifty years after the battle, it was no longer blue and gray. Now it was all gray.

civil war reunion

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

Did Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson Love Each Other? | Fall 2008, Summer 2025, Vol 58, No 5

By Annette Gordon-Reed

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

hemings jefferson

Searching for “Shenandoah” | Winter 2022, Summer 2025, Vol 67, No 1

By Bruce Watson

It's one of the oldest folk ballads in our national songbook, but where did it come from? The answer is complex, multi-layered, American.

trapper family

“Medic!” | November 1997, Vol 48, No 7

By Stephen E. Ambrose

In a hard war, theirs may have been the hardest job of all. Along with Army doctors and nurses, they worked something very close to a miracle in the European theater.

medic

"The Sparck of Rebellion" | Winter 2010, Summer 2025, Vol 59, No 4

By Douglas Brinkley

Badly disguised as Indians, a rowdy group of patriotic vandals kicked a revolution into motion.

boston tea party

    Today in History

  • First Nixon-Kennedy debate

    Chicago hosts the first televised presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

  • Battle of the Meuse-Argonne begins

    The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the final Allied offensive of World War I, begins in the Argonne Forest in northern France. It would become the bloodiest battle in American history.

    More »

  • George Gershwin born

    American composer and pianist George Gershwin is born as Jacob Gershowitz in Brooklyn, New York.

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