Skip to main content

Featured Essays

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.

Classic Essays from the Archives

Growing Up Colored | Summer 2012, Summer 2025, Vol 70, No 3

By Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The noted writer and educator tells of his boyhood in the West Virginia town of Piedmont, where African Americans were second-class citizens, but family pride ran deep.

Henry Louis Gates and family

"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

A Few Parchment Pages Two Hundred Years Later | May/June 1987, Summer 2025, 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

SUPPORT AMERICAN HERITAGE BY BUYING A NEW EBOOK!