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Featured Essays

Our Founders profoundly transformed the way people participate in government.

Congress forbade living persons from appearing on paper currency in 1866, after an unpopular Treasury Department official put himself on the five-cent note.

The extravaganza celebrating the nation’s first century was the greatest cultural event of America’s Gilded Age.

At the nation’s pivotal moment — the Civil War — two seventeenth-century vessels kept sailing through the American mind: the Mayflower and the slaver White Lion. Their wakes still cut our waters.

America 250!

An Update on “Save the Glover!” | Spring 2026, Vol 71, No 2

By Nancy L. Schultz

Efforts continue to preserve the historic home of General John Glover in Swampscott, Massachusetts, which is still slated for demolition.

glover house

“What, to the American Slave, Is the Fourth of July?” | Summer 2019, Vol 64, No 3

By Bruce Watson

In what many consider the greatest anti-slavery oration ever given, Frederick Douglass called for “the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”

frederick douglass

Lafayette: A Hero Among Heroes | Summer 2021, Vol 65, No 5

By Harlow Giles Unger

No figure in the Revolutionary era inspired as much affection and reverence as Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette

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Making Sense of the Fourth of July | July/August 1997, Vol 48, No 4

By Pauline Maier

The Declaration of Independence is not what Thomas Jefferson thought it was when he wrote it, and that's why we celebrate it.

july 4th

Classic Essays from the Archives

“The Miraculous Care Of Providence” | February/March 1982, Vol 33, No 2

By James Thomas Flexner

George Washington’s Narrow Escapes

washington princeton

Ike's Son Remembers George S. Patton Jr. | Summer 2012, Vol 62, No 2

By John D. Eisenhower

The author, who once served under General Patton and whose father, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was Patton's commanding officer, shares his memories of "Ol' Blood and Guts."

Gen. George Patton

The Hawthornes In Paradise | December 1958, Summer 2025, Vol 70, No 3

By Malcolm Cowley

Nathaniel was poor and sunk in his solitude; Sophia seemed a hopeless invalid, but a late-flower love gave them at last “a perfect Eden.”

Hawthorne Peabody

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