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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!

Drama on Dorchester Heights: Washington’s First Victory | Winter 2026, Vol 71, No 1

By Edward J. Larson

The American patriots came up with a bold plan to force the British out of Boston 250 years ago this month.

dorchester heights

With Little Less Than Savage Fury | Fall 2010, Vol 60, No 3

By Thomas B. Allen

America’s first civil war took place during the Revolution, an ultra-violent, family-splitting, and often vindictive conflict between "patriots" and loyalists.

American Heritage Logo

America 50: The First Jubilee | Summer 2026, Vol 71, No 3

By Joseph Connor

“And so old Mr. Adams is dead; on the 4th of July, too, just half a century after our Declaration of Independence...”

adams and jefferson

Leadership of the Founders | Winter 2026, Vol 71, No 1

By Joseph J. Ellis

Our nation came into being thanks to an unexpected explosion of political talent in an emerging nation on the fringe of the Atlantic world.

founding fathers

The Shots Heard Round the World | Spring 2025, Vol 70, No 2

By John Ferling

What began as a civil war within the British Empire continued until it became a wider conflict affecting peoples and countries across Europe and North America.

shots heard round the world

Classic Essays from the Archives

The Treasure From The Carpentry Shop | December 1979, Vol 31, No 1

By David McCullough

THE EXTRAORDINARY ORIGINAL DRAWINGS OF THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE

bridge drawing

A Few Parchment Pages Two Hundred Years Later | May/June 1987, Summer 2025, Vol 70, No 3

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

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

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