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Featured Essays

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, our founding charter remains central to our national life, unifying us and paving the way for what we have long called “the American Dream.”

America’s extraordinary success is directly related to its unique form of government embodied in the Constitution.

American patriots began a conflict that spread around the globe.

The Rule of Law is the great foundation of our Constitution and our Nation. 

America 250!

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

John Dickinson: Forgotten Founder | Fall 2025, Vol 70, No 4

By Jane E. Calvert

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.

dickinson farmer

Why Is the American Revolution So Important? | Spring 2024, Vol 69, No 2

By Jack D. Warren

Our nation is free because, 250 years ago, brave men and women fought a war to establish the independence of the United States and created a system of government to protect the freedom of its citizens.

congress

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

American Heritage Logo

The Revolution Could Have Started Here | Summer 2024, Vol 69, No 3

By Bob Thompson

At a curious stone tower in Somerville, Massachusetts, panic in 1774 could have sparked a war seven months before Lexington and Concord entered the history books.

boston map

Classic Essays from the Archives

How My Father and President Kennedy Saved The World | October 2002, Vol 53, No 5

By Sergei Khrushchev

The Cuban Missile Crisis as seen from the Kremlin

kruschev

America: Experiment or Destiny? | June 1977, Summer 2025, Vol 28, No 4

By Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

We can take pride in our nation, not as we pretend to a commission from God and a sacred destiny, but as we struggle to fulfill our deepest values in an inscrutable world.

american destiny

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

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