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Long before he founded his Quaker commonwealth in America, he stood up for religious freedom against the awesome power of the Crown — and put the entire English-speaking world in his debt Read >>
William Miller applied good Yankee arithmetic to biblical prophecies and convinced thousands that the hour of Christ’s Second Coming was upon them Read >>
The nation’s waterways, once crisscrossed by countless ferries, are now bridged or tunnelled, and all but a few of the romantic old surface shuttles are, alas, sounding their final whistles and bells Read >>
An exile from his own land, ex-Senator William Gwin dreamed of lostmines in Sonora, an Eldorado for unreconstructed Confederates, and a title in Maximilian’s Mexico Read >>
The Birth of Jim Crow Read >>
Among the Pennsylvania Dutch, both plain and fancy, the milk is yet, the schnitz-un-gnepp delights the soul, and the soup is thick enough to stand on Read >>
From a long-obscure life of Cortés, written by his own secretary, comes a narrative of the incredible splendors of Moctezuma’s Axtec capital Read >>
“Father! Won't you come home?” little Mary begged. And right before your eyes in the temperance speaker's slides you saw the grief his refusal caused. The melodrama was broad, but many a man paused before taking another drink Read >>
So spoke Sitting Bull, greatest of Sioux chiefs, as he bitterly watched his people bargain away their Dakota homeland Read >>
Will success spoil Hardy Lee? Or, a nautical tale with a pertinent moral Read >>
From the start, Niagara has been over publicized, but somehow its authentic majesty has survived Read >>
and… …a glimpse at the grandfathers of the candidates exhibits the wonderful diversity of American life Read >>
Coatesville, Pennsylvania, dozed fitfully in the oppressive heat of August. Then two shots rang out, and set off an ugly train of racial violence Read >>
A single great photograph has become an indelible symbol of the Marines’ heroic fight for the Japanese island. But hours earlier a now-almost-forgotten platoon had raised the first American flag on Mt. Suribachi’s scarred summit—and under enemy fire Read >>
Spies and assassins stalked our first consul to Japan, his hosts bluntly told him to leave, and his own government neglected him Read >>
Being Eliza Williams’s own journal of her thirty-eight-month voyage with her husband, master of the ship Florida, from New Bedford to Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk in pursuit of the great whales Read >>

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