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On July 18, 1863, on Morris Island near Charleston, South Carolina, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a Union regiment of free African American men, began their assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold. After the...

When James Madison signed this membership certificate as president of the American Colonization Society in 1833, the organization’s effort to repatriate America’s free black population to Africa had been underway for over a decade. On...

Maritime trade and exploration in the colonial era created an environment ripe for piracy. One of the most famous pirates in history, Captain William Kidd, was commissioned by William III of England in 1695 as a privateer to hunt and...

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 inspired her to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin . The novel, first serialized in newspapers and then published in 1852 as a two-volume work, enjoyed tremendous success in...

George Washington’s words in this letter represent a stirring plea for help at the darkest moment of the American Revolution. As few other documents do, this letter illustrates Valley Forge as an icon of American perseverance and...

Mary Todd Lincoln’s years in the White House were a combination of triumph and tragedy. Never fully accepted by the public and vilified by the press for overspending, her tenure as First Lady was unstable at best. After the death of...

This stunning document, a refusal of clemency for a convicted slave trader, stands out among the papers of Abraham Lincoln, a man renowned for his mercy and willingness to pardon. In November 1861, Nathaniel Gordon was convicted of...

Between 1629 and 1640, 20,000 Puritans left England for America to escape religious persecution. They hoped to establish a church free from worldly corruption founded on voluntary agreement among congregants. This covenant theory...

By October 1780, in the midst of the American Revolution, Alexander Hamilton was discouraged by the apparent apathy of the American people and the ineffectuality of their elected representatives, as well as by the recent discovery of...

The Federalist Party evolved from the core of Federalists, like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, who wrote and defended the US Constitution in 1787–1788. The political party advocated a strong central government and supported...