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Featured Essays
While Robert Morris is remembered as the "financier of the Revolution," his partner and former boss, Thomas Willing, has been lost to history despite his own contributions to early American business and finance.
Decades before the Ayatollah, even before the shah, early Americans found themselves enchanted with Iranian culture, politics, and history.
By organizing weekly gatherings of political leaders and citizens, she proved democracy works best when rivals see one another as human beings.
William Seward's 1868 attempt to acquire the Danish territory was the country's first, but not the last.
America 250!
Patriots or Terrorists? | Fall 2008, Vol 58, No 5
By Edwin G. BurrowsThe Lost Story of Revolutionary War POW’s
An Update on “Save the Glover!” | Spring 2026, Vol 71, No 2
By Nancy L. SchultzEfforts continue to preserve the historic home of General John Glover in Swampscott, Massachusetts, which is still slated for demolition.
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...”
With Little Less Than Savage Fury | Fall 2010, Vol 60, No 3
By Thomas B. AllenAmerica’s first civil war took place during the Revolution, an ultra-violent, family-splitting, and often vindictive conflict between "patriots" and loyalists.
America 100: The Great Centennial Fair | Summer 2026, Vol 71, No 3
By Fergus M. BordewichThe extravaganza celebrating the nation’s first century was the greatest cultural event of America’s Gilded Age.
Classic Essays from the Archives
Alice Paul: “I Was Arrested, Of Course…” | February 1974, Summer 2025, Vol 25, No 2
By Robert S. GallagherAn interview with the famed suffragette, Alice Paul
1619: The Year That Shaped America | Winter 2019, Vol 64, No 1
By James HornFour hundred years ago this year, two momentous events happened in Britain’s fledgling colony in Virginia: the New World’s first democratic assembly convened, and an English privateer brought kidnapped Africans to sell as slaves. Such were the conflicted origins of modern America.
Did Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson Love Each Other? | Fall 2008, Summer 2025, Vol 70, No 3
By Annette Gordon-ReedTo call it a loaded question does not begin to do justice to the matter, given America’s tortured racial history and its haunting legacy.
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