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Featured Essays

Recent rehabilitation of this important site at the Gettysburg battlefield provides a much improved experience for visitors.

A Chinatown cook's fight to re-enter the U.S. in 1895 went up to the Supreme Court, which upheld his claim to birthright citizenship and guaranteed it for all through the 14th Amendment. 

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.

Some delegates at the Constitutional Convention wanted a strong executive, while others feared the American president might become a king.

America 250!

Rethinking the Boston Massacre | Special Issue - George Washington Prize 2018, Vol 63, No 2

By Eric Hinderaker

It is one of the most notorious incidents in American history, and also one of the least understood.

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Knox Brings Cannon and Victory to General Washington | Fall 2025, Vol 70, No 4

By Edwin S. Grosvenor

Setting out 250 years ago this month, Henry Knox’s “Noble Train” carried 60 tons of desperately needed artillery to help patriots oust British forces from Boston.

knox train

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

American Rebels at Sea | Summer 2022, Vol 67, No 3

By Eric Jay Dolin

An estimated 1500 privateering ships played a crucial role in winning the American Revolution, but their contributions are often forgotten.

privateers

The Plight of Massachusetts Loyalists | Spring 2024, Vol 69, No 2

By Larry C. Kerpelman

In “the cradle of the American Revolution,” loyalists to the Crown faced a harsh choice: live with terrible abuse where they were, or flee to friendlier, but alien regions.

loyalists during the revolution

Classic Essays from the Archives

1619: The Year That Shaped America  | Winter 2019, Vol 64, No 1

By James Horn

Four 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.

jamestown

Did Castro Okay the Kennedy Assassination? | Winter 2009, Vol 58, No 6

By Gus Russo

Incriminating new evidence has come to light in KGB files and the authors' interviews of former Cuban intelligence officers which indicates that Fidel Castro probably knew in advance of Oswald's intent to kill JFK.

jfk

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

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