AMERICAN HERITAGE

Featured Articles

American resistance to British authority developed with stunning speed 250 years ago in response to George III’s inflexibility.

The Night I Met Elvis

by Curtis Wilkie

The young rockabilly star autographed each of our forearms.

Women Finally Get Full Credit

by Elisabeth Griffith

Fifty years ago, the Equal Credit Act was an important step in affording women control of their own finances.

Solving Our Political Disarray

by Yuval Levin

The Constitution is more than a legal code. It is also a framework for union and solidarity.

Classic Essays from Our Archives

Searching for “Shenandoah” | Winter 2022, Vol 67, No 1

By Bruce Watson

It's one of the oldest folk ballads in our national songbook, but where did it come from? The answer is complex, multi-layered, American.

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.

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.

Range Practice | Februrary 1968, Vol 19, No 2

By Dean Acheson

Our former Secretary of State recalls his service fifty years ago in the Connecticut National Guard—asthmatic horses, a ubiquitous major, and a memorable

The Man of the Century | May/June 1994, Vol 45, No 3

By Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Of all the Allied leaders, argues FDR's biographer, only Roosevelt saw clearly the shape of the new world they were fighting to create.

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.

Today in History

18th amendment ratified

Nebraska becomes the 36th state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment, establishing prohibition in the United States. The ban on alcohol would go into effect a year later, on January 20, 1920.
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General Halleck born

Union General Henry Halleck is born in Westernville, New York. Halleck, nicknamed "Old Brains", served as general-in-chief of the Union Army for two years but frequently quarreled with other generals such as George McClellan. Halleck oversaw the total war campaigns waged by Generals Grant and Sherman in the last years of the Civil War.
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Pendleton Civil Service Act

President Chester A. Arthur signs the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act into law, instituting the largest civil service reform in American history. Following the assassination of President Garfield in 1881, Arthur became a major proponent of a merit-based bureaucracy.
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