In many ways, the Gettysburg Address reflects the culmination of Abraham Lincoln’s lifelong admiration for the principles of the Declaration of Independence. As a young man in 1838, Lincoln responded to the wave of mob violence sweeping through the nation by calling on Americans to “swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.” Alluding to the words of the Declaration itself, Lincoln intoned, “As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of...

Letters between soldiers and spouses are often powerful and moving documents. Given the intensity, danger, and uncertainty of armed conflict as well as the significant changes wrought by most wars, such correspondence reveals what individuals did, felt, and experienced like few historical records can. This is the case with the letters written by Henry and Lucy Knox during the Revolutionary War. Henry Knox is well known to historians. A Boston bookseller, he joined American forces following Lexington and Concord. After transporting fifty-nine captured British cannon from Fort...

"Received your package," Pvt. George Van Pelt of Company I, 165th Infantry wrote in May 1918 from the frontlines in France to Annie E. Cole, a grammar school teacher and principal on Staten Island, New York, and to her students. "I appreciate your kindness very much and glad to know that the boys and girls of P. S. #5 have not forgotten me. Those wristlets are fine, just the thing I needed." The woman behind these letters and gifts to the soldiers, Annie E. Cole, was one of eight children born to Jacob W. and Mary Cole. After attending public schools on Staten Island and taking...

During the Great Depression, a top commercial portraitist took to San Francisco’s streets to experiment with representing the social devastation surrounding her. Her photos showed men sleeping on sidewalks and in parks like bundles of rags spit out by the economy. Dorothea Lange described watching from her studio windows the unemployed "drifting" past, and wanting to do something. Her "Man Beside Wheelbarrow" (1934) displays one such victim. The worker is bent up against a blank cinderblock expanse. We see only his workingman’s cap; he cannot face the light. Lange later told an...

With his tongue halfway in his cheek, Ambrose Bierce defined history as "an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools." Well, we’ve come a long way in a hundred years. These days, historical narratives routinely include the experiences and values of "ordinary" folk. They use popular culture to describe and analyze culture, society, and politics. So, "Roll over Beethoven/Tell Tchaikovsky the news": rock ’n’ roll merits inclusion in the American history curriculum. During the 1950s — when...