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Banks are among the oldest businesses in American history—the Bank of New York, for example, was founded in 1784, and as the recently renamed Bank of New York Mellon it had its 225th anniversary in 2009. The banking system is one of...
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The Riddles of "Confederate Emancipation"
In July 1861, Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, was exulting over the victory of his troops at the first Battle of Manassas (or Bull Run) and calling it a sign of eventual triumph in the war as a...
The Emancipation Proclamation: Bill of Lading or Ticket to Freedom?
Of all the speeches, letters, and state papers he had written, Abraham Lincoln believed that the greatest of them was his Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. With one document of only 713 words, Lincoln declared more than...
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The Battle of Antietam: A Turning Point in the Civil War
Four days after the battle of Antietam, which took place near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, Captain Robert Gould Shaw of the 2nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry wrote to his father: "Every battle makes me wish more and...
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The Contentious Election of 1876
The presidential election of 1876 is better known for its controversial aftermath than for the campaign that preceded it. The basic outline of events after Election Day, November 7, 1876, is familiar. The Democratic candidate,...
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Sharing a Civil War Photo with a Million People
A tree falls on a shed and all but destroys it. A passing student notices that from a certain angle the portion of the shed still standing looks just like a man on horseback. It is uncanny; a talented artist could hardly do better....
"The Brave Men, Living and Dead": Common Soldiers at the Battle of Gettysburg
Midway through his remarks at the Gettysburg National Soldiers’ Cemetery on November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln confided that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." This remarkable (and remarkably off-target)...
Field Relief Work at Gettysburg
On Independence Day in 1863, a Saturday, it was raining in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as burial details and medical officers took account of the recent battle. Some 50,000 men had fallen in three days, 8,000 of them killed outright and...
How the Town Shaped the Battle: Gettysburg 1863
We think we know who the important players at the Battle of Gettysburg were: Robert E. Lee, or George G. Meade, or the Union Army of the Potomac, or the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. But there is one major player from whom,...
The Origins of the Transcontinental Railroad
The completion in 1869 of the first transcontinental railroad—the Pacific Railway, as the combination of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific was called—created two of the most iconic symbols in American history. The first is a...
Harlem’s Rattlers: African American Regiment of the New York National Guard in World War I
Jeffrey Sammons is Professor of History at New York University. He is the author of Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society (1988) and the co-author, with John H. Morrow, Jr., of Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War:...
Sitting Bull: Last of the Great Chiefs
Sitting Bull was the last of the great Indian chiefs to surrender his free way of life and settle on a government reservation. He belonged to the Hunkpapa tribe of the Lakota Sioux. The Lakotas numbered seven tribes, loosely...
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