Little Rock Central High, Trail of Tears, Manzanar, Flight 93…Several national parks force us to confront some of the ugliest episodes in our national history.
Benjamin T. Arrington
“A Certain Fatality”: Robert Todd Lincoln and Presidential Assassinations
Few people know much about the younger Lincoln today, and what many think they know is incorrect. Lincoln was not present at three assassinations, though he was closely connected to them.
John Wilkes Booth’s Other Victims
Nearly every American knows that John Wilkes Booth murdered President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865. Was Abraham Lincoln the only casualty that night?
What Can We Learn from American Sniper?
In just over a month after its release, the film American Sniper has made over $400 million and is now the highest-grossing American war movie of all time.
Exhuming President Taylor
President Zachary Taylor died on July 9, 1850, five days after becoming ill at a Fourth of July celebration. He apparently overindulged on raw cherries and iced milk; his doctors cited the cause of death as “acute gastroenteritis.”
Colonel Lewis Millett and the Changing Nature of War
Since the Medal of Honor’s creation during the Civil War, many awardees have become household names and gone on to notable careers at least partially enabled by their status as Medal recipients.
The Tragic Life and Cold Death of Schuyler Colfax
On January 14, 1885, the New York Times carried a headline that read “Schuyler Colfax Dead; He Drops Down in a Railway Station.” While this would be a sad headline to describe anyone’s death, it was made a bit more awful by the fact that Schuyler Colfax was a former Vice President of the United States and Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The Temporary Insanity Defense Comes to America
Political sex scandals are as old as politics and so commonplace that even in the internet age we can barely keep up with developments in the latest salacious story.
“Antagonisms and Controversies”: Garfield, Sherman, and the 1880 Republican National Convention
As he did most days of his adult life, President-elect James A. Garfield sat down to write in his diary on the evening of December 2, 1880.
The Anti-War Marine
It is both truism and cliché that “no one hates war more than the soldiers who fight.” Many historians have demonstrated that political causes are often quickly discarded among the mud, bullets, and blood of war.