When an enlisted man sees his commanding officer lose his head entirely…, Private Taylor wrote, it would…demoralize anyone taught to breathe, almost, at the word of command.
A space of time is a great breeder of myths.
Resumed
When I was at Brown, I wanted to write the great American novel, but I was too scared to take a creative course. I signed up for one, got in, and just didn't have the courage to go. I was a tremendous...
Brown made a claim that possibly hit a little too close to home. 'Money is this man's god,' the handbill read, 'and to get enough of it, he would sacrifice his country.
For the future welfare of the settlement, it was essential that all the colonists—Leideners and Strangers alike—learn to live together as best they could. This nonjudgmental attitude did not come natu...
Hope was all that stood between them and death.
In the years after the War of Independence, historian paid scant attention to the Siege of Fort Mifflin, primarily because, Martin believed 'there was no Washington, Putnam, or Wayne there.' 'Had ther...
That Church according to Church is too brave, too cunning, and too good to be true is beside the point. America was destined to become a nation of self-fashioned and self-promoting men. What makes his...
The act of self-expression—through writing a journal or letters—often enables a survivor to distance himself from his fears.
Then I’ll haste to wed a sailor, and send him off to sea, For a life of independence, is the pleasant life for me. But every now and then I shall like to see his face, For it always seems to me to bea...
Fluidity of the sea, not the rigidity of irresistible law, characterizes human conduct, especially in the midst of a calamity.
By the 1770s, the Teton Sioux had overrun the Arikara, or Ree, on the Missouri River and made it as far west as the Black Hills, where they quickly ousted the Kiowa and the Crows. Over the next hundre...
During the forty-five months of World War II, the United States lost just under 1 percent of its adult male population; during the Civil War the casualty rate was somewhere between 4 and 5 percent; du...
Hindsight has a way of corrupting people’s memories, inviting them to view a past event not as it actually occurred but as they wished it had occurred given the ultimate result.
In a letter hastily written to a friend in London, Cushman saw only doom and disaster ahead. Friend, if ever we make a plantation God works a miracle, especially considering how scant we shall be of v...
In the year 1712, a Captain Hussey, cruising in his little boat for right whales along Nantucket’s south shore, was blown out to sea in a fierce northerly gale.
Midshipman Edward Pellew was in the British boat right behind Arnold's. The American general had escaped, but in his haste he had left behind his stock and buckle, which Pellew took as a keepsake. Yea...
No matter how much the inhabitants might try to hide it, there was a savagery about this island, a bloodlust and pride that bound every mother, father, and child in a clannish commitment to the hunt.
Philip’s local squabble with Plymouth Colony had mutated into a regionwide war that, on a percentage basis, had done nearly as much as the plagues of 1616–19 to decimate New England’s Native populatio...
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