The Great American History Blog

Success leaves clues.   So does failure.   Some of history’s best known commanders are remembered not for their brilliant victories but f...

Those who conceived the idea of the modern cemetery anticipated the movement for public parks.  Cemeteries provided the public with beau...

America entered World War I on April 6, 1917. Un-naturalized Germans and even first and second generation naturalized German immigr...

Established in 1866, The Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) was a fraternal organization of Union veterans.  After the Civil War many l...

Wilmer McLean Wilmer McLean was born in 1814, was orphaned before he was nine, was raised by relatives in Alexandria, Virginia and b...

   Told to expand its training capabilities during World War I, the Marine Corps began inspecting promising sites in the spring of 1...

Missoula:Rape and the Justice System in a College Town By John Krakauer Missoula is not Krakauer’s best effort.  This is an advoc...

The 1952 Washington D.C. UFO incident, also known as the “Washington Flap”, was a series of unidentified flying object reports from July ...

The first woman POW was taken in the Civil War. Union army contract surgeon Dr. Mary E. Walker was captured on April 10, 1864. She was ...

In pre-Civil War America, slave marriages were not recognized in the state codes. No state legislature ever considered encroaching up...

Brigadier General Montgomery C. Meigs (above), commander of the garrison at Arlington House and Quartermaster General of the Union A...

Sergeant William T. Biedler Sergeant William T. Biedler, 16 years old, of Company C, Mosby's Virginia Cavalry Regiment is pic...

In virtually every American presidential election, candidates vilify and demonize their opponents. The meme in the last several elections h...

Custer'sTrials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles     Whatever else George Armstrong Custer ma...

Queen Victoria reigned over the British Empire, the largest and most diverse empire the world has ever known, from 1837-1901, and gave h...

Fort Runyon , named after Brig. Gen. Theodore Runyon, was located astride the important junction of the Washington Alexandria and Columbia...

     In the early part of the 20 th century an increasing number of Americans grew concerned about violent immigrants from Eastern Europe...

George Washington bought William “Billy” Lee, his brother Frank and two other slaves in 1768.  Billy Lee was eighteen.  Frank became the...

War presented special problems for the world of ladies’ fashion in the Confederacy, as is best described in the words of General James Long...