Civics Education
The Trail of Tears: Cherokee Removal, Survival, and Rebuilding
What happened to the Cherokee people during the forced removal of 1838–39, and how the Cherokee Nation endured, governed, and rebuilt in Indian Territory.
Read MoreChief John Ross: Cherokee Sovereignty and the Long Fight Against Removal
How a Cherokee merchant became one of his nation’s longest-serving leaders, and how the Cherokee Nation used law, diplomacy, and persistence to defend its sovereignty before and after removal.
Read MoreSequoyah and the Cherokee Syllabary: Writing a Nation’s Language
Sequoyah did not invent the Cherokee language. He developed a writing system for it, one that Cherokee people rapidly adopted and made their own. Cherokee people have spoken their language for countless generations, carrying history, law, ceremony, and story from one generation to the next. Today the Cherokee Nation describes its language work as preserving…
Read MoreHarriette J. Cooke: A Professor’s Rank and a Professor’s Pay
In 1871, Cornell College promoted a longtime teacher to professor and, by its own account, paid her the same as the men beside her. Her story raises a question worth asking of any “first”: how do we know?
Read MoreKansas-Nebraska Act: Railroads, Slavery, and the Fight for the West
The 1854 law that organized Kansas and Nebraska repealed the Missouri Compromise, ignited Bleeding Kansas, and reshaped national politics.
Read MoreLaura Ingalls Wilder and the Homestead West
A full-life account of Andrew Jackson — frontier orphan, war hero, and seventh president — covering his military career, his presidency’s major controversies, including Indian removal, and his contested legacy.
Read MoreThe Indian Removal Act and Its Consequences
In 1850, Congress defused a crisis over slavery’s expansion by breaking it into five separate laws. One of those laws — a far more coercive Fugitive Slave Act — did more to divide the country than any of the concessions meant to hold it together.
Read MoreAndrew Jackson: An American Life and Legacy
A full-life account of Andrew Jackson — frontier orphan, war hero, and seventh president — covering his military career, his presidency’s major controversies, including Indian removal, and his contested legacy.
Read MoreAntietam: The Bloodiest Day and a Turning Point Toward Emancipation
On the morning of September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, two armies collided in what remains the bloodiest single day in American military history — and gave Abraham Lincoln the military opening to announce a decision he had already been considering: linking Union victory to the destruction of slavery.
Read MoreMexican Independence and Mexico’s Colonization of Texas
On September 27, 1821, the Army of the Three Guarantees entered Mexico City, marking the effective end of Spanish colonial rule after an eleven-year independence struggle.
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