Colonial Period

Before the United States, thirteen separate colonies settled throughout the eastern coast of North America. As separate communities with their own goals and needs, they were not created to join together. However, external forces during the 1770s pushed these colonies to form the United States of America.

John Paul Jones — The Scottish Sailor Who Gave America a Navy

John Paul Jones (1747–1792), painted by Charles Willson Peale, 1781. Independence National Historical Park. Public domain. He was ...

Into the Unknown: How Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery Changed America Forever

On a showery Monday afternoon, May 14, 1804, a fleet of three vessels — a 55-foot keelboat and ...

Sybil Ludington — The Teenage Patriot Who Rode Into Legend

In the spring of 1777, two years into a Revolution still very much in doubt, a sixteen-year-old girl ...

A Nation’s First Oath: George Washington and the Inauguration That Invented the Presidency

On April 30, 1789, a reluctant hero stepped onto a balcony overlooking a packed Wall Street and, before ...

Henry Knox — The Bookseller Who Became Washington’s Most Trusted General

Few stories from the founding era better capture the promise of the American experiment than Henry Knox's. Born ...

William Williams — Connecticut’s Steadfast Servant of Liberty

William Williams (1731–1811), signer of the Declaration of Independence from Connecticut. Engraving by Ole Erekson, c. 1876, Wikipedia ...

The Midnight Ride: The Real Story Behind America’s Most Famous Night on Horseback

On the night of April 18, 1775, a silversmith, a tanner, and a young doctor galloped through the ...

Samuel Adams — The Spark That Lit the Revolution

Samuel Adams (1722–1803), painted by John Singleton Copley, c. 1772. One of Boston's foremost revolutionary leaders, Adams played ...

Thomas Jefferson at 282: Founder, Visionary, and America’s Most Enduring Paradox

Born on April 13, 1743, in the Virginia colony, Thomas Jefferson authored the words that would become the ...

Lucy Flucker Knox — Patriot by Choice, Partner in Revolution

Not every act of patriotism takes place on a battlefield. Some of the most consequential choices of the ...

Carter Braxton: The Founder Who Risked Everything for Independence

In the early Among the fifty-six men who pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor by signing the ...

How the First Quorum Shaped Congress: America’s Earliest Legislative Challenge

Facade of Federal Hall with figures on the balcony — one of the most iconic early images of ...