History Lessons

The articles below provide access to valuable resources, including articles, videos, and courses that deepen knowledge and civic engagement.

A lawyer with ambitions in Mexican California proposed a shorter road west before he had traveled it himself ...

Expansionists rallied around a slogan demanding U.S. control to 54°40′, near the southern boundary of Russian America—but the ...

Her 1836 journey and the letters she sent home did not create the Oregon Trail migration by themselves—but ...

How a surveyor’s grief over a family tragedy on the Columbia River led him to blaze a safer ...

For six days in August 1835, a struggling New York newspaper told its readers that a celebrated astronomer ...

How an illiterate Missouri runaway became the most famous frontiersman in America — and how a fuller reckoning ...

How two nights of violence in a Virginia county reshaped the laws of the American South — and ...

How a shrewd Gold Rush businesswoman built a fortune, backed the abolitionist cause, and took racial exclusion in ...

How a Missouri farmwife turned a biscuit, a hotel, and a hard-won legal right into a life that ...

On August 10, 1821, Missouri became the 24th state. Getting there required one of the most consequential — ...

How a chance discovery by James Marshall at a remote sawmill transformed California, the United States, and the ...

Signed into law on August 5, 1861, America's first federal income tax was enacted as part of Congress's ...