Issue

A distinguished historian finds that after 65 years Frederick Jackson Turner’s disputed “frontier theory” is still a valid key to understanding modern America

Around Francis Marion there has sprung up an overgrowth of legend as tangled as the swamps he fought in. Here is an authoritative account of his role in the Revolution

The Confederates’ Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy warship, but her crude design made her a coffin for her crew

Homely sentiment and crude humor—in delightful covers—helped soothe the mid-nineteenth-century breast

Thomas Jefferson paid Gilbert Stuart $100 for a portrait, then waited 21 years for delivery. A fire-blackened canvas discovered over a century later raises doubt that the original ever left the artist’s Boston studio

“Every one of us was seized by his future master…

The white man made certain his imported thoroughbred could outrun the red man’s pony, but the Indian chief was wise in the gambler’s ways

“Why Oh! Why should death’s darts reach the young and brilliant —”

Japan’s feudal, shut-in history suddenly came to an end when the bluff American commodore dropped anchor in Tokyo Bay