united states

News Stories

Captain John Grant Tod, Texas Sailor in the Heart of Sin City Mexico, 1848

Born in 1808 near Lexington, Kentucky, John Grant Tod, the youngest of nine children born to pious immigrants from Scotland, left home at seventeen.

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The Life of Sgt. I-See-O, Kiowa Scout and Peacemaker of the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry

Born to Kiowa parents in Indian Territory in the Oklahoma-Kansas region shortly after the 1848 conclusion of the Mexican-American War, Tahbonemah (Ta-bone-mah), later known as Sergeant I-See-O, would serve the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry Regiment as a tracker for nearly four decades until his death.

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Zebulon Pike’s 1805 Journey to Minnesota in Search of the Mississippi’s Headwaters

Zebulon Pike would go on to explore swaths of North America – becoming a legend in a growing nation.

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History of the Conquest of Mexico:  The Black Legend, Prescott’s Paradigm, Tlaxcalans, and US-Mexican War

Accompanying an increasing interest in Spain during the antebellum era was a repackaging of the “Black Legend” – a cultural and racial stereotype that became a long-held historiographical generalization.

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Sparking a Third Anglo-American War: The Canadian Rebellion and Caroline Affair, 1837-1838

In 1837 former Toronto mayor William Lyon Mackenzie organized an insurrection among the farmers of Ontario in an attempt to wrest political control over Canada from colonial authorities. The rebellion received substantial sympathy and support from Americans living in the border region – particularly around the city of Buffalo – which used a local American ship the SS Caroline to ferry weapons and supplies over the Niagara River.

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