Westward Expansion
From The Archives: Lincoln’s Greatest Case–Sort of
One of the recurring themes this fall as we worked our way along the Great River Road, crossing the Mississippi back and forth between Iowa and Wisconsin was, in fact, the question of crossing the river. We think of “bridge-building” as a metaphor for bringing communities together, but the construction of real-life bridges was often…
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From the Archives: Custer’s Last Stand?
On June 25, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and five companies of the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry died at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Unlike D-Day, it’s not the kind of historical event that generates lots of anniversary coverage. (Though I suspect it will garner some attention on its 150th anniversary in…
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The Sand Creek Massacre is Tracking Me Down
I assume most of you, at least in the United States, have heard of the Battle of Wounded Knee, the final battle of the Plains Wars of the late nineteenth century and the focus of Native American activism in the 1970s.(1) But have you heard of the Sand Creek Massacre? I stumbled across the story…
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