Once Lewis and Clark had blazed the trail to the West, writes Gerald Rawling, traders and trappers began to follow in their footsteps, as they did so opening up vast new tracts of the “Great American Desert.”
Most famous of the three chief routes that led to the promised lands of the Far West was the so-called Oregon Trail. By the middle forties, writes Gerald Rawling, the popular American interest in Oregon had become a fever.
Like other Indian nations before them, the Sioux in 1876 took up arms to defend their traditional way of life and “sold their land dearly.” During this hopeless conflict, a gallant but showy American cavalry officer fought his last battle.
George Washington had warned the American people against “the insidious wiles of foreign influence.” President Monroe, writes Arnold Whitridge, further developed “the thesis of non-entanglement.”
Arnold Whitridge offers his survey of American relations with Cuba from the intervention of 1898 down to Castro’s Revolution.
When Mark Twain said of the Mormons, 'Their religion is singular but their wives are plural' he expressed the sum of what is generally known about them. Yet the Mormon story deserves to be better known. It illuminates one side of the development of a pioneer society, and forms a commentary upon many of the main themes of American history.
Marcus Cunliffe re-estimates a big man in several respects, of a scale that the American presidency demands and does not always get.
During a short-lived phase of expansionism the United States wrested Cuba and the Philippines from their Spanish rulers.
Proud, wayward, immensely rich, with romantic good looks and an explosive temper, John Lambton was one of those natural rebels who turn their rebellious energies to constructive purposes. Both at home and abroad, writes George Woodcock, he became a powerful exponent of the early nineteenth-century liberal spirit.
For two hundred years, writes George Woodcock, French Canadians have been battling to preserve their national and cultural identity.
