This text comes from our book, Lands of Hope and Promise . It took over 400 vessels to ferry the immense Army of the Potomac, 121,500 strong, from its base near Washington to Fort Monroe. McClellan’s army reached Fort Monroe in mid-March and began its slow advance up the York Peninsula. On April 5, McClellan’s advanced guard reached Yorktown where, some 80 years earlier, Cornwallis had surrendered to Washington. Joe Johnston’s Confederates lay between the Army of the Potomac

This text comes from our book, Lands of Hope and Promise . The American army and navy in the Pacific were making steady advances against the Japanese while German resistance crumbled in Europe. From the island of Saipan, American bombing raids pounded Japanese cities to dust, progressively destroying Japan’s industrial capability to make war, as well as killing tens of thousands of Japanese civilians—men, women and children. The U.S. firebombing of Tokyo laid waste to 56 squa

This text comes from our book, Light to the Nations, Part II . On a summer’s day in August 1819, tens of thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Fields, near Manchester, in Lancashire County, England. They had come, summoned by radical leaders, to hear the reformer Henry Hunt give a speech on the causes he stood for—yearly elections for members of Parliament, universal manhood suffrage, and voting by secret ballot. Great throngs of people had begun to arrive a little befo

In a city in Holland called Leyden lived a colony of Englishmen. These English men and women had come to live in Holland for only one reason: they wanted the freedom to practice their religion without interference from the government or anyone else.

This text comes from our book, The American Venture . Such swift work was thought necessary, especially because, since the election in November, the federal government had done nothing about the depression. For three months, Hoover initiated no new policies, though he tried to get Roosevelt to endorse measures which made the New Deal much more like the old deal that had lost Hoover the election. With government doing nothing, panicky investors withdrew their savings from bank

This text comes from our book, The American Venture . Theodore Roosevelt was a man of strong passions and commitments—to justice, for instance, and American glory and power. Yet, Roosevelt shared with other progressives of his time another passion—the conservation of regions of great natural beauty and utility. At the turn of the century, ranchers and timber companies were looting federal public lands, particularly in the West, of their rich harvest of wood. Roosevelt believe