Since its inception the United States has sent envoys to advance American interests abroad, both across oceans and to areas that later became part of the country. Little has been known about these first envoys until now. From China to Chile, Tripoli to Tahiti, Mexico to Muscat, Peter D. Eicher chronicles the experience of the first American envoys in foreign lands. Their stories, often stranger than fiction, are replete with intrigues, revolutions, riots, war, shipwrecks, swashbucklers, de...

Barbara W. Tuchman, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the classic The Guns of August, turns her sights homeward with this brilliant, insightful narrative of the Revolutionary War.In The First Salute, one of America’s consummate historians crafts a rigorously original view of the American Revolution. Barbara W. Tuchman places the Revolution in the context of the centuries-long conflicts between England and both France and Holland, demonstrating ...

Between the Confederacy and recognition by Great Britain stood one unlikely Englishman who hated the slave trade. His actions helped determine the fate of a nation.When Robert Bunch arrived in Charleston to take up the post of British consul in 1853, he was young and full of ambition, but even he couldn’t have imagined the incredible role he would play in the history-making events to unfold. In an age when diplomats often were spies, Bunch’s job included sending in...

A fascinating look at over seventy years of fighting in the American colonies—as France, England, and Spain tried to stake their claims in the New World.Although the colonial wars consisted of almost continuous raids and skirmishes between the English and French colonists and their Indian allies and enemies, they can be separated into four major conflicts, corresponding to four European wars of which they were, in varying degrees, a part: King William's War (1689-9...

It is not too much to assert that most of our countrymen acquire at school all the knowledge they possess of the past history of their country. In view of this fact it is most desirable that a history of the United States for elementary schools should present not only the essential features of our country's progress which all should learn, but also many things of secondary consequence which it is well for every young American to know.

The book is divided into three main parts: I. The Founding of the Colonies; II. Expansion and International Conflict; III. The Revolt of the English Colonies. The keynote is expansion. The spread of civilization in America has been presented against a broad European background. Not only colonial beginnings but colonial growth has been traced. This method accounts for the development of all geographical sections, and shows the relation of each section to the history of the continent as a wh...

Feeling in Spain.—America, at this time, was to the Spaniard a land of vague, but magnificent promise, where the simple natives wore unconsciously the costliest gems, and the sands of the rivers sparkled with gold. Every returning ship brought fresh news to quicken the pulse of Spanish enthusiasm. Now, Cortez had taken Mexico, and reveled in the wealth of the Montezumas; now, Pizarro had conquered Peru, and captured the riches of the Incas; now, Magellan, sailing through the straits which ...

In 1812, a 67-year-old black United Empire Loyalist named Richard Pierpoint helped raise "a corps of Coloured Men to stand and fight together" against the Americans who were threatening to invade the tiny British colony of Upper Canada.Pierpoint’s unique fighting unit would not only see service throughout the War of 1812, it would also be the first colonial military unit reactiviated to quash the Rebellion of 1837. It would go on to serve as a police force, keeping the peace among ...

This book represents an attempt to bring into one account the story of European expansion in North America down to 1783. The authors wrote this book in response to a clear demand for a text written from the standpoint of North America as a whole, and giving a more adequate treatment of the colonies of nations other than England and of the English colonies other than the thirteen which revolted. The book is divided into three main parts: I. The founding of the colonies; II. Expansion and in...

In 1860, disgruntled secessionists in the deep North rebel against the central government and plunge America into Civil War. Will the Kingdom survive? The land will run red with blood before peace comes again.

A classic work of black study that shines a light on the accomplishments of African people within Western history—from the groundbreaking journalist.Originally published in 1959 and revised and expanded in 1989, this book asserts that Africans had contributed more to the world than was previously acknowledged. Historian Joel Augustus Rogers devoted a significant amount of his professional life to unearthing facts about people of African ancestry. He intended these f...

Many Americans buoy their national pride and patriotism in the tableau of the American Revolution—in which every day men rose up against taxation from abroad to defeat one of the most powerful countries in the world at the time. From the midnight ride of Paul Revere to the cold winter at Valley Forge, American freedom was a right proudly won. This book investigates the important battles, speeches, and founding fathers of this important war that ended in the creation of a proud new nation.