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History - American — page 15
1,087 public-domain history - american books, summarised. Page 15 of 23.

Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous
Abram Joseph Ryan
The heart of this collection beats with the rhythm of a man caught between his devotion to the divine and his sorrow for a lost earthly cause. It is a portrait of a soul in mourning, finding in poetry a sanctuary for both faith and grief.

The Seminoles of Florida
Minnie Moore-Willson
The Seminoles of Florida offers an intimate, impassioned look at a resilient people who refused to vanish into the shadows of the Everglades, documenting their struggle for dignity against a century of institutional betrayal.

Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800: Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872
William Frederick Poole
Long before the American Civil War, a quiet but resolute movement sought to reconcile the nation’s founding promise of liberty with the brutal reality of human bondage. This historical examination illuminates the forgotten voices that dared to challenge slavery in the eighteenth century.

Cheap Postage
Joshua Leavitt
Cheap postage is not merely a convenience, but a vital engine for education, commerce, and the strengthening of national bonds. This historical pamphlet argues for a fundamental restructuring of American mail delivery based on efficiency.

England, Canada and the Great War
L. G. (Louis Georges) Desjardins
An impassioned defense of Canadian participation in the First World War, this work argues that supporting the British Empire was not only a constitutional duty but a moral necessity for the survival of global civilization.

Liberation: Marines in the Recapture of Guam
Cyril J. O'Brien
HOOK The recapture of Guam in 1944 was a brutal, hard-won campaign to reclaim American soil from entrenched Japanese forces, serving as a pivotal moment in the Pacific War.

New Witnesses for God (Volume 3 of 3)
B. H. (Brigham Henry) Roberts
A methodical defense of a foundational religious text, this work gathers historical, archaeological, and theological arguments to establish the authenticity of a controversial scripture.

San Francisco in Ruins: A Pictorial History of Eight Score Photo-Views of the Earthquake Effects, Flames' Havoc, Ruins Everywhere, Relief Camps
Unknown
A harrowing, immediate account of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, this chronicle captures the sheer scale of a city’s sudden annihilation and its desperate, rapid mobilization for survival.

The Cotton Kingdom, volume 2 (of 2)
Frederick Law Olmsted
This immersive travelogue documents a journey through the American South on the eve of the Civil War, offering a dispassionate, boots-on-the-ground examination of the economic and moral machinery of slavery.

The Oregon Territory, Its History and Discovery
Travers Twiss
This examination of the Oregon Territory navigates the tangled history of international boundary disputes, providing a rigorous legal and historical framework for understanding the mid-nineteenth-century rivalry between Great Britain and the United States.

Uncle Sam Abroad
Jacob Elon Conner
Written at the dawn of the twentieth century, this informative guide demystifies the mechanics and evolving global responsibilities of the American diplomatic and consular services.

The Tale of the Spinning Wheel
Elizabeth C. Barney (Elizabeth Cynthia Barney) Buel
This historical account traces the evolution of the spinning-wheel from an ancient symbol of feminine divinity into a bedrock of American colonial industry and revolutionary spirit. It elevates the humble, laborious work of past generations to a place of national honor.

Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: The Faith of Our Fathers
G. MacLaren (George MacLaren) Brydon
The story of early Virginia is often told through its politics and trade, but this account reveals the vital, underlying architecture of its faith. It tracks the struggle to transplant the Church of England into a raw, untamed landscape, detailing a century of persistence by laypeople and clergy alike to build a…

Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699
Lyman Carrier
The story of early Virginia is often told through politics and war, but its survival truly rested on the slow, often desperate, transformation of a wilderness into a landscape of fields and fences.
Fort Ticonderoga: A Short History
Stephen H. P. Pell
This is a concise, illustrated chronicle of the strategic fortress that defined the struggle for North America, spanning its construction in the mid-18th century to its meticulous modern restoration.

Secrets of the Bosphorus
Henry Morgenthau
A candid, urgent account of diplomacy at the heart of the Ottoman Empire, revealing how imperial machinations ignited the First World War.

The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863
Various
This nineteenth-century periodical serves as a vital artifact of the American Civil War, blending urgent political discourse with the literary ambitions of a nation in the throes of self-definition. It captures the intellectual pulse of 1863, weighing the heavy cost of conflict against the persistent, quiet hope…

Wonders of the Yellowstone
James (Geologist) Richardson
The American West holds few secrets as profound as the region surrounding the Yellowstone River, a landscape where volcanic forces and thermal wonders combine to create a world unlike any other on the continent.

Capturing a Locomotive: A History of Secret Service in the Late War
William Pittenger
The daring 1862 mission to seize a Confederate locomotive and disrupt the Western & Atlantic Railroad remains one of the Civil War’s most harrowing tales of espionage and sacrifice.

Great Epochs in American History, Volume 1.: Voyages of Discovery and Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682
Unknown
The first centuries of American exploration reveal a continent of mythic proportion, where the desperate ambitions of European crowns collided with the vast, uncharted realities of a New World.

History of the United States, Volume 1
Elisha Benjamin Andrews
The tapestry of the American past is woven from threads of exploration, survival, and a quiet, persistent growth toward self-governance.

Huts in Hell
Daniel A. (Daniel Alfred) Poling
The American soldier serves as the central subject of this immersive, firsthand account of the Great War. Written by an influential religious official with full access to the front, the narrative captures the spirit, morale, and daily hardships of the men who fought in France.

Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910: Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, Vol. LIX, No. 4, 1914
Samuel Joseph
The vast migration of Eastern European Jews to the United States between 1881 and 1910 marks a defining shift in modern history. This analytical survey documents the structural forces that transformed millions of lives.

Under Six Flags: The Story of Texas
M. E. M. (Mollie Evelyn Moore) Davis
The spirit of a vast territory is captured here through the bold deeds of those who sought to master it. It is a chronicle of a frontier transformed by courage, ambition, and the relentless tides of history.

Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1900: Vol. 56, Nov. 1899 to April, 1900
Various
Science, as understood at the dawn of the twentieth century, reveals a world in constant, observable flux. From the slow evolution of landscapes to the mechanics of human behavior, the search for natural laws remains the era’s most ambitious project.

France and England in North America, Part III: The Discovery of the Great West (1870)
Francis Parkman
The path to the heart of the American continent was carved by men whose ambition, endurance, and tragic failures remain among the most compelling chapters of colonial history. This narrative uncovers the relentless struggle to map the Mississippi and the Great West, transforming vague rumors into a new map of the…

Derelicts: An Account of Ships Lost at Sea in General Commercial Traffic: And a Brief History of Blockade Runners Stranded Along the North Carolina Coast, 1861-1865
James Sprunt
This account chronicles the perilous lives of merchant ships lost at sea and the high-stakes gamble of blockade runners operating along the North Carolina coast during the American Civil War.

Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Prairies, etc., part 2, October 21-December 4, 1839: and De Smet's Oregon Missions and Travels over the Rocky Mountains, 1845-1846
Pierre-Jean de Smet
Two distinct accounts of the American frontier in the mid-nineteenth century offer a vivid, firsthand look at a world defined by vast landscapes, shifting cultural encounters, and the relentless expansion of trade and missions.

Historical and descriptive narrative of twenty years' residence in South America (Vol 3 of 3): Containing travels in Arauco, Chile, Peru, and Colombia
Stevenson, William Bennet, active 1803-1825
This firsthand chronicle captures the volatile birth of South American independence, tracing the collapse of Spanish colonial authority through the eyes of an intimate participant in the military and political high command.

In ancient Albemarle
Catherine Albertson
This historical chronicle illuminates the foundational moments of the Albemarle region, tracing the rise of the North Carolina colony from its earliest colonial land grants through the tumult of the American Revolution.

The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 3, March, 1862
Various
This collection of political essays, travel narratives, and social commentary captures the urgent, fractious spirit of the American Civil War in the spring of 1862.

The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, April, 1862: Devoted To Literature And National Policy
Various
This collection captures the urgent pulse of the American Civil War, blending rigorous political advocacy with the varied literary sketches that defined a nation in the midst of a profound, violent transformation.

The History of University Education in Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University (1876-1891). With supplementary notes on university extension and the university of the future
Bernard C. (Bernard Christian) Steiner
This account traces the precarious origins of Maryland’s higher education and the transformative rise of a research-focused institution that redefined American academic life.

Letters from the Alleghany Mountains
Charles Lanman
Across the rugged terrain of the nineteenth-century American frontier, a curious traveller wanders down narrow mountain paths to capture the raw landscape and the vibrant lives of its mountain inhabitants.

Naval Actions of the War of 1812
James Barnes
Before open sea battles brought national fame, single-ship actions across the Atlantic and North American lakes proved that a fledgling American fleet could outmaneuver and outfight the world’s most formidable naval power.

Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F. A. Sandford: December Term, 1856
United States. Supreme Court
A slave travels into free territory and sues for his freedom, sparking a legal clash that splits the nation’s highest court over human citizenship and constitutional power.

The American Missionary
Various
A quiet, persistent network of Northern teachers and Southern leaders quietly reshapes post-Civil War education, building self-reliant communities across the American South, West, and Alaska.

The Civil War in America: Fuller's Modern Age, August 1861
Russell, William Howard, Sir
A foreign traveler watches an empire split in two, writing down every uncomfortable truth that local pride tries to hide.

The Spirit of the Ghetto: Studies of the Jewish Quarter in New York
Hutchins Hapgood
An outsider steps across the threshold of New York’s Lower East Side to record a neighborhood’s vibrant intellectual heart with quiet reverence.

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 098, February, 1876
Various
This mid-winter issue of a nineteenth-century literary journal captures the restless intellectual spirit of 1876. It surveys the global landscape through a lens of Victorian curiosity, scientific progress, and cultural commentary.

Redmanship in Kentucky for Fifty Great Suns
Frank L. Smith
A dedicated fraternal history documents the survival, dissolution, and rebirth of a uniquely American order across fifty years of regional growth.

The history of Company C, Seventh Regiment, O.V.I
Theodore Wilder
A unit of college-educated idealists trades the classrooms of Oberlin for the battlefields of the American Civil War, recording their trials through capture, prison camps, and bloody Eastern and Western Theater campaigns.

The Americans in the Great War
Unknown
A precise guide to the battlefields of eastern France, this volume traces the 1918 American offensive at Saint-Mihiel alongside the centuries of architectural and civic history embedded in the surrounding towns.

Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1
James Athearn Jones
An origin story born from the banks of a rising river finds its match in tales of spirit-wives, celestial hunters, and divine intervention.

Vigilante Days and Ways: The pioneers of the Rockies
Nathaniel Pitt Langford
A single, terrifying reality governed the mountain gold rushes of the 1860s: where civil authority had no reach, criminal gangs held absolute power until local miners organized their own swift, extrajudicial force to hang them.

Historic towns of the southern states
Unknown
A regional legacy carved from wilderness, trade, and trial.

Pioneer Roads and Experiences of Travelers (Volume 1)
Archer Butler Hulbert
Deeply worn animal paths and narrow Indian traces gave birth to the paved roads of the modern United States through a slow, chaotic evolution.

The Famous Missions of California
William Henry Hudson
An account of courage, hardship, and ambition, tracing the eighteenth-century Franciscan push north into Alta California to build outposts that altered the Pacific coast.