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History - American — page 28
1,581 public-domain history - american books, summarised. Page 28 of 33.

The Herriges Horror in Philadelphia: A Full History of the Whole Affair. A Man Kept in a Dark Cage Like a Wild Beast for Twenty Years, As Alleged, in His Own Mother's and Brother's House
Anonymous
This anonymous account documents the 1870 discovery of John Herriges, a man allegedly kept in a wooden cage within his own Philadelphia home for two decades. It serves as both a sensationalist exposé and a snapshot of Victorian-era attitudes toward mental illness and familial duty.

The Only Woman in the Town, and Other Tales of the American Revolution
Sarah J. (Sarah Johnson) Prichard
This collection of Revolutionary-era stories captures the intimate, domestic side of the American struggle for independence through the eyes of those who kept the hearths burning while the world transformed.

The Winning of the West, Volume 3: The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790
Theodore Roosevelt
The young nation’s survival depends on the unruly, rifle-bearing frontiersmen who claim the western woods. Amidst broken treaties, brutal skirmishes, and shifting allegiances, these pioneers test whether a democracy can expand without shattering into pieces.

A Day in a Colonial Home
Della R. Prescott
This earnest account invites readers into the heartbeat of early American life, where the fireside serves as the center of all industry, devotion, and family tradition. Through the eyes of a dutiful young woman, the domestic rhythms of a bygone era emerge in vivid, tangible detail.

Charter and Supplemental Charter of the Hudson's Bay Company
Hudson's Bay Company
A single legal grant transforms an unexplored wilderness into a vast commercial empire, establishing the machinery of British colonial trade across North America.

History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service
J. R. (John R.) Kinnear
This chronicle follows the Eighty-sixth Illinois Infantry from its 1862 formation through the grueling campaigns of the American Civil War, ending in the triumphant, solemn journey home.

Seeing Lincoln
Anne Longman
A city reveals its layers through sixty specific landmarks, tracing the evolution of a prairie settlement into a bustling capital. This intimate tour uncovers the hidden history behind the stone facades and quiet avenues.

The American Missionary
Various
This record of post-Civil War American religious outreach documents the institutional effort to build schools and churches for the formerly enslaved, immigrants, and overseas populations. It is a vital primary source for understanding the mid-19th-century missionary mindset.

From Yauco to Las Marias: A recent campaign in Puerto Rico by the Independent Regular Brigade under the command of Brig. General Schwan
Karl Stephen Herrman
This account follows a professional brigade’s rapid march through the mountains of western Puerto Rico during the final days of the Spanish-American War, capturing a narrative of military duty, tactical caution, and colonial ambition.

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.

Emancipation and Emigration: A Plan to Transfer the Freedmen of the South to the Government Lands of the West by The Principia Club
Anonymous
This document serves as a desperate, impassioned manifesto for a mass migration of African Americans from the post-Reconstruction South to the Western territories. It is a radical call for autonomy through geographic displacement.

Historical Tours in and about Boston: Compliments of American Oil Company
American Oil Company
This guide serves as a practical, time-capsule companion for the mid-1930s motorist, mapping out the essential landmarks of Boston and its surrounding historical orbit. It transforms the city into a series of reachable, bite-sized itineraries for the curious traveler.

Mexican letters written during the progress of the late war between the United States and Mexico, no. 1
H. M. (Henry Marie) Brackenridge
A series of urgent, mid-nineteenth-century letters defends the morality of the Mexican-American War while navigating the complex political tensions of a fracturing nation.

The American Missionary
Various
A window into the urgent moral and political anxieties of late nineteenth-century American religious life, this collection serves as both a historical record and a call to action for the Congregational missions.

Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education
Richard Bartholdt
A common language for a globalizing world remains an elusive dream, but one early twentieth-century proposal argued that the solution was not a natural tongue, but a logical, synthetic one.

Kinston, Whitehall and Goldsboro (North Carolina) expedition, December, 1862
Unknown
A forgotten military dispatch from the winter of 1862, this record captures the rapid, tactical maneuvers of a Union expedition deep into the heart of Confederate North Carolina.

The American Missionary
Various
This collection of periodic reports serves as an urgent, mid-19th-century chronicle of the American Missionary Association’s efforts to educate and evangelize the marginalized across the United States. It documents a pivotal era of social transition through the lens of faith, administrative necessity, and…

The magazine of history with notes and queries, Vol. II, No. 4, October 1905
Various
This collection of historical reports and primary source documents illuminates the fractured, often mythologized landscape of early American life and the Revolutionary struggle. It captures the granular reality of the young republic through a kaleidoscopic lens.

Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812
William C. (William Cooper) Nell
Colored Americans made vital sacrifices and fought for freedom in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 despite facing institutional prejudice.

Florida: An Ideal Cattle State
Florida State Live Stock Association
This document serves as a foundational blueprint for transforming Florida’s traditional open-range cattle industry into a modernized, high-yield agricultural powerhouse. It offers a technical and strategic roadmap for ranchers looking to capitalize on a post-war economic shift.

Industrial Conspiracies
Clarence Darrow
A searing critique of the American legal system, this lecture argues that the law serves as a weapon for the wealthy to suppress the working class. It is a passionate, defiant call for labor solidarity.

The Iron Division, National Guard of Pennsylvania, in the World War: The authentic and comprehensive narrative of the gallant
H. G. (Harry George) Proctor
This account chronicles the 28th Division’s transition from Pennsylvania National Guardsmen into the "Iron Division," a front-line force that navigated the brutal realities of the First World War’s most decisive battles.

The "Twenty-Seventh"
Winthrop Dudley Sheldon
Through mud, bombardment, and the tragic smoke of three major battles, a nine-month Connecticut regiment confronts the raw, unsparing realities of the American Civil War.

The Women Who Came in the Mayflower
Annie Russell Marble
This historical account reconstructs the daily lives of the women who established the Plymouth Colony, peeling back the layers of myth to reveal their resilience, industry, and social complexity.

History of Company E of the Sixth Minnesota Regiment of Volunteer Infantry
A. J. (Alfred James) Hill
This is a rigorous, granular account of a single infantry company’s three-year experience, documenting the raw reality of the American Civil War and the concurrent conflicts on the Minnesota frontier.

Some Phases of Sexual Morality and Church Discipline in Colonial New England
Charles Francis Adams
Colonial New England’s reputation for rigid piety hides a far more complex reality of human fallibility. By peering into the private records of the past, a clearer, less romanticized image of those early communities emerges.

The Chattanooga Campaign: With especial reference to Wisconsin's participation therein
Michael Hendrick Fitch
The rugged theater of Chattanooga unfolds through meticulous tactical records, tracing a pivotal Civil War campaign where endurance and strategic missteps shaped the Western front.

Trotwood's Monthly, Vol. II, No. 2, May, 1906
Various
A restless chronicle of the early-twentieth-century American South, blending agrarian wisdom, horse-racing lore, and regional history into a singular monthly periodical.

Wichita
Fred Harvey
At the junction of the Arkansas rivers, a thriving Kansas community transforms from a frontier trading post into an aggressive regional metropolis of commerce, education, and culture.

An Englishman's View of the Battle between the Alabama and the Kearsarge: An Account of the Naval Engagement in the British Channel, on Sunday June 19th, 1864
Frederick Milnes Edge
A brief, rigorous eyewitness investigation dismantles English press rumors to reveal how superior American naval gunnery and disciplined seamanship sank a notorious Confederate privateer off the French coast in just over an hour.

Over There with the Marines at Chateau Thierry
G. Harvey (George Harvey) Ralphson
Amid the brutal shellfire of the Western Front, an American Marine sergeant navigates enemy captivity, daring escapes, and a bizarre nemesis known as the human snake.

The American Child
Elizabeth McCracken
In the modern American home, the lines between elder and youth have blurred, creating a nation of "chums" where children and parents navigate life’s fundamental lessons as partners in discovery.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This mid-winter periodical offers a vital, immediate lens into the fractured American psyche of 1861, blending sharp political analysis with the era’s most refined literary sensibilities.

The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D.: Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. Carefully Reported, and Compiled from the Written Statements of the Court and the Counsel
Unknown
A Northern physician visits Washington, D.C., carrying private botanical samples and anti-slavery pamphlets, only to find himself arrested, targeted by a mob, and tried for inciting a violent slave rebellion.

Early German music in Philadelphia
Robert Rutherford Drummond
This historical study recovers the lost landscape of 18th-century Philadelphia, revealing how German immigrants embedded a sophisticated musical culture into the foundations of early American life.

Eighty-fourth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers (Infantry.)
Thomas Edward Merchant
The 84th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry stood at the center of the Union’s most grueling campaigns, and this history remains their final, granite-carved testimony to a war that defined a nation.

Magazine of western history, illustrated, Vol. I, No. 1, November 1884
Various
This inaugural volume serves as a scholarly gateway to the American frontier, chronicling the early exploration, legal formation, and human struggle that defined the settlement of the Northwest Territory.

The American Missionary
Various
These pages capture the urgent, mid-winter heartbeat of a sprawling, post-Civil War American organization committed to education and religious mission. It is a vital record of a nation reconciling with its own fractured soul.

The American Missionary
Various
This collection serves as a historical window into the post-Civil War American conscience, documenting a concerted effort to reshape the nation through education, religious ministry, and social reform in the South and West.

The Review, Vol. 1, No. 12, December, 1911
Various
This collection of reports and essays offers a candid look at the early twentieth-century American penal system, balancing the idealism of reformers with the grim realities of prison labor and institutional mismanagement. It serves as a historical blueprint for a movement struggling to replace retributive…

The Review, Vol. 1, No. 5, May 1911
Various
This volume serves as a compelling window into the early twentieth-century American movement to transform the penal system from a mechanism of mere punishment into a laboratory for human rehabilitation and social engineering.

Condensed History of the Mexican War and Its Glorious Results
Daniel E. Hungerford
The Mexican War of 1846–1848 remains a pivot point of American history, defined here not by dry records, but by the fading voices of the men who marched through its fires. This account serves as both a tactical summary and a final testament from a generation of soldiers looking back across the decades.

Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War
Eugenia Dunlap Potts
The American South was once a self-contained, aristocratic civilization, defined by its plantation life and its interpretation of constitutional rights, until a collision of political ideologies and historical inevitability led to the total collapse of its social order.

Southern Derringers of the Mississippi Valley
Turner Kirkland
A dedicated collector preserves the fading history of the Mississippi Valley’s nineteenth-century gunsmiths, documenting the distinctive, small-bore pistols that once defined personal defense in the American South.

The American Missionary
Various
This record serves as an urgent, impassioned bridge between Northern donors and the newly established mission schools and churches of the post-Civil War South, documenting a pivotal era of social and educational reconstruction.

The journal of prison discipline and philanthropy (New series, No. 57), March, 1918
Pennsylvania Prison Society
This chronicle of early twentieth-century penal reform captures a pivotal moment when the American justice system began shifting from a focus on punishment toward rehabilitation, labor, and scientific management.

The Lost Tribes of the Irish in the South: An Address at the Annual Dinner of the American Irish Historical Society, January 6, 1917
Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb
A vibrant, rollicking defense of the Irish roots buried within the American South, this address challenges the long-held myth of the region’s purely Anglo-Saxon heritage. It invites readers to look past standard histories and reconsider the true lineage of the Southern character.

The United States and the War
Gilbert Murray
The world stands at a crossroads between the isolationist pride of a rising superpower and the urgent necessity of global cooperation. This examination explores the tension between America’s detachment from the Great War and the growing inevitability of its future influence.