Legacy Unpublished Archives

History of Trick‑or‑Treating

Ancient Origins of Trick‑or‑Treating Halloween has its roots in the ancient, pre‑Christian Celtic festival of Samhain, which was celebrated on the night of October 31. The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, believed that the dead returned to earth on Samhain. People […]

Winfield Scott

Winfield Scott (1786‑1866) was one of the most important American military figures of the early 19th century. After fighting on the Niagara frontier during the War of 1812, Scott pushed for a permanent army that adhered to standards of professionalism. In 1821, he wrote “General Regulations for the Army,” the first comprehensive, systematic set of […]

Wilmot Proviso

The Wilmot Proviso was designed to eliminate slavery within the land acquired as a result of the Mexican War (1846‑48). Soon after the war began, President James K. Polk sought the appropriation of $2 million as part of a bill to negotiate the terms of a treaty. Fearing the addition of a pro‑slave territory, Pennsylvania […]

Siege of Leningrad

After the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, a German army surrounded the city of Leningrad in an extended siege beginning that September. In subsequent months, the city sought to establish supply lines from the Soviet interior and evacuate its citizens, often using a hazardous “ice and water road” across Lake […]

Eugene V. Debs

Labor organizer and socialist leader Eugene V. Debs (1855‑1926) began his rise to prominence in Indiana’s Terre Haute lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. He entered politics as a Democratic City Clerk in 1879, and in 1885 he was elected to the Indiana State Assembly with broad support from Terre Haute’s workers and businessmen. […]

Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu is the reputed author of The Art of War (

Slave Rebellions

SLAVE REVOLTS BEGIN The first recorded slave revolt in the United States happened in Gloucester, Virginia, in 1663, an event involving white indentured servants as well as black slaves. In 1672, there were reports of fugitive slaves forming groups to harass plantation owners. The first recorded all‑black slave revolt occurred in Virginia in 1687. Virginia […]

Myrlie Evers‑Williams

Early Life and Marriage to Medgar Evers Myrlie Louise Beasley on March 17, 1933, in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Raised by her grandmother, a schoolteacher, Evers‑Williams loved learning and music. Growing up in the segregated South, she went to Alcorn A&M College, one of the only colleges in the state that accepted African American students. While at […]

John Foster Dulles

John Foster Dulles (1888‑1959) was a powerful U.S. secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Born into a family of statesmen, Dulles became an international lawyer for a Wall Street firm and attended the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 as part of the Reparations Commission and Economic Council. He negotiated the Japanese peace treaty […]

Henry Clay

Leader of the Whig party and five times an unsuccessful presidential candidate, Henry Clay (1777‑1852) played a central role on the stage of national politics for over forty years. He was secretary of state under John Quincy Adams, Speaker of the House of Representatives longer than anyone else in the nineteenth century, and the most […]

Gouverneur Morris

Gouverneur Morris (1752‑1816) was an American politician, public official and diplomat. Born into a prominent New York family, he earned election to the state’s provincial congress, and signed the Articles of Confederation as a New York delegate to the Continental Congress. Among the most vocal participants of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Morris argued for granting […]

Felix Frankfurter

The only naturalized American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, Felix Frankfurter (1882‑1965), immigrated from Austria to New York in 1894. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1906, and later joined the school’s faculty. Throughout the 1920s, Frankfurter was influential both as a law professor and as a participant in public debates. He […]