James A. Garfield was truly a dark horse candidate for the presidency. Read about the problems the Republicans had in settling on a candidate, and find out how close the election truly was when Garfield defeated Winfield Hancock.

Kathleen T. Rhem analyzes President George W. Bush's announcement that the combat in Iraq has ceased. (May 1, 2003)

In the field of foreign affairs, President Kennedy faced a series of challenging situations in Cuba, in Southeast Asia, and in Berlin. In 1961, he initiiated a program called the Alliance for Progress aimed to establish economic...

Through amendments and legal rulings, the Constitution has transformed in some critical ways. The U.S. Constitution, written in 1787 and ratified by nine of the original 13 states a year later, is the world's longest-surviving written...

AmericanPresident offers a comprehensive overview of the 1964 campaign and election of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Content includes a focus on the separate campaigns waged by Johnson and his challenger, Barry Goldwater.

From carefully staged speeches to radio to Twitter, U.S. presidents have always leveraged the cutting edge to connect directly with voters. Two centuries before Twitter, U.S. presidents understood the power of communicating directly with...

Billy Graham's unprecedented access to U.S. presidents ushered in a new era of evangelical influence in American politics.

Read about the background of coal miners and coal mine operators prior to the coal strike in 1902. Find out the significant role of the federal government in bringing the strike to an end.

Warren G. Harding's handling of domestic affairs and the appointments made for his cabinet were a combination of good governance and terrible choice of friends. Read about his problems.

Overview of the foreign policy of the Nixon administration with a focus on China, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with the U.S.S.R., and Vietnam.

The Secret Service accompanies the president and the First Family everywhere, but it wasn't always this way. It would take a third assassination of a U.S. president -- William McKinley -- to prompt Congress to assign full official...

Easy-to-read article explores every election, from George Washington to the present. Which political parties have come and gone? Who has been elected more times than anybody else?

This article explains the United States v Korematsu (The Japanese-American Exclusion Case)during WWW II Japanese-Americans were subject to relocation camps. It also includes a video with Korematsu.

An account of the events leading up to the Washington meeting between President Obama and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan in May 2010. A top issue for discussion will be President Obama's deadline of July 2011 to start withdrawing...

United States' President Barack Obama emphatically shares his concern and vision of the American education systems to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. March 10, 2009.

Read this essay from Roosevelt's, "The Strenuous Life," in which he discusses U.S. military forces, primarily in terms of the Spanish-American War. Excellent primary source!

Of the three U.S. presidents who were impeached -- Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump -- none were ever convicted or removed from office. But when it comes to governors, the history of impeachment is quite different. There...

As Florida's electoral votes became too close to call, controversy ensued over hanging chads, dimpled chads and butterfly bullets. Five hundred thirty-seven votes. That's all that separated Democrat Al Gore and his Republican challenger...

Until 1989, Russians claimed they were not trying to reach the Moon first and that the U.S. was in "a one-nation race." Until 1989, a group of American aerospace engineers went to Moscow and finally saw the Soviets' failed lunar-landing...

After Fidel Castro loosened emigration policies, some 125,000 Cubans landed on U.S. shores over a span of five months. The Mariel Boatlift of 1980 was a mass emigration of Cubans to the United States. The exodus was driven by a stagnant...

On April 10, 1963, just seven months before he shot and killed President John F. Kennedy, the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald crouched Edwin Walker, a former U.S. Army general. Oswald fired, but the bullet caromed off the windowsill and...

This article focuses on the history of the relationship between the US and Mexico regarding immigration. In the 1930s, the U.S. government forced hundreds of thousands of ethnic Mexicans, including some U.S. citizens, back across the...

The subject of this painting is probably the U.S.S. Powhatan, Commodore Matthew Perry's flagship on his second expedition to Japan in 1854. The previous year Perry had come to Japan, delivered a letter from President Millard Fillmore to...

Russia was ahead in the "space race" in 1961. In this article, the Library of Congress discusses how President Kennedy assigned Lyndon Johnson the task of uniting the different parts of the U.S. space program into NASA.