I believe American history began in Philadelphia on July 4th 1776. It was here that colonists led by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison signed the Declaration of Independence. Up to this time it could be argued that what had taken place was part of British colonial history and not...

As the British Empire spread its dominion across the seas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, great masses of people poured forth to populate its ever-widening realms. Their migration unfolded in stages. They journeyed from farms to towns, from towns to great cities like London and Bristol,...