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How I Wrote “Lincoln’s Greatest Case”
On May 6, 1856, a steamboat known as the Effie Afton crashed into the first railroad bridge ever built across the Mississippi River,...


How and Why I Wrote “John Brown’s Trial”
As the 150th anniversary of the execution of the famous abolitionist John Brown approached, I became more interested in the story of...

Olive Oatman: The Story That Will Not Die
Olive Oatman was thirteen years old in February 1851 when, traveling west with her family in a covered wagon, she was seized by...


“The Year of Archy Lee”
Archy Lee was a young African American who arrived in Sacramento in 1858 with a white man named Charles Stovall and soon became the...
BRIAN McGINTY'S WRITINGS
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