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 DieOlive 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...