Recently, a document containing a sample of President Abraham Lincoln’s handwriting was discovered among the papers in the James Frazier Reed Collection at the California State Library in Sacramento. The KCRA Channel 3 website reports that Reed, the Collection’s namesake, was one of the organizers of the tragic Donner Party, and the document travelled with the Party on their fateful trip west in 1846. The Lincoln document, which lists the names of several Illinois volunteers for the Black Hawk War in 1832, has been examined by several experts from the The Papers of Abraham Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. It was “determined that Abraham Lincoln had written the title for one of the July 10 muster rolls,” stated The Papers of Abraham Lincoln organization.
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"The Birth of Old Glory" by Percy Moran

In the spirit of patriotism surrounding the 4th of July, history professor Marla Miller has written a new book about Betsy Ross, the iconic patriot best known for sewing the first American flag. In Betsy Ross and the Making of America (Henry Holt, 467pgs) Miller investigates the story of Ross and her most famous creation, drawing some very interesting conclusions. Working as an upholsterer, Ross’ skill and quality of craftsmanship was well known, and it is documented that she made numerous flags, pennants and standards for the government during the Revolutionary War. But, there is no written historical record proving the seamstress made America’s first flag by herself. “Miller reminds us, the flag, ‘like the Revolution it represents, was the work of many hands,’” writes Marjoleine Kars in a review for The Washington Post.
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By Evan Thomas
Little, Brown and Company | 480pgs
Release Date: April 27, 2010

The unexplained explosion of the USS Maine, near the coast of Cuba on February 15, 1898, put the gears of war in motion and inflamed relations between the United States and Spain. Evan Thomas examines the confluence of events that triggered the Spanish-American War, and studies the characters of the key players in the U.S’s push to battle, in his new book The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898. Though the cause of the explosion was never determined, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge whipped the public into a war mongering frenzy with the help of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst and his yellow journalism. Hearst’s outlandish accusations in his New York Journal that the USS Maine was destroyed by Spain’s “secret infernal machine” (WMDs anyone?) helped Roosevelt and Lodge convince a compliant President McKinley, and the country as a whole, that war was the answer. Thomas theorizes that the men’s hawkish behavior stemmed from the shame of their fathers’ lack of participation in the Civil War, and the inherited sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority of the upper class.
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By Edith Belle Gelles
William Morrow ©2009 | Hardcover 352pgs

Volumes have been written about the vital role that John Adams has played in the history of the United States of America, and Abigail Adams herself has been the subject of several in-depth biographies. But, Abigail & John: Portrait of a Marriage portrays the life of one of America’s first couples, framed by their loving and enduring marriage. Much has been made of the Adamses’ public life, yet Abigail & John draws a more intimate portrait, illustrated by passages of their private correspondence. Though this book may not cover any fresh ground historically, it gives a wonderful sense of the Adamses as partners, lovers and patriots.

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