Helen Keller (1880–1968) was an American author, activist, and lecturer who overcame profound challenges. Born in Alabama, she lost her sight and hearing at 19 months due to illness. With the help of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, Keller learned to communicate through touch, eventually mastering speech, reading, and writing in multiple languages. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor’s degree. Keller devoted her life to advocating for people with disabilities, women’s rights, and social justice. Her remarkable achievements made her a global symbol of perseverance, courage, and the power of education.

Louis Emory McComas’s life reflects the arc of a nation in transition: from post–Civil War reconstruction through the dawn of America’s modern age. He was a lawyer, a legislator, a senator, and a judge. Yet perhaps most enduring was the example he set for his family and his state—that service to the public, across generations and even across party lines, was the highest calling of all.

To commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of Frederick Douglass, a man many regard as one of the greatest Americans in our history, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has gathered here short essays by leading scholars focused on selected documents written by Douglass.

Henry C. Loomis was the son of Bliss and Betsey Loomis, of the township of Otto, in Cattaraugus County, New York, where he was born in a log house on March 16, 1834. His grandfather was an officer in the revolutionary war, and from him he inherit­ed a love for military life.

I was born on the Wisconsin River. I was about ten years of age when the treaty was held at Prairie du Chien, where they fixed the boundaries between the Winnebagoes and the Chippewas and our cousins the Sioux. I went with my father to that treaty. My squaw's name is Champchekeriwinke (Flash of Lightning).

“THE OLD MAN OF FAITH”

Bishop Bowman was a man of extraordinary by vitality and breadth of intellect and despite his advanced age. He maintained his connections with the church up to the time of his death. Even after he passed his 90th birthday he preached occasionally from the pulpit of the Calvary Methodist Church in East Orange, New Jersey of which he was a member.

MONEY, Hernando De Soto, (cousin of James Kimble Vardaman), a Representative and a Senator from Mississippi; born at Zeiglersville, Holmes County, Miss., August 26, 1839; moved in early childhood to Carrollton, Carroll County, Miss . . .

In September 1863, Dr. Walker became the first female U.S. Army surgeon following her commission as a “Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian)” by the Army of the Cumberland. While serving the 52nd Ohio Infantry she would often cross lines, helping wounded soldiers on both sides of the battlefield.

The sister of General M.D. Hardin marries into a nightmare. In the end, the glorious chronicle they wanted to leave behind was essentially forgotten, and they may be best remembered for the strain of mania and uncontrollable violence that finally tore their world apart.