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Antietam & Gettysburg

Since the birth of the United States in the American Revolution of 1776, the Civil War has been the only conflict in which the very survival of the nation was at stake. The issue of life or death for two nations lay at the heart of the war, and there was no middle ground for either side. Abraham Lincoln's great dream of freedom for all could be realized only with Union victory. If the Confederacy won, the precedent would be set for further divisions, and there would no longer be a country worthy of the name "United States."

The pendulum of victory and defeat swung back and forth during the four years of the war. Two of the most important swings from Confederate triumph to Union success took place at Antietam and Gettysburg. The 23,000 men killed, wounded, and missing at Antietam constituted the largest toll for any single day in all of American history. The 50,000 casualties of both sides in three days at Gettysburg were the largest for any battle in the Civil War. If either had turned out differently, the United States as we know it today might not exist.

Historian Guides:

Due to a scheduling conflict, Ed Bearss is not able to be the historian guide for this tour. Instead, the tour will be conducted by two of our country's most highly acclaimed historians, James McPherson and Dennis Frye.

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Princeton University, Dr. James McPherson received his PhD at Johns Hopkins University. In a career as America's preeminent Civil War historian that has spanned more than four decades, he has garnered many of the historical profession's top accolades. He has written many books on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War and countless articles for historical publications. Dr. McPherson's most famous work Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era won the Pulitzer Prize for History and is considered to be the finest and most definitive comprehensive treatment of the Civil War period.

Dennis Frye is the Chief Historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. He is a prominent Civil War historian with numerous appearances on PBS, The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, and A&E. He helped produce award-winning television features on the Battle of Antietam and abolitionist John Brown and served as an Associate Producer for the Civil War movie "Gods and Generals." Dennis is a well-known author of 88 articles and eight books, including Harpers Ferry Under Fire and September Suspense: Lincoln's Union in Peril.

An unprecedented presentation, this HistoryAmerica tour will become the opportunity of a lifetime to recapture all the excitement of the great events at the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg

St. Louis Bound

High on a limestone bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, with forested areas beyond the cliffs, French fur traders traveled up from New Orleans in 1762 and found an ideal site to establish a trading post. Following a prediction that the village they built "might become hereafter one of the finest cities of America," the settlement quickly grew because of its central location in the Upper Mississippi Valley, close to the confluences of the Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers.

By the time Captain Meriwether Lewis saw it during December 1803, St. Louis was a thriving community with almost 200 white-washed houses and a population of perhaps a thousand people from all walks of life and nationalities. Established by the French in the hopes of a trade monopoly with the Indians, governed by the Spanish, and purchased by President Jefferson for America, St. Louis has always been cosmopolitan in nature as it transitioned from a frontier river town to a metropolitan mercantile empire.

Come spend a week in St. Louis with River Historian Jon G. James, and explore all the local, regional, and national attractions associated with the most famous events and people in American history. You will walk through ethnic neighborhoods and on the original levee and riverfront and recount the compelling legends and gripping stories of countless boatmen, cowboys, Indians, politicians, priests, slaves, soldiers, and voyageurs who passed through or resided in this vibrant city, the Gateway to the West.

Lake Champlain

At the dawn of the 18th century, French colonies extended from the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes. British colonies extended west from the Atlantic seaboard, and both sought to expand into the territory between. After the Treaty of Paris ended French imperial claims in North America, the British Empire found its authority challenged by rebellious American colonists.

Waterways were then the transportation arteries, and nowhere else in North America are there more 18th-century forts and battlefields than in the Upper Hudson River and Lake Champlain valleys. This corridor, from Albany through Lake Champlain to Canada, witnessed key battles in both the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. At Fort Ticonderoga, France achieved its greatest victory, repulsing a much larger British army in the bloodiest battle on North American soil until the Civil War. To end rebellion in the American colonies, British General John Burgoyne considered the Lake Champlain-Hudson River Valley "precisely the route an army ought to take" to invade New York. He expected to isolate New England and then focus on crushing that seat of discontent. However, the Americans forced Burgoyne's army to surrender at the Battle of Saratoga, a crucial victory that renewed Patriots' hopes, secured essential foreign recognition, and forever changed the face of the world.

Historian Frank Ackerman will guide you through the crucible of North American wars for an exciting, in-depth look at independence from an empire.

Old Cape Cod

Famed naturalist Henry Beston wrote, "East of America, there stands in the open Atlantic the last fragment of an ancient and vanished land. Worn by the breakers and the rains, and disintegrated by the wind, it still stands bold."

Landmark for early explorers, Cape Cod was where the Pilgrims first landed and signed the Mayflower Compact, forming the basis of government in Plymouth Colony. Afterward it was again and again the site of confrontations, first between explorers and natives and then between Patriots and Tories.

Saltworks, lighthouses, shipwrecks, and characters as varied as radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, Henry David Thoreau, and Eugene O'Neill gave Cape Cod its unique landscape and a fascinating human chronicle that was always shaped by the sea. Though its villages all share the easy-going charm one expects from quaint seaside towns, you'll be surprised to find that each one, although small in size, is large in personality. See artist neighborhoods, areas of wild beauty, and regions still steeped in whaling lore and legends of glorious clipper ships.

Historian guide Frank Ackerman will bring to life all the excitement of Cape Cod's celebrated past. Come see a place ever changing. Relentless tides and winds reshape the beaches, cliffs, and boulders, removing evidence that any of us — Native people or Vikings, Pilgrims or presidents, explorers, painters, or inventors — ever set foot here. There's no more fitting place for a HistoryAmerica tour than Cape Cod, where our history began.                                                                           

On the Santa Fe Trail

When one imagines all the storied routes in the history of our nation, the Santa Fe Trail often comes to mind first. As this country's first international highway, it was where Missouri traders headed south, Hispanic traders headed east, and the United States Army traveled when it went to war with Mexico in 1846. Following the Trail today, you can still see wagon ruts, and you can almost hear the whoops and cries of "All's set!" as trail hands hitched their oxen to freight wagons.

We will pick up the Trail at La Junta, Colorado, just after it splits into the Mountain Route and the Cimarron cut-off. Along the way we will meet Kit Carson, "Uncle Dick" Wootten, the Bent's, and outlaws Jesse James and Billy the Kid. We will see Bent's New Fort, the magnificently reconstructed Bent's Old Fort, Raton, Cimarron, and Fort Union. We will travel from charming Mexican villages such as Tecolote and San Miguel to the trail towns of Trinidad and Las Vegas (New Mexico, that is). We will also visit the Civil War battlefield at Glorieta Pass, the most decisive battle in the West, where Colorado Volunteers turned back a Confederate invasion right on the Trail.

Always in sight of the incredible Rocky Mountains, the scenery will be breathtaking, and the history lively and colorful. Mike Koury and this land have a great story to tell. Follow in the curious company of traders, mountain men, and adventurers as the entire saga of the Southwest unfolds along the Santa Fe Trail.

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History America TOURS

Between Two Wars:
The Great Smoky Mountains

Battles for Freedom in East Tennessee
and South Carolina

April 27-May 4, 2013
Historian Guide: Neil Mangum

The rugged vastness and dense forests of the Great Smoky Mountains rise along the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. This majestic mountain range offers more than just beautiful scenery — it's the blend of breathtaking grandeur with the memory of early struggles.

During the American Revolution, when settlements had scarcely breached areas west of the Appalachians, battles were fought generally east of the Smoky Mountains. British strategy was to capture territory with regular forces and then train local militia to hold the territory. While the plan met with some success in the colony of Georgia, in South Carolina British authorities failed to take into account the determination of patriot resistance. Clashes at Kings Mountain and Cowpens and the Siege of Ninety-Six helped the underdog Americans' cause for independence.

During the Civil War the Smoky Mountains formed a natural barrier to the movement of large standing armies. Confederate forces had to send troops and supplies along the southern seaboard to reach East Tennessee by rail or along lines connecting western Virginia with the region. Union forces, using the Tennessee River, found easier access. The North considered Chattanooga the gateway to the Deep South and fought pivotal battles at Chickamauga and Lookout Mountain.

Visit battle sites and absorb all aspects of Appalachian culture on this journey into America's past. With veteran historian guide Neil Mangum, you will gain new insights into a place that had a significant role in shaping two wars.

HISTORY OF ARGENTINA

For the first two centuries of the Spanish empire the vast region draining from the Andes to the river Plate at Buenos Aires is the least regarded part of Latin America. It lacks the gold or silver which attract adventurers across the Atlantic to Mexico and Peru. There is no direct link with Spain, all official contact being through the viceregal capital at Lima. Most of the early settlements are established by colonists moving into the region from Peru or Chile. In 1726 Buenos Aires has a population of only 2200. But the area's status gradually improves during the 18th century, particularly after an administrative reorganization in 1776.
Until this time the region has been part of the viceroyalty of Peru, administered at very long range from Lima. In 1776 the entire area, from the eastern Bolivian highlands through Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina to the southern tip of the continent, is given separate status as the viceroyalty of La Plata with its capital at Buenos Aires. The people of Buenos Aires discover an exciting new sense of pride in 1806, after a British fleet arrives and captures the city. The Spanish viceroy flees ignominiously, whereupon Creole militia led by Santiago de Liniers expel the intruders on their own. For three years Liniers rules in place of the absent viceroy. Buenos Aires is now in the mood to seize any future opportunities.
Argentina and San Martín: 1810-1816
Argentina takes its first step towards independence more easily than most other regions of the Spanish empire, partly because of the events of 1806-9 in Buenos Aires. When developments in Spain in 1808 force a choice of allegiance, acabildo abierto (open town meeting) in Buenos Aires on 25 May 1810 quickly decides to set up an autonomous local government on behalf of the deposed Ferdinand VII. However this first step is soon followed by violent conflict with opposing royalist forces elsewhere in the province. News of this conflict brings back to Buenos Aires an Argentinian-born officer serving in the Spanish army, José de San Martín.
When San Martín reaches Argentina in 1812, the patriot army is under the command of Manuel Belgrano, a Buenos Aires lawyer who has had his first military experience as a member of the Creole militia in 1806. In the early years of the war of independence Belgrano has successes against royalist troops in the foothills of the Andes in the extreme northwest of Argentina, at Tucuman (1812) and Salta (1813). But he is defeated further north, in Bolivia, later in 1813. In 1814 he is replaced as commander by San Martín. These battles have all been close to the main source of royalist strength, the rich and conservative viceroyalty of Peru. San Martin concludes that Latin America's independence will never be secure until Peru is conquered.
The independence of Argentina is formally proclaimed on 9 July 1816, abandoning any pretence that the junta has been governing on behalf of Ferdinand VII. (The decision is simplified by the reactionary and incompetent rule of the Spanish king after he recovers his throne in 1814.) Meanwhile San Martín is assembling and training an army for his long-term plan of campaign against Peru. He has decided on a two-pronged attack, beginning with an invasion of Chile. He already has an important Chilean ally in Bernardo O'Higgins, a soldier closely involved in the beginnings of the independence movement in Chile but from 1814 a refugee in Argentina.
United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata: 1816-1828
San Martín marches west into Chile in January 1817, a few month's after the formal declaration of full Argentinian independence. He leaves his compatriots in Argentina with the task of forming a nation out of what has been the vast but relatively uncentralized viceroyalty of La Plata. The ambitions of many in Buenos Aires are that their city should remain the capital of the entire viceroyalty. But in 1817 this already looks a forlorn hope. Paraguay has resolutely gone its own way in 1811 and by 1814 is a region almost impenetrable to outsiders. Uruguay becomes a battle ground between Argentina and Brazil, until in 1828 both accept it as an independent buffer state between them.
This leaves a large area, consisting mainly of the great alluvial plain between the Andes and the Atlantic which forms the greater part of modern Argentina. But even this proves hard to hold together, with inland regions strongly resisting every attempt by Buenos Aires to prevail as a capital city. The struggle between Unitarists (favouring centralization) and Federalists (demanding autonomy for the regions) becomes the main political issue in the early years of the republic. But the question is somewhat academic from 1835 during the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas - paradoxically the leader of the Federalists, yet a man with the personal power to control every region of the nation.
Rosas and Urquiza: 1835-1861
Argentina is geographically unlike other south American nations, with its vast open plains (the pampas, from an Indian word meaning a flat place) on which cattle are herded in Spanish imperial times by tough mestizo cowboys or gauchos (again probably from an Indian word, for vagabond). This is the tradition which produces Juan Manuel de Rosas, the first strong man of independent Argentina. He is not himself a gaucho, for he comes from a noble Spanish family and owns extensive ranches, but he lives among the cowboys and trains them to his own tough standards. In the early years of independence he wins a formidable reputation as a leader of irregular troops.
In 1829 Rosas is elected governor of the province of Buenos Aires. By 1835 he has successfully imposed his will on all the other local governors. His status is now officially raised to that of dictator. Making effective use of personalismo (his portrait even features sometimes on church altars), he imposes on Argentina a brutally repressive conservative regime. Rosas follows a vigorously nationalistic policy which pleases his people (he reacts strongly, for example, to the British seizure of the Falklands), but he goes too far when he intervenes in a Uruguayan civil war - lending his assistance in 1843 to a siege of Montevideo which eventually lasts for nearly nine years.
This embarrassment, together with Rosas' failure to provide the provinces with a federal constitution, leads to his being toppled in 1851 by one of his own provincial governors, Justo José de Urquiza. Urquiza gathers an army to raise the siege of Montevideo and defeats an army loyal to Rosas at Caseros in February 1852. He then calls a convention which provides Argentina, in 1853, with the required constitution. Urquiza is elected president in 1854 for a six-year term. The first capital, in a rotating sequence, is to be Paraná. But there is one glaring omission from this new confederation. Buenos Aires, insisting on leadership of the nation or nothing, refuses to join.
The issue is again resolved on the battlefield. In 1861, at Pavón, the provincial troops of Buenos Aires under Bartolomé Mitre defeat the national army under Urquiza. In the following year Mitre (a distinguished author and historian as well as soldier) is elected president. He moves the capital to Buenos Aires, where it has remained ever since - though its status as permanent capital is not formally accepted until 1880. Argentina, after fifty years of independence, has finally established its political identity. Meanwhile its economic nature is about to undergo a transformation.
From gauchos to peones: late 19th century
The Argentinian pampas has traditionally been a lawless area, the preserve of wild cattle and horses (descendants of animals which have escaped from Spanish domestic use) and of equally wild gauchos. The only indigenous inhabitants of the area, the American Indians, are nearly exterminated by the colonists in a series of 19th-century wars. In 1878-9 the remaining Indians are either killed or are driven south into Patagonia in a campaign commanded by Julio Roca, a general who is voted into the presidency of Argentina in 1880 on the strength of this success. His victory over the Indians is a significant step in a process which is steadily transforming the pampas.
As elsewhere in the world during the 19th century, the arrival of the railway opens up remote regions. Agricultural labourers can be easily attracted into previously inaccessible areas, and their products can be cheaply transported out. At much the same time barbed wire becomes available to fence in large areas. The owners of the great estancias(ranches) realize that wild herds and gauchos are an uneconomic use of these rolling acres. Far more profitable is the breeding of cattle and sheep; and in many parts of the pampas an even higher yield can be derived from harvests of wheat and corn. The gaucho is no longer needed. The demand, in his place, is for peones or farm labourers.
With this new window of economic opportunity, the Argentinian government encourages immigration from Europe. By far the largest group of new arrivals are from Italy and Spain, with the Italians slightly the more numerous of the two. But there are also appreciable numbers of French, Germans, Poles, Turks and Russian Jews (more than three million newcomers arrive from Europe between 1860 and 1940). Argentina already has a smaller indigenous Indian population than other parts of continental Latin America. To this it now adds a higher rate of immigration. It becomes the most European republic in south America. But as yet it is one where power and wealth remain in the hands of a very select few.
The Argentine Rural Society: 1866-1916
When the Argentinian rural economy begins to develop, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the fertile regions of the pampas are divided into vast estancias owned by no more than 300 families. Each estancia covers hundreds of thousands of acres. With wealth in so few hands, oligarchy is almost inevitable. Argentine's gilded few ensure that power remains within their own circle by means of an exclusive club, the Argentine Rural Society, founded in 1866. The presidency of Julio Roca in 1880 begins three decades in which the office (together with its material benefits) is passed from hand to hand among a small circle of friends and relations within the Rural Society.
By the 1890s this situation has prompted sufficient outrage for two opposition groups to be formed - the Radical party in 1892 (campaigning on behalf of all shades of political opinion against the corruption of the regime) and in 1895 the specifically left-wing Socialist party. By 1912 political unrest is so potentially explosive that the ruling group reluctantly concedes electoral reform. There is now to be a secret ballot and universal male suffrage. At the next election, in 1916, the oligarchy is finally removed from power. The new president is the leader of the Radical party, Hipólito Irigoyen.

BRAZIL History

The Portuguese were the first European settlers to arrive in the area, led by adventurous Pedro Cabral, who began the colonial period in 1500. The Portuguese reportedly found native Indians numbering around seven million. Most tribes were peripatetic, with only limited agriculture and temporary dwellings, although villages often had as many as 5000 inhabitants. Cultural life appears to have been richly developed, although both tribal warfare and cannibalism were ubiquitous. The few remaining traces of Brazil's Indian tribes reveal little of their lifestyle, unlike the evidence from other Andean tribes. Today, fewer than 200,000 of Brazil's indigenous people survive, most of whom inhabit the jungle areas.

Other Portuguese explorers followed Cabral, in search of valuable goods for European trade but also for unsettled land and the opportunity to escape poverty in Portugal itself.   The only item of value they discovered was the pau do brasil (brazil wood tree) from which they created red dye. Unlike the colonizing philosophy of the Spanish, the Portuguese in Brazil were much less focused at first on conquering, controlling, and developing the country. Most were impoverished sailors, who were far more interested in profitable trade and subsistence agriculture than in territorial expansion. The country's interior remained unexplored.

Nonetheless, sugar soon came to Brazil, and with it came imported slaves.  To a degree unequaled in most of the American colonies, the Portuguese settlers frequently intermarried with both the Indians and the African slaves, and there were also mixed marriages between the Africans and Indians. As a result, Brazil's population is intermingled to a degree that is unseen elsewhere. Most Brazilians possess some combination of European, African, Amerindian, Asian, and Middle Eastern lineage,and this multiplicity of cultural legacies is a notable feature of current Brazilian culture.

The move to open the country's interior coincided with the discovery in the 1690s of gold in the south-central part of the country. The country's gold deposits didn't pan out, however, and by the close of the 18th century the country's focus had returned to the coastal agricultural regions. In 1807, as Napoleon Bonaparte closed in on Portugal's capital city of Lisbon, the Prince Regent shipped himself off to Brazil. Once there, Dom Joao established the colony as the capital of his empire. By 1821 things in Europe had cooled down sufficiently that Dom Joao could return  to Lisbon, and  he left his son Dom Pedro I in charge of Brazil. When the king attempted the following year to return Brazil to subordinate status as a colony, Dom Pedro flourished his sword and declared the country's independence from Portugal (and his own independence from his father).

In the 19th century coffee took the place of sugar as Brazil's most important product. The boom in coffee production brought a wave of almost one million European immigrants, mostly Italians, and also brought about the Brazilian republic. In 1889, the wealthy coffee magnates backed a military coup, the emperor fled, and Brazil was no more an imperial country. The coffee planters virtually owned the country and the government for the next thirty years, until the worldwide depression evaporated coffee demand. For the next half century Brazil struggled with governmental instability, military coups, and a fragile economy. In 1989, the country enjoyed its first democratic election in almost three decades. Unfortunately, the Brazilians made the mistake of electing Fernando Collor de Mello. Mello's corruption did nothing to help the economy, but his peaceful removal from office indicated at least that the country's political and governmental structures are stable.

Brazil has the sixth largest population in the world--about 148 million people--which has doubled in the past 30 years. Because of its size,  there are only 15 people per sq. km, concentrated mainly along the coast and in the major cities, where two-thirds of the people now live: over 19 million in greater Sao Paulo and 10 million in greater Rio.

The immigrant Portuguese language was greatly influenced by the numerous Indian and African dialects they encountered, but it remains the dominant language in Brazil today. In fact, the Brazilian dialect has become the dominant influence in the development of the Portuguese language, for the simple reason that Brazil has 15 times the population of Portugal and a much more dynamic linguistic environment.