History Today

Twenty years after the Declaration of Independence, writes Louis C. Kleber, the Americans, now at peace with Britain, were involved in tortuous negotiations with the Directory of the French Republic.

Besides La Fayette, writes Arnold Whitridge, many French volunteers joined the American forces to fight for a freedom they had not yet won in France.

Derek Lawrence charts the origins of submarine design.

G.G. Hatheway describes how British-Canadian and American companies entered upon a nineteenth century contest in transatlantic crossings.

The transatlantic connection was ‘an additional bond of union’, in the words of Queen Victoria to President Andrew Johnson, which strengthened the link between Britain and the United States.

Thomas J. Brady offers a study of a fashionable photographer who became the great visual recorder of the American Civil War.

Arnold Whitridge introduces a musician, a financier, and a playwright who was also a secret agent; Beaumarchais believed in the success of American arms, and organized a flow of supplies and munitions from France to the hard-pressed colonists.

Astonished by the hustle of American life, and awed by the immensity of the country, Richard L. Rapson describes how visitors from Britain returned home both chastened and invigorated.

The third President of the United States had been the first American Minister in Paris; Stuart Andrews describes how, to the end of his life, he was a faithful disciple of the French Enlightenment.

Born in the West Indies; Secretary of State in the Confederate Government, Benjamin ended his career as a successful barrister in London. By Charles Curran.