The American Heritage Magazine: A Wide-Open Gateway to the Past

Issues of American Heritage magazine. (Courtesy of Jeff Minick)

After my father’s death in 2016, his wife invited me to take whatever of his books I wanted. His college literature textbook—I’d read several of its essays and stories over the years—was my first choice. Second on my list was his collection of 19 American Heritage volumes. Ordered by subscription, these tall, slim books with their distinctive white covers were the remnants of a larger collection, publications that had arrived every two months in our house during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Recently, I opened a few of these volumes for the first time since bringing them home and was stunned. My reaction, I suspect, was much the same as someone today who watches the 1937 Disney film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and realizes that the talented cartoonists, artists, and other makers of that movie operated without computers. Similarly, in each of the American Heritage issues, which the company regarded as magazines, are marvelous histories and biographies replete with photographs and beautiful paintings and drawings.

The copies I own are not much more than 60 years old, yet when I open one of them, I feel as if I’ve just dug out some heirloom from a dusty attic trunk, some antique from the age of crinoline and frock coats.

Let me explain my wonderment.

The Way It Was

June 1971 edition of American Heritage magazine.

The spring of 1971 brought a cascade of events. In March, a bomb exploded in the Capitol, causing $300,000 in damages. In April, 500,000 protesters marched in Washington against the war in Vietnam. In that same month, the Nixon administration eased trade and travel restrictions with China.

None of these headlines made the pages of my April 1971 edition of American Heritage. Unlike today, when so many editors and publishers mingle conjecture, opinion, news, and history, the American Heritage editors focus all of their attention on providing a balanced account of the American past.

Several other characteristics distinguish this book-magazine from its counterparts then and especially now. In this April edition I possess, for example, are long articles like “Voices of Lexington and Concord,” which in addition to photographs includes nine pages of relatively small print, two columns per page. Today, such articles of 5,000 words or more are as rare as those frock coats I previously mentioned, victims of the internet and the demand for shorter articles.

In addition to this length, the breadth of subjects is dizzying. Here in this same issue are pieces on Civil War veterans; popular fiction of that war; the paintings of John Faulkner, brother to the famous novelist William; a look at presidential libraries; and more. If my mother looked over these articles, then she surely would have read Peter Chew’s “The ‘mostest Hoss’” about the race horse Man o’ War, for she had seen that thoroughbred in the flesh and kept his picture on the living room wall.

A photograph of the American thoroughbred Man o' War (1917–1947), widely considered one of the greatest racehorses of all time, by the Brown Brothers on Jan. 1, 1920. New York Public Library. (Public Domain)

Like National Geographic, the magazine makes lavish use of pictures, albeit many of them are period drawings or black-and-white photographs. To be sure, unlike the photographers for the Geographic, the researchers for American Heritage didn’t head off to jungles for their pictures, but surely spent countless hours in libraries, museums, and book depositories, undaunted as they hunted down illustrations and other material.

A Touching Story

The magazine’s writers and editors frequently addressed sidebars to history, little-known incidents that illustrated a larger picture. In the December 1963 volume owned by my parents, we find one of these vignettes in “General Reynolds And ‘dear Kate.’”

"The Fall of Reynolds," 1863, by Alfred Rudolph Waud. Library of Congress. (Public Domain)

John Reynolds, an outstanding Union officer, was shot and killed on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. He left behind, unknown to nearly everyone who knew the general, a woman who loved him, Kate Hewitt. According to the article, Hewitt made herself known to Reynolds’s grieving family when she paid a visit to their home to view his body. She and Reynolds’s sister spent the night keeping watch over the deceased and became friends.

Soon afterward, the grieving Kate, a convert to Catholicism, entered a convent founded by Elizabeth Ann Seton, another famous American, though she is likely unknown to many of the public today. Several years later, having made no vows, Kate left the convent and then disappeared from the pages of history.

It is a poignant tale, a small piece of Americana that brings light on the horrors of that war and the way the survivors dealt with the deaths of their loved ones.

A Brief History

Photograph of historian Bruce Catton, between circa 1960–1970, by Katherine Young. (Public Domain)

Founded in 1949, the aim of American Heritage from its inception was to acquaint Americans with their past, including, as I say, those nooks and crannies often ignored in more general histories. In 1954, three former Time magazine editors took control of the operation, “convinced that the American story if well told was one of great value and endless fascination. They applied the techniques of journalism to the discipline of history, and envisioned a new kind of magazine: an abundantly illustrated bimonthly, bound in hard covers with no advertising.”

Initially under the editorship of Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Catton, the magazine grew over the next decade until the number of its subscribers exploded to 300,000. The company also began publishing books, including the still popular “The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.” My parents owned this reference book as well as “The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War,” which my brother and I enjoyed for hours on end. One of the company’s board games, “Battle-Cry,” was likewise a tremendous hit with us and with our friends.

“The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War” introduction (page 6) featured “Rainy Day in Camp” by Winslow Homer, who first achieved fame as a Civil War painter. “Rainy Day in Camp,” 1871, by Winslow Homer. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Public Domain)

The 21st century brought hard times to the magazine. High costs finally caused the print publication to cease operations. But in 2017, backers helped launch an improved digital publication that remains alive today and which for now is free, though donations are appreciated.

Visitors to the American Heritage site can find articles not from just current issues of the magazine but also all the way back to its beginnings. Here, for example, are 682 articles on the Civil War, 407 having to do with John Adams, and 328 about Native Americans. Here, too, are pieces by renowned American historians like Stephan Ambrose, David McCullough, Barbara Tuchman, and James Flexner. Though some contemporary events are addressed, the editors and writers remain committed to exploring, like their predecessors, the American past.

Loving Means Learning

"Reading," before 1933, by Lilla Cabot Perry. Oil on canvas. Private collection. (Public Domain)

Although American Heritage deserves our applause, my point here isn’t to tout the magazine but to underscore one more way to discover our country’s fascinating past. Many Americans—and not all of them young—remain ignorant of their own history. Some of those “gotcha” videos on YouTube, for instance, reveal college students who don’t know the meaning of Independence Day or the importance of Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War. Doubtless, many other Americans of all ages could use some brushing up, at a minimum, when it comes to the story of our country. To love our country means knowing something about its past.

One way to do so is to enter the website portal of “American Heritage,” which is like swinging open a door and walking into a vast library centered on our past. As Editor-in-Chief Edwin S. Grosvenor says: “It is our nation’s shared memory, the place where the insights and observations of our best storytellers have been preserved over the generations.”

Give that door a push, and see what you think.

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