Conflict & Transformation

Six months after Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy was outnumbered, outgunned, and reading Japan’s mail. In four days off a speck of coral in the Pacific, a handful of dive bombers reversed the course of a war — in about five minutes.

The Central Pacific and Union Pacific met at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869. The Chinese laborers who built the western half were not in the photograph.

On December 26, 1862, thirty-eight Dakota men were hanged simultaneously in Mankato on President Lincoln’s order — still the largest mass execution in American history.

Four years of war, roughly 750,000 dead — historian J. David Hacker’s revised estimate. Ended at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. Reconstruction lasted twelve.

Between 1838 and 1839, the federal government forced 16,000 Cherokee from their ancestral lands to Indian Territory. Roughly 4,000 died on the thousand-mile march.

On April 30, 1803, France sold 828,000 square miles for $15 million. Napoleon needed cash; Jefferson doubled the country. The land was already inhabited by dozens of nations.