It’s 1827. Jim Bowie, a frontiersman, illegal slave trader, and real-estate scammer, is in a fight to the death on an island in the Mississippi River. Several of his rivals have attacked him with cane ...

As we’ve documented on these pages before, the Bowie knife — made famous by James “Jim” Bowie on a Mississippi sandbar in 1827 — is about as American as a knife can get. Though the fighting knife ...

A long cavalcade of wagons, teams and broken regiments of troops streamed down the old Southwest Trail, exiting the state capitol. September 10, 1863 was less than an auspicious day for the state and ...