Discovery of the Mississippi by Ferdinand De Soto and His Followers, May 1541 Size:24x18 when soldiering was still half

when soldiering was still half pageantry and the ledger of casualties had barely opened

when an anarchist's bullet at the Pan-American Exposition turned the architect of American empire into its first 20th-century martyr

to save the Union

A portrait of the Pennsylvania firebrand caught mid-career

Discovery of the Mississippi by Ferdinand De Soto and His Followers, May 1541 Size:24x18 when soldiering was still halfDiscovery of the Mississippi by Ferdinand De Soto and His Followers, May 1541 a documentary engraving steeped in the heroic mode, casting the Spaniard and his armored retinue at the riverbank as if conquest were a sacrament. The composition treats a contested arrival as revelation, the Mississippi rendered less as geography than as inheritance. About the Source Bella Frye sources artifacts from the great American historical archive the Library of