In 1917, after years of neutrality, the United States entered World War I—reshaping global politics and transforming life at home.

The Enlightenment wasn’t just an era of smart people in powdered wigs—it was a radical shift in how humans understood power, truth, and their place in the world. Its ideas fueled revolutions, rewrote constitutions, and laid the intellectual bricks of modern democracy.

Manifest Destiny fueled territorial growth, but it also deepened sectional divides—turning political disagreements over slavery and states’ rights into irreconcilable conflicts that led to civil war.