First Landing of Columbus on the Shores of the New World, at San Salvador Size:36x24 These postcards traffic in midnight

These postcards traffic in midnight sun and Mount McKinley's white wall

when state artillery companies drilled in handsome uniforms and borrowed the names of dead presidents

The plate is less diagram than elegy

The portrait carries the weight of a soldier who had outlived his century and was being asked

James Abram Garfield 1881 — a presidential portrait shadowed by its own year

First Landing of Columbus on the Shores of the New World, at San Salvador Size:36x24 These postcards traffic in midnightFirst Landing of Columbus on the Shores of the New World, at San Salvador an engraving freighted with the founding myth of the hemisphere, staging the October morning at San Salvador as solemn theater: banner unfurled, knee bent, an ocean's distance compressed into a single ceremonial gesture. About the Source Bella Frye sources artifacts from the great American historical archive the Library of Congress, the National Archives, regional historical