In the War: Memoirs of V. Veresaev (1917)

A glimpse at three centuries highlights eleven figures or events that helped shape American history. Deborah Sampson, disguised as a man, joined the Continental Army and was wounded twice in skirmishes. The only female veteran of the Revolutionary War, she introduced vaudeville to New England by enacting the Manual of Arms. Elfego Baca became a living legend to Mexicans in 1884. Then nineteen, he singlehandedly held off eighty Texans in a thirty-six-hour gun battle in Frisco, New Mexico. He became sheriff, an attorney, mayor, district attorney and school superintendent of Socorro County, N.M. But he was always best remembered for humbling eighty Texans. The death of his fiancee turned William Walker of Tennessee from a amamaas boya into a filibuster, when that meant a freewheeling adventurer. He led Nicaraguan rebels in a successful 1885 revolution and was proclaimed presidentathe first American ever to rule a foreign country.