Honestly people are better off just going to historical sights, even with the propaganda you'll undoubtedly get from them being run by the National Parks Service. We are a young country, and many of our historical artifacts actually still exist in some form.

One of my moments of awakening as it were was visiting a battlefield for the War for Independence and discovering through the records they had on-site that one of my ancestors fought in that battle. Suddenly I had a connection to this place which made visiting it much more meaningful than it otherwise would have been. I wasn't expecting that to matter, but it did.