Spotlights on Primary Sources

Spotlights on Primary Sources provide a deep dive into documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, offering explanatory text, a transcript, and an image of a featured document. Click on individual spotlights for printer-friendly resources, and note that additional questions for classroom discussion are available to K–12 teachers and parents. View our full collection of Spotlights here.

Colonization and Settlement

• The Doctrine of Discovery, 1493
• A Jamestown settler describes life in Virginia, 1622
• John Winthrop describes life in Boston, 1634
• Indenture Agreement, 1742
• Proclamation of 1763, 1763
• Receipt for land purchased from the Six Nations, 1769
• A report from Spanish California, 1776

Nineteenth Century

• Verses on Norwegian emigration to America, 1853
• Official photograph from the “Golden Spike” Ceremony, 1869
• San Francisco’s Chinatown, 1880
• The Haymarket Affair, 1886
• Statue of Liberty, 1884
• Map of the Foreign-Born Population of the United States, 1900

Twentieth Century

• Literacy and the immigration of “undesirables,” 1903
• Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, 1911
• Immigration cartoon, 1916
• “Food Will Win the War,” 1917
• Emma Goldman on the restriction of civil liberties, 1919
• Japanese Internment, 1942
• Preventing labor discrimination during World War II, 1942