83 items
The rivalry between Spain and England grew throughout the late sixteenth century. In the 1570s and 1580s, Sir Francis Drake led English attacks on Spanish vessels and raided Spanish settlements in the Americas. In 1588, Spain’s King...
The horrors of slavery, 1805
Originally circulated in 1805 to educate the public about the treatment of slaves, this broadside, entitled "Injured Humanity," continues to inform twenty-first-century audiences of the true horrors of slavery. As evidenced by this...
"America the Beautiful," 1893
In a brief essay that appeared ca. 1925, poet Katharine Lee Bates described her inspiration for writing "America the Beautiful," the poem that would evolve into one of the nation’s best-loved patriotic songs, during a trip to Pike’s...
Harriet Beecher Stowe sends Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, 1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 inspired her to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin . The novel, first serialized in newspapers and then published in 1852 as a two-volume work, enjoyed tremendous success in...
John Winthrop describes life in Boston, 1634
Between 1629 and 1640, 20,000 Puritans left England for America to escape religious persecution. They hoped to establish a church free from worldly corruption founded on voluntary agreement among congregants. This covenant theory...
Aaron Burr, fugitive and traitor, 1804
On July 11, 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr shot former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. Nine days later he wrote this cryptic letter (partially in cipher) to his son-in-law, Joseph...
The New York Conspiracy of 1741
In New York City in 1741 an economic decline exacerbated conflict between enslaved men and women engaged in commercial activity and working-class White colonists who felt their jobs were threatened. This tension boiled over in the...
A revival of religious fervor, 1744
The Christian History was a revivalist periodical founded by the Boston clergyman Thomas Prince in 1743 to report on the religious revivals sweeping across Europe and the United States. It was the first Christian periodical published...
George Washington’s First Inaugural Address, 1789
After officially enacting the newly ratified US Constitution in September 1788, the Confederation Congress scheduled the first inauguration for March 1789. However, bad weather delayed many congressmen from arriving in the national...
John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961
On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the thirty-fifth President of the United States. His short, fourteen-minute inaugural address is best remembered for a single line: "My fellow Americans: ask not what your country...
A report from Spanish California, 1776
Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, military commander of Alta California, wrote this letter from Mission San Gabriel. Rivera y Moncada was instrumental in the development of missions in California and was in a sometimes-contentious...
Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1863
In 1621, settlers in Massachusetts celebrated what has come to be regarded as the first thanksgiving in the New World. On October 3, 1789, George Washington issued a proclamation creating the first Thanksgiving Day designated by the...
Phillis Wheatley’s poem on tyranny and slavery, 1772
Born in Africa, Phillis Wheatley was captured and sold into slavery as a child. She was purchased by John Wheatley of Boston in 1761. The Wheatleys soon recognized Phillis’s intelligence and taught her to read and write. She became...
On the emigrant trail, 1862
Samuel Russell, his mother, and his sisters emigrated to the Mormon settlement at Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1861. The next spring, Russell joined a “down-and-back” wagon train to escort new pioneers to the settlement. These caravans...
Poem on a Civil War death: "Only a Private Killed," 1861
Approximately 3.5 million men served in the Union and Confederate military during the Civil War. Recent scholarship indicates that at least 750,000 men died. Lewis Mitchell of the 1st Minnesota Volunteers was one of those men. On...
World War I poems: “In Flanders Fields” and “The Answer,” 1918
Ella Osborn’s 1918 diary provides insight into the experiences of an American nurse serving in France at the end of World War I. In addition to her notes about the men under her care and events in France, Osborn jotted down two...
Verses on Norwegian emigration to America, 1853
Between 1836 and 1865, approximately 55,000 Norwegians sailed to the United States. [1] Like most immigrants, they sought opportunities that didn’t exist at home—religious freedom, economic security, land ownership, and educational...
Frederick Douglass’s tribute to Abraham Lincoln, 1880
Despite initial differences, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln forged a relationship over the course of the Civil War based on a shared vision. Fifteen years after Lincoln’s death, Douglass described him as "one of the noblest...
Inside the Vault: Jewish American Soldiers & Jewish Refugees after World War II
In the wake of World War II, American servicemen helped Jewish refugees come to the United States. Join us as we learn more about the servicemen’s work through primary sources. Who were these people? What are their stories? On...
Inside the Vault: A 1925 Study Guide for Eighth-Grade Graduation in Iowa
Are you smarter than a (1925) eighth grader? In the 1920s, when most students did not go to high school, the eighth-grade state examinations marked the end of their formal education. Sam C. Stephenson published review books to help...
The Bondwoman’s Narrative
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, chair of Afro-American Studies, director of the Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, and author of seminal works on African American literary criticism and...
The Supreme Court and Religious Freedom
A. E. Dick Howard, the White Burkett Miller Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Virginia School of Law, presents a short history of the Constitution and discusses the Supreme Court’s role in the ongoing debate...
Europeans and the New World, 1400–1530
Brian DeLay, associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses how the backwater of western Europe emerged from the devastation of the fourteenth century to generate the power, wealth, knowledge,...
Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln
An eminent Lincoln scholar, Douglas Wilson is the director emeritus of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. In Honor’s Voice, Professor Wilson draws on testimonies and recollections by Abraham Lincoln’s...
Understanding Slavery via Narratives
James Oliver Horton speaks about slave narratives as an important resource for understanding American history.
Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend
James I. Robertson, Alumni Distinguished Professor in history at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, re-examines, in Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend, the life and the aura of Thomas "Stonewall"...
The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity
Jill Lepore, Professor of Early American History at Harvard University, draws on scholarship from her book, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity, to trace how the meanings attached to this brutally...
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Joseph J. Ellis, Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, discusses his Pulitzer Prize–winning book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, explains the emergence of the men who led the Revolutionary War and created...
The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope
Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of the American Studies Program at Columbia University, Andrew Delbanco examines the evolution of the American Dream--the idea that anyone may rise above his or her...
In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692
Mary Beth Norton, Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University, examines the Salem witchcraft crisis from a seventeenth-century perspective, drawing not only on court records, but also on correspondence and...
Writing Op-Ed
Jonathan Zimmerman, NYU historian, discusses the art of writing an op-ed and believes that it remains a critical democratic exercise.
Gold, Gospel, and Glory: Motivations for European Exploration and Colonization of the Americas
Professor John Fea of Messiah College discusses the European motivations--gold, gospel, and glory--for exploration in the Americas, taking Europeans from the Crusades to the Spanish conquest and the exploitation of resources in the...
Lincoln’s Religion
Professor Richard Carwadine examines Lincoln's religious beliefs as America's crisis deepened, and looks at the role that the President's religious sentiments played in mobilizing support for the war among Union citizens. Richard...
The Post-Revolutionary Generation
Joyce Appleby, Professor Emerita, University of California, Los Angeles, explores how the men and women born after the American Revolution experienced and developed the theoretical ideas of liberty and independence put in place by...
American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation
James G. Basker (Barnard College, Columbia University) discusses his latest book, American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation (The Library of America, 2012). Basker, who is also the president of the Gilder...
War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars
Andrew Carroll, founder of the Legacy Project, recounts his search for letters from America’s wars and reads excerpts from several.
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