309 items
Responding to fears of Japanese spies within the United States, President Roosevelt signed an order authorizing the forced relocation and confinement of more than 110,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans living in the West....
Japanese announcement of the attack at Pearl Harbor, 1941
In January 1941, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto began developing a plan to attack the American base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. For eleven months, the Japanese continued to refine their plans while at the same time working diplomatically to...
Official photograph from the "Golden Spike" Ceremony, 1869
This iconic photograph records the celebration marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad lines at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869, when Leland Stanford, co-founder of the Central Pacific Railroad,...
John Philip Sousa critiques modern music, 1930
John Philip Sousa (1854–1932), an American composer of classical music, served as the director of the United States Marine Band from 1880 to 1892. During Sousa’s time as leader of "The President’s Own," as the band was called, he...
A British view of rebellious Boston, 1774
In the years leading up to the American Revolution, both the British and the colonists used broadsides to influence public opinion. This broadside, “The Bostonian’s Paying the Excise-man, or Tarring & Feathering,” printed in...
American Colonization Society membership certificate, 1833
When James Madison signed this membership certificate as president of the American Colonization Society in 1833, the organization’s effort to repatriate America’s free black population to Africa had been underway for over a decade. On...
Literacy and the immigration of "undesirables," 1903
During the Progressive era, tens of millions of immigrants came to the United States from Europe to fulfill their American dream. During this period most came from southern and eastern Europe, particularly from Italy, Russia, and the...
The price of war: A letter from Mary Kelly to Sarah Gordon, 1862
James Kelly served with the 14th Indiana Volunteers beginning in 1861. In March 1862, his wife, Mary, traveled to the field hospital in Virginia where he lay wounded after the Battle of Winchester. She described the terrible...
The death of enslaved Africans on a voyage, 1725
Slavery in English America underwent profound changes during the first two centuries of settlement. During the early seventeenth century, some Black laborers were enslaved; others, however, were treated like White indentured servants...
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, 1911
On March 25, 1911, a devastating fire started at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. Workers had been locked in the factory to discourage theft and prevent labor organization, and they were unable to escape when the fire...
John Mosby on the silver issue, 1895
In the late nineteenth century, Democrats and Republicans fought over whether the gold standard ought to be retained or if the United States should switch to a free silver system. In 1890, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was passed,...
Frederick Douglass on Jim Crow, 1887
Frederick Douglass tirelessly labored to end slavery but true equality remained out of reach. Despite the successful passage of several Constitutional amendments and federal laws after the Civil War, unwritten rules and Jim Crow laws...
President Truman’s Farewell Address, 1953
It has none of the catch phrases or warnings of other, more famous presidential inaugural or farewell addresses, no cautions against permanent alliances or military-industrial complexes, no appeals to better angels or declarations...
Slavery in the New York State census, 1800
While numbers do not explain the everyday realities of slavery in the eighteenth century, they do provide a sense of the pervasiveness of the peculiar institution even in a northern state like New York. This broadside provides figures...
The Battles of Lexington and Concord, 1775
By April 1775, reconciliation between England and the thirteen colonies had failed. Two months earlier, Parliament had declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion, and on April 14 General Thomas Gage received secret orders...
Remember the Maine, 1898
On February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine exploded in Havana’s harbor in Cuba, killing nearly two-thirds of her crew. The tragedy occurred after years of escalating tensions between the United States and Spain, and the “yellow...
William Jennings Bryan and the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, 1895
In 1895, Williams Jennings Bryan wrote to I. J. Dunn, an Omaha lawyer and president of the Jackson Club, to decline an invitation to speak at the local Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, an annual event held by the Democratic Party. Bryan,...
Thomas Jefferson's opposition to the Federalists, 1810
The Federalist Party evolved from the core of Federalists, like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, who wrote and defended the US Constitution in 1787–1788. The political party advocated a strong central government and supported...
The Map Proves It, ca. 1919
Supporters of women’s rights used maps such as the one shown here to demonstrate where women were allowed to vote, when they won that right, and which elections they could vote in. The source of this map is unknown. Originally printed...
"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...
Horace Greeley: "Go West," 1871
Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune , wrote this letter in 1871 to R. L. Sanderson, a young correspondent who had requested career advice. Greeley, a great supporter of westward expansion, shared the national conviction...
Building Mount Rushmore, 1926
This September 1926 report by the sculptor Gutzon Borglum to the Harney Peak Memorial Association anticipates the construction of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Borglum’s report offers a look...
The Brotherton Indians of New Jersey, 1780
During the French and Indian War, the Lenni-Lenape (or Delaware) Indians of New Jersey were among the tribes that signed the Treaty of Easton of 1758. The tribes agreed not to support the French in the colonial conflict and to leave...
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