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D-Day correspondence between a soldier and his wife, 1944

On June 6, 1944, as Allied forces numbering approximately 160,000 troops landed along fifty miles of coastline in Normandy, France, Moe Weiner, a native of Brooklyn, was serving in the US Army Quartermaster Corps in England. He did...

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"Citizen 13660" by Miné Okubo, an illustrated memoir of Japanese incarceration during World War II, 1946

9, 10, 11, 12

Click the images to enlarge them. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, resulting in the incarceration of all people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. The order was issued in...

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The Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Signed into law on May 6, 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act barred most Chinese immigration to the United States by placing a 10-year ban on the entry of Chinese laborers. Chinese merchants, diplomats, scholars, and students were exempt...

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Bartolomé de Las Casas debates the subjugation of the Indians, 1550

Art

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

This tract, a summary of a debate concerning the subjugation of Indians, contains the arguments of Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, and Juan Gines Sepulveda, an influential Spanish philosopher, concerning the...

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Spain's Covert Contribution to the American Revolution, 1778

This 1778 unpublished letter from Diego de Gardoqui, head of the commercial firm of Joseph Gardoqui and Sons in Bilbao, Spain, to Arthur Lee, a diplomat from Virginia, documents Spanish contributions to the American Revolution. Prior...

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Spain's "Royal Gift" to George Washington, 1784

George Washington, as a landowner, was an agricultural scientist anxious to improve production on his plantations. His political experiences brought him into contact with agriculturalists from around the world and his military...

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"Men of Color, To Arms! To Arms," 1863

After the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted on January 1, 1863, Black leaders including Frederick Douglass swiftly moved to recruit African Americans as soldiers. “A war undertaken and brazenly carried on for the perpetual...

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Lydia Maria Child on women’s rights, 1843

The best-known work of the poet and novelist Lydia Maria Child may be her poem "Over the River and through the Woods," but she is also remembered for her compelling objections to slavery and her support for underrepresented groups....

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A political cartoon of Grant and Lee, 1864

Art, Government and Civics

During the first three years of the Civil War, a series of Union generals led the Army of the Potomac against Confederate General Robert E. Lee with little success. In March 1864, Abraham Lincoln appointed General Ulysses S. Grant...

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World War I poems: “In Flanders Fields” and “The Answer,” 1918

Literature, World History

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...

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Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address, 2009

The inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2009 was a historic moment not only because Obama was the first African American ever sworn into executive office but also because he entered the presidency at a...

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President Ford’s remarks in Japan, 1974

In November 1974, Gerald Ford became the first sitting American president to visit Japan—the trip was also Ford’s first abroad since replacing Nixon in August of that year. He used the trip to reinforce US-Japanese relations, and in...

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John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

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...

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The struggle for married women’s rights, circa 1880s

Government and Civics

In the early nineteenth century, married women in the US were legally subordinate to their husbands. Wives could not own their own property, keep their own wages, or enter into contracts. Beginning in 1839, states slowly began to...

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The "House Divided" Speech, ca. 1857–1858

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

By 1850, the extension of slavery into the new territories won through the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848 provided a testing ground for competing visions of America. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 and the Kansas...

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Buying Frederick Douglass’s freedom, 1846

Economics

After he had escaped from slavery in 1838, Frederick Douglass became a well-known orator and abolitionist. He wrote an autobiography in 1845, but because he was a runaway slave, its publication increased the chances that he would be...

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Hamilton’s Report on the Subject of Manufactures, 1791

Economics, Government and Civics

When George Washington became president in 1789, he appointed Alexander Hamilton as his secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton’s vision for the economic foundation of the United States included three main programs: 1) the federal...

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Phillis Wheatley’s poem on tyranny and slavery, 1772

Government and Civics, Literature, Religion and Philosophy

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...

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President Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, 1861

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On March 4, 1861, the day Abraham Lincoln was first sworn into office as President of the United States, the Chicago Tribune printed this special pamphlet of his First Inaugural Address. In the address, the new president appealed to...

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Sir Francis Drake’s attack on St. Augustine, 1586

Economics, World History

Five years after leading the first English circumnavigation of the globe in 1577–1580, Sir Francis Drake led a raid against Spanish settlements in the Caribbean including Santiago, Santo Domingo, and Cartagena, as well as St....

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Eleanor Roosevelt’s four basic rights, 1944

Government and Civics

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a lifelong advocate of equal rights, used her position as First Lady to advocate against discrimination in the United States. However, Mrs. Roosevelt’s ideas were not embraced by everyone in the pre-civil...

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The origins of FDR’s New Deal, 1932

Economics, Government and Civics

When the nation fell into the Great Depression following the stock market crash of 1929, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was serving as New York’s governor and was responsible for shaping the state’s response to the crisis. The origins of...

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Map of the Foreign-Born Population of the United States, 1900

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

According to the 1900 census, the population of the United States was then 76.3 million. Nearly 14 percent of the population—approximately 10.4 million people—was born outside of the United States. Drawn by America’s labor...

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The Middle Passage, 1749

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Historians estimate that approximately 472,000 Africans were kidnapped and brought to the North American mainland between 1619 and 1860. Of these, nearly 18 percent died during the transatlantic voyage from Africa to the New World....

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Emma Goldman on the restriction of civil liberties, 1919

Government and Civics

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Emma Goldman was born to a Jewish family in Kovno, Russia (present-day Lithuania). In 1885, at the age of sixteen, she emigrated to the United States, becoming a well-known author and lecturer promoting anarchism, workers’ rights,...

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Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, 1770

Art, World History

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

By the beginning of 1770, there were 4,000 British soldiers in Boston, a city with 15,000 inhabitants, and tensions were running high. On the evening of March 5, crowds of day laborers, apprentices, and merchant sailors began to pelt...

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Thomas Rowe and Joshua Hooper: Sedition charges, 1815

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Even though the Sedition Act of 1798 had expired in 1801, individuals could still be charged with sedition. On January 20, 1815, Thomas Rowe and Joshua Hooper, publishers of the Massachusetts newspaper The Yankee , printed an article...

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The Sedition Act, 1798

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

On August 14, 1798, the Columbian Centinel , a Boston newspaper aligned with the Federalist Party, printed this copy of the Sedition Act. It was the last in a series of legislation known as the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by the...

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J. Edgar Hoover on campus unrest, 1970

Government and Civics

In September 1970, J. Edgar Hoover composed an open letter to American students detailing his view on civil unrest at the nation’s colleges and universities and warning against the elements he believed responsible. Hoover opened with...

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The Monroe Doctrine, 1823

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics, World History

President James Monroe’s 1823 annual message to Congress included a warning to European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. This portion of the address is known as the Monroe Doctrine. The United States...

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A report from Spanish California, 1776

Foreign Languages, Government and Civics

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...

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Spain authorizes Coronado's conquest in the Southwest, 1540

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

This letter, written on behalf of the king of Spain by Francisco Garcia de Loaysa, the president of the Council of the Indies, acknowledges Francisco Coronado’s report of the famous Niza expedition of the previous year and authorizes...

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Japanese internment, 1942

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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....

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Japanese announcement of the attack at Pearl Harbor, 1941

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

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...

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Official photograph from the "Golden Spike" Ceremony, 1869

Economics, Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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,...

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John Philip Sousa critiques modern music, 1930

4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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A British view of rebellious Boston, 1774

Art, Government and Civics, World History

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...

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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...

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Literacy and the immigration of "undesirables," 1903

Government and Civics, World History

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...

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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...

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The death of enslaved Africans on a voyage, 1725

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, 1911

Economics, Foreign Languages, Literature, Religion and Philosophy

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...

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John Mosby on the silver issue, 1895

Economics

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,...

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Frederick Douglass on Jim Crow, 1887

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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President Truman’s Farewell Address, 1953

Government and Civics, World History

5, 6, 7, 8, 9

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...

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Slavery in the New York State census, 1800

Government and Civics

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...

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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...

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Remember the Maine, 1898

Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

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...

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William Jennings Bryan and the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, 1895

Government and Civics

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,...

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Thomas Jefferson's opposition to the Federalists, 1810

Government and Civics

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...

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