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A proclamation on the suspension of habeas corpus, 1862

The doctrine of habeas corpus is the right of any person under arrest to appear in person before the court, to ensure that they have not been falsely accused. The US Constitution specifically protects this right in Article I, Section...

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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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Gen. Ulysses S. Grant on the Siege of Vicksburg, 1863

One of the Union’s top military objectives was to gain control of the Mississippi River, and thereby split the Confederacy in two. General Ulysses S. Grant took up this challenge late in 1862 but was frustrated for several months by...

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George Washington would have supported the New Deal, 1934

During his first term, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to deflect opposition to the New Deal. Speaking at Gettysburg on Memorial Day, 1934, Roosevelt invoked the memory of George Washington by comparing his federal agenda with...

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The Spanish Armada, 1588

World History

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...

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Our Victorious Fleets in Cuban Waters, 1898

In 1898, the US Navy was small—especially compared to the navies of the European powers. The Navy had shrunk in the years after the Civil War, from more than 600 vessels at that conflict’s close to just forty-eight ready but aging...

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Confirming governors for territories of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, 1901

President Theodore Roosevelt wrote this letter to William H. Hunt, the governor of Porto Rico (as Puerto Rico was known at the time), just twelve days after he assumed the presidency following President William McKinley’s...

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The Grange Movement, 1875

The Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange, was founded in 1867 to advance methods of agriculture, as well as to promote the social and economic needs of farmers in the United States. The financial crisis of 1873, along with falling crop...

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Building Mount Rushmore, 1926

Art

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...

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Creating the Air Force, 1924

In this July 1924 letter to aviation pioneer and publisher Lester D. Gardner, Brigadier General William "Billy" Mitchell prophesied the coming tide of Japanese militarism. Concerned about Japan’s growing military power in the skies,...

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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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Henry Knox on the British invasion of New York, 1776

When twenty-six-year-old Henry Knox, the Continental Army’s artillery commander, penned this letter to his wife, Lucy, on July 8, 1776, patriot morale was at a low point. The summer of 1776 was a particularly hard time as word of...

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Lincoln on abolition in England and the United States, 1858

Government and Civics

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

Though Lincoln spoke frequently during the 1858 Illinois Senate race against Stephen Douglas—a campaign that propelled Lincoln to the political forefront and helped shape him into a presidential candidate—very few Lincoln manuscripts...

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Lincoln speech on slavery and the American Dream, 1858

Economics, Government and Civics

Through the 1830s and 1840s, Abraham Lincoln’s primary political focus was on economic issues. However, the escalating debate over slavery in the 1850s, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act in particular, compelled Lincoln to change his...

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The state of the English colonies, 1755

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

The French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years’ War, was primarily fought along the frontier between New France and the British colonies in North America from 1754 to 1763. This newspaper article, printed in the Maryland...

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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...

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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 massacre of American Indian allies, 1818

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On April 23, 1818, Captain Obed Wright of the Georgia militia ordered an attack on a Chehaw village, which resulted in the slaughter of several American Indians. In a letter written a week after the attack, Brigadier General Thomas...

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The Civil War and early submarine warfare, 1863

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

Civil War combat foreshadowed modern warfare with the introduction of the machine gun, repeater rifles, and trench warfare, and the use of trains to quickly move troops. However, one of the most celebrated tactical innovations of the...

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Amelia Earhart to her former flight instructor, Neta Snook, 1929

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

The first decades of the twentieth century brought a golden age of aviation. During this exciting period, many pioneering women defied traditional female roles to become pilots. Amelia Earhart is the most famous of this group of...

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Sergeant Francis Fletcher of the 54th Massachusetts on equal pay for Black soldiers, 1864

Government and Civics

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

Francis H. Fletcher, a 22-year-old clerk from Salem, Massachusetts, enlisted as a private in Company A of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment on February 13, 1863. One year after the regiment left Boston with great fanfare,...

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George Washington and the Newburgh Conspiracy, 1783

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In March of 1783, George Washington faced a serious threat to his authority and to the civil government of the new nation. The Continental Army, based in Newburgh, New York, was awaiting word of peace negotiations between Great...

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The Great West Illustrated, 1869

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

The exploration and settlement of the American West coincided with the development of the medium of photography. Photographic images, reproduced in books and newspapers and available for purchase on their own, helped shape Americans’...

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A northerner’s view of southern slavery, 1821

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

Aurelia Hale of Hartford, Connecticut, offered her impressions of southern life in this letter of June 11, 1821. Hale, then about twenty-two years old, had recently traveled to Washington County, Georgia, to serve as a schoolteacher....

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Indenture agreement, 1742

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

Colonial Americans engaged in many forms of unfree labor, with great numbers of youths moving away from their families to become servants or apprentices. The terms of their service were spelled out in contracts called indentures,...

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A Ku Klux Klan threat, 1868

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

This page contains language that may be offensive or inappropriate for some viewers. Reconstruction politics was a catalyst for widespread racism and hatred that freed people experienced throughout the South. The Ku Klux Klan, founded...

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My Country, ’Tis of Thee

Samuel Francis Smith was a twenty-four-year-old Baptist seminary student in Massachusetts when he wrote the lyrics of "America (My Country, ’Tis of Thee)," the patriotic song that would serve as an unofficial national anthem for...

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A Founding Father on the Missouri Compromise, 1819

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

In 1819 a courageous group of Northern congressmen and senators opened debate on the most divisive of antebellum political issues—slavery. Since the Quaker petitions of 1790, Congress had been silent on slavery. That silence was...

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A soldier’s reasons for enlisting, 1942

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

"Our country is the entire world and mankind our countrymen!!!" In April of 1942, Sidney Diamond, a chemical engineering student at City College in New York, enlisted in the United States Army against the wishes of his friends and...

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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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Suffragists invoke Lincoln, 1910

Government and Civics

In 1910 Washington State voted to approve full woman suffrage, a vote that was influenced by publications and posters such as this one. This poster, declaring that "Lincoln said women should vote," invoked the words of Abraham Lincoln...

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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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"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...

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A patriot’s letter to his loyalist father, 1778

In February 1778, Timothy Pickering Jr. received word from Massachusetts that his father was dying. An adjutant general in George Washington’s Continental Army, Pickering wrote his father this moving letter of farewell on February 23,...

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"The whole land is full of blood," 1851

"The whole land is full of blood." These ominous words were uttered by James W. C. Pennington, a former slave and noted abolitionist, in the wake of Thomas Sims’s infamous trial. Sims had escaped from slavery in Georgia before being...

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Union soldier turns medic at Gettysburg, 1863

After three days of fierce fighting on July 1–3, 1863, nearly 40,000 battered soldiers lay scattered across the blood-soaked fields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. As the torrential summer rain poured down on the wounded, Private Elbert...

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African American soldiers at the Battle of Fort Wagner, 1863

On July 18, 1863, on Morris Island near Charleston, South Carolina, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a Union regiment of free African American men, began their assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold. After the...

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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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A secret agreement between pirate hunters, 1696

World History

Maritime trade and exploration in the colonial era created an environment ripe for piracy. One of the most famous pirates in history, Captain William Kidd, was commissioned by William III of England in 1695 as a privateer to hunt and...

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Harriet Beecher Stowe sends Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, 1852

Literature

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...

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George Washington from Valley Forge on the urgent need for men and supplies, 1777

George Washington’s words in this letter represent a stirring plea for help at the darkest moment of the American Revolution. As few other documents do, this letter illustrates Valley Forge as an icon of American perseverance and...

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Mary Todd Lincoln on life after the White House, 1870

Economics

Mary Todd Lincoln’s years in the White House were a combination of triumph and tragedy. Never fully accepted by the public and vilified by the press for overspending, her tenure as First Lady was unstable at best. After the death of...

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Lincoln on the execution of a slave trader, 1862

This stunning document, a refusal of clemency for a convicted slave trader, stands out among the papers of Abraham Lincoln, a man renowned for his mercy and willingness to pardon. In November 1861, Nathaniel Gordon was convicted of...

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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...

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Alexander Hamilton’s "gloomy" view of the American Revolution, 1780

Government and Civics

By October 1780, in the midst of the American Revolution, Alexander Hamilton was discouraged by the apparent apathy of the American people and the ineffectuality of their elected representatives, as well as by the recent discovery of...

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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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General Sherman on the "March to the Sea," 1865

In the fall of 1864, Gen. James H. Wilson took command of Gen. William T. Sherman’s cavalry. Sherman and Wilson met and discussed various operations in Sherman’s “March to the Sea” from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. Wilson’s...

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Lucy Knox on the home front during the Revolutionary War, 1777

Like many others before and after her, Lucy Knox performed a continuous juggling act as a busy wife and mother. Born into an aristocratic family, she had the advantage of a good education. At the age of seventeen she was disowned by...

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Robert E. Lee’s message to his troops before the Battle of Spotsylvania, 1864

Just after the devastating fighting in Virginia at the Battle of the Wilderness and prior to the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864, Confederate General Robert E. Lee drafted this inspirational message to his troops on the back of a...

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Ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, 1866

Government and Civics

President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves only in Confederate states still at war with the Union on January 1, 1863, and as a wartime order, it could be reversed by subsequent presidential proclamation,...

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