In September 1814, Francis Scott Key, an attorney and DC insider, watched the American flag rise over Baltimore, Maryland’s Fort McHenry from a British ship in the harbor. Key had been negotiating the release of an American captive during the War of 1812 when the British attacked the fort. After twenty-five hours of heavy bombardment, Key was sure that, come dawn, the British flag would be flying over Baltimore. Upon seeing the American flag still aloft, he wrote, on the back of a letter, the first verse of what would eventually become the national anthem of the United States....

On the morning of September 15, 1963, Denise McNair (age 11), Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Cynthia Wesley (age 14), and Carole Robertson (age 14) were killed when nineteen sticks of dynamite exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Fourteen others were injured in the bombing. Just five days after the bombing of the church, the Reverend C. Herbert Oliver wrote a “Report on Birmingham,” making an appeal on behalf of the Inter-Citizens Committee to prospective supporters and documenting the violence that was consuming the city. The Inter-Citizens...

On June 25, 1950, war broke out on the Korean peninsula when the Soviet-backed Communist forces in North Korea invaded the recently founded democratic republic of South Korea. Following a unanimous UN resolution condemning the invasion, President Harry S. Truman committed US troops to the conflict. The United States took the lead in fighting North Korea to combat the spread of Communism. The events in Korea contributed to the escalation of the Cold War, a decades-long rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Active combat ended in a cease-fire in 1953 , but no...

In February 1912, former president Theodore Roosevelt stunned the country by challenging President William Howard Taft for the Republican nomination. The move was not only a rejection of his friend Taft, it also violated an unwritten rule of American politics. Roosevelt had already had two terms in office, and no president had ever had a third. Roosevelt insisted that he was running out of duty, not personal ambition. As president, he had charted a politically progressive course, but under Taft, his chosen successor, the country had been becoming more conservative. In 1912...

In this letter written in July 1912, during his campaign for a thrid term as president, Theodore Roosevelt informs the state and county chairmen of the Progressive Party of his plan to support women’s suffrage. The document shows the many edits Roosevelt made as he refined his message. Roosevelt wrote this letter supporting women’s suffrage in 1912, but he had fought for equality for women much earlier in his life. As a senior at Harvard University in 1880, he had written about marriage equality and urged women not to change their last name upon marriage. As a New York State...

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 Coronado to explore the northern lands, in the search for wealth and resources, and in the hope that “through your excellent efforts you will bring the natives of that province under our sway and dominion and will bring them into the knowledge of the holy catholic faith.” This letter is possibly the earliest surviving official authorization by any...

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 relationship with Father Junipero Serra, the Father President mentioned in the letter. When Rivera y Moncada wrote this letter, he was returning to his headquarters at the Presidio of Monterey after a nine-month stay at the Presidio of San Diego. There he had supervised the hunt for the leaders of an Indian uprising that had destroyed Mission San Diego in...

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 was wary of European intervention in Florida, the Pacific Northwest, and Latin America. In 1821, Russia claimed control of the entire Pacific coast from Alaska to Oregon and closed the area to foreign shipping. This development coincided with rumors that Spain, with the help of European allies, was planning to reconquer its former Latin American...

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, connected the eastern and western sections of the railroad with a golden spike. This “joining of the rails” was the culmination of work commenced in 1863 when the Central Pacific began laying track eastward from Sacramento, California, and the Union Pacific started laying track westward from Omaha, Nebraska, in July of 1865. To meet its manpower needs, the...

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 relieve tensions with the United States. On November 26, 1941, the main body of the attack force began moving toward Hawaii. Shortly before 8 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack against US armed forces in Hawaii . Japanese pilots targeted Army, Navy, and Marine airfields, and then naval ships at Pearl Harbor, with the...