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 Peak in 1893. Bates was a professor at Wellesley and had traveled west to teach a summer course in Colorado Springs. Bates and the other professors decided to "celebrate the close of the session by a merry expedition to the top of Pike’s Peak." They made the ascent by prairie wagon. At the top, Bates later wrote, she was inspired by "the sea-like expanse of fertile…

In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act overturned the Missouri Compromise, which stated that slavery would not be allowed north of latitude 36°30′. Instead, settlers would use the principle of popular sovereignty and vote to determine whether slavery would be allowed in each state. Supporters of both sides flooded into the territory of Kansas, where violence soon erupted between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers. In retaliation for the "sack" of the free-state town of Lawrence on May 21, 1856, the abolitionist John Brown led a brutal attack on a pro-slavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek on…

When most people think of wartime food rationing, they often think of World War II. However, civilians were encouraged to do their part for the war effort during World War I as well. This colorful poster by artist Charles E. Chambers was issued by the United States Food Administration to encourage voluntary food conservation. "Food Will Win the War" was the name of the campaign initiated by the newly appointed head of the agency, Herbert Hoover. Food was necessary not only to feed America’s growing Army, but to help relieve famine in Europe, in part to prevent the overthrow of European…

Following his escape from slavery in Maryland to freedom in New York City in 1838, Frederick Douglass became a leader of the abolition movement and its best-known orator. His book Autobiography of an American Slave became a best seller and exposed the horrors of slavery. In this letter dated October 4, [ca. 1860], Douglass wrote to his former master expressing the desire to learn more about his own childhood and the children with whom he grew up. This letter also reflects Douglass’s capacity for forgiveness and is part of his lifelong quest, shared by all slaves, to establish his own history…

The presidential election of 1800 had resulted in a tie between the two Democratic Republicans, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The founders had not foreseen the rise of political parties and the effects that development would have on the operations of the Electoral College. As that body was created at the Constitution Convention of 1787, each elector had two votes to cast and had to cast his votes for different individuals. The candidate receiving the highest number would become president; the candidate with the second highest number would become vice president. (Only after the adoption of…

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 enslavement of colored men," Douglass wrote in Frederick Douglass’ Monthly, "calls logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it." This broadside, endorsed by Douglass (third name in the first column) and other African American leaders, urges free African Americans to enlist, declaring "If we value liberty, if we wish to be free in this land. . . . If we would…

This Democratic Party campaign poster from 1936 outlines some of the agencies and regulations Franklin Roosevelt put in place to try to solve the most urgent problems of the Great Depression. While it reminds laborers of how they have benefitted from the New Deal and encourages them to support Roosevelt’s reelection, it acknowledges that the Depression is not over and that "the unemployed still look for jobs." The "printer’s bug" in the lower left indicates that the poster was printed by a union shop. Excerpt DEEDS—NOT WORDS President Roosevelt has not given lip service to Labor. He did not…

At 10:13 p.m. on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC, President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln, unconscious and bleeding, was rushed across the street to a nearby house. Though doctors tended to Lincoln throughout the night, his wound proved fatal. The “Great Emancipator” died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15. The assassination of Lincoln was part of a wider plot that included the deaths of the vice president and the secretary of state. The man who intended to kill Andrew Johnson did not go through with…

"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 captured in Massachusetts in April 1851 and taken to court under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. The judge decided in favor of Sims’s owner, and the seventeen-year-old was marched through the streets of Boston by US marines before being returned to Georgia. The authoritarian nature and public spectacle of Sims’s case sent a resounding message to slaves who sought…

Abraham Lincoln’s death on April 14, 1865, stunned the nation. He was the first US president to be assassinated and the third to die in office. As Americans mourned, they also began to see him as a martyr and the savior of the Union. In eulogies and engravings, Lincoln was compared to George Washington.Printed in 1865, Columbia’s Noblest Sons features imagery that draws parallels between Washington and Lincoln.Columbia is crowning Washington and Lincoln with laurel wreaths, which were traditionally given to people who had won victories.Columbia was considered the female symbol of the United…