202 items
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...
The Province of Massachusetts Bay requests aid from Queen Anne, 1708
Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713) was the second of four great wars for empire fought among France and England and their Indian allies. This struggle broke out when the French raided English settlements on the New England frontier....
George Washington on attending church, 1762
In 1762, Virginia planter and future president George Washington, just thirty years old, had reason for optimism. He had inherited Mount Vernon a decade earlier, and it had prospered under his management; plus he had married Martha...
Landing of Columbus, 1492
This engraving depicts Columbus’s first landing in the New World, on the island he called San Salvador, on October 12, 1492. Columbus is surrounded by his men on the beach. Discussing the landing in his journal, Columbus wrote that he...
De Soto's discovery of the Mississippi, 1541
In 1539, Hernando de Soto led the first major European expedition into the interior of the southeastern North America, an area then known as La Florida. De Soto landed near Tampa Bay, Florida, with more than 600 men, and hoped to find...
President Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, 1861
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...
The Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863
The Emancipation Proclamation was shaped by both pragmatic considerations and Lincoln’s deeply held, lifelong hatred of slavery. It was timed, after the Union victory at Antietam, to strike a military blow against the South’s economic...
President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, 1865
Just 701 words long, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address took only six or seven minutes to deliver, yet contains many of the most memorable phrases in American political oratory. The speech contained neither gloating nor rejoicing....
Best friends divided by the Civil War, 1861
On April 12, 1861, Confederate officials informed Major Robert Anderson, US commander at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, that they would allow one hour for him to surrender his forces. When he refused, Confederates...
Stephen Austin's contract to bring settlers to Texas, 1825
In order to settle Texas in the 1820s, the Mexican government allowed speculators, called empresarios, to acquire large tracts of land if they promised to bring in settlers to populate the region and make it profitable. Moses and...
Indian Wars: The Battle of Washita, 1868
The Battle of Washita on November 27, 1868, pitted US Army troops commanded by General George Custer against the Southern Cheyenne. An excerpt from Custer’s report on a return to the battlefield ten days later is presented here. The...
William T. Sherman on the western railroads, 1878
After Ulysses S. Grant’s election as president, William Tecumseh Sherman, known for leading the "March to the Sea" in the closing months of the Civil War, was appointed commanding general of the United States Army. Headquartered in St...
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...
William Penn on the "Well-Governing of My Family," 1751
Quaker school teacher Josiah Forster first published this broadside in 1751, thirty years after the death of its author, William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. The treatise, Christian Discipline: Or Certain Good and...
George Washington discusses Shays’ Rebellion and the upcoming Constitutional Convention, 1787
On January 25, 1787, Daniel Shays and his insurrectionists confronted a Massachusetts state militia force outside the Springfield armory. Shays’ Rebellion had begun in the summer of 1786, when Shays, a former Continental Army captain,...
Abstinence pledge card, 1842
Mathew Theobald, a Catholic priest in Dublin, Ireland, founded the Cork Total Abstinence Society on April 10, 1838. About sixty followers joined Theobald in swearing off alcohol completely and signed his abstinence pledge book....
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...
Theodore Roosevelt on the sinking of the Lusitania, 1915
On May 7, 1915, the British passenger ship Lusitania , sailing from New York to Liverpool, was torpedoed by a German U-boat. The Lusitania sank, killing 1,195 people on board, including 123 Americans. The incident created sharp...
Recruiting posters for African American soldiers, 1918
These two World War I recruiting posters aim to encourage African Americans to enlist. In the first poster, “Colored Man Is No Slacker,” a black soldier takes his leave against a background of African American patriotism, self...
Treaty of Versailles and President Wilson, 1919 and 1921
The Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, was drafted at the Paris Peace Conference in the spring of 1919 and shaped by the Big Four powers—Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States. This souvenir copy of the Paris...
Sacco and Vanzetti, 1921
On May 31, 1921, Nicola Sacco, a 32-year-old shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a 29-year-old fish peddler, went on trial for murder in Boston. More than a year earlier, on April 15, 1920, a paymaster and a payroll guard had been...
Herbert Hoover's Inaugural Address, 1929
In November 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover was elected president over the Democratic nominee Al Smith. Hoover had served in the Harding and Coolidge administrations and won the nomination after Coolidge declined to run for a third...
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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