1,035 items
“The war ruined me”: The aftermath of the Civil War in the South, 1867
In the aftermath of the Civil War, former slaveholders struggled to adjust to the economic conditions resulting from the end of slavery as well as the destruction of plantations and markets and the population loss. Many southern...
A family torn apart by war, 1777
The Revolutionary War divided families. In 1774, eighteen-year-old Lucy Flucker married twenty-four-year-old Henry Knox. Lucy’s parents were powerful, wealthy Tories, and they were not happy with the match. Henry Knox was the son of...
“Columbia’s Noblest Sons”: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, 1865
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....
Japanese announcement of the attack at Pearl Harbor, 1941
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...
Activist for Equality: Frederick Douglass at 200
Born to Harriet Bailey, an enslaved woman in Maryland in February 1818, Douglass lived twenty years as a slave and nearly nine years as a fugitive. From the 1840s to his death in 1895, he attained international fame as an...
A brawl between Federalists and anti-Federalists, 1788
In 1787 and 1788, debates over the ratification of the Constitution took place in towns and villages across the country. To gain support, both Federalists and anti-Federalists held meetings and marches that sometimes became violent....
Map of the Foreign-Born Population of the United States, 1900
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...
A frightening mission over Iwo Jima, 1945
Lieutenant Bob Stone served as a bombardier in the 431st Bomb Squadron (Heavy), 7th United States Army Air Force in the Pacific. This Spotlight is part of a series of documents detailing the experience of airmen in World War II. Click...
A soldier’s reaction to the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1945
Lieutenant Bob Stone served as a bombardier in the 431st Bomb Squadron (Heavy), 7th United States Army Air Force in the Pacific. This Spotlight is part of a series of documents detailing the experience of airmen in World War II. Click...
The World War II experience of Robert L. Stone, 1942–1945
Lieutenant Robert “Bob” Stone served as a bombardier in the 431st Bomb Squadron (Heavy), 7th United States Army Air Force in the Pacific during World War II. Born on December 19, 1921 in New York City, Bob was a nineteen-year-old...
The Battle of Iwo Jima: A family waits for news, 1945
Lieutenant Bob Stone served as a bombardier in the 431st Bomb Squadron (Heavy), 7th United States Army Air Force in the Pacific. This Spotlight is part of a series of documents detailing the experience of airmen in World War II. Click...
Bob Stone joins the US Army Air Forces, 1943–1944
Lieutenant Bob Stone served as a bombardier in the 431st Bomb Squadron (Heavy), 7th US Army Air Force in the Pacific. This Spotlight is part of a series of documents detailing the experience of airmen in World War II. Click here for...
“Defence of Fort McHenry” or “The Star-Spangled Banner,” 1814
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...
Bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, 1963
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...
Anti-Communist Trading Cards, 1951
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...
Reporting on the Spanish Influenza, 1918
These newspaper articles illustrate the impact on American society of Spanish Influenza (H1N1), which first appeared in the United States in March 1918. [1] There were periodic, minor outbreaks for six months, but in September a...
Diary of World War I nurse Ella Osborn, 1918–1919
At the outbreak of World War I, Ella Jane Osborn was a surgical nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. In January 1918, she volunteered to serve with the American Expeditionary Forces as a member of the Red Cross’s nursing...
Why Black men fought in World War I, 1919
During World War I, approximately 370,000 black men in the US military served in segregated regiments and were often relegated to support duties such as digging trenches, transporting supplies, cleaning latrines, and burying the dead....
Selling World War I: "Buy Liberty Bonds!" 1917-1919
When the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, it needed funds to support the war effort. The Civil War had demonstrated that simply printing more currency would lead to inflation and economic trouble. During World War...
Rules for discharging disabled veterans, 1919
When World War I ended in 1918 more than 4.6 million men returned to the United States from war. The American people and the US government were unprepared to reintegrate and care for the men who returned with physical injuries and...
Emma Goldman on the restriction of civil liberties, 1919
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,...
Cadet Ulysses S. Grant at West Point, 1839
In 1839, seventeen-year-old Hiram Ulysses Grant received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. It changed the course of his life—and his name. Grant always disliked his first name and was commonly known...
American Indians' service in World War I, 1920
More than 11,000 American Indians served with the American forces during World War I. Nearly 5,000 Native men enlisted and approximately 6,500 were drafted—despite the fact that almost half of American Indians were not citizens and...
"Harlem's Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills"
Born to parents who were both former slaves, Florence Mills knew at an early age that she loved to sing and that her sweet, bird-like voice, resonated with those who heard her. Performing catapulted her all the way to the stages of...
"Locomotive"
It is the summer of 1869, and trains, crews, and family are traveling together, riding America’s brand-new transcontinental railroad. These pages come alive with the details of the trip and the sounds, speed, and strength of the...
"Grandfather's Journey"
When he was a young man, Allen Say’s grandfather left his home in Japan to explore the world. He began his journey by crossing the Pacific Ocean on a steamship, then wandered the deserts, farmlands, and cities of North America. Allen...
"Goin' Someplace Special"
Through moving prose and beautiful watercolors, an award-winning author-illustrator duo collaborates to tell the poignant tale of a spirited young girl who comes face to face with segregation in her southern town. Read by Morgan Wood...
"Ticktock Banneker's Clock"
Throughout his life, Benjamin Banneker was known and admired for his work in science, mathematics, and astronomy, just to name a few pursuits. But even when he was born in Maryland in 1731, he was already an extraordinary person for...
"The Bell Rang"
A young enslaved girl witnesses the heartbreak and hopefulness of her family and their plantation community when her brother escapes for freedom in this brilliantly conceived picture book by Coretta Scott King Award–winner James E....
"Ona Judge Outwits the Washingtons"
Soon after American colonists had won independence from Great Britain, Ona Judge was fighting for her own freedom from one of America’s most famous founding fathers, George Washington. George and Martha Washington valued Ona as one...
"Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreno Played the Piano for President Lincoln"
As a little girl, Teresa Carreño loved to let her hands dance across the beautiful keys of the piano. If she felt sad, music cheered her up, and when she was happy, the piano helped her share that joy. Soon she was writing her own...
Inside the Vault: Frederick Douglass: Advocate for Equality
Most people know Frederick Douglass as an abolitionist, but his fight for equality did not end after the Thirteenth Amendment. In the February 18, 2021 session of Inside the Vault, educator Mandel Holland and Hamilton cast member...
"Gittel's Journey: An Ellis Island Story"
Gittel and her mother were supposed to immigrate to America together, but when her mother is stopped by the health inspector, Gittel must make the journey alone. Her mother writes her cousin’s address in New York on a piece of paper....
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