430 items
Reading 1 It is idle to talk of a peaceful strike. None such has ever occurred. All combinations to interfere with perfect freedom in the proper management and control of one's lawful business, to dictate the terms upon which such...
Guided Readings: The Gospel of Wealth
Reading 1 Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; entrusted for...
Guided Readings: Reflections on the Great Depression and the New Deal
Reading 1 I want to tell you about an experience we had in Philadelphia when our private funds were exhausted and before public funds become available. . . . One woman said she borrowed 50 cents from a friend and bought stale bread...
Guided Readings: Federalists and Jeffersonians
Reading 1 Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. —Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia ...
Guided Readings: Toward Revolution
Reading 1 For fire and water are not more heterogeneous than the different colonies in North America. Nothing can exceed the jealousy and emulation which they possess in regard to each other. . . . In short . . . were they left to...
Guided Readings: Impact of the Revolution on Women and African Americans
Reading 1 I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If...
Guided Readings: Major Social Issues of the 1960s
Reading 1: Civil Rights The separate but equal doctrine has failed in three important respects. First it is inconsistent with the fundamental equalitarianism of the American way of life in that it marks groups with the brand of...
Guided Readings: Imperialism and the Spanish-American War
Reading 1 Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. . . . The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. . . . The frontier promoted the...
Guided Readings: Manifest Destiny
Reading 1: Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. John L. O'Sullivan, 1845 Reading 2: Texas has been absorbed into the Union as the...
Guided Readings: World War II
Reading 1 It seems to be unfortunately true that the epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading. When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to...
Guided Readings: The Atomic Bomb
Reading 1 Nuclear bombs cannot possible remain a "secret weapon" at the exclusive disposal of this country for more than a few years. The scientific facts on which their construction is based are well known to scientists of other...
Guided Readings: Using Primary and Secondary Sources: Slavery in the Founding Era
Primary and secondary sources can provide different kinds of information about the past. In the context of slavery, Phillis Wheatley is considered the most important figure of the eighteenth century. Two accounts of her experience...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The Spanish Armada, 1588
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...
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...
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...
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...
Building Mount Rushmore, 1926
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...
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,...
J. Edgar Hoover on campus unrest, 1970
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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