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Colonial Pennsylvania and the Paxton Massacre, 1763
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About This Lesson Plan Unit The four lessons in this unit explore a massacre in colonial Pennsylvania in which the Paxton Boys—immigrants from Ulster,...
Pilgrims, the Plymouth Colony, and Thanksgiving, 1608-1621
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The Doctrine of Discovery, 1493
The Papal Bull "Inter Caetera," issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, played a central role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands...
The surrender of New Netherland, 1664
The Dutch colonization of New Netherland (which included parts of present-day New York, Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut) began in the 1620s. From the outset, New Netherland was a multiethnic, multireligious society: about half...
Carte de la Louisiane et du cours du Mississipi, 1718
This map of “la Louisiane” was published by French geographer Guillaume de l’Isle. It is the first detailed map of the Gulf Coast region and the Mississippi River, as well as the first printed map to show Texas (identified as “Mission...
Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, 1770
By the beginning of 1770, there were 4,000 British soldiers in Boston, a city with 15,000 inhabitants, and tensions were running high. On the evening of March 5, crowds of day laborers, apprentices, and merchant sailors began to pelt...
Henry Knox’s Order of March to Trenton, 1776
On Christmas Day in 1776 the American Revolution was on the verge of collapsing. Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American forces had been driven from New York City to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and reduced...
A map of the Louisiana Territory, 1806
The 1803 Louisiana Purchase from France during Thomas Jefferson’s first term as president more than doubled the size of the United States. Jefferson’s next step was to learn all about this new territory of the United States. He chose...
Jefferson on British aggression, 1815
In this letter in defense of American nationalism, Thomas Jefferson denounced the blustering of certain members of the British House of Lords who blamed the War of 1812 on US aggression. Jefferson’s letter followed a report from James...
The Gettysburg Address, 1863
On November 19, 1863, four months after the Battle of Gettysburg, a ceremony was held at the site in Pennsylvania to dedicate a cemetery for the Union dead. The battle had been a Union victory, but at great cost—about 23,000 Union...
Japan declares war, 1941
On December 7, 1941, two hours after the Japanese attack on American military installations at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Japan declared war on the United States and Great Britain, marking America’s entry into World War II. The Japanese...
Physicists predict a nuclear arms race, 1945
This declaration of concern, written after the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, offers insight into the Manhattan Project, an atomic development program led by the United States. The "Preliminary Statement of the...
Victory Order of the Day, 1945
In March 1945 American and British forces moved eastward into Germany in large numbers, stopping at the Elbe River in mid-April in accordance with pre-negotiated agreements with the Soviet Union. The Red Army, meanwhile, had moved...
Columbus reports on his first voyage, 1493
On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Spain to find an all-water route to Asia. On October 12, more than two months later, Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas that he called San Salvador; the natives called it Guanahani....
Proclamation of 1763, 1763
At the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, France surrendered Canada and much of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys—two-thirds of eastern North America—to England. The Proclamation of 1763 “preserved to the said Indians” the lands west...
Surrender of the British General Cornwallis to the Americans, October 19, 1781
These three documents—a map, a manuscript, and a print—tell the story of the surrender of British commander Charles Cornwallis to American General George Washington. In October 1781, the successful siege of Yorktown, Virginia, by...
Davy Crockett on the removal of the Cherokees, 1834
In this letter, written in December 1834, Davy Crockett complains about President Andrew Jackson’s forced removal of the Cherokees from their homes to Oklahoma. Crockett opposed that policy and feared Vice President Martin Van Buren...
Death of a soldier, 1863: Paul Semmes
The Civil War was the bloodiest in the nation’s history, with 618,000 Union and Confederate soldiers perishing in the war. Among the nearly 8,000 men mortally wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 were twelve commanding...
Map of the New World, with European settlements and American Indian tribes, 1730
This map, "Recens edita totius Novi Belgii in America Septentrionali," depicts present-day New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Created by Dutch mapmakers in 1730, the map reflects the...
Bartolomé de Las Casas debates the subjugation of the Indians, 1550
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....
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