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Washington on a proposed third term and political parties, 1799

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

By 1798, George Washington had led America to victory in the Revolution, helped create the American government, and served two terms as the nation’s first president (1789–1797). He was called back to service, though, by President John...

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Runaway slave ad, 1852

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Broadsides and notices posted by slave owners or their agents offer dramatic and concrete evidence of the inhumanity of slavery. Defined as both property and responsible persons by law, slaves were sold with cows, sheep, and furniture...

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John Adams on the abolition of slavery, 1801

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On January 24, 1801, President John Adams responded to two abolitionists who had sent him an anti-slavery pamphlet by Quaker reformer Warner Mifflin (1745–1798). In the letter, Adams expresses his views on slavery, the dangers posed...

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The death of enslaved Africans on a voyage, 1725

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Slavery in English America underwent profound changes during the first two centuries of settlement. During the early seventeenth century, some Black laborers were enslaved; others, however, were treated like White indentured servants...

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"I love you but hate slavery": Frederick Douglass to his former owner, Hugh Auld, ca. 1860

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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Columbus reports on his first voyage, 1493

Geography, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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....

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Proclamation of 1763, 1763

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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Declaration of Independence, 1776

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

During the spring of 1776, colonies, localities, and groups of ordinary Americans—including New York mechanics, Pennsylvania militiamen, and South Carolina grand juries—adopted resolutions endorsing independence. These resolutions...

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Don’t Buy a Ford Ever Again, ca. 1960

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

New Orleans in 1960 was sharply divided over the practice of segregation. The schools were ordered to desegregate, which angered many white people. Members of the Citizens’ Council of Greater New Orleans believed that large companies...

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Surrender of the British General Cornwallis to the Americans, October 19, 1781

World History

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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Davy Crockett on the removal of the Cherokees, 1834

Government and Civics

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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Death of a soldier, 1863: Paul Semmes

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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JFK on the containment of Communism, 1952

Economics, World History

In August 1952, as he was campaigning for the US Senate, John F. Kennedy addressed the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Federation of Labor. This manuscript is a draft of the speech Kennedy delivered before the influential labor...

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Map of the New World, with European settlements and American Indian tribes, 1730

Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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A bond for the manumission of a slave, 1757

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1757, New York tavern keeper Eve Scurlock freed five slaves in her will, citing their fidelity, service, and good behavior. Among them was a woman named Ann, to whom Scurlock also willed money, clothing, and household items. Though...

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Spain authorizes Coronado's conquest in the Southwest, 1540

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

This letter, written on behalf of the king of Spain by Francisco Garcia de Loaysa, the president of the Council of the Indies, acknowledges Francisco Coronado’s report of the famous Niza expedition of the previous year and authorizes...

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The Province of Massachusetts Bay requests aid from Queen Anne, 1708

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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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The assassination of John F. Kennedy, 1963

Government and Civics

13+

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas. This Dow Jones News Service ticker tape tells the story of that day as it happened. The fifteen sheets span the entire day of the...

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George Washington on attending church, 1762

Economics, Religion and Philosophy, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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Landing of Columbus, 1492

Geography, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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De Soto's discovery of the Mississippi, 1541

Art, Geography, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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Landing of Henrick Hudson, 1609

Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1609, Henry Hudson was chosen by the Dutch East India Company to search for a passage to Asia. In September of that year, Hudson landed on the shores of the river that would be named for him and claimed the lands along it for the...

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President Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, 1861

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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The Union Is Dissolved!, 1860

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The election of Abraham Lincoln as the sixteenth president of the United States in November 1860 led to the eventual secession of eleven slave-holding states and the formation of the Confederacy. Convinced that the federal government...

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The "House Divided" Speech, ca. 1857–1858

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

By 1850, the extension of slavery into the new territories won through the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848 provided a testing ground for competing visions of America. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 and the Kansas...

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The Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, 1865

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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....

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Charles Sumner on Reconstruction and the South, 1866

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

By 1865 there were sharp differences of opinion about the rights of freedmen and the governance of the defeated Southern states among political leaders in Congress and the Executive Branch in Washington, DC. Conflict among Republicans...

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Best friends divided by the Civil War, 1861

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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Olaudah Equiano, 1789

Economics, World History

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Within ten years of the first North American settlements, Europeans began transporting captured Africans to the colonies as enslaved laborers. Imagine the thoughts and fears of an eleven-year-old boy who was kidnapped from his village...

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A View of Savannah, Georgia, 1734

World History

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The colony of Georgia was founded in 1732 by James Oglethorpe, a British Member of Parliament. Oglethorpe planned Savannah as a place where the poor could come to make a better life. An attempt to produce a "classless society," this...

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Stephen Austin's contract to bring settlers to Texas, 1825

Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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Statue of Liberty, 1884

Literature

4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

First conceived of in 1865, the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France commemorating the alliance between that country and the United States during the American Revolution as well as their mutual dedication to freedom and democracy....

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Anti-corporate cartoons, ca. 1900

Art, Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

These cartoons illustrate the growing hostility toward the practices of the big businesses that fueled the industrial development of the United States. In "The Protectors of Our Industries" (1883), railroad magnates Jay Gould and...

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Civilian Conservation Corps poster, 1938

Art, Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Civilian Conservation Corps directly addressed two of the most pressing problems during the Depression: male youth unemployment and environmental degradation. The CCC, based on a military model of everyday life, put thousands of...

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Horace Greeley: "Go West," 1871

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune , wrote this letter in 1871 to R. L. Sanderson, a young correspondent who had requested career advice. Greeley, a great supporter of westward expansion, shared the national conviction...

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Indian Wars: The Battle of Washita, 1868

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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Japanese internment, 1942

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Responding to fears of Japanese spies within the United States, President Roosevelt signed an order authorizing the forced relocation and confinement of more than 110,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans living in the West....

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Official photograph from the "Golden Spike" Ceremony, 1869

Economics, Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

This iconic photograph records the celebration marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad lines at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869, when Leland Stanford, co-founder of the Central Pacific Railroad,...

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Photograph of a "Hooverville," 1936

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

"Hoovervilles" were temporary communities that America’s homeless created to provide shelter for themselves and their families during the Great Depression. They were so named as an insult to President Herbert Hoover, who seemed to be...

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Photograph of an abandoned farm in the Dust Bowl, 1938

Art, Economics, Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

When a severe drought in the early 1930s left the crops of the Great Plains stunted, the relentless winds of the plains picked up the soil and brewed up horrific, roiling storms that gave this time its name: the Dust Bowl. Thousands...

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San Francisco's Chinatown, 1880

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Workingmen’s Party of California pamphlet, which is representative of widespread anti-immigration sentiment, attacks President Ulysses S. Grant and calls San Francisco’s Chinatown "rampant with disease." On May 8, 1882, President...

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William T. Sherman on the western railroads, 1878

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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Andrew Jackson to the Cherokee Tribe, 1835

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Elected president in 1828, Andrew Jackson supported the removal of American Indians from their homelands, arguing that the American Indians’ survival depended on separation from whites. In this 1835 circular to the Cherokee people,...

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"Jefferson is in every view less dangerous than Burr": Hamilton on the election of 1800

Government and Civics

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...

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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...

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Secotan, an Algonquian village, ca. 1585

Art

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In the 1570s and 1580s, John White served as an artist and mapmaker to several expeditions around the Carolinas. White made numerous watercolor sketches depicting the Algonquian people and stunning American landscapes. This engraving...

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William Penn on the "Well-Governing of My Family," 1751

Religion and Philosophy

K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

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An African American protests the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850

Economics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

This 1850 letter written by Henry Weeden is a statement against slavery by a free African American. Weeden was one of Boston’s leading abolitionists. In the 1840s, he had been an activist for the integration of Boston’s schools. [1]...

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Albert Einstein on the McCarthy hearings and the Fifth Amendment, 1953

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

During the "McCarthy hearings" of the 1950s, the government investigated American society and industry in an attempt to root out communist sympathizers. Among those investigated were scientists and scholars, who were called upon to...

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