87 items
In trying to understand why people migrate, some scholars emphasize individual decision-making, while others stress broader structural forces. Many early scholars of migration emphasized the importance of "push" and "pull" factors....
Statistics: The Growth of Cities
Urban Growth Number of Cities 1860 1900 100,000-499,999 7 32 500,000 or more 2 6 Percent of Total Population 1860 1900 100,000-499,999 4% 8% 500,000 or more 4% 11% Questions for Discussion What factors contributed to the growth of...
Statistics: Trends in American Farming
Percentage of Labor Force in Agriculture 1860 53% 1870 52% 1880 51% 1890 43% 1900 40% 1910 31% 1920 26% 1930 21% Farming Profession Number of Farms (in thousands) Proportion of Total Population 1940 6,350 23.1% 1950 5,648 15.2% 1960 3...
Statistics: Agriculture in America
Farm Production Year Number of Farms* Bales of Cotton* Bushels of Corn* Bushels of Wheat* Price Index 1860=100 1860 2 3.8 839 173 100 1870 2.7 4.4 760 254 140 1880 4 6.6 1,706 502 100 1890 4.6 8.7 2,125 449 90 1900 5.7 10.1 2,662 599...
Study Aid: Slavery Fact Sheet
Geography Enslaved Africans came primarily from a region stretching from the Senegal River in northern Africa to Angola in the south. Europeans divided this stretch of land into five coasts: Upper Guinea Coast: The area delineated by...
Study Aid: Major Slave Rebellions
New York City, 1712 Like many later revolts, this one occurred during a period of social dissension among White colonists following Leisler’s Rebellion. The rebels espoused traditional African religions. Stono Rebellion, 1739 The...
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...
Study Aid: Cultures of the Americas, 1200 BC–AD 1600
Mound Builders (Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River) Key Groups : Adena (500 BC), Hopewell (100 BC) Religion and Culture : Known as mound builders because they buried the dead in large earth mounds, these groups lived in small...
The horrors of slavery, 1805
Originally circulated in 1805 to educate the public about the treatment of slaves, this broadside, entitled "Injured Humanity," continues to inform twenty-first-century audiences of the true horrors of slavery. As evidenced by this...
The Great West Illustrated, 1869
The exploration and settlement of the American West coincided with the development of the medium of photography. Photographic images, reproduced in books and newspapers and available for purchase on their own, helped shape Americans’...
Indenture agreement, 1742
Colonial Americans engaged in many forms of unfree labor, with great numbers of youths moving away from their families to become servants or apprentices. The terms of their service were spelled out in contracts called indentures,...
Statistics: Immigration in America, Ku Klux Klan membership: 1915-1940s
The following charts are presented in the book The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930 by Kenneth T. Jackson. The first chart represents the states with the highest recorded membership in the Klan during this time period. The...
"The whole land is full of blood," 1851
"The whole land is full of blood." These ominous words were uttered by James W. C. Pennington, a former slave and noted abolitionist, in the wake of Thomas Sims’s infamous trial. Sims had escaped from slavery in Georgia before being...
American Colonization Society membership certificate, 1833
When James Madison signed this membership certificate as president of the American Colonization Society in 1833, the organization’s effort to repatriate America’s free black population to Africa had been underway for over a decade. On...
Harriet Beecher Stowe sends Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, 1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 inspired her to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin . The novel, first serialized in newspapers and then published in 1852 as a two-volume work, enjoyed tremendous success in...
John Winthrop describes life in Boston, 1634
Between 1629 and 1640, 20,000 Puritans left England for America to escape religious persecution. They hoped to establish a church free from worldly corruption founded on voluntary agreement among congregants. This covenant theory...
Runaway slave ad, 1860
Runaway slave ads were a reality in America as long as slavery existed. Appearing as broadsides and in newspapers, such ads offered monetary rewards from slaveholders for the capture and return of escaped slaves. On May 9, 1860, Enoch...
Texas Declaration of Independence, 1836
On March 2, 1836, Texas formally declared its independence from Mexico. The Texas Declaration of Independence was signed at Washington-on-the-Brazos, now commonly referred to as the “birthplace of Texas.” Similar to the United States...
The New York Conspiracy of 1741
In New York City in 1741 an economic decline exacerbated conflict between enslaved men and women engaged in commercial activity and working-class White colonists who felt their jobs were threatened. This tension boiled over in the...
"Food Will Win the War," 1917
When most people think of wartime food rationing, they often think of World War II. However, civilians were encouraged to do their part for the war effort during World War I as well. This colorful poster by artist Charles E. Chambers...
A revival of religious fervor, 1744
The Christian History was a revivalist periodical founded by the Boston clergyman Thomas Prince in 1743 to report on the religious revivals sweeping across Europe and the United States. It was the first Christian periodical published...
A plea to defend the Alamo, 1836
A decade of conflict between the Mexican government and US settlers in Texas culminated in 1836 with the siege of the Alamo and the Texas Declaration of Independence. On February 23, 1836, Lieutenant Colonel William Travis, Jim Bowie,...
A report from Spanish California, 1776
Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, military commander of Alta California, wrote this letter from Mission San Gabriel. Rivera y Moncada was instrumental in the development of missions in California and was in a sometimes-contentious...
Receipt for land purchased from the Six Nations, 1769
This document records that the representatives of the Six Nations, who signed using totems to designate individuals and tribes, received $10,000 as payment from the Penns for land the tribes had ceded in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in...
Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1863
In 1621, settlers in Massachusetts celebrated what has come to be regarded as the first thanksgiving in the New World. On October 3, 1789, George Washington issued a proclamation creating the first Thanksgiving Day designated by the...
The Haymarket Affair, 1886
The Haymarket Affair is considered a watershed moment for American labor history, at a time when fears about the loyalties and activities of immigrants, anarchists, and laborers became linked in the minds of many Americans. On May 3,...
Phillis Wheatley’s poem on tyranny and slavery, 1772
Born in Africa, Phillis Wheatley was captured and sold into slavery as a child. She was purchased by John Wheatley of Boston in 1761. The Wheatleys soon recognized Phillis’s intelligence and taught her to read and write. She became...
On the emigrant trail, 1862
Samuel Russell, his mother, and his sisters emigrated to the Mormon settlement at Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1861. The next spring, Russell joined a “down-and-back” wagon train to escort new pioneers to the settlement. These caravans...
Literacy and the immigration of "undesirables," 1903
During the Progressive era, tens of millions of immigrants came to the United States from Europe to fulfill their American dream. During this period most came from southern and eastern Europe, particularly from Italy, Russia, and the...
Preventing labor discrimination during World War II, 1942
In early 1942, as men of working age enlisted in the military and war production accelerated, US industries experienced a labor shortage. President Roosevelt established the War Manpower Commission "to assure the most effective...
Politics and the Texas Revolution, 1836
Texas’s fight for independence from Mexico was an uphill battle from the very beginning. Texians were outnumbered and outmatched by the much more powerful Mexican military, and the province was plagued by quarrels within its own...
The Battle of Horseshoe Bend and the end of the Creek War, 1814
On May 12, 1814, Tennessee settler Isaac Stephens wrote to his uncle Henry Mackey in Virginia about the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. In that battle on March 27, 1814, US Army and Tennessee militia troops under General Andrew...
The Brotherton Indians of New Jersey, 1780
During the French and Indian War, the Lenni-Lenape (or Delaware) Indians of New Jersey were among the tribes that signed the Treaty of Easton of 1758. The tribes agreed not to support the French in the colonial conflict and to leave...
Showing results 51 - 87