607 items
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...
A View of Savannah, Georgia, 1734
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...
Stephen Austin's contract to bring settlers to Texas, 1825
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...
Statue of Liberty, 1884
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....
Civilian Conservation Corps poster, 1938
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...
Horace Greeley: "Go West," 1871
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...
Indian Wars: The Battle of Washita, 1868
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...
Japanese internment, 1942
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....
Official photograph from the "Golden Spike" Ceremony, 1869
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,...
Photograph of a "Hooverville," 1936
"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...
Photograph of an abandoned farm in the Dust Bowl, 1938
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...
San Francisco's Chinatown, 1880
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...
William T. Sherman on the western railroads, 1878
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...
Andrew Jackson to the Cherokee Tribe, 1835
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,...
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...
George Washington discusses Shays’ Rebellion and the upcoming Constitutional Convention, 1787
On January 25, 1787, Daniel Shays and his insurrectionists confronted a Massachusetts state militia force outside the Springfield armory. Shays’ Rebellion had begun in the summer of 1786, when Shays, a former Continental Army captain,...
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, 1911
On March 25, 1911, a devastating fire started at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. Workers had been locked in the factory to discourage theft and prevent labor organization, and they were unable to escape when the fire...
Theodore Roosevelt on the sinking of the Lusitania, 1915
On May 7, 1915, the British passenger ship Lusitania , sailing from New York to Liverpool, was torpedoed by a German U-boat. The Lusitania sank, killing 1,195 people on board, including 123 Americans. The incident created sharp...
Recruiting posters for African American soldiers, 1918
These two World War I recruiting posters aim to encourage African Americans to enlist. In the first poster, “Colored Man Is No Slacker,” a black soldier takes his leave against a background of African American patriotism, self...
Treaty of Versailles and President Wilson, 1919 and 1921
The Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, was drafted at the Paris Peace Conference in the spring of 1919 and shaped by the Big Four powers—Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States. This souvenir copy of the Paris...
Sacco and Vanzetti, 1921
On May 31, 1921, Nicola Sacco, a 32-year-old shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a 29-year-old fish peddler, went on trial for murder in Boston. More than a year earlier, on April 15, 1920, a paymaster and a payroll guard had been...
Herbert Hoover's Inaugural Address, 1929
In November 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover was elected president over the Democratic nominee Al Smith. Hoover had served in the Harding and Coolidge administrations and won the nomination after Coolidge declined to run for a third...
President Ford’s remarks in Japan, 1974
In November 1974, Gerald Ford became the first sitting American president to visit Japan—the trip was also Ford’s first abroad since replacing Nixon in August of that year. He used the trip to reinforce US-Japanese relations, and in...
Discovering a mass grave in Iraq, 2003
Mark Rickert wrote this email while serving as a journalist with the 372nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment in Iraq. On this day, he and his group were investigating rumors of a mass grave. The letter is written to his grandfather,...
Christmas in Kuwait, 1990
Cpl. Brett G. Coughlin arrived with Delta Company in Saudi Arabia at the port of Al Jubail on September 13, 1990. For the next three months the company trained in the northern desert of Saudi Arabia. By Christmas, its headquarters...
Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address, 2009
The inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2009 was a historic moment not only because Obama was the first African American ever sworn into executive office but also because he entered the presidency at a...
Immigration cartoon, 1916
This political cartoon appeared as the nation debated new restrictions on immigration. After 1917, immigrants entering the United States had to pass a literacy test. In the cartoon, the literacy test appears as an insurmountable...
The United Nations and the international community, 1967
In this 1967 letter, Dr. Israel Goldstein, a prominent American rabbi and Zionist, comments on the United Nations as a peacekeeping organization. After World War II, Goldstein, with other rabbis, had lobbied members of the newly...
Historical Context: American Slavery in Comparative Perspective
Of the ten to sixteen million Africans who survived the voyage to the New World, more than one-third landed in Brazil and between 60 and 70 percent ended up in Brazil or the sugar colonies of the Caribbean. Only 6 percent arrived in...
Historical Context: Go West ... and Grow Up with the Country
In 1854 Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor, gave Josiah B. Grinnell a famous piece of advice. "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country," said Greeley. Grinnell took Greeley's advice, moved west, and later founded...
Historical Context: Immigration Policy in World War II
The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt suspended naturalization proceedings for Italian, German, and Japanese immigrants, required them to register, restricted their mobility, and prohibited them from owning...
Historical Context: Mexican Americans and the Great Depression
In February 1930 in San Antonio, Texas, 5000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans gathered at the city’s railroad station to depart the United States for settlement in Mexico. In August, a special train carried another 2000 to central...
Historical Context: Movies and Migration
Many of our most memorable images of the past come from movies. Films set in the past provide a vivid record of history: of the "look," the clothing, the atmosphere, and the mood of past eras. Nevertheless, movies remain a...
Historical Context: The First National Census
Early in August 1790, David Howe, an assistant federal marshal, began the difficult task of counting all the people who lived in Hancock County, Maine. One of 650 federal census takers, charged with making "a...perfect enumeration.....
Historical Context: The Human Meaning of Migration
For more than two centuries novelists and autobiographers have explored the human meaning of migration. In hundreds of stories, novels, and autobiographies, these writers have examined what it means to be uprooted, voluntarily or...
Study Aid: The Language of Cultural Mixture and Persistence
The study of migration encourages us to think about the process of cultural adjustment and adaptation that takes place after migrants move from one environment to another. In the early twentieth century, Americans commonly thought of...
Historical Context: The Survival of the US Constitution
The United States has the oldest written national framework of government in the world. At the end of the twentieth century, there were about 159 other national constitutions in the world, and 101 had been adopted since 1970. While...
Historical Context: Why Do People Migrate?
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....
Historical Context: The Global Effect of World War I
A recent list of the hundred most important news stories of the twentieth century ranked the onset of World War I eighth. This is a great error. Just about everything that happened in the remainder of the century was in one way or...
Guided Readings: Indian Removal
Reading 1 Toward the aborigines of this country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people. Humanity...
Guided Readings: Origins of the Cold War: The Containment Policy
Reading 1 Soviet power...bears within itself the seeds of its own decay, and the sprouting of these seeds is well advanced...[If] anything were ever to disrupt the unity and efficacy of the Party as a political instrument, Soviet...
Guided Readings: Origins of the Cold War and Soviet-American Confrontation
Reading 1 From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague,...
Guided Readings: The Korean War
Reading 1 In Korea the Government forces, which were armed to prevent border raids and to preserve internal security, were attacked by invading forces from North Korea. . . . The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that...
Guided Readings: Anti-Communism at Home
Reading 1 Sec. 2: (a) It shall be unlawful for any person— (1) to knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United...
Guided Readings: The Rise of the City
Reading 1 To-day, what is a tenement? . . . When last arraigned before the bar of public justice: “It is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, when...
Guided Readings: World War I
Reading 1 The United States must be neutral in fact, as well as in name, during these days that are to try men’s souls. We must be impartial in thought, as well as action, must put a curb upon our sentiments, as well as upon every...
Guided Readings: Secession and the Civil War
Reading 1 The leaders and oracles of the most powerful party in the United States have denounced us as tyrants and unprincipled heathens through the whole civilized world. They have preached it from their pulpits. They have declared...
Guided Readings: Indian Policy
Reading 1 One [infantry] battalion...left Fort Lyon [Colorado] on the night of the 28th of November, 1864; about daybreak on the morning of the 29th of November we came in sight of the camp of friendly [Cheyenne and Arapaho] Indians.....
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