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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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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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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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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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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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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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George Wallace on segregation, 1964

Government and Civics

In 1958, George Wallace ran against John Patterson in his first gubernatorial race. In that Alabama election, Wallace refused to make race an issue, and he declined the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan. This move won Wallace the...

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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,...

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Speech in favor of the Twelfth Amendment, 1803

Government and Civics

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

Until 1804, American presidents were elected under a system established in the US Constitution in which each member of the Electoral College voted for two presidential candidates. The candidate who received the most votes became...

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Abstinence pledge card, 1842

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

Mathew Theobald, a Catholic priest in Dublin, Ireland, founded the Cork Total Abstinence Society on April 10, 1838. About sixty followers joined Theobald in swearing off alcohol completely and signed his abstinence pledge book....

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A Mirror for the Intemperate, ca. 1830

Government and Civics

The temperance crusade against liquor consumption was a central element of reform movements of the antebellum period. It drew support from middle-class Protestants, skilled artisans, clerks, shopkeepers, free blacks, and Mormons, as...

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Horace Greeley on a woman’s reform newspaper, 1851

In February 1851, suffragist reformer Elizabeth Oakes Smith wrote to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley about her interest in starting a newspaper dedicated to women’s rights issues. Greeley answered with this rather brusque reply...

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People’s Party campaign poster, 1892

Government and Civics

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

In July 1892, the Populist Party (or People’s Party), formed by farmers and labor supporters, held its first convention in Omaha, Nebraska. At that convention, the party created and ratified its Omaha Platform and nominated James B....

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Lynching in America, ca. 1926

Government and Civics

The number of violent acts against African Americans accelerated during the first quarter of the twentieth century. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began compiling lynching statistics in 1912,...

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Birth of a Nation, 1915

Government and Civics

This "Advice Sheet" flyer was distributed with D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation to theaters when the film was released in 1915. Significantly, the distributors are adamant that "NEGROES MUST NOT BE ADMITTED . . . under any...

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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, 1911

Economics, Foreign Languages, Literature, Religion and Philosophy

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...

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Prescription for alcohol during Prohibition, 1923

Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

At midnight, January 16, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcohol took effect. The Eighteenth Amendment banned the manufacture and sale (but not the possession, consumption,...

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Women's suffrage poster, 1915

Government and Civics

Opponents to women’s suffrage argued that voting would be detrimental to women’s character and to their families. This broadside, published around 1915 refutes those accusations. It declares that if a woman is responsible for taking...

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Susan B. Anthony on suffrage and equal rights, 1901

Government and Civics

Writing at the age of eighty, having just retired from a long public life as an advocate for abolition and women’s rights, Susan B. Anthony trenchantly summarized the gains that had been made in women’s rights. Her energetic tone...

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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...

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Recruiting posters for African American soldiers, 1918

Government and Civics

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...

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Treaty of Versailles and President Wilson, 1919 and 1921

Government and Civics, World History

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...

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