Site Search

90,731 items

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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,...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

"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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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]...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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,...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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....

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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....

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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,...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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,...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Site Search

Stay up to date, and subscribe to our quarterly newsletter.