New U.S. History Documents Available in HistoryClass for Fall 2009
By Date –
North America to 1492
The Constitution of the Iroquois Nation (written down, c. early sixteenth century, oral tradition dating to c.
1400)
Cherokee Myth, “How the World Was Made” (written down, 1861 from oral tradition, n.d.)
Colonial America
Mayas React to European Arrival (recorded in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from texts dating to the
early sixteenth century)
Amerigo Vespucci, Letter to Pier Soderini, Gonfalonier of the Republic of Florence, describing his first
voyage to the New World (1497)
John Cabot, from John Cabot’s Discovery of North America (1497)
John Smith, “Instructions by way of advice, for the intended Voyage to Virginia,” from Travels and Works
of John Smith President of Virginia, and the Admiral of New England, 1580–1631 (c. 1609–1617)
Three Virginia Statutes relating to Slavery: Act X (1639/40); Act XII (1662) and Chap. XLIX (1705)
William Berkeley, “The Declaration and Remonstrance of Sir William Berkeley his most sacred Majesties
Governor and Captain Generall of Virginia” (1676)
Robert Horne, from A Brief Description of the Province of Carolina (1666)
The Mayflower Compact (1620)
Transcript of the Trial of Anne Hutchinson (1637)
William Pond, “A Letter to Father and Mother” (1631)
William Penn, Some Account of the Province of Pennsylvania (1681)
Gottlieb Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania in the Year 1750 and Return to Germany in the Year 1754
(1754)
The Life and Confession of Cato (1803)
Devereux Jarratt, from The Life of the Reverend Devereux Jarratt (1806)
The Era of the American Revolution, 1750–1783
Benjamin Franklin, “The Way to Wealth” (1758)
Sir William Johnson, “The Uncommon Increase of Settlements in the Back Country” (November 4, 1772)
Patrick Henry, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” (March 23, 1775)
Samuel Seabury, “A View of the Controversy Between Great Britain and her Colonies” (1774)
Samuel Adams, “On American Independence” (August 1, 1776)
Second Continental Congress, The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776)
Sally Wister, “Revolutionary War Diary” (1777–1778)
THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION AND PERPETUAL UNION (November 15, 1777)
Mary Jemison, Account of the American Revolution from the Seneca Perspective, from A Narrative of the
Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, by James E. Seaver (1824)
Antibiastes, Observations on the Slaves and the Indented Servants, Inlisted in the Army, and in the Navy of
the United States (August 14, 1777)
The Early Republic, 1783–1820
The Northwest Ordinance (1787)
Constitution of the United States (September 17, 1787)
Benjamin Banneker, Letter to Thomas Jefferson on Slavery (August 19, 1791); and Thomas Jefferson,
Response to Benjamin Banneker (August 30, 1791)
Yeomen’s letter opposing the Constitution, from The Massachusetts Gazette (January 25, 1788)
Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of the National Bank (1791)
The Bill of Rights (1791)
Amendments XI-XXVII to the U.S. Constitution (1798–1992)
George Washington, Proclamation on the Whiskey Rebellion (August 11, 1794)
Benjamin Franklin Bache, Letters Defending the French Revolution (December 12, 1792 and January 25,
1793)
Black Hawk, from Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak or Black Hawk, Embracing the Tradition of his
Nation—Indian Wars in which he has been Engaged… (published 1834)
An Act to Prohibit American Vessels from Proceeding to or Trading with the Enemies of the United States,
and for Other Purposes (July 6, 1812)
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams on Natural Aristocracy (October 28, 1813)
Emma Willard, “Plan for Female Education” (1819)
Antebellum America, 1820–1860
Knight’s Penny Magazine, “A Working Man’s Recollections of America” (1846)
Arguments for the Ten-hour Day from Factory Life As It Is (1845)
From U.S. Supreme Court, Majority Opinion, from Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837)
Margaret Bayard Smith, Description of Jackson’s Inaugural (published 1906)
Philip Hone, from The Diary of Philip Hone (1831)
Charles G. Finney, “What a Revival of Religion Is” (1835)
Advocate of Moral Reform, “Thoughts on Miss S. M. Grimké’s ‘Duties of Woman’” (July 16, 1838)
Solomon Northup, from Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York,
Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853 (1855)
Reverend Samuel J. May, The Rights and Condition of Women Considered in the “Church of the Messiah”
(November 8, 1846)
Joint Resolution of Congress on the Annexation of Texas (March 1, 1845)
Thomas Corwin, “On the Mexican War,” Speech before the U.S. Senate Opposing Additional
Appropriations for the Mexican War (1847)
Lyrics from song To the West! (n. d.)
William Grayson, from The Hireling and the Slave (1856)
Charles Ball, from Fifty Years in Chains or, the Life of an American Slave (1858)
New Orleans Picayune, “Our Present Position” (September 11, 1850)
John C. Calhoun, Speech Delivered to Congress in Response to the Compromise of 1850 (March 4, 1850)
Andrew Johnson, “What John Brown Did in Kansas,” Speech Delivered to Congress (December 12, 1859)
Civil War and Reconstruction, 1860–1877
Republican Party Platform (1860)
Constitution of the Confederate States of America (March 11, 1861)
Samuel English, Letter Describing the First Battle of Bull Run (1861)
Dolly Lunt Burge, from A Woman’s Wartime Journal: An Account of the Passage over Georgia’s Plantation
of Sherman’s Army on the March to the Sea, as Recorded in the Diary of Dolly Sumner Lunt (Mrs. Thomas
Burge) (1864–1865)
Act to Establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees (1865)
Frederick Douglass, Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage (January 1867)
Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution—Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments
(1865, 1866, 1869)
The Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 1865…1920
An Act To Execute Certain Treaty Stipulations Relating to the Chinese (May 6, 1882)
Solomon Butcher, Account of Conflict between Ranchers and Farmers in Nebraska (1884)
U.S. Supreme Court, Majority and Dissenting Opinions, from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Mary Elizabeth Lease, Speech in Favor of the Populist Party (1890)
Henry Grady, Speech Given before the New England Society in New York City (December 22, 1886)
Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (1899)
Rose Pastor Stokes, from I Belong to the Working Class (c. 1901)
William Graham Sumner, “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over” (1894)
George F. Baer, President of the Philadelphia & Reading Coal and Iron Company, from “Echoes from the
Recent Pennsylvania Coal Strike, on Behalf of the Mine Owners and Operators” (April 1903)
Thomas O’Donnell, A Mule-Spinner, Testimony to the U.S. Senate on Unemployment (October 18, 1883)
New York World, “The Triangle Fire” (March 26, 1911)
Abraham Flexner, “A Modern School” (1916)
U.S. Supreme Court, Majority Opinion, Muller v. Oregon (1908)
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Platform (1909)
New York Evening Post, “Jane Addams Condemns Race Prejudice Film” (March 13, 1915)
World War I and Its Aftermath, 1915–1929
Al Pianadosi and Alfred Bryan, Lyrics, “I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be a Soldier” (1915)
North American Review, “For Freedom and Democracy” (March 30, 1917)
Good Housekeeping, “Wanted: Recruits for an Army of Kitchen Soldiers!” (December 1917)
John Dos Passos on Sacco and Vanzetti, “They Are Dead Now” (October 1927)
Depression and New Deal, 1929–1939
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fireside Chat, “Outlining the New Deal Program” (May 7, 1933)
World War II
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fireside Chat, “On the Progress of War” (February 23, 1942)
Frank P. Graham, National War Labor Board, On Equal Pay for Black Workers (June 5, 1941)
U.S. Supreme Court, Majority and Dissenting Opinions, Korematsu v. United States (1944)
The Post-World War II Era, 1945–1975
President Harry S. Truman, The Truman Doctrine (March 12, 1947)
Paul Robeson, Testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) (June 12, 1956)
National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (1956)
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Radio and Television Address to the American People on the Situation in
Little Rock (1957)
Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, Report to President John F. Kennedy (November 11, 1961)
John Kerry, Vietnam Veterans against the War, Statement to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
(April 23, 1971)
President Richard Nixon, First Inaugural Address (January 20, 1969)
U.S. since 1975
U.S. Supreme Court, Majority Opinion, from Regents of Univ. of California v. Bakke (1978)
President Bill Clinton, Remarks on Signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
(September 14, 1993)
Vice President Al Gore, Concession Speech (December 13, 2000)
President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address (January 2003