Primary sources are records created at the time of an event or experience, or as told by people who were present at the event, historical works of literature or others works such as historical artifacts, letters, diaries, newspaper articles, government documents. Get Tips for Finding Primary Sources.
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Artifacts from Nineteenth-Century America
This book presents both nationally significant objects and ordinary items from everyday life to provide insight into 19th century American society, showing readers how the production, design, function, and use of these objects can inform our understanding of the period.Artifacts from 19th Century America examines a broad array of objects representing various aspects of 19th century American society. The objects have been chosen to illuminate daily life in a number of categories including cooking, entertainment, grooming, clothing and accessories, health, household items, religious life, work, and education.The book's 53 entries include a brief introduction to the background of the object, when and why it was made, and who used it, followed by a detailed description of the object itself. Finally, each entry provides a deep dive into the object's significance and how the object reveals clues about the social, political, economic, and intellectual life of the society in which it was produced and utilized. Students and general readers alike will not only learn about the time period but also learn to use the skills of material culture theory and method, including how to draw meaningful conclusions from each object about their historical context and significance.
Defining Documents in American History : Civil War (1860-1865)
Edited by James M. McPherson, PhD a preeminent civil war scholar and historian, George Henry Davis 1886 Professor Emeritus of United States History, Princeton University and Pulitzer Prize winner in History for Battle Cry Freedom, Defining Documents in American History: Civil War (1860-1865) surveys key documents produced during the Civil War with special attention devoted to the war-time policies of President Abraham Lincoln and the 37th US Congress. A special feature of the volumes is the inclusion of letters and diaries by soldiers and civilians writing about their experiences. The two volumes are organized into several chapters that cover the progress of the war beginning with early debates on secession, through wartime events on the political and battle fronts and concludes with a look toward the issues of race and reconstruction.
Defining Documents in American History : Court Cases (1803-2017)
This title covers important historical documents from the U.S. Supreme Court as well as other courts in American history. Readers will find in-depth analysis of a broad range of court cases covering critical topics. The set provides detailed, thought-provoking analysis of: Marbury v. Madison Roe v. Wade Plessy v. Ferguson Bush vs. Gore Muller v. Orgeon Each in-depth chapter guides readers with historical insight and comprehension. Written by historians and teachers, several elements explain the document's historical impact and provide thoughtful critical analysis, including a Summary Overview, Defining Moment, Author Biography, Document Analysis, and Essential Themes. Plus, an historical timeline and bibliography of important supplemental readings will support readers in understanding the broader historical events covered. From the earliest decisions of the Supreme Court to the battles over civil rights to divisive events in contemporary America, this set provides thoughtful analysis of court cases allowing readers to gain a better understanding of this crucial topic in American history. An important resource for the history collections of high schools, undergraduate libraries and public libraries.
Defining Documents in American History : Dissent & Protest (1635-2017)
Dissent & Protest studies crucial documents from various protests, dissents, revolts, riots, and revolutions throughout American history, from the American Revolution to the Black Lives Matter Movement of today. This text closely studies more than eighty primary source documents to deliver a thorough examination of issues so important to Americans that they took action, exercised their rights and stood up to protest. Defining Documents in American History: Dissent & Protest provides detailed thought-provoking analysis of speeches and documents surrounding: American Revolution Native American Dissent Women's Rights Worker's Rights Abolitionism Slave Rebellions State Rights Political & War Protests Whiskey Rebellion Racism Poverty Civil Rights . Each in-depth chapter guides readers with historical insight and comprehension. Written by historians and teachers, several elements explain the document's historical impact and provide thoughtful critical analysis, including a Summary Overview, Defining Moment, Author Biography, Document Analysis, and Essential Themes. Plus, an historical timeline and bibliography of important supplemental readings will support readers in understanding the broader historical events covered. The documents include highlight American's commitment to stand up and fight for the issues they believe in. This volume will be a welcome addition to the history collections of high schools, undergraduate libraries, and public libraries.
Defining Documents in American History : Immigration & Immigrant Communities (1650-2016)
This text explores the full history of immigration issues in America, from those early immigrants making their way through Ellis Island, to immigration issues in modern society. With in-depth analysis of a broad range of documents, researchers come away with fresh understanding and insight to study this hot button topic. Immigration & Immigrant Communities provides detailed, thought-provoking analysis of: The Chinese Exclusion Act Executive Order 9066: Japanese Internment Cesar Chavez: Commonwealth Address Pope Francis' Speech to U.S. Congress on Immigrants and Refugees And much more! . Each in-depth chapter guides readers with historical insight and comprehension. Written by historians and teachers, several elements explain the document's historical impact and provide thoughtful critical analysis, including a Summary Overview, Defining Moment, Author Biography, Document Analysis, and Essential Themes. Plus, an historical timeline and bibliography of important supplemental readings will support readers in understanding the broader historical events covered. The documents discussed in this volume paint a portrait of the issues and challenges face by immigrants on American soil. This volume will be a useful addition to high school and undergraduate libraries, plus history collections of all sizes.
Defining Documents in American History : Political Campaigns, Candidates, and Debates (1787-2017)
Documents and commentary that showcase the American political process. The 80 documents are organized into major categories that include: Politics and War; Politics and Social Issues; Politics and the Economy; Politics and Education; and Political Debate.
Defining Documents in American History : Reconstruction Era (1865–1877)
Allows readers to gain new insights into the reconstruction era and the development of the industrial United States. Provides in-depth analysis of over twenty primary source documents to deliver a thorough examination of this important time in American history. Defining Documents in American History: Reconstruction & the Development of the Industrial United States offers in-depth critical analysis of 20 primary source documents. Articles begin by introducing readers to the document's historical context, followed by a description of the author's life and circumstances in which the document was written. A document analysis, written by professional writers and historians, guides readers in understanding key elements of language, rhetoric, and social and political meaning that define the significance of the author and document in American history. Defining Documents in American History: Reconstruction & the Development of the Industrial United States provides detailed analysis of a wide array of documents, including: The Second Reconstruction Act Louisiana, Mississippi & Ohio State Black Codes Civil Rights Act of 1875 Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation Since the War Harpers Weekly, "Education of the Freedmen" This collection will introduce students and educators to a diverse range of genres, including journals, letters, speeches, government legislation, and court opinions. Documents represent the diversity of ideas and contexts that define social, political and cultural subjects throughout American history.
Defining Documents in American History : Slavery
Slavery was not universally endorsed, but it became a part of the economic fabric of the nation. Riots and rebellions alarmed owners and strengthened the resolve of those who worked toward the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the men, women, and children deemed "property" and valued as only three-fifths of a human. It took a civil war to achieve the goal of freedom for all, and decades of work that continues to this day, to gain and defend the civil rights and liberties afforded to all citizens. The two-volume set includes in-depth chapters that provide a thorough commentary of significant primary source documents.
Defining Documents in American History : The Underground Railroad
Offers in-depth analysis of seventy-six documents, including biographies, book excerpts, court cases, editorials, essays, laws, maps, memoirs, novels, a questionnaire, pamphlets, public postings, sermons, songs, speeches, a stamp series, and more. These selections help define events surrounding the Underground Railroad, which operated in the United States from approximately 1800-1865, helping enslaved people escape to freedom through a network of routes and safe houses.
Defining Moments : Reconstruction
Defining Moments: Reconstruction tells the story of the tumultuous period immediately following the Civil War, when the United States faced the enormous challenges of restoring ties with the shattered South and helping four million formerly enslaved people make the transition to new lives as free citizens.
Defining Moments in American History : The Battle of Gettysburg
Provides a detailed account of the American Civil War and the importance of the Battle of Gettysburg. Examines the forces that contributed to the war; early military battles and the Battle of Gettysburg; and the legacy of the Civil War.
Life on the Mississippi
Before his literary career took off and he emerged as one of America's foremost men of letters, Mark Twain worked as a steamboat pilot in the antebellum South and Midwest. This fascinating account offers a brief history of commercial boating in the period and a probing, insightful, and eminently entertaining look at Twain's own experiences.
Milestone Documents in American History : Exploring the Primary Sources That Shaped America
Contains thirty-two full-text primary source documents that helped to shape American society from 1763 to 1823 including the Proclamation of 1763, Treaty of Fort Pitt, the Bill of Rights, the Missouri Compromise, and the Monroe Doctrine.
The Oregon Trail Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life
Take a trip back in time on the Oregon Trail. This series of non-fiction essays from Francis Parkman details life on the nineteenth-century American frontier, detailing the summer a young Parkman traveled through Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado and Kansas. Along the way, the author spent time hunting and fishing, as well as participating in a buffalo hunt led by members of the Native American tribe, the Oglala Sioux.
Voices of Civil War America
Letting ordinary people speak for themselves, this book uses primary documents to highlight daily life among Americans--Union and Confederate, black and white, soldier and civilian--during the Civil War and Reconstruction. * Original materials from a wide range of sources, including letters, diaries, newspaper editorials, journal articles, and book chapters * Detailed background for each of the 48 featured documents, placing the experiences and opinions of the authors into historical context.
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American Antislavery Writings : Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation
For the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, here is a collection of writings that charts our nation's long, heroic confrontation with its most poisonous evil. It's an inspiring moral and political struggle whose evolution parallels the story of America itself. T
American Datelines : Major News Stories from Colonial Times to the Present
An eyewitness account of the events-war, politics, the arts, sports, human interest-that have most influenced American political and popular culture.
The American Nation : Primary Sources
The American Nation: Primary Sources resumes the narrative begun in its companion volume, The American Republic which covered the first eight decades of U.S. history, ending at the onset of the Civil War. The American Nation continues the story through America’s entrance into World War II. The American Nation makes available, in one volume, many of the most crucial documents necessary for understanding the variety of policies and viewpoints driving American public life during an important, substantive part of American history. The primary sources in The American Nation are relevant to the Civil War, Reconstruction, the rise of a national capitalist system and culture, the waves of reform-minded thought and policy that moved the nation toward formation of the national administrative and welfare states, and America’s emergence as a major power on the world stage. This period was a watershed in the history of the nation--the time of establishing and consolidating national power and laying the foundations of a national government committed to promoting the material well-being of Americans. It was an era that witnessed the development of the nation-state and the establishment of the New Deal regime, which set the stage for the radical social movements of the 1960s and beyond. For decades debates have raged concerning the nature and impact of post-Civil War Reconstruction, as well as the major popular legal and ideological movements shaping the United States during the period up to World War II. This critical era encompassed the rise of mass-market corporatism and America’s entry into world politics. Recent social history has uncovered a great deal of information regarding the daily lives of Americans during this era. Of equal importance is an in-depth study of the public documents critical for an understanding of the effects of public acts and pronouncements on Americans. This volume will allow students and readers to readily engage, without interpretation, the original historical documents that have shaped the history of American public life. Some of the primary documents include the Emancipation Proclamation, the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, the Sherman Antitrust Act, and the Monroe Doctrine. Some of the authors featured include Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jefferson Davis, Robert LaFollette, Eugene Debs, Jane Addams, William Graham Sumner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Booker T. Washington, among many others. Bruce P. Frohnen is Associate Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University College of Law. He holds a J.D. from the Emory University School of Law and a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University.
The Civil War and Reconstruction : An Eyewitness History
The latest title in the ""Eyewitness to History"" series covers a dramatic period of 19th-century American history. It begins with early historical developments that led to the Civil War, and it concludes with the Reconstruction period from 1865 to 1868. Rather than marshalling the historical facts of the period, this volume presents a mosaic of eyewitness accounts, the words of actual participants and first-hand observations through which readers can relive events. Each chapter starts with a brief historical context, which is followed by a chronology of events and carefully selected quotations emphasizing the diversity of viewpoints at the time. The appendix incorporates a useful list of documents, including Lincoln's inaugural address and the Emancipation Proclamation.
Roughing It
Based on Mark Twain's own years of "variegated vagabonding" in the West, this comic narrative offers a virtual grab-bag of tall tales, folklore, beast fables, travelogue, local color, autobiography, history, geography--even statistics. This new critical edition of Roughing Itsupersedes the 1972 edition published in the Works of Mark Twain over twenty years ago. It is an entirely new undertaking, by a different group of editors. Together they have made extensive use of newly discovered historical and textual materials, particularly biographical documents which illuminate how Mark Twain gave literary shape to his actual experiences in the West. This edition includes the more than 300 illustrations Mark Twain commissioned for his book. It also provides six new maps: two for Nevada in the 1860s and four to help trace the Clemens brothers' cross-country stagecoach route. The editors provide a comprehensive introduction that will supplant all previous accounts of how Mark Twain wrote and revised his second long book. Fully supplemented by the textual apparatus, the edition presents a complete record of Twain's revisions and is sure to become the standard text of Mark Twain's great Western adventure. Editorial work was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by a generous gift from the L. J. Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation.
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