Table of Contents

  • Christopher Columbus, "Letter to the Sovereigns" (1493)
  • Bartolome de Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542)
  • Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain (1632)
  • "Mexican Accounts of Conquest from the Florentine Codex" (c. 1547)
  • "Letters Patent Granted to John Cabot and His Sons" (1496)
  • John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia (1631)
  • Richard Frethorne, Letter from an Indentured Servant (1623)
  • Nathaniel Bacon, "Manifesto Concerning the Present Troubles in Virginia" (1676)
  • John Winthrop, "A Model of Christian Charity" (1630)
  • William Penn, Promoting Pennsylvania (1681)
  • Benjamin Franklin, "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, Ec." (1751)
  • Job Johnson, "As Good a Country as Any Man Needs to Dwell In" (1767)
  • Benjamin Franklin, "A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge Among the British Plantation in America" (1743)
  • Account of the Stono Rebellion (1739)
  • Nathan Cole, "Spiritual Travels" (1740)
  • Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741)
  • James Otis, Rights of the Colonies Asserted and Proved (1764)
  • John Dickinson, Letter from a Farmer (1768)
  • Thomas Preston, "Account of the Boston Massacre" (1770)
  • George R. T. Hewes, "An Account of the Boston Tea Party" (1834)
  • Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia House of Burgesses (1775)
  • Edmund Burke, Reconciliation with the Colonies (1775)
  • Thomas Jefferson, "A Summary View of the Rights of British America" (1774)
  • Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
  • Correspondence of John and Abigail Adams (1776)
  • George Washington, Letter to John Hancock (1776)
  • Thomas Paine, The American Crisis (1776)
  • The Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)
  • Constitution of Pennsylvania (1776)
  • Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom (1786)
  • Henry Knox, Letter to George Washington (1786)
  • James Madison, "Vices of the Political System of the United States" (1787)
  • James Wilson, Speech to the Convention of Pennsylvania (1787)
  • James Madison, The Federalist, No. 10 (1787)
  • Mercy Warren Otis, Observations On the New Constitution (1788)
  • J. Hector St. John de Crévecoeur, "What is an American?" (1782)
  • Alexander Hamilton, "An Opinion on the Constitutionality of an Act to Establish a Bank" (1791)
  • Alexander Hamilton, Report on the Subject of Manufactures (1791)
  • George Washington, Sixth Annual Message to Congress (1794)
  • Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison (1794)
  • Benjamin Rush, The Education of Republican Women (1798)
  • Thomas Jefferson, The Kentucky Resolutions (1798)
  • Thomas Jefferson, The First Inaugural Address (1801)
  • Thomas Jefferson, Correspondence on the Constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase (1803)
  • Fisher Ames, "The Republican, No 11" (1804)
  • Tecumsah, Speech to William Harrison (c. 1810)
  • Henry Clay, Speech on the Tariff (1824)
  • John Quincy Adams, Annual Message to Congress (1825))
  • Alexis de Tocquevulle, Democracy in America: Tyranny of the Majority (1831)
  • John C. Calhoun, South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828)
  • Henry W. Bellows, The Influence of the Trading Spirit upon the Social and Moral Life of America (1845)
  • Harriet Hanson Robinson, Loom and Spindle, or Life Among the Early Mill Girls (1831)
  • The Lowell Offering, A Mill worker Describes Her Work and Life (1844)
  • Lyman Beecher, Sermons on Intemperance (1828)
  • De Bow’s Review, "The Stability of the Union" (1805)
  • Annie Young, Memoir of Slavery (1937)
  • Frances Anne Kemble, Women in Slavery (1839)
  • Harriet Jacobs, The Trials of Girlhood (1861)
  • Mary Chestnut, A Diary in Dixie (1861)
  • Frederic Law Olmsted, "The Cotton Kingdom" (1861)
  • David Walker, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829)
  • The Confessions of Nat Turner(1831)
  • William Lloyd Garrison, "Commencement of the Liberator" (1831)
  • Frederick Douglass, Fourth of July Oration (1852)
  • Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
  • George Fitzhugh, Sociology of the South (1854)
  • John L. O’Sullivan, "Editorial on Manifest Destiny" (1845)
  • Henry David Thoreau, "On Civil Disobedience" (1846)
  • Walter Colton, Three Years in California (1850)
  • Salmon P. Chase, "Union and Freedom, Without Compromise" (1850)
  • Abraham Lincoln, Speech in Peoria (1854)
  • Lincoln Douglas Debates (1858)
  • Charles Sumner, "Crime Against Kansas" (1856)
  • Roger Taney, Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)
  • John Brown, Speech to the Court (1859)
  • Jefferson Davis, Speech before the Senate (1860)
  • Jefferson Davis, Address to the Provincial Congress of the Confederate States of America (1861)
  • Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (1861)
  • Frederick Douglas, "The Future of the Negro People of the Slave States" (1862)
  • Charles Harvey Brewster, Civil War Letters (1862)
  • John Dooley, Passages from a Journal (1863)
  • Clement Vallandigham, "Copperhead Dissent" (1863)
  • Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address (1863)
  • Correspondence between General William T. Sherman and James M. Calhoun, Mayor of Atlanta (1864)
  • Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (1865)
  • Carl Schurz, Report on the Condition of the South (1865)
  • Clinton B. Fisk, Plain Counsels for Freedmen (1865)
  • Frederick Douglass, "What the Black Man Wants" (1865)
  • Thaddeus Stevens, Speech on Reconstruction (1867)
  • Elias Hill, Testimony before Congress on the Activities of the Ku Klux Klan (1871)
  • Carl Schurz, Speech in the Senate on Reconstruction (1872)