The Power of Words, Volume I: Documents in American History Book

Volume I.

1. Conquest of Native American Peoples. Excerpt from Letter to the Sovereigns on His First Voyage (1493), Christopher Columbus. Images of the Conquest (Photo Essay). A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542), Fray Bartolome de Las Casas. The Long Journey to the Country of the Hurons (1632), Father Gabriel Sagard. Relation of What Occurred Most Remarkable in the Missions of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus in New France in the Years 1657 and 1658. Letter to King Francis I (1524), Giovanni da Verrazano.

2. An English New World. Letters Patent Granted to John Cabot and His Sons (1496). An Attempt to Raise Subscriptions in Exeter (1586). The 1586 Voyages (1589), Richard Hakluyt. New England's Plantation (1630), The Reverend John Higginson. Letter to the Right Honourable, My Very Good Lad, the Lady Bridget, Countess of Lincoln (1631), Thomas Dudley. Letter to His Parents (1631), Pond.

3. The Puritan Commonwealth. A Model of Christian Charity, (1630),John Winthrop. Articles of Agreement, Springfield, Massachusetts (1648).

The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts (1648).

The Oath of a Freeman (1634). Copy of a Letter from John Cotton to Lord Say and Seal in the year (1636). Little Speech (1645), John Winthrop. Confessions of Faith by Jane Stephenson and Abram Arrington, recorded by the Reverend Thomas Shepard (1648-1649). Some Versus Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666, Anne Bradstreet.

4. Life and Labor in the Plantation Colonies. The General Historie of Virginia (1631), Captain John Smith. Laws Divine, Morall, and Martiall, Etc.(1612), William Strachey. A Letter (1619), John Pory. Leah and Rachell, or the Two Fruitful Sisters of Virginia and Maryland (1656), John Hammond. Legal Constraints on Indentured Servants and Slaves, Records of the Maryland Provincial Court (1660); Laws of Virginia; Control of Servants and Slaves (1661 - 1680); Letter to His Father and Mother (1623), Richard Frethorne. A Mutiny of Servants (1661). Letter from Governor William Berkeley and Other Members of the Council to the King and Privy Council (1673).

5. Anglo-American Empire of the Eighteenth Century. Letters from America (1770), William Eddis. Letter to John Boyle, Wiliam Byrd II to John Boyle of Broghill (1731), William Byrd II. The Duty of God's People to Pray for the Peace (1746), Hull Abbot. Provincial Accounts of the War for Empire; (Nova Scotia) to Hendry Fox, Secretary of War in London (1755), John Winslow. Itinerarium: Being a Narrative of a Journey (1744), Alexander Hamilton. A Proposal for Promoting Use Knowledge Among the British Plantations in America (1743), Benjamin Franklin. The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry (1741), Gilbert Tennent. Peoples Brains are Turn'd and Bewilder'd, (1768 or 1769), Charles Woodmason. Spiritual Travels (1740), Nathan Cole.

6. Revolution. "What Is An American?" (1782), Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Courtries, &c. (1751), Benjamin Franklin. The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (1763), James Otis. Virginia Nonimportation Resolutions (1769). Images of Rebellion (Photo Essay). George Robert Twelves Hewes, A Retrospect of the Boston Tea-Party (1834), Petition of A Grate Number of Blacks of the Province to Governor Thomas Gage and the Members of the Massachusetts General Court (1774) George Robert. Slave Petition for Freedom (1773). Rights of Women in an Independent Republic; Letters (1776), Letters to Abigail Adams (1776), John Adams. Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion (1781), Peter Oliver. John Adams Adams to Abigail Adams (July 3, 1776). Original Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence (1776), Thomas Jefferson.

7. Republican Experiment. Travels in North America (1786), Marquis de Chastellux. Resolution of a Concord, Massachusetts Town Meeting (1776). Constitution of Pennsylvania (1776). Articles of Confederation (1777). Letter to George Washington (1786), Henry Knox. Debate over Ratification of the Constitution (1787).

Federalist Paper No. 10 (1787), James Madison.
Speech to Convention Pennsylvania, James Wilson.
To the People (1787), James Winthrop.

Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Thomas Jefferson. An Introductory to a Course of Law Lectures, (1791), James Wilson.

8. Politics in the New Nation. Travels in New England and New York (1821), Timothy Dwight. New Travels in the United States of America (1788), Jacques Pierce de Warville. Final Version of An Opinion on the Constitutionality of an Act to Establish a Bank, (1791), Alexander Hamilton. For the Independent Gazateer (1790), William Maclay. Sixth Annual Address to Congress (1794), George Washington. Letter to James Madison (1794), Thomas Jefferson. The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798). The Kentucky Resolutions (1798), Thomas Jefferson.

9. The Jeffersonian State. The Stranger in America: Containing Observations Made During a Long Residence in that Country (1807), Charles William Janson. First Inaugural Address (1801), Thomas Jefferson. Margaret Bayard Smith Meets Thomas Jefferson (1801), Margaret Bayard Smith to Miss Susan B. Smith (1801). (1801).

Reminiscences, Margaret Bayard Smith (1800).

Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, as Dictated to Charles Campbell by Isaac (1847). Constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase (1803).

Thomas Jefferson to John C. Breckinridge.
Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Cary Nicholas.
Thomas Paine to John C. Breckinridge.

Life of Black Hawk (1833), Black Hawk. The Republican No. II (1804), Fisher Ames. Report of a Joint Committee of the General Assembly of Connecticut (1814).

10. Early Industrial Transformations. Inaugural Address (1816), Jacob Bigelow. Building of the Erie Canal.

Extract from the Albany Daily Advertiser (1819).
To the Honourable Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress, the Representation of the {Canal} Commissioners of the State of New York (1817).
Notions of the Americans (1840), James F. Cooper.

Description of the United States' Armory at Springfield, Massachusetts (1819), American State Papers, Military Affairs. Defense of the American System (1832), Henry Clay. The Western Country: Extracts from Letters Published in Niles Weekly Register (1816). Letters of John and Elizabeth Hodgdon (1840).

11. Jacksonian Democracy. Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States (1834), Michael Chevalier. Veto of the Bank Bill (1832), Andrew Jackson. The Force Bill (1833). Commencement Address (1835), Nicholas Biddle. Preface to Leaves of Grass (1855), Walt Whitman. Niles Weekly Register (1835). Female Industry Association, from the New York Herald (1845). Memorial of the Delegation of the Cherokee Nation (1840).

12. Reforming Society. What a Revival of Religion Is (1835), Charles G. Finney. The Kentucky Revival, or a Short History of the Late Extraordinary Out-Pouring of the Spirit of God, in the Western States of America (1808), Richard McNemar. Six Sermons on Intemperance (1828), Lyman Beecher. Early Habits of Industry, The Mother's Magazine (1834). Declaration of Sentiments (1848), Seneca Falls Convention. Self-Reliance (1841), Ralph Waldo Emerson. Petition of the Catholics of New York (1840). Bible Communism, Speech to the Convention of Perfectionists (1845), John Humphrey Noyes. Bible Communism (1849), John Humphrey Noyes.

13. Sectional Crisis. Democracy in America (1831), Alexis De Tocqueville.

A Northerner Looks at the South.

A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856), Frederick Law Olmsted. A Journey in the Back Country (1860), Frederick Low Olmstead. The Dred Scott Decision (1857), Roger B. Taney. Debate at Galesburg, Illinois (1858), Abraham Lincoln. Report on Abolition (1847), National Convention of Colored People. Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Harriet Beecher Stowe. Stability of the Union (1850), BeBow's Review. Memoir of Slavery (1937), Annie Young.

14. The Civil War. Address to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America (1861), Jefferson Davis. Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (1865). Three Letters from the Civil War Front (1862), Charles Harvey Brewster. Passages from a Journal (1863), John Dooley.

The Christian Recorder.

Sketch of Its Purposes (1864), United States Sanitary Commission. Passages from Her Diary (1861-1865), Mary Boykin Chestnut.

Volume II.

15. Reconstruction. Report on the Condition of the South (1865), Carl Schurz. Plain Counsels for Freedmen (1865), Clinton B. Fisk. Report on Land Reform in the South Carolina Islands (1865, 1866), James C. Beecher. Address from the Colored Citizens of Norfolk to the People of the United States (1865). The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (1868). The State of the South (1872), The Nation. Letter on Ku Klux Klan Activities (1870), Albion W. Tourgee. Testimony Before U.S. Senate Regarding the Agricultural Labor Force in the South (1880), James T. Rapier.

16. The West. An Overland Journey, (1860), Horace Greeley. Diary of Western Travel (1852), Lydia Allen Rudd. Six Months in the Gold Mines (1850), Edward Gould Buffum. Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest (1874), Joseph G. McCoy. Memorial of the Chinese Six Companies to U.S. Grant, President of the United States (1876). Congressional Report on Indian Affairs (1887). Tragedy at Wounded Knee (1890). The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893), Frederick Jackson Turner.

17. Labor and Capital. Wealth (1889), Andrew Carnegie. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Session of the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry (1879). Interstate Commerce Act (1887). Suit by the United States against Workingmen's Amalgamated Council of New Orleans (1893). A Piece-Rate System (1896), Frederick Winslow Taylor. Address by George Engel, Condemned Haymarket Anarchist (1886), George Engel. Looking Backward (1888), Edward Bellamy.

18. Urban Society. The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century (1899), Adna Weber. The Jungle (1905), Upton Sinclair. The Immigrant Woman and Her Job (1930), Caroline Manning. The Promised Land (1912), Mary Antin. Plunkett of Tammany Hall (1905), William Riordan. If I Were a Man (1914), Charlotte Perkins Gilman. New York, Park Commission (1888), Proposal to Buffalo. Review of Opening at Coney Island (1904), New York Times.

19. Imperial Power and Domestic Unrest. Our Country (1885), Rev. Josiah Strong. The Outlook for Socialism in the United States (1900), Euguene V. Debs. Lynch Law in America (1900), Ida B. Wells. The Business World vs. the Politicians (1895), Henry Cabot Lodge. Third Annual Message to Congress (1903), Theodore Roosevelt. What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883), William Graham Sumner. Platform of the People's Party (1892). Cross of Gold Speech (1896), William Jennings Bryan.

20. Progressivism. Progressive Democracy (1914), Herbert Croly. Other People's Money and How Bankers Use It, Louis Brandeis. Birmingham Under the Commission Plan (1911), Walker Percy. Report of the Vice Commission of Louisville, Kentucky (1915). Twenty Years at Hull House (1892), Jane Addams. Chairman of the National Legislative Committee of the American Purity Federation, Testimony before Congress (1910), James H. Patten. Platform Adopted by the National Negro Committee (1909). Getting Out the Vote (1911), Helen Todd.

21. Corporate Society. Campaign Speech at Boston (1920), Warren G. Harding. Big Ideas From Big Business (1921), Edward Earl Purinton. Babbit,(1922) Sinclair Lewis. Middletown (1929), Robert and Helen Lynd. Meditations of a Wage-Earning Wife (1924), Jane Littell. The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926), Langston Hughes. Letters from the Great Migration, (1917). The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926), Langston Hughes. Gastonia (1929), Mary Heaton Vorse.

22. The Great Depression and the Rise of the Welfare State. Editorial on Economic Conditions (1932), Fortune. Speech at San Francisco (1932), Franklin D. Roosevelt. Speech in New York City (1932), Herbert Hoover. The New Deal for Nearly Four Months (1933), J. Frederick Essary. Report on the Inadequacy of Federal Relief Efforts (1933), Lorena Hickok. My First Days in the White House (1935), Huey P. Long. Memoirs of the Depression (1939), Charlie Storms. Letters to FDR (1934, 1937).

23. World War II. Annual Message to Congress (1941), Franklin D. Roosevelt. Radio Address (1941), Charles Lindbergh. The Atlantic Charter (1941). For the Jews - Life or Death? (1944), I.F. Stone. Desert Exile (1982), Yoshiko Uchida. Why Should We March? (1942), A Philip Randolph. Out of Their Mouths (1942), Sterling A. Brown. From Rosie the Riveter Revisited (1942-1945), Juanita Loveless.

24. The Culture of Prosperity. The Unfinished Work (1946), Kenneth MacFarland. Long Telegram (1946), George F. Kennan. National Security Council Memorandum Number 68 (1950). How You Can Survive an Atomic Bomb Blast (1950), Richard Gerstell. The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), Norman Vincent Peale. The National Style (1957), David Riesman. Young Motherhood (1956), Ladies Home Journal. Photo Essay on Teen-age Consumption (1959), Life. The Other America (1962), Michael Harrington.

25. Demands for Civil Justice. Letter from Birmingham Jail(1963), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Malcolm X. The Port Huron Statement (1962), Students for a Democratic Society. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Memorandum on the Albany Movement (1961), Charles Sherrod. Commencement Address at Howard University (1965), Lyndon B. Johnson. I'd Rather Be Black Than Female (1970), Shirley Chisholm. What Has Happened to America? (1967), Richard M. Nixon. The Situation in Watts Today (1967), Donald Wheeldin.

26. War in Vietnam. Press Conference (1954), Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964). A Time to Break Silence, (1967), Martin Luther King, Jr. Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came (1966), Charlotte Keyes. Columbia Liberated (1968), Columbia Strike Coordinating Committee. Columbia University Commencement Address (1968), Richard Hofstadter. The Flower of the Dragon (1968), Richard Boyle. Demented Vets and Other Myths (1983), George Swiers.

27. Multicultural America. The Peoples of America (1965), Nathan Glazer. Remarks Upon Singing the Immigration Bill (1965), Lyndon B. Johnson. Testimony Before Congress on Immigration Reform (1964), Mrs. Robert H.V. Duncan. Asian Influx Alters Life in Suburbia (1987), Los Angeles Times. Southie Won't Go (1986), Ione Molloy. God is Beside You on the Picket Line , Cesar Chavez. Come Out (1970), The Gay Liberation Front.

28. Republican Hegemony. First Inaugural Address (1981), Ronald Reagan. The Supply-Side Revolution (1984), Paul Craig Roberts. My Case for Reagan (1984), T. Boone Pickens. The New Class (1985), Patricia Morrisroe. Modern-Day Mentors (1987), Leah Rosch. Listen, America! (1981), Jerry Falwell. The G.O.P. 'Me Decade' (1984), Sidney Blumenthal. Dead End in Silicon Valley (1985), Diana Hembree.

29. The End of the Cold War. Address to the National Association of Evangelicals (1983), Ronald Reagan. Speech to the American Security Council Foundation (1985), Bill Chappell. Did the West Undo the East? (1993), Stephen Sestanovich. The United States Was the Loser in the Cold War (1993), Wade Huntley. The Morning After (1993), Cynthia Enloe. The Workplace, After the Deluge (1993), New York Times.

30. Toward Postindustrial Society. The Work of Nations (1991), Robert Reich. A Declaration of Sustainability (1993), Paul Hawken. Social Responsibility: A Conservative View (1992), Doug Bandow. Rebels With a Cause (1993), Myron Magnet. A Guide to the Ghettos (1993), Camilo Jose Vergara. Greetings From the Electronic Plantations (1993), Roger Swardson.