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READING THE AMERICAN PAST
EIGHTH EDITION
Selected Historical Documents
Volume 1: To 1877
READING THE AMERICAN PAST
EIGHTH EDITION
Selected Historical Documents
Volume 1: To 1877
MICHAEL P. JOHNSON
Johns Hopkins University
For Bedford/St. Martin’s
Vice President, Editorial, Macmillan Learning Humanities: Edwin Hill
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Composition: Lumina Datamatics, Inc.
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Cover Image: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Reproduction number LC-DIG-ppmsca-11010 (digital file from original item, front) LC-DIG-ppmsca-11011 (digital file from
original item, back)
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Acknowledgments
Text acknowledgments and copyrights appear at the back of the book on page 287, which constitutes an extension of the copyright page. Art acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same
page as the art selections they cover.
Preface for Instructors
Reading the American Past is a collection of compelling documents that represent political, social, and cultural experiences critical to students’ understanding of the scope and diversity of United
States history. Created by people who shaped American history in ways both large and small, these primary sources reveal the views of the authors, the historical context in which they were
written, and the major developments and controversies of their era. The documents give depth, breadth, and variety to textbook discussions of important developments in our nation’s past.
Organized chapter by chapter to parallel The American Promise: A History of the United States in all its versions (full-length, concise, and value), this wide-ranging set of documents offers
teachers many pedagogical choices for discussion, analysis, writing assignments, and examinations. Above all, Reading the American Past seeks to ignite the sparks of historical imagination that
every teacher hopes to see in students’ eyes.
Reading a textbook discussion of Columbus’s arrival in the New World, for example, gives students basic, up-to-date information that has been collected, sorted out, and synthesized over the past
five hundred years. But reading the words Columbus wrote in his log shortly after he stepped ashore in the Western Hemisphere recaptures as no textbook can that moment of profound, mutual
surprise when fifteenth-century Europeans and the people they called Indians first encountered one another. As every historian knows, primary sources bridge the gap from the present, when they
are read, to the past, when they were written. They encourage students to venture across that span connecting present and past and to risk discovering a captivating and unexpected world.
FEATURES OF THIS BOOK
Three basic principles guided my selection of documents. First and foremost, the sources highlight major events and significant perspectives of a given historical era. Second, I chose and edited
documents to be accessible, interesting, and often surprising to students. Third, I sought sources that lend themselves to analysis in classroom discussion and writing assignments — documents
that vividly portray controversies marking a particular historical moment and that offer multiple avenues of interpretation.
User-friendly editorial features help students read and interpret the sources. Introductory headnotes and follow-up questions accompany each document to aid students’ reading and discussion.
Unfamiliar words are defined when they are necessary to understand a document. Editorial intrusions have been kept brief, providing just enough information to allow students to explore the
sources and make their own discoveries. By minimizing editorial interventions, I hope to encourage students to focus on the documents and to become astonished, perplexed, and invigorated by
what they read.
Visual sources now in the eighth edition
Visual documents are included in the book for the first time, one in each chapter. Pictures can sometimes awaken students’ curiosity more readily than written texts, but both images and texts
require students to exercise their historical imagination, to read critically, and to ask questions about what the documents reveal and conceal.
This new edition incorporates the insights and suggestions of teachers who have used Reading the American Past. Guided by their classroom experiences, I have replaced one document per
chapter in order to diversify the historical voices from each era and to give students and teachers fresh choices for investigating major developments. The visual documents include a wide range
of images that challenge students to interrogate depictions of Native Americans and African Americans, of presidents and other politicians, of immigrants and pioneers, of common experiences
of rural and urban Americans, and of moments of intense conflict.
Diverse perspectives and sources
The documents assembled here provide students a generous cross-section of the diverse experiences that comprise the American past. The reflections of politicians and thieves, generals and
privates, reformers and reprobates can be found here, along with those of the nation’s countless ethnic and religious minorities. New text documents include a memorandum from American
Jewish leaders to President Roosevelt, notifying him of the Holocaust (Document 25–2), President Carter’s speech on energy conservation (Document 29–5), and President Bush’s address on the
Persian Gulf Crisis (Document 30–4). Barack Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo (Document 31–4) joins classic sources such as John Winthrop’s Arbella sermon (Document 4–1), George
Washington’s Farewell Address (Document 9–5), and George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” (Document 26–2), which disclose the perspectives of influential leaders. The no-less-significant views
of common people are revealed by such documents as the memoir of an Englishwoman who became an indentured servant in eighteenth-century New York (Document 5–1), the letter from a
slave to President Thomas Jefferson demanding that the president live up to his criticisms of slavery (Document 10–3), twentieth-century letters from American soldiers at war (Documents 22–3
and 25–4), and the interview of a Vietnamese immigrant (Document 30–3). Diaries and court cases convey the immediacy of history as lived experience. Reminiscences and oral histories
illuminate the past with memories of participants. Speeches, manifestos, congressional testimony, and White House tape recordings spotlight the ends and means of political power. Essays,
addresses, and passages from books offer the considered opinions of cultural leaders, whether captains of industry, novelists, or social critics.
Classroom flexibility
The selections in Reading the American Past allow instructors to choose documents that best serve their teaching needs. Teachers might, for example, ask students to read documents in
preparation for lectures, then refer to the assigned selections as they explain, say, the encounter between Europeans and Native Americans, the tensions that led to the Civil War, or the origins
and consequences of the Cold War. An instructor might devote a class to explicating a single source, such as Richard Frethorne’s letter describing his life as an indentured servant at Jamestown,
Virginia (Document 3–1), or Walter Wyckoff’s observations about socialists and anarchists in 1890s Chicago (Document 19–4), or Mary Jenney Howe’s parody of arguments made by opponents
of women’s suffrage (Document 21–4), or President Reagan’s speech to American evangelicals (Document 30–1).
All the documents are ideally suited for provoking discussions during lecture sessions or in section meetings. Students can be asked to adopt and defend the viewpoint of a given source, to attack
it from the perspective of a historical contemporary, to dissect its assumptions and evasions, or to compare and contrast it with other sources. Selections might also be used for quizzes, brief
writing assignments, longer papers, or examinations. The documents open these and many other avenues for inspiring students to investigate the American past.
Tips for reading documents
A short introduction for students at the outset of each volume explains the significance of documents, both texts and images, for understanding history and outlines the basic questions that
students should ask themselves in order to decipher any primary source. It encourages students to consider the historical context, author, date, audience, and language of the sources they are
about to read.
Just the right amount of context
A brief paragraph begins each chapter, setting the documents in the larger historical context detailed in the corresponding chapter of the textbook. A headnote precedes every document,
identifying its source, explaining when and by whom it was produced, and highlighting why it presents a revealing point of view. Rather than cluttering documents with numerous explanatory
notes, I have assumed that students will — and they should — refer to a textbook for basic information about the people and events that appear in the sources, though notes are provided for more
obscure words and people.
Thought-provoking questions
To guide students toward key passages and central ideas, “Questions for Reading and Discussion” follow each document. They are intended to help students identify fundamental points, analyze
what a document means, and think about its larger historical significance. “Comparative Questions” at the end of each chapter ask students to ponder some of the similarities and differences
among the chapter’s documents, and to consider how the ideas, observations, and viewpoints expressed reveal the major historical developments of the time.
To see more clearly along the many angles of historical vision offered by the documents, students rely on the guidance, insight, and wisdom of their teachers. Reading the American Past gives
instructors numerous opportunities to entice students to become active collaborators in the study of American history. Ideally, these documents will help persuade students that the American past
is neither frozen in time nor entombed in books, but instead shapes their present and prefigures their future. Ideally, they will come to see that they do not simply read American history; they live
it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For help with this edition of Reading the American Past I am indebted to many people, but to none more than the following historians who have shared their professional insights and classroom
experiences to suggest ways to make the documents more useful and informative for students and teachers throughout the country: Ann Ackerman, Nashua Community College; Ian Aebel,
Harris-Stowe State University; Joseph Bagley, Georgia State University Perimeter College; Ian Beamish, University of Louisiana-Lafayette; Timothy Buckner, Troy University; Kara Carroll,
Central New Mexico Community College; Leilah Danielson, Northern Arizona University; Wayne Drews, Kennesaw State University, Marietta Campus; Donna Dunakey, Florida South Western
State College; Robert Genter, Nassau Community College; Jessica Gerard, Ozarks Technical Community College; Diane Gill, North Lake College; Pat Herb, North Central State College; Peter
Hoffer, University of Georgia; Andrew Hollinger, Tarrant County College; Robin Krawitz, Delaware State University; Alan Lehmann, Blinn College; Alexander Marriott, Alvin Community
College; Michael McCormick, Houston Community College; Stacy Reikowsky, New River Community and Technical College; Gary Ritter, Central Piedmont Community College; Carey
Roberts, Liberty University; Scott Seagle, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; Edward Simmons, Georgia Gwinnett College; John Smith, Texas A&M University-Commerce; David Toye,
Northeast State Community College; James Tuten, Juniata College; Leah Vallely, Calhoun Community College; Stephanie Vincent, Kent State University; William Whisenhunt, College of
DuPage.
I have also relied, as usual, on my coauthors of The American Promise — James L. Roark, François Furstenberg, Sarah Stage, and Sarah Igo — for advice and suggestions. Although I have
benefited from the support of all of these colleagues, I am nonetheless solely responsible for the final selection of documents and edited passages in this volume.
Many others contributed their energy and creativity to this project. As always, the team at Bedford/St. Martin’s, including Michael Rosenberg, Bill Lombardo, Leah Strauss, and Mollie Chandler,
brought their benevolent and constructive stewardship to the project. Kendra LeFleur and Natalie Jones skillfully steered the book through the production process, while Kalina Ingham, Michael
McCarty, and Cecilia Varas handled permissions.
Overall, this book represents the constructive efforts of teachers, students, colleagues, editors, and publishers, all enlisted in the common cause of helping students better understand our collective
history. I am the grateful beneficiary of their generosity, intelligence, and insight.
Introduction for Students
Historical documents allow us to peer into the past and learn what happened and what did not happen — crucial beginning points for understanding how and why the present came to be. They
record bits of history and preserve the momentary ideas and experiences of individuals and groups. But how can you, a twenty-first-century student, read and truly comprehend a letter from a
seventeenth-century indentured servant or a nineteenth-century woman on the frontier, full of irregular spelling and contemporary references? How can you determine the historical value and
accuracy of documents recorded years or even centuries ago? How can you read documents to figure out what really happened in the past?
