U.S. Intellectual History Blog

#USIH2020: The Society for United States Intellectual History Primary Source Reader

Editor's Note

Welcome to #USIH2020 and our Teaching Intellectual History Workshop! Today’s post is by Ben Wright, assistant professor of history at The University of Texas at Dallas, co-editor of The American Yawp, and author of Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism (2020). Follow him on Twitter @benjamingwright. Check out our full conference program, including Danielle Allen’s keynote on Mon., 28 Sept. 2020, 7pm EST, and register for our FREE webinars here! –Sara Georgini, #USIH2020 Chair

There is nothing I do as a historian more important than teaching the U.S. history survey. This semester, I have a brief opportunity to explain to 200 students—not a single history major among them—why our discipline matters. It’s a thrilling challenge.

Even for historians particularly devoted to the history of ideas, political history more often forms the backbone of the U.S. history survey. But, of course, political history, without intellectual context is merely a parade of names and dates. We might say that the success of avoiding the trap of trivializing the American past is directly related to our ability to get our students invested in exploring the ideas that lurk behind the parade of events that most people understand as history. The history of ideas is ultimately about meaning-making and so the history of ideas functions in my U.S. history survey as the moments where the students and I explore meanings in the past and the meaning of the past.

Nothing accomplishes this as effectively as inviting students to wrestle with primary sources. In that spirit, I share this list of 100 primary sources, highlighting the ideas that inform the major questions in American history: What is freedom? Who is an American? What does it mean to be “created equal?” How have American identities formed, and how have those identities been tied to power? What is the place of the United States in the world?

These documents encourage students to understand the lives of minds through the realities of every day survival. They track the evolution of ideas in their material contexts. These sources aim for a broad representation of the American past, drawing on a host of subfields from the pre-Columbian period to the present. All of them indicate the importance of ideas in history. Angelina Grimké’s Appeal to Christian Women of the South optimistically believed that the power of and purity of ideas would pierce through the interests of enslavers and capture the hearts of southern women, turning them against the institution that enabled their material wealth and structured their social relations. Hiram Evans’s celebration of the Ku Klux Klan flowed from the idea that “The world has been so made that each race must fight for its life, must conquer, accept slavery or die.” Adam Fortunate Eagle of the Ojibwa Nation and his collaborators foregrounded the power of ideas in the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island.

And of course, the ideas that gave moral force to the Declaration of Independence ring throughout these documents, as they have run throughout American history, in the words of Benjamin Banneker, Angelina Grimke, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Paul Robeson, the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and the very last words of Chelsea Manning’s plea for a pardon.

These documents also tell us of the importance of history in ideas. David Walker understood the plight of Black Americans partly by reflecting on the experiences of “the Israelites in Egypt, the Helots in Sparta, and of the Roman Slaves.” Sarah Grimke similarly asserts that “the page of history teems with women’s wrongs, and it is wet with women’s tears.” Frederick Douglass too realized the power of history and the dangers of myth, lamenting in 1877 that the reason the Civil War was fought was being subsumed under a cloud of white supremacist revisionism. Alain Locke believed that the New Negro transcended the bonds of history that shackled the Old Negro as “a creature of moral debate and historical controversy.”

The following 100 primary sources in United States Intellectual History are designed to offer students and scholars an introductory view of the history of ideas in United States history. All documents have been selected from The American Yawp Reader, an open-source collection of primary sources in United States history. You are free to use and modify them freely. If you would like to suggest additional sources, please do so here. Suggestions of sources from under-represented voices are particularly appreciated.

  1. Native American creation stories
  2. Bartolomé de las Casas describes the exploitation of indigenous people, 1542
  3. John Winthrop dreams of a city on a hill, 1630
  4. A Gaspesian Indian defends his way of life, 1641
  5. Olaudah Equiano describes the Middle Passage, 1789
  6. Haudenosaunee thanksgiving address
  7. Eliza Lucas letters, 1740-1741
  8. Jonathan Edwards revives Enfield, Connecticut, 1741
  9. Samson Occom describes his conversion and ministry, 1768
  10. Pontiac calls for war, 1763
  11. Thomas Paine calls for American independence1776
  12. Declaration of Independence, 1776
  13. Abigail and John Adams converse on women’s rights, 1776
  14. Hector St. Jean de Crèvecœur describes the American people1782
  15. A Confederation of Native peoples seek peace with the United States, 1786
  16. Mary Smith Cranch comments on politics, 1786-87
  17. James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, 1785
  18. Venture Smith, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture Smith, 1798
  19. Anti-Thomas Jefferson Cartoon, 1797
  20. Thomas Jefferson’s racism, 1788
  21. Black scientist Benjamin Banneker demonstrates black intelligence to Thomas Jefferson, 1791
  22. Tecumseh calls for pan-Indian resistance, 1810
  23. Genius of the Ladies Magazine Illustration, 1792
  24. Maria Stewart bemoans the consequences of racism, 1832
  25. Alexis de Tocqueville, “How Americans Understand the Equality of the Sexes,” 1840
  26. Anti-Catholic Cartoon, 1855
  27. Rhode Islanders protest property restrictions on voting, 1834
  28. Black Philadelphians defend their voting rights1838
  29. Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” 1852
  30. Revivalist Charles G. Finney emphasizes human choice in salvation, 1836
  31. David Walker’s “Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World,” 1829
  32. Angelina Grimké, Appeal to Christian Women of the South, 1836
  33. Sarah Grimké calls for women’s rights, 1838
  34. Henry David Thoreau reflects on nature, 1854
  35. The fruit of alcohol and temperance lithographs, 1849
  36. Nat Turner explains the Southampton rebellion, 1831
  37. Harriet Jacobs on rape and slavery, 1860
  38. George Fitzhugh argues that slavery is better than liberty and equality, 1854
  39. Sermon on the duties of a Christian woman, 1851
  40. Cherokee petition protesting removal, 1836
  41. John O’Sullivan declares America’s manifest destiny, 1845
  42. Wyandotte woman describes tensions over slavery, 1849
  43. Manifest destiny painting, 1872
  44. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852
  45. Margaraetta Mason and Lydia Maria Child discuss John Brown, 1860
  46. Alexander Stephens on slavery and the Confederate constitution, 1861
  47. Ambrose Bierce recalls his experience at the Battle of Shiloh, 1881
  48. Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, 1865
  49. Charlotte Forten teaches freed children in South Carolina, 1864
  50. Frederick Douglass on remembering the Civil War, 1877
  51. Fifteenth Amendment print, 1870
  52. William Graham Sumner on Social Darwinism (ca.1880s)
  53. Henry George, Progress and Poverty, Selections (1879)
  54. Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth (1889)
  55. Lucy Parsons on Women and Revolutionary Socialism (1905)
  56. Chief Joseph on Indian Affairs (1877, 1879)
  57. Frederick Jackson Turner, “Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893)
  58. Laura C. Kellogg on Indian Education (1913)
  59. Helen Hunt Jackson on a Century of Dishonor (1881)
  60. Henry Grady on the New South (1886)
  61. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “Lynch Law in America” (1900)
  62. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams(1918)
  63. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” (1913)
  64. Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (1899)
  65. William James on “The Philippine Question” (1903)
  66. Chinese Immigrants Confront Anti-Chinese Prejudice (1885, 1903)
  67. Booker T. Washington & W.E.B. DuBois on Black Progress (1895, 1903)
  68. Jane Addams, “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” (1892)
  69. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)
  70. Alice Stone Blackwell, Answering Objections to Women’s Suffrage (1917)
  71. Theodore Roosevelt on “The New Nationalism” (1910)
  72. Alan Seeger on World War I (1914; 1916)
  73. Emma Goldman on Patriotism (July 9, 1917)
  74. E.B DuBois, “Returning Soldiers” (May, 1919)
  75. Warren G. Harding and the “Return to Normalcy” (1920)
  76. Crystal Eastman, “Now We Can Begin” (1920)
  77. Hiram Evans on the “The Klan’s Fight for Americanism” (1926)
  78. Ellen Welles Page, “A Flapper’s Appeal to Parents” (1922)
  79. Alain Locke on the “New Negro” (1925)
  80. Franklin Roosevelt’s Re-Nomination Acceptance Speech (1936)
  81. Dorothy West, “Amateur Night in Harlem” (1938)
  82. Charles A. Lindbergh, “America First” (1941)
  83. Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga on Japanese Internment (1942/1994)
  84. Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1945)
  85. The Truman Doctrine (1947)
  86. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Atoms for Peace” (1953)
  87. Paul Robeson’s Appearance Before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1956)
  88. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka(1954)
  89. John F. Kennedy on the Separation of Church and State (1960)
  90. Congressman Arthur L. Miller Gives “the Putrid Facts” About Homosexuality (1950)
  91. National Organization for Women, “Statement of Purpose” (1966)
  92. The Port Huron Statement (1962)
  93. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968)
  94. Gloria Steinem on Equal Rights for Women (1970)
  95. Native Americans Occupy Alcatraz (1969)
  96. Pat Buchanan on the Culture War (1992)
  97. Phyllis Schlafly on Women’s Responsibility for Sexual Harassment (1981)
  98. George W. Bush on the Post-9/11 World (2002)
  99. Chelsea Manning Petitions for a Pardon (2013)
  100. Emily Doe (Chanel Miller), Victim Impact Statement (2015)

2 Thoughts on this Post

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  1. This is really a valuable list and thanks for doing it. It does, understandably, underplay ideas/ concepts connected with the ideology of the (White and Black) South. For instance, there’s nothing by John C. Calhoun(I realize Fitzhugh is on the list). What about material from the post-Reconstruction period? (Henry Grady is duly noted.)The Southern Manifesto from the mid-1950s? I’m even rustier on the Southern African American sources concerning race and desegregation(King, Lewis) or culture(Hurston?)

    Thanks
    RHK

  2. Ben, thanks so much for highlighting these readings — and, more generally, for putting in the werk on American Yawp.. For one honors course and two survey courses in the last three years of teaching, I decided to assign some supplemental reading as an alternative to Yawp, and each time I realized two weeks into the semester, What have I done?!. I will say that when I taught a co-requisite history course (for students who are working to become college-ready writers while also taking college classes), the print edition was especially helpful and wonderfully cheap — I think it cost $17 a copy or something.

    Our favorite game to play around here is “what would you swap out if you had to make changes?” I would swap out Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” sermon, which, it seems to me, has had a lot more influence on the intellectual history of 20th century American intellectual historians than it has had on the intellectual history of America before that point. I’d replace it with his 1629 sermon, “Reasons to be Considered…” because he gets into the nitty-gritty there about why it’s perfectly okay for Puritans to seize Indigenous land, how England is filled with too many poor people crowding into the city, etc.

    If I had to choose between Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, I’d use an excerpt from “Woman in the 19th Century” and just consign Thoreau to a “recommended reading list.” I just finished reading Walden again, and portions of it are truly beautiful writing–some of the most lyrical prose I can remember. Much of it is twee and precious and self-indulgent–the judgment of most of his readers or potential readers at the time. I do think Emerson’s eulogy for Thoreau is an interesting read, and could be a substitute for Thoreau itself, summarizing as it does the importance of Thoreau in American thought while giving students a taste of Emerson’s prose and of Transcendentalism more broadly. But at the time of their greatest contemporary renown, and even for a while after, Margaret Fuller’s was a stronger and more influential voice than Thoreau’s, just as Louisa May Alcott’s voice and ideas had a far greater reach than the voice and ideas of Bronson Alcott’s.

    I love the Transcendentalists — love this whole period in American thought, honestly — but sometimes I want to yeet Thoreau and Alcott alike into the sea. Especially Alcott, honestly, whose idea of resistance to the Industrial Age was to refuse to provide for his family.

    Anyway, enough grousing about indolent men with dreamy ideas who depended on their parents/friends/children for financial support so that they could think great thoughts — an interesting historical phenomenon in its own right.

    I will close by making a couple of suggestions, especially doable with a primary source reader on the internet: though it would change entirely the genre of this collection of sources from a source “reader” into something else, I wonder if it might not be advisable to include audio clips and film clips once those become historically significant. Maybe a portion of Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” or Marian Anderson’s performance at the Lincoln Memorial and the speeches surrounding that event. The challenge here is accessibility, as visually impaired or hearing impaired students would not be able to experience the full import of the source — but maybe paired with a good “alt” description, this could work.

    Lastly, I think it is absolutely impossible to teach American intellectual history without including songs or song lyrics, and I would make a case for the inclusion of hymns. Maybe something by Thomas Hastings and / or Lowell Mason — I usually use “Rock of Ages” when I teach the Second Great Awakening, with Hastings’s “Toplady” tune (though the words are older, it was a standard gym for Fuller’s revivals). But some “sorrow songs”/spirituals and some Gilded Age/Progressive Era hymns would be really important, I think, for conveying the cultural sensibilities of large swathes of the American public. Hymns by Ira Sankey, Dwight L. Moody’s main musical collaborator, or Fanny Crosby, would be especially revealing, I think.

    Anyway, your current list, just as it is, without one plea, is a really great contribution to our pedagogy, and I thank you for it!

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