# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Research Guides: Articles of Confederation: Primary Documents in American History: Introduction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Ratified on March 1, 1781, the Articles of Confederation served as the United States' first constitution. This guide provides access to digital materials at the Library of Congress, links to related external websites, and a selected print bibliography.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Map Shows How Humans Migrated Across The Globe

# data[].attributes.body
https://youtu.be/CJdT6QcSbQ0

# data[].attributes.body
http://gcmsanasazicivilization.weebly.com/anasazi-government.html

# data[].attributes.body
http://gcmsanasazicivilization.weebly.com/anasazi-government.html

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Viking-Exploration-of-North-America-Poster-Map-and-Interactive-Notebook-INB-Set-882912

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySeY6j8wmBY

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/The-Renaissance

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Spanish_Empire

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life in the 13 American Colonies Explained

# data[].attributes.body
http://thestrangecontinent.com/2018/02/27/great-empires-north-america-part-1-welcome-old-world/

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=109tKKANMEA

# data[].attributes.headline
Colonies Affected by The Great Awakening

# data[].attributes.subject
Colonies Affected by The Great Awakening

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.peterheck.com/libtree/liberty_tree/view/2374/great_awakening_leads_to_liberty

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Few historians are comfortable with the triumphalist and western Europe-centred image of the Renaissance as the irresistible march of modernity and progress. A sharp break with medieval values and institutions, a new awareness of the individual, an awakened interest in the material world and nature, and a recovery of the cultural heritage of ancient Greece and Rome-these were once understood to be the major achievements of the Renaissance. Today, every particular of this formula is under suspicion if not altogether repudiated. Nevertheless, the term Renaissance remains a widely recognized label for the multifaceted period between the heyday of medieval universalism, as embodied in the papacy and Holy Roman Empire, and the convulsions and sweeping transformations of the 17th century.

In addition to Classical scholarship, the systematic investigation of the physical world, and commercial enterprise based on private capital, other important innovations of the Middle Ages that came into their own in the period included the revival of urban life, banking, the formation of states, and vernacular literatures. In religious life, the Renaissance was a time of the broadening and institutionalizing of earlier initiatives in lay piety and lay-sponsored clerical reforms, rather than the abandonment of traditional beliefs. In government, city-states and regional and national principalities supplanted the fading hegemony of the empire and the papacy and obliterated many of the local feudal jurisdictions that had covered Europe, although within states power continued to be monopolized by elites drawing their strength from both landed and mercantile wealth. If there was a Renaissance "rediscovery of the world and of man," as the 19th-century historians Jules Michelet (in the seventh volume of his History of France) and Jacob Burckhardt (in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy [1860]) asserted, it can be found mainly in literature and art, influenced by the latest and most successful of a long series of medieval Classical revivals. For all but exceptional individuals and a few marginal groups, the standards of behaviour continued to arise from traditional social and moral codes. Identity derived from class, family, occupation, and community, although each of these social forms was itself undergoing significant modification. Thus, for example, while there is no substance to Burckhardt's notion that in Italy women enjoyed perfect equality with men, the economic and structural features of Renaissance patrician families may have enhanced the scope of activity and influence of women of that class. Finally, the older view of the Renaissance centred too exclusively on Italy, and within Italy on a few cities- Florence, Venice, and Rome. By discarding false dichotomies-Renaissance versus Middle Ages, Classical versus Gothic, modern versus feudal-one is able to grasp more fully the interrelatedness of Italy with the rest of Europe and to investigate the extent to which the great centres of Renaissance learning and art were nourished and influenced by less exalted towns and by changes in the pattern of rural life.

For additional treatment of Renaissance thought and intellectual activity, see humanism and classical scholarship.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
History of Europe - Renaissance, Art, Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
History of Europe - Renaissance, Art, Culture: Few historians are comfortable with the triumphalist and western Europe-centred image of the Renaissance as the irresistible march of modernity and progress.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Spain led European global exploration and colonial expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Trade flourished across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Toppling the Aztec and Inca civilizations, Spain laid claim to vast territories in North and South America. The Spanish Empire became the foremost global power, dominating the oceans as well as European battlefields.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
They built astronomical observatories and innovative farming systems - and we don't even know their names. Meet the first great civilizations of Native American history.

Nearly four thousand years ago - as the city of Babylon was first growing into a metropolis and Egypt's Middle Kingdom was in full swing - a group of hunters along North America's Mississippi River assembled in their thousands, to build something very strange.

In a place that would someday be known as northern Louisiana, they staked out an area of some five hundred acres, and began to heap the earth into enormous mounds.

By the time their great project was completed, these people had arranged more than one million cubic feet of soil into a sprawling system of concentric semicircles, ten feet high and nearly a square mile in diameter. At the far western end of these earthworks, they raised a towering mountain of earth.

Standing on that mountain's peak, gazing eastward across the construction, one would see the sun rise precisely above its center on the days of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.

But this vast, intricate structure did not serve as the center of a city, like the ziggurats of Mesopotamia.

It wasn't a king's tomb, like the pyramids of Egypt. The people who built these earthworks did not surround them with fields of crops, or pens of livestock, or imposing royal palaces, as did the builders of so many other holy monuments.

Instead, they stockpiled vast hoards of copper, slate, quartz and other exotic materials - often imported from hundreds of miles away. They used these materials to manufacture finely tooled knives, beads, stone effigies and animal figurines, which they sold to a network of trading partners throughout North America's Gulf Coast region.

Their business flourished for more than a thousand years - until at last, around 700 BCE, they abandoned their great distribution center, never to return.

We don't know what the builders of these earthworks called themselves - or even what language they spoke. We have no idea which (if any) living American Indian groups they might be related to, because we've found none of their depictions of themselves, or any remnants of their DNA. Today, they're known as the Poverty Point culture, after the modern English name for the place where they once made their home.

The Poverty Point people were not the first great civilization to rise in North America.

As early as 3500 BCE - centuries before Stonehenge or Egypt's Great Pyramid were built - people in what's now Watson Brake, Louisiana raised a set of circular mounds 900 feet across, towering 25 feet high.

These earthworks seem to have served as a base for hunter-gatherers - meaning that even without agriculture, these builders (whoever they were) knew how to organize human expertise on a large scale, over an extended period.

To create, in other words, a civilized society.

But long before anyone raised earthworks in North America, technological and societal innovation had already been flourishing for a very long time.

In the first article of my "Great African Empires" series, we met the San people, whose technology may date back as far as 44,000 BCE, and whose languages may be directly related to the primordial mother tongue spoken by the first Homo sapiens.

We also met the Australian Yidindji people, whose oral traditions clearly describe a sea level rise that happened at the end of the last Ice Age, no less than 13,000 years ago.

Sometime during that last Ice Age, people first started walking from Russia to Alaska.

Starting around 30,000 years ago, the eastern tip of Siberia was connected to western Alaska by a land bridge known as Beringia. This bridge was no narrow strip of ice, but a sprawling tundra, teeming with mammoths and woolly rhinos.

Around 13,000 BCE, a few thousand people crossed Beringia into Alaska - most likely pursuing herds of the great beasts they hunted.

These Ice-Age hunters could not have known, of course, that they were entering a brand-new continent.

The landscape in Alaska would have looked much the same as that of Russia and Beringia: a half-frozen steppe-tundra, bounded by towering glaciers, filled with forests of pine and birch, and with the same thundering menagerie of furred, tusked, horned beasts depicted in the cave paintings of Lascaux and Chauvet.

In fact, the culture of these North American newcomers would remain strikingly similar to that of their relatives in Siberia.

Long centuries after the ice melted, the seas rose, and the land bridge of Beringia was no more, peoples on both sides of the Bering Strait would continue to dress in furs and feathers, to speak very similar languages, to live in pointed houses wrapped in animal skins, to throat-sing to the sound of pounding drums, and to send shamans to journey between the worlds of life, dreams and death.

But as the ice melted and the newcomers multiplied, their descendants began to push southward, lured by warmer weather, greener meadows, and greater herds of mammoth, mastodon - and of course, by the bison, which thronged in their millions across the North American plains.

By 12,000 BCE, these hunters had settled throughout what's now the west coast of Canada.

Their most distinctive mark was the pair of fluted incisions they made on the sides of their stone arrowheads. We still don't know why these peoples fluted their arrowheads - this technique is unique to North America; stone-age hunters around the world got along perfectly fine without it - or whether they were even a single culture, or a diverse array of peoples who happened to share certain ideas.

We call these mysterious people the Clovis culture - though we have no idea how they categorized themselves.

But the Clovis people were not alone on their new continent.

As early as 17,000 BCE - a full 4,000 years before the Clovis people arrived in Canada - people at Pennsylvania's Meadowcroft Rockshelter were stockpiling corn, squash and fruit, hunting deer and small game, and creating arrowheads without the distinctive Clovis fluting.

In fact, a wide variety of hunting-gathering peoples already thrived throughout the North American continent, thousands of years before the Clovis people showed up.

Who were these primordial American peoples? Where did they come from?

We simply don't know. Some experts think they came across Beringia much earlier, perhaps tens of thousands of years before the Clovis people. Others have connected them with even more ancient sites - such as Monte Verde in Chile, where people constructed hide buildings and clay-lined pits as early as 20,000 BCE.

In any case, one fact is very clear:

By 13,000 BCE, Native American history had already witnessed a diverse cast of well-developed cultures.

By 9000 BCE, people in the Great Basin - the sprawling watershed region at the center of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and California - had become experts at hunting ducks and rabbits, harvesting roots and pine nuts, and carving scenes of animals into the rocks.

A few thousand years later, in 6000 BCE, people in the Lower Pecos region of Texas were practicing organized agriculture and creating complex cave paintings. By 5500 BCE, people in what's now Florida had settled down to a fishing life not unlike that of the earliest Sumerians.

Although ancient North America didn't experience a bronze or iron age, it gave birth to a staggering array of complex societies.

When Babylon rose to power far to the east, North America was home to a dizzying range of civilizations, about which we know astonishingly little. Some of these peoples hunted bison on the Great Plains, while others fished in the southern marshes, or grew crops on hilltop farms - living in dread, no doubt, of raids from the wild nomads of the steppes.

But since none of these peoples felt inclined to leave inscriptions or compile written texts, our understanding of Native American history is somewhat limited: we do not know these people's names, or the names of their cities, or of the gods in their pantheons.

We know exactly what they liked to eat, because they left plenty of it lying around - but we can make only vague guesses about what they believed and how they worshiped, based on scant clues from their effigies, paintings, carvings and sculptures.

We know they must have spoken thousands of dialects of hundreds of languages, in dozens of different language families. Among some of those language families, only one lonely language remains alive - as in the case of Zuni; while other families, like the Uto-Aztecan languages, still have several living members, along with many extinct ones.

There are, without a doubt, entire families of extinct North American languages about which we know nothing.

And while it's easy to pin the blame for these losses on European colonialists - who certainly did inflict apocalyptic destruction on thousands of North American peoples, societies and languages - the fact remains that ancient North America was already a stage for war, oppression, slavery and ethnic hatred, thousands of years before Columbus arrived.

Throughout those centuries, the North American continent played host to legendary cities, epic migrations, mighty kings, transformative religions, and a myriad of intertwined, ever-evolving ways of life - some of which you'll experience later in this series, while others still remain buried beneath the dust of prehistory.

Europeans did not invade an untouched paradise. They invaded a continent already dense with thousands of years of civilization.

Over the course of this series, we're going to see how the great civilizations of ancient North America developed a breathtaking variety of societal structures and ways of life. We'll visit the mighty cities those civilizations raised in ancient Arizona and Colorado, and in medieval Missouri and Arkansas.

We'll meet powerful merchant princes who built a trade empire across the Northeast, and steppe warriors who defeated and enslaved their would-be European conquerors.

You're about to see North America as you've never seen it before.

Because the truth is -

This so-called "New World" is one of the oldest worlds on earth.

Great Empires of North America, Part 2: Exodus to Arizona

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Great Empires of North America, Part 1: The Old World - The Strange Continent

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
They built astronomical observatories and innovative farming systems - and we don't even know their names. Meet the first great civilizations of Native American history. Nearly four thousand years ago - as the city of Babylon was first growing into a metropolis and Egypt's Middle Kingdom was in full swing - a group of hunters...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Navigation Acts were trade rules that governed commerce between Britain and its colonies. The first of the Navigation Acts existed for almost two centuries and was repealed in 1849. The laws were designed to protect British economic interests in colonial trade and to protect its industry against the rapidly growing Dutch navigation trade.

The purpose of the Molasses Act was to protect British West Indies exports to the American colonies from the more fertile French and Spanish islands of Martinique and Santo Domingo. It was not designed to raise revenue but it was used as a trade barrier. The duty was set at 6p per gallon of imported foreign molasses, corruption became endemic and illegal trade was widespread. In its first year it collected £330 sterling and during the period of 1738-1741 it collected £76 a year. Not until 1763 was the collection of the duty enforced when the duty was lowered to 2d a gallon and in 1764 it was replaced by the Sugar Act.

The Currency Act of 1751 prohibited the issue of new bills of credit by New England colonies: Rhode Island, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire and Connecticut. Parliament decided to enact the Currency Act of 1751 to control currency depreciation against silver and sterling and to ensure its value for payments of debt to British merchants. A subsequent Currency Act enacted in 1764 extended the policy to all British colonies in the Americas increasing more tension between Britain and America.

It amended the existing 1733 Molasses Act. The Act increased the duty of molasses from 2d to 3d of gallon of imported molasses. It enforced the Navigation Acts by prohibiting vessels to directly transport cargo to the colonies. Vessels had to unload its cargo in Britain, pay duties and reload its cargo before sailing to the colonies. The Sugar Act imposed a £7 a ton on wine imported from Madeira, the Azores and Canary Islands. It added hides, skins, potash and other products to the list of commodities that could be legally exported. The act was strictly enforced through the Vice-Admiralty Courts.

The Stamp Act intended to raise revenue by requiring the purchase of stamps to be placed on public documents, there were 55 documents subject to the duty. Violators were to be prosecuted in the vice-admiralty courts. For the first time the British had levied an explicit tax on the colonist for the purpose of raising revenue, previous taxes were seen as trade taxes and tolerated by colonial residents. Opposition to the tax was widespread as it represented an infringement on their rights. Opposition groups such as the Sons of Liberty sprung everywhere. The Act was nullified in March 1766.

The act required colonial assemblies to provide housing, food and drink to British troops stationed in their towns with the purpose of improving living conditions and decreasing the cost to the crown. Soldiers were to be housed in barracks or empty public buildings and not in private residences. It was the duty of local legislatures to fund the expenses. In 1766 the New York assembly refused to raise the money and in 1767 Parliament passed the New York Suspending Act on July 1767 which suspended the assembly until they complied with the new law.

The Declaratory Act was passed on March 18, 1766, at the same time as the repeal of the 1765 Stamp Act. The act was used as a justification for the repeal of the Stamp Act and as a face saving action. The 1766 Declaratory Act stated that the colonies are subordinate and dependent on the Imperial Crown and Parliament of Britain and that Parliament had the authority to pass laws.

The Act imposed import duties on 72 items including paint, tea, glass and paper. The revenue raised from it was to provide for the salaries of colonial officers and its administration. It also authorized the Supreme Court to issue writs of assistance for violators, established the American Customs Board and expanded Admiralty Courts. Protests against the Townshend Acts led to the Boston Massacre.

The Tea Act of 1773 granted the East India Company exclusive license to import and distribute tea to the American colonies. Tea was sold in America at 10s per pound, half its previous price and less than the cost of smuggled tea. Despite the economic benefit to end consumers of tea, the law damaged the position of independent shippers, smugglers and local shopkeepers. On December 1773 Bostonians dumped 342 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor in an event known as the Boston Tea Party.

As retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, Britain imposed the Coercive Acts in 1774. The Coercive Acts were a package of five laws: Boston Port Act, Massachusetts Government act, Administration of Justice Act, Quartering Act and Quebec Act.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Navigation Acts were trade rules that governed commerce between Britain and its colonies. The first of the Navigation Acts existed for almost two centuries and was repealed in 1849. The laws were designed to protect British economic interests in colonial trade and to protect its industry against the rapidly growing Dutch navigation trade.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.stamp-act-history.com/british-taxation-colonial-america/list-of-british-acts/

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.john-hancock-heritage.com/boston-massacre-boston-tea-party/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Boston Massacre

Protests against the Townshend acts and intimidation tactics against tax collectors, government officials and merchants violating the boycott of British goods prompted Governor Francis Bernard to request troops in order to keep civil order in Boston. On October 1768 additional British troops started to arrive in Boston joining another regiment and adding up to a total of 4,000 soldiers, a large number considering the population of Boston was 20,000 at the time. The 14 th and 29 th regiments were to protect government officials, restore order, reinforce the collection of taxes and take action as needed.

As member of the Massachusetts Legislature, John Hancock warned the government against a standing army in times of peace. Abuse and tension led to many violent incidents which culminated in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. During this incident five civilians were killed by British troops including a mulatto named Crispus Attucks who is considered to be the first martyr of the American Revolution. Samuel Adams paid for their funeral which was followed by thousands of residents. Samuel's cousin, John Adams, who would later become the second president of the United States, defended the soldiers arguing that they too deserved a fair trial even though he sought independence from Britain.

After the Massacre, John Hancock met with Governor Thomas Hutchinson and demanded the troops removed from Boston as retaliation was imminent, he also demanded the repeal of the Townshend Acts. Troops were immediately removed to Castle Williams which gave Hancock a boost in his popularity reflected in his nearly unanimous reelection to the House of Representatives. The Townshend Acts were partially repealed on April of the following year.

Four years later on March 5, 1774 for the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, John Hancock gave a speech known as the Boston Massacre Oration. It reveals a more radical view against British occupation which was spread by propaganda by the Sons of Liberty.
Tea Act and Boston Tea Party
Even though Hancock did not directly participate in the Boston Tea Party, he was present at the December 16, 1773 meeting at the Old South Meeting House preceding the dumping of the tea. Being a very close friend of Samuel Adams and a member of the Sons of Liberty, he most likely helped to plan or at the least inspired the famous protest.

The approval of the Tea Act in 1773 brought a renewal of the sense of independence. Although the Tea Act made tea cheaper to the end consumer it affected local shopkeepers, merchants and smugglers. It is a well known fact that John Hancock was one of the largest Dutch tea smugglers, which was cheaper than the East India tea. He had the most to lose from the Tea Act.

Boston's radical leadership and powerful business interests were ready to revive the protest movement by calling town meetings and organizing protests against the Tea Act and selected tea merchants. Joseph Warren, Benjamin Church, Thomas Young were joined by Paul Revere, Ebenezer Mackintosh and William Molineaux among others, all of them had ties with the working class. They convinced the population to view the act as other means of "taxation without representation" as they should be free to buy tea from any merchant and not selected ones.

As the Dartmouth arrived in Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773, a town meeting was called at the Old South Church, John Hancock was the moderator. It is believed that over five thousand attended. During the meeting they decided to send an envoy to Governor Hutchinson but they were unsuccessful in their attempt to persuade him to send the Dartmouth and other two ships back to London. Now the decision lay with the radicals. As the moderator of the meeting John Hancock told the crowd "let every man do what is right in his own eyes". That evening the crowd who attended the Boston Town meeting congregated in Boston Harbor and disguised as American Indians boarded ships containing tea cargo, proceeding to dump 342 chests of tea that belonged to the East India Company into the sea. Hancock did not take part in the Boston Tea Party but approved the action. Furthermore, he was aware that as a public figure he could not publicly commend violent actions of his fellow citizens.
Back to John Hancock Homepage

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
1770-1773: Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Boston Massacre Protests against the Townshend acts and intimidation tactics against tax collectors, government officials and merchants violating the boycott of British goods prompted Governor Francis Bernard to request troops in order to keep civil order in Boston.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Federalism: Crash Course Government and Politics #4

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.biography.com/news/paul-reveres-ride-facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Treaty of Paris - Definition, Date & Terms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Treaty of Paris of 1783 formally ended the American Revolutionary War. American statesmen Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay negotiated the peace treaty with representatives of King George III of Great Britain.

# data[].attributes.body
https://guides.loc.gov/articles-of-confederation

# data[].attributes.body
http://oomscholasticblog.com/post/resources-learning-about-three-branches-government

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Scholastic We the People Three Branches of Government

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Article. I.

Section. 1.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Section. 2.

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Section. 3.

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.

Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies.

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

Section. 4.

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

Section. 5.

Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.

Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal.

Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

Section. 6.

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

Section. 7.

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.

Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;-And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Section. 9.

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Section. 10.

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Article. II.

Section. 1.

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:-"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Section. 2.

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Section. 3.

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

Section. 4.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Article. III.

Section. 1.

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

Section. 2.

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;-to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;-to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;-to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;-to Controversies between two or more States;- between a State and Citizens of another State,-between Citizens of different States,-between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

Section. 3.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Article. IV.

Section. 1.

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

Section. 2.

The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

Section. 3.

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

Section. 4.

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Article. V.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Article. VI.

All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Article. VII.

The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.

The Word, "the," being interlined between the seventh and eighth Lines of the first Page, The Word "Thirty" being partly written on an Erazure in the fifteenth Line of the first Page, The Words "is tried" being interlined between the thirty second and thirty third Lines of the first Page and the Word "the" being interlined between the forty third and forty fourth Lines of the second Page.

Attest William Jackson Secretary

done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independance of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,

G°. Washington
Presidt and deputy from Virginia

For biographies of the non-signing delegates to the Constitutional Convention, see the Founding Fathers page.
Back to Main Constitution Page

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
get-content name="print-page-left" include-tag="false" /] Note: The following text is a transcription of the Constitution as it was inscribed by Jacob Shallus on parchment (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) The spelling and punctuation reflect the original.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
National Center for Constitutional Studies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
*Congress of the United States

begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution. RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz. ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg Speaker of the House of Representatives John Adams, Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate.

Attest, John Beckley, Clerk of the House of Representatives. Sam. A. Otis Secretary of the Senate. *On September 25, 1789, Congress transmitted to the state legislatures twelve proposed amendments, two of which, having to do with Congressional representation and Congressional pay, were not adopted. The remaining ten amendments became the Bill of Rights.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

A well-regulated M ilitia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear A rms shall not be infringed.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

Amendment 6
- Rights of Accused Persons in Criminal Cases

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Preamble to the Bill of Rights *Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAlv93kuVwY

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0gosGXSgsI

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript

# data[].attributes.body
https://nccs.net/blogs/americas-founding-documents/bill-of-rights-amendments-1-10

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The State House in Boston was designed by Charles Bullfinch, who also designed the Capitol in Washington D.C.

The election of 1796 was the first election in American history where political candidates at the local, state, and national level began to run for office as members of organized political parties that held strongly opposed political principles.

This was a stunning new phenomenon that shocked most of the older leaders of the Revolutionary Era. Even Madison, who was one of the earliest to see the value of political parties, believed that they would only serve as temporary coalitions for specific controversial elections. The older leaders failed to understand the dynamic new conditions that had been created by the importance of popular sovereignty - democracy - to the American Revolution. The people now understood themselves as a fundamental force in legitimating government authority. In the modern American political system, voters mainly express themselves through allegiances within a competitive party system. 1796 was the first election where this defining element of modern political life began to appear.

The two parties adopted names that reflected their most cherished values. The Federalists of 1796 attached themselves to the successful campaign in favor of the Constitution and were solid supporters of the federal administration. Although Washington denounced parties as a horrid threat to the republic, his vice president John Adams became the de facto presidential candidate of the Federalists. The party had its strongest support among those who favored Hamilton's policies. Merchants, creditors and urban artisans who built the growing commercial economy of the northeast provided its most dedicated supporters and strongest regional support.

This mural, located at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., represents Thomas Jefferson's views on the necessity of education.

The opposition party adopted the name Democratic-Republicans, which suggested that they were more fully committed to extending the Revolution to ordinary people. The supporters of the Democratic-Republicans (often referred to as the Republicans) were drawn from many segments of American society and included farmers throughout the country with high popularity among German and Scots-Irish ethnic groups. Although it effectively reached ordinary citizens, its key leaders were wealthy southern tobacco elites like Jefferson and Madison. While the Democratic-Republicans were more diverse, the Federalists were wealthier and carried more prestige, especially by association with the retired Washington.

The 1796 election was waged with uncommon intensity. Federalists thought of themselves as the "friends of order" and good government. They viewed their opponents as dangerous radicals who would bring the anarchy of the French Revolution to America.

The Democratic-Republicans despised Federalist policies. According to one Republican-minded New York newspaper, the Federalists were "aristocrats, endeavoring to lay the foundations of monarchical government, and Republicans [were] the real supporters of independence, friends to equal rights, and warm advocates of free elective government."

This chart depicts the electoral vote distribution for the election of 1796. John Adams (green) edged out Thomas Jefferson (yellow) for the Presidency, with Thomas Pinckney (purple) and Aaron Burr (blue) leading the runners-up. Jefferson's second-place earned him the Vice Presidency.

Clearly there was little room for compromise in this hostile environment.

The outcome of the presidential election indicated the close balance between the two sides. New England strongly favored Adams, while Jefferson overwhelmingly carried the southern states. The key to the election lay in the mid-Atlantic colonies where party organizations were the most fully developed. Adams ended up narrowly winning in the electoral college 71 to 68. A sure sign of the great novelty of political parties was that the Constitution had established that the runner-up in the presidential election would become the vice president.

John Adams took office after a harsh campaign and narrow victory. His political opponent Jefferson served as second in command.

A History of American Agriculture: 1776-1990
A collection of timelines from the United States Department of Agriculture show the amazing rate of change in the demographics and technology of the American farm. Thomas Jefferson's hopes for an agrarian economy were ignored by the pace of change demonstrated in graphic detail by these 11 timelines. While Jefferson ran for office in 1796, 90 percent of the population were farmers. Today, farmers make up less than 3 percent of the population.

Report broken link

The Campaign and Election of 1796
The American President series presents a summary of the first American election where political parties played a part. See a chart of the candidates and the results; find out the political rationale for why the parties chose their candidates; learn strange facts that made this election unique.

Report broken link

George Washington's Farewell Address
George Washington's departure from the political scene created a political vacuum which laid the groundwork for the formation of political parties - something Washington despised. Early America offers this dusty original of Washington's farewell address, but provides a readable abstract as well. "[Political parties] ... distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration ... agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one ... against another ... it opens the door to foreign influence and corruption ..." -George Washington

Report broken link

If you like our content, please share it on social media!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The State House in Boston was designed by Charles Bullfinch, who also designed the Capitol in Washington D.C. The election of 1796 was the first election in American history where political candidates at the local, state, and national level began to run for office as members of organized political parties that held strongly opposed political principles.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sent by President Thomas Jefferson to find the Northwest Passage, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the most important expedition in American history. This extraordinary film tells the remarkable story of the entire Corps of Discovery - not just of the two Captains, but the young army men, French-Canadian boatmen, Clark's African-American slave, and the Shoshone woman named Sacagawea, who brought along her infant son. As important to the story as these many characters, however, was the land itself, and the promises it held.

The mission of the Corps of Discovery was to explore the uncharted West. Beginning February 28, 1803 It would be led by Meriwether Lewis, and Lewis' friend, William Clark. Over the next four years, the Corps of Discovery would travel thousands of miles, experiencing lands, rivers and peoples that no Americans ever had before. Ken Burns' LEWIS & CLARK re-creates the 1803 journey to locate the Northwest Passage. The explorers found a varied landscape and a dizzying diversity of Indian peoples.

Premiered: November 4, 1997

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lewis and Clark | Ken Burns | PBS | Watch Lewis and Clark Documentary | Ken Burns | PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Enter the world of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and the rest of the Corps of Discovery. Full film now streaming.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
America's 2nd War of Independence | 5 Minute Video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Significance of Sections in American History. By Frederick Jackson

Turner. New York: Henry Holt and Company. $3.50. The Rise of the City, 1878-1898. By Arthur Meier Schlesinger. New York: The Macmillan Company. $4.00.

At first glance, these two volumes seem to have little relation to each other. Frederick Jackson Turner's "Significance of Sections" is a posthumous collection of essays, arranged by Max Farrand. They have a loose, though fairly definite, unification, in that all of them deal with the importance of sectionalism, but in the main these essays suggest fields that need both broad and intensive study; they do not furnish a complete history of any period or any section. A few articles deal with specific historical topics-for example, "Genet's Projected Attack on Louisiana and the Floridas" - but these articles comprise the least valuable portion of the book. In contrast, Professor A. M. Schlesinger's "Rise of the City" is a closely knit and thoroughly documented historical narrative, and is Volume Ten of the comprehensive twelve-volume "History of American Life," edited by Dixon Ryan Fox and Mr. Schlesinger himself. Within its limited field it is complete.

In plan and in content, these two books seem far apart. But a wider view suggests that they are also excellently representative of two widely divergent schools of thought about American life. Professor Turner was the first to point out the tremendous influence of the frontier upon American life; the present volume emphasizes the fact that this country was, and is, only loosely a nation, composed less of states than of integrated regional sections. Professor Schlesinger's book deals with the period when nationalism and standardization seemed inevitable, when the rise of the city seemed to carry with it the knell of sectionalism. He closes on a high note of unity, after the Spanish-American War, when "the foemen of 1861 had become comrades in spirit as well as in arms." But Mr. Schlesinger sticks perhaps too closely to the narrow span of years that he treats; the apparent homogeneity has, somehow, never occurred, and the cities have in many cases become only another one of the sections that Mr. Turner treats more wisely.

Unfortunately, Professor Schlesinger does not consider the economic aspects of the years 1878-1898. That is left for Miss Ida Tarbell. But one doubts if the true significance of the rise of the city can be discussed in any other terms. The lure of the city has been with us always. Undoubtedly, the new domination of city over country represented the triumph of organized man in a collectivistic state over individual man in a democratic state; but that triumph, essentially, was an economic one. After 1865, the country changed, first slowly but by 1878 with an ever-increasing rapidity, from an agrarian and localized economy to an in-dustrialistic and highly centralized economy. And this change in our economic philosophy brought with it a change in our entire philosophy of life.

It is this second change that Professor Schlesinger undertakes to portray. But it cannot be portrayed adequately when the basic and causal forces that brought about almost a social revolution are entirely neglected.

Once this limitation is recognized, the book becomes immensely valuable. No other phase of life or of manners is neglected. Mr. Schlesinger writes with considerable understanding of the break-up of the old South into a new land of small farms and small industrial concerns, and with greater penetration of the conquest of the frontier West. But he is most at home when he describes the appeal of the city, and the physical and scientific advances that it produced. No chapter is more fascinating or more thorough than his description of woman's part in this urban development. And he gives equally thorough attention to education, literature (as seen historically), religion, and all the habits, pleasures, and problems that were involved in this changing world. For the first time one has a rounded and complete picture of two decades that were neither brown nor mauve, as they have been sardonically described before, but were decades, rather, of a blurred and shifting color that could not be labelled for the simple reason that they were ever-changing.

Yet I feel that the picture here is not quite valid or authentic. The book has an optimistic tone with regard to this rise of a centralized and urban civilization that later developments hardly seem to warrant. Mr. Schlesinger records all the educational advances, for instance, and assumes that this I popularization was entirely good; he does not consider that in this process we lost much (perhaps more than we gained) that could not be replaced in this new system. Throughout, all that the city represents is good; all that the country represented was bad. This seems to me a highly debatable thesis: Mr. Schlesinger has painstakingly pointed out all our profits, but it would require an equally large, and perhaps more valuable, book to point out our corresponding losses.

Mr. Turner is never guilty of this over-simplification of values. In an essay on "The West-1876 and 1926," he treats this urbanization and industrial development in a specific section, but his treatment has greater moderation, and some element of doubt as to the eternal goodness embodied in this progress. And the West remains a section, or a group of sections, that yet differ from other parts of the United States, and will for a long time resist any efforts toward complete standardization.

Each essay in Professor Turner's book, in fact, seems to bring out or to suggest the tremendous complexity of our civilization. We have become at once more centralized and more sectional; the life of each section-personal, economic, and cultural-has become in some ways more standardized, but in many other ways more diverse. Writing of 1898, Mr. Schlesinger could see only a "momentous shift of the center of national equilibrium from the countryside to the city," and an inevitable tendency toward national unity; Mr. Turner, writing of our immediate time, can see "degrees of sectionalism," and nationalizing tendencies, but he also believes that "the influence of the diverse physiographic provinces which make up the nation will become more marked." In this diversity the city must play an important, but not necessarily a dominant, part; it is, by its nature, a section also, and one that is often at war with other sections. Before we can begin to understand this country we must understand all the complex elements of which it is composed. These elements defy easy analysis, but Mr. Turner casually suggests topics for a hundred or more books that must be written before any true clarification can be secured. In the meantime, we have always before us the conflict between city and country, between localism and centralization, between agrarianism and industrialism, between section and nation, between tradition and revolution . . . and the commentator who assumes that our national life has fallen definitely into any one of these patterns must neglect the complicated realities for an unsound and deceptive thesis.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Significance of Sections in American History. By Frederick Jackson Turner. New York: Henry Holt and Company. $3.50. The Rise of the City, 1878-1898. By Arthur Meier Schlesinger. New York: The Macmillan Company. $4.00. At first glance, these two volumes seem to have little relation to each other.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Andrew Jackson rose to national prominance as a General during the War of 1812.

The presidential election of 1828 brought a great victory for Andrew Jackson. Not only did he get almost 70 percent of the votes cast in the electoral college, popular participation in the election soared to an unheard of 60 percent. This more than doubled the turnout in 1824; Jackson clearly headed a sweeping political movement. His central message remained largely the same from the previous election, but had grown in intensity. Jackson warned that the nation had been corrupted by "special privilege," characterized especially by the policies of the Second Bank of the United States. The proper road to reform, according to Jackson, lay in an absolute acceptance of majority rule as expressed through the democratic process. Beyond these general principles, however, Jackson's campaign was notably vague about specific policies. Instead, it stressed Jackson's life story as a man who had risen from modest origins to become a successful Tennessee planter. Jackson's claim to distinction lay in a military career that included service as a young man in the Revolutionary War, several anti-Indian campaigns, and, of course, his crowning moment in the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812.

Jackson's election marked a new direction in American politics. He was the first westerner elected president, indeed, the first president from a state other than Virginia or Massachusetts. He boldly proclaimed himself to be the "champion of the common man" and believed that their interests were ignored by the aggressive national economic plans of Clay and Adams. More than this, however, when Martin Van Buren followed Jackson as president, it indicated that the Jacksonian movement had long-term significance that would outlast his own charismatic leadership.

Andrew Jackson is known to have harbored animosity for Native Americans. During his administration, many tribes were moved to reservations in the Oklahoma Territory.

Van Buren, perhaps even more than Jackson, helped to create the new Democratic party that centered upon three chief qualities closely linked to Jacksonian Democracy. First, it declared itself to be the party of ordinary farmers and workers. Second, it opposed the special privileges of economic elites. Third, to offer affordable western land to ordinary white Americans, Indians needed to be forced further westward. The Whig party soon arose to challenge the Democrats with a different policy platform and vision for the nation. Whigs' favored active government support for economic improvement as the best route to sustained prosperity. Thus, the Whig-Democrat political contest was in large part a disagreement about the early Industrial Revolution. Whigs defended economic development's broad benefits, while Democrats stressed the new forms of dependence that it created. The fiercely partisan campaigns waged between these parties lasted into the 1850s and are known as the Second Party System, an assuredly modern framework of political competition that reached ordinary voters as never before with both sides organizing tirelessly to carry their message directly to the American people.

A "mob" descended upon Andrew Jackson at the White House to celebrate his victory in the election of 1828. Public parties were regular occurrences during Jackson's administration.

A new era of American politics began with Jackson's election in 1828, but it also completed a grand social experiment begun by the American Revolution. Although the Founding Fathers would have been astounded by the new shape of the nation during Jackson's presidency, just as Jackson himself had served in the American Revolution, its values helped form his sense of the world. The ideals of the Revolution had, of course, been altered by the new conditions of the early nineteenth century and would continue to be reworked over time. Economic, religious, and geographic changes had all reshaped the nation in fundamental ways and pointed toward still greater opportunities and pitfalls in the future. Nevertheless, Jacksonian Democracy represented a provocative blending of the best and worst qualities of American society. On the one hand it was an authentic democratic movement that contained a principled egalitarian thrust, but this powerful social critique was always cast for the benefit of white men. This tragic mix of egalitarianism, masculine privilege, and racial prejudice remains a central quality of American life and to explore their relationship in the past may help suggest ways of overcoming their haunting limitations in the future.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Jacksonian Democracy and Modern America [ushistory.org]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Andrew Jackson rose to national prominance as a General during the War of 1812. The presidential election of 1828 brought a great victory for Andrew Jackson. Not only did he get almost 70 percent of the votes cast in the electoral college, popular participation in the election soared to an unheard of 60 percent.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Indian Removal Act Explained in 5 Minutes: US History Review

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
America: Promised Land: Migrants Travel West on the Oregon Trail | History

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There was a brief period of time when Texas was an independent country. This was a ten-year period between March 2, 1836, and February 19, 1846, after Texas won its independence from Mexico. Many battles were fought for Texas independence, the most famous of which was the Battle of the Alamo. On December 29, 1845, Texas was admitted into the United States and became the Texas we know today. During its period of independence, it was known as the Republic of Texas and even had its own flag. It was a sovereign nation in every way.

During the period of Texan independence, it was the very embodiment of the term "the Wild West." It was an excellent place for fugitives from the United States and Mexico to go to hide. Feuds between settling families who hoped to build a new life free from the laws of the United States in this new nation were common. Many of these feuds got violent, and some are still remembered as part of Texas lore. Texas was known for its wild, independent spirit, and to this day, when Texans utter the state's unofficial motto of "Don't Mess With Texas," they mean it.

Texas was a settler's dream during the 10 years of independence. Even respectable families went there to be free of the limitations the laws in the United States placed on what they could do. While they did find a great deal of freedom, that freedom came with a price. Texas was a large territory, much larger then than it is today. It was virtually impossible for the independent nation's government to govern everything that went on there.

The Comanche Natives were against Texas being a nation since Texas was part of their territory, and raids, rapes, and other types of violence against the settlers were a common occurrence, especially in the more rural areas. Mexico continued to refuse to recognize Texan independence and continually sent small armies into Texas to raid and pillage for years. If any two settlers or settling families had problems with each other, they were often left to work it out on their own with frontier justice. The law only became involved if the violence spilled over into the more settled areas.

Texas eventually accepted the offer from the United States to become a state, mainly to get a handle on law and order in the territory. With the help of the United States government, Texas became a much safer place to live than it was as an independent nation.

Stories from those years of independence and the people who lived there at that time still exist. In fact, Texas was keeping vital records and other archival documents from the time it gained independence. Texas president Sam Houston even had to move the archives once to keep them from being captured by Mexican soldiers who were raiding the area. Since Sam Houston had the archives moved to Austin, which was initially a temporary measure that became permanent, that is where they can be found today.

If you have ancestors who lived in Texas during the time of independence, visit the Austin archives, or email them for information. You may be surprised at some of the stories your ancestors have in those archives that they are just waiting to reveal to you.

Free Genealogy Lookups

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Wild Days of Texas: When Texas Was a Country

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There was a brief period of time when Texas was an independent country. This was a ten-year period between March 2, 1836, and February 19, 1846, after Texas won its independence from Mexico. Many battles were fought for Texas independence, the most famous of which was the Battle of the Alamo.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.ushistory.org/us/19c.asp

# data[].attributes.body
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/ufAFuw20DZ2jB5dRP0SZ29BIoeOtl359cM46iWx-6Jw0yS6bT1MhteJms3Tygdu9MsQxNh2EJ41HYr-eFp93Ovg7X-tJKfLe6w=w2484-h1254

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/inside/index.html

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnSwKWRL8i4

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Woh4gwIFpic

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.vqronline.org/sectionalism-and-nationalism

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.ushistory.org/us/23f.asp

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQfP2Y2t45U

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3HxADg7G_I

# data[].attributes.body
https://ancestralfindings.com/wild-days-texas-texas-country/

# data[].attributes.body
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/PnR9umWpPKlG7yuMBGVa645uPii3wwjuSO_Dz13IklQsoHIGKOCFyDkPYRBowupeBgBsvN_wv_GRJgVsWNI7djDQa-WoSGIt=w2484-h1254

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.history.com/topics/mexican-american-war

# data[].attributes.body
The years that America grew on it's technology with objects like steam powered vehicles and the cotton gin

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Coal, Steam, and The Industrial Revolution: Crash Course World History #32

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhL5DCizj5c

# data[].attributes.body
Same parts of machines made rapidly to fix machines effortlessly

# data[].attributes.body
Organized labor was as the name implies, work organized to be done by numerous people, there for beginning the rise of factories and stores.

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.ushistory.org/us/37.asp

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvd5_LB30b8

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Table of Contents

1. Whitney Learns About Cotton

2. A More Efficient Way

3. Cotton Gin's Impact on Slavery And The American Economy

4. Interchangeable Parts

In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America's leading export. Despite its success, the gin made little money for Whitney due to patent-infringement issues. Also, his invention offered Southern planters a justification to maintain and expand slavery even as a growing number of Americans supported its abolition. Based in part on his reputation for creating the cotton gin, Whitney later secured a major contract to build muskets for the U.S. government. Through this project, he promoted the idea of interchangeable parts-standardized, identical parts that made for faster assembly and easier repair of various devices. For his work, he is credited as a pioneer of American manufacturing.

Whitney Learns About Cotton

Eli Whitney was born on December 8, 1765, in Westborough, Massachusetts. Growing up, Whitney, whose father was a farmer, proved to be a talented mechanic and inventor. Among the objects he designed and built as a youth were a nail forge and a violin. In 1792, after graduating from Yale College (now Yale University), Whitney headed to the South. He originally planned to work as a private tutor but instead accepted an invitation to stay with Catherine Greene (1755-1814), the widow of American Revolutionary War (1775-83) general Nathanael Greene, on her plantation, known as Mulberry Grove, near Savannah, Georgia. While there, Whitney learned about cotton production-in particular, the difficulty cotton farmers faced making a living.

Did you know? Some historians believe Catherine Greene devised the cotton gin and Eli Whitney merely built it and applied for the patent, since at that time women were not allowed to file for patents. Others believe the idea was Whitney's but Greene played an important role as both designer and financier.

In many ways, cotton was an ideal crop; it was easily grown, and unlike food crops its fibers could be stored for long periods of time. But cotton plants contained seeds that were difficult to separate from the soft fibers. A type of cotton known as long staple was easy to clean, but grew well only along coastal areas. The vast majority of cotton farmers were forced to grow the more labor-intensive short-staple cotton, which had to be cleaned painstakingly by hand, one plant at a time. The average cotton picker could remove the seeds from only about one pound of short-staple cotton per day.

A More Efficient Way

Greene and her plantation manager, Phineas Miller (1764-1803), explained the problem with short-staple cotton to Whitney, and soon thereafter he built a machine that could effectively and efficiently remove the seeds from cotton plants. The invention, called the cotton gin ("gin" was derived from "engine"), worked something like a strainer or sieve: Cotton was run through a wooden drum embedded with a series of hooks that caught the fibers and dragged them through a mesh. The mesh was too fine to let the seeds through but the hooks pulled the cotton fibers through with ease. Smaller gins could be cranked by hand; larger ones could be powered by a horse and, later, by a steam engine. Whitney's hand-cranked machine could remove the seeds from 50 pounds of cotton in a single day. Whitney wrote to his father: "One man and a horse will do more than fifty men with the old machines...Tis generally said by those who know anything about it, that I shall make a Fortune by it."

Whitney received a patent for his invention in 1794; he and Miller then formed a cotton gin manufacturing company. The two entrepreneurs planned to build cotton gins and install them on plantations throughout the South, taking as payment a portion of all the cotton produced by each plantation. While farmers were delighted with the idea of a machine that could boost cotton production so dramatically, they had no intention of sharing a significant percentage of their profits with Whitney and Miller. Instead, the design for the cotton gin was pirated and plantation owners constructed their own machines-many of them an improvement over Whitney's original model.

Cotton Gin's Impact on Slavery And The American Economy

The patent laws of the time had loopholes that made it difficult for Whitney to protect his rights as an inventor. Even though the laws were changed a few years later, Whitney's patent expired before he ever realized much profit. Still, the cotton gin had transformed the American economy. For the South, it meant that cotton could be produced plentifully and cheaply for domestic use and for export, and by the mid-19th century, cotton was America's leading export. For the North, especially New England, cotton's rise meant a steady supply of raw materials for its textile mills.

One inadvertent result of the cotton gin's success, however, was that it helped strengthen slavery in the South. Although the cotton gin made cotton processing less labor-intensive, it helped planters earn greater profits, prompting them to grow larger crops, which in turn required more people. Because slavery was the cheapest form of labor, cotton farmers simply acquired more slaves.

Interchangeable Parts

Patent-law issues prevented Whitney from ever significantly profiting from the cotton gin; however, in 1798, he secured a contract from the U.S. government to produce 10,000 muskets in two years, an amount that had never been manufactured in such a short period. Whitney promoted the idea of interchangeable parts: standardized, identical parts that would make for faster assembly as well as easier repair of various objects and machines. At the time, guns were typically built individually by skilled craftsmen, so that each finished device was unique. Although it ultimately took Whitney some 10 years, instead of two, to fulfill his contract, he was credited with playing a pioneering role in the development of the American system of mass-production.

In 1817, Whitney, then in his early 50s, married Henrietta Edwards, with whom he would have four children. He died on January 8, 1825, at age 59.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Whitney Learns About Cotton A More Efficient Way Cotton Gin's Impact on Slavery And The American Economy Interchangeable Parts In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Interpretation of Slave Quarter, Carter's Grove Plantation, Williamsburg

Slave life varied greatly depending on many factors.

Life on the fields meant working sunup to sundown six days a week and having food sometimes not suitable for an animal to eat. Plantation slaves lived in small shacks with a dirt floor and little or no furniture. Life on large plantations with a cruel overseer was oftentimes the worst. However, work for a small farm owner who was not doing well could mean not being fed.

The stories about cruel overseers were certainly true in some cases. The overseer was paid to get the most work out of the slaves; therefore, overseers often resorted to whatever means was necessary. Sometimes the slaves would drive the overseer off the plantation in desperation. When slaves complained that they were being unfairly treated, slaveholders would most often be very protective of their "property" and would release the overseer.

Slaves who worked inside the plantation homes often had better living and working conditions than slaves who worked in the fields.

In some cases, a driver was used rather than an overseer. The difference between the overseer and the driver was simple: drivers were slaves themselves. A driver might be convinced by a master to manage the slaves for better privileges. Drivers were usually hated by the rest of the slaves. These feelings often led to violence.

Large plantations often required some slaves to work in the plantation home. These slaves enjoyed far better circumstances. Domestic slaves lived in better quarters and received better food. They sometimes were able to travel with the owner's family. In many cases, a class system developed within the slave community. Domestic slaves did not often associate themselves with plantation slaves. They often aspired to arrange courtships for their children with other domestic slaves.

This Slave Code booklet for Washington D.C., was published in 1862, only one month before Lincoln abolished slavery in the nation's capitol. More lenient than most states' slave codes, the District's code allowed slaves to hire themselves out and live apart from their masters.

As the Peculiar Institution spread across the South, many states passed "slave codes," which outlined the rights of slaves and the acceptable treatment and rules regarding slaves. Slave codes varied from state to state, but there were many common threads. One could not do business with a slave without the prior consent of the owner. Slaves could be awarded as prizes in raffles, wagered in gambling, offered as security for loans, and transferred as gifts from one person to another.

A slave was not permitted to keep a gun. If caught carrying a gun, the slave received 39 lashes and forfeited the gun. Blacks were held incompetent as witnesses in legal cases involving whites. The education of slaves was prohibited. Anyone operating a school or teaching reading and writing to any African-American in Missouri could be punished by a fine of not less than $500 and up to six months in jail. Slaves could not assemble without a white person present. Marriages between slaves were not considered legally binding. Therefore, owners were free to split up families through sale.

Any slave found guilty of arson, rape of a white woman, or conspiracy to rebel was put to death. However, since the slave woman was chattel, a white man who raped her was guilty only of a trespass on the master's property. Rape was common on the plantation, and very few cases were ever reported.

Virginia's Slave Code of 1705
Virginia's slave code of 1705 was designed to settle the questions about the status of non-Christian servants... they were all made slaves. The law served as a model for codes in other colonies. This webpage from PBS provides a brief overview and links to related topics.

Report broken link

Antebellum Slavery
What happens when an ardent abolitionist marries a member of one of the largest slaveholders in the South? A disastrous marriage - and a moving epic of slavery in the South. Read excerpts from the account, which includes physical and mental abuse as well as the story of the largest sale of human beings in the history of the United States. Links to other moving stories surrounding antebellum (before the war) slavery abound as well.

Report broken link

Virginia's slave codes
If any slave resist his master ... correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction ... the master shall be free of all punishment ... as if such accident never happened. Read more about the 1705 slave code which served as a model for future laws.

Report broken link

Few slaves wrote letters or diaries because they weren't allowed to read or write, but some broke the rules and wrote down their stories.
Learn More...

Report broken link

If you like our content, please share it on social media!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Slave Life and Slave Codes [ushistory.org]

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.ushistory.org/us/27b.asp

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The European Wave - America's Immigration History | Part 3

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3nKgKswlSA

# data[].attributes.body
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/1839-meth.jpg/280px-1839-meth.jpg

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Please enable JavaScript

This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The service requires full JavaScript support in order to view the website.

Please enable JavaScript on your browser and try again.

Reference ID: dc1c6785d684e527047a6231893dd1e2

This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks.

This process is automatic, you will be redirected to the requested URL once the validation process is complete.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/the-abolitionist-movement.html

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Page not found | National Women’s History Museum

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.womenshistory.org/resources/general/woman-suffrage-movement

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.ushistory.org/us/images/00080486.gif

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The History Place - Abraham Lincoln: Kansas-Nebraska Act

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/kansas.htm

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Lincoln-Douglas debates, series of seven debates between the Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign, largely concerning the issue of slavery extension into the territories.

The slavery extension question had seemingly been settled by the Missouri Compromise nearly 40 years earlier. The Mexican War, however, had added new territories, and the issue flared up again in the 1840s. The Compromise of 1850 provided a temporary respite from sectional strife, but the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854-a measure Douglas sponsored-brought the slavery extension issue to the fore once again. Douglas's bill in effect repealed the Missouri Compromise by lifting the ban against slavery in territories north of the 36°30′ latitude. In place of the ban, Douglas offered popular sovereignty, the doctrine that the actual settlers in the territories and not Congress should decide the fate of slavery in their midst.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act spurred the creation of the Republican Party, formed largely to keep slavery out of the western territories. Both Douglas's doctrine of popular sovereignty and the Republican stand on free soil were seemingly invalidated by the Dred Scott decision of 1857, in which the Supreme Court said that neither Congress nor the territorial legislature could exclude slavery from a territory.

When Lincoln and Douglas debated the slavery extension issue in 1858, therefore, they were addressing the problem that had divided the nation into two hostile camps and that threatened the continued existence of the Union. Their contest, as a consequence, had repercussions far beyond determining who would win the senatorial seat at stake.

When Lincoln received the Republican nomination to run against Douglas, he said in his acceptance speech that "A house divided against itself cannot stand" and that "this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." Douglas thereupon attacked Lincoln as a radical, threatening the continued stability of the Union. Lincoln then challenged Douglas to a series of debates, and the two eventually agreed to hold joint encounters in seven Illinois congressional districts.

The debates, each three hours long, were convened in Ottawa (August 21), Freeport (August 27), Jonesboro (September 15), Charleston (September 18), Galesburg (October 7), Quincy (October 13), and Alton (October 15). Douglas repeatedly tried to brand Lincoln as a dangerous radical who advocated racial equality and disruption of the Union. Lincoln emphasized the moral iniquity of slavery and attacked popular sovereignty for the bloody results it had produced in Kansas.

At Freeport Lincoln challenged Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision. Douglas replied that settlers could circumvent the decision by not establishing the local police regulations-i.e., a slave code-that protected a master's property. Without such protection, no one would bring slaves into a territory. This became known as the " Freeport Doctrine."

Douglas's position, while acceptable to many Northern Democrats, angered the South and led to the division of the last remaining national political institution, the Democratic Party. Although he retained his seat in the Senate, narrowly defeating Lincoln when the state legislature (which then elected U.S. senators) voted 54 to 46 in his favour, Douglas's stature as a national leader of the Democratic Party was gravely diminished. Lincoln, on the other hand, lost the election but won acclaim as an eloquent spokesman for the Republican cause.

In 1860 the Lincoln-Douglas debates were printed as a book and used as an important campaign document in the presidential contest that year, which once again pitted Republican Lincoln against Democrat Douglas. This time, however, Douglas was running as the candidate of a divided party and finished a distant second in the popular vote to the triumphant Lincoln.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lincoln-Douglas debates | Summary, Dates, Significance, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lincoln-Douglas debates, series of seven debates between the Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign, largely concerning the issue of slavery extension into the territories. The slavery extension question had seemingly been settled by the Missouri Compromise nearly 40 years earlier.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.britannica.com/event/Lincoln-Douglas-debates

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Election of 1860 & the Road to Disunion: Crash Course US History #18

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roNmeOOJCDY

# data[].attributes.body
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Bombardment_of_Fort_Sumter.jpg/300px-Bombardment_of_Fort_Sumter.jpg

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.

The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC. With the text covering five pages the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off.

The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.

The Emancipation Proclamation

Select Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Enlarge The Emancipation Proclamation (page 1) Record Group 11 General Records of the United States View in National Archives Catalog Español President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn about Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross who led the organization for 23 years.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.redcross.org/about-us/who-we-are/history/clara-barton.html

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Battle of Gettysburg: The Civil War in Four Minutes