front cover of The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638
The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638
A Documentary History
David D. Hall, ed.
Duke University Press, 1990
The Antinomian controversy—a seventeenth-century theological crisis concerning salvation—was the first great intellectual crisis in the settlement of New England. Transcending the theological questions from which it arose, this symbolic controversy became a conflict between power and freedom of conscience. David D. Hall’s thorough documentary history of this episode sheds important light on religion, society, and gender in early American history.
This new edition of the 1968 volume, published now for the first time in paperback, includes an expanding bibliography and a new preface, treating in more detail the prime figures of Anne Hutchinson and her chief clerical supporter, John Cotton. Among the documents gathered here are transcripts of Anne Hutchinson’s trial, several of Cotton’s writings defending the Antinomian position, and John Winthrop’s account of the controversy. Hall’s increased focus on Hutchinson reveals the harshness and excesses with which the New England ministry tried to discredit her and reaffirms her place of prime importance in the history of American women.
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Beyond Rosie
A Documentary History of Women and World War II
Julia Brock
University of Arkansas Press, 2015
More so than any war in history, World War II was a woman’s war. Women, motivated by patriotism, the opportunity for new experiences, and the desire to serve, participated widely in the global conflict. Within the Allied countries, women of all ages proved to be invaluable in the fight for victory. Rosie the Riveter became the most enduring image of women’s involvement in World War II. What Rosie represented, however, is only a small portion of a complex story. As wartime production workers, enlistees in auxiliary military units, members of voluntary organizations or resistance groups, wives and mothers on the home front, journalists, and USO performers, American women found ways to challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes.

Beyond Rosie offers readers an opportunity to see the numerous contributions they made to the fight against the Axis powers and how American women’s roles changed during the war. The primary documents (newspapers, propaganda posters, cartoons, excerpts from oral histories and memoirs, speeches, photographs, and editorials) collected here represent cultural, political, economic, and social perspectives on the diverse roles women played during World War II.
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Black Communists Speak on Scottsboro
A Documentary History
edited by Walter T. Howard
Temple University Press, 2007
On March 25, 1931, Alabama police detained nine young African AMerican men at a railroad stop not far from Scottsboro.  In the process, they encountered two white women --  who promptly accused the young men of raping them.  Soon after, all-white juries found the nine youths guilty and eight of them were sentenced to death.  Although many Americans were outraged by the injustices of the case, the loudest voices raised in protest were those of members of the American Communist Party.

Many white Communists spoke out, but black Communists took the lead in organizing public protests and legal responses.  As this surprising book makes clear, they were acting at the direction of the Communist International  (Comintern), which had directed them to address the "Negro problem."  Now, with the opening of formerly inaccessible Communist party archives, this collection of primary documents reveals the little-known but major roles played by black Communists in the case of "the Scottsboro Boys."
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Civil Rights and African Americans
A Documentary History
Albert Blaustein and Robert L. Zangrando
Northwestern University Press, 1991
This volume brings together for the first time all the important primary documents in the history of civil rights in the United States. Beginning in 1619, it contains original texts on slavery, abolition, the Civil War, Reconstruction, desegregation, the NAACP, and the black power movement. A thought-provoking preface provides an overview of the developments in civil rights law and public policy to the present day.

Many of the documents included were previously scattered in hard-to-find sources, not readily available to instructors and students. Civil Rights and African Americans is the first collection of all the seminal texts of the civil rights struggle, an invaluable scholarly reference and riveting reading for anyone interested in the history of racial conflict in the United States.
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front cover of Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College
Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College
A Documentary History
Roland M. Baumann
Ohio University Press, 2010

In 1835 Oberlin became the first institute of higher education to make a cause of racial egalitarianism when it decided to educate students “irrespective of color.” Yet the visionary college’s implementation of this admissions policy was uneven. In Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College: A Documentary History, Roland M. Baumann presents a comprehensive documentary history of the education of African American students at Oberlin College.

Following the Reconstruction era, Oberlin College mirrored the rest of society as it reduced its commitment to black students by treating them as less than equals of their white counterparts. By the middle of the twentieth century, black and white student activists partially reclaimed the Oberlin legacy by refusing to be defined by race. Generations of Oberlin students, plus a minority of faculty and staff, rekindled the college’s commitment to racial equality by 1970. In time, black separatism in its many forms replaced the integrationist ethic on campus as African Americans sought to chart their own destiny and advance curricular change.

Oberlin’s is not a story of unbroken progress, but rather of irony, of contradictions and integrity, of myth and reality, and of imperfections. Baumann takes readers directly to the original sources by including thirty complete documents from the Oberlin College Archives. This richly illustrated volume is an important contribution to the college’s 175th anniversary celebration of its distinguished history, for it convincinglydocuments how Oberlin wrestled over the meaning of race and the destiny of black people in American society.

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The Council of Fifty
A Documentary History
Jedediah S. Rogers
Signature Books, 2014
Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith had both millennial and temporal aspirations for the organization he called the Council of Fifty, named after the number of men who were intended to comprise it. Organized a few months before Smith’s death in June 1844, it continued under Brigham Young as a secret shadow government until 1851. Minutes from the earliest meetings are closed to researchers but contemporary accounts speak of a deliberative body preparing for Christ’s imminent reign. It also helped to sponsor Smith’s U.S. presidential bid and oversaw the exodus to present-day Utah.

One member downplayed the significance of this secret legislative body in 1849 as “nothing but a debating School.” On the contrary, a typical meeting included decisions regarding irrigation, fencing, and adobe housing, after which the group sang a song written by Parley P. Pratt: “Come ye sons of doubt and wonder; Indian, Moslem, Greek or Jew; … Be to all a friend and brother; Peace on Earth, good will to men.” Two weeks later, the council called for “blood to flow” to enforce its laws.

As the nineteenth century waned and the LDS Church moved toward the American mainstream, ending its emphasis on the imminent End of Days, there was no longer a need for a Church-managed municipal group destined to become the millennial world government. The council became irrelevant but survives today as a historical artifact available in fragmented documentary pieces which are presented here for the first time. 
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Cultures In Conflict
A Documentary History of the Mormon War in Illinois
John Hallwas and Roger Launius
Utah State University Press, 1999
Cultures in Conflict offers students of history an invaluable source of documents regarding the history of the Mormon presence in Illinois. Few local histories are so academically sound. —Illinois Times Hallwas and Launius have compiled and written the most balanced and thorough account yet of the events and circumstances that led to the forced Mormon exodus from Nauvoo following the mini civil war that erupted in Illinois during the 1849s
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A Documentary History of Arkansas
C. Fred Williams
University of Arkansas Press, 2013
A Documentary History of Arkansas provides a comprehensive look at Arkansas history from the state's earliest events to the present. Here are newspaper articles, government bulletins, legislative acts, broadsides, letters, and speeches that, taken collectively, give a firsthand glimpse at how the twenty-fifth state's history was made. Enhanced by additional documents and brought up to date since its original publication in 1984, this new edition is the standard source for essential primary documents illustrating the state's political, social, economic, educational, and environmental history.
[more]

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A Documentary History of Arkansas
C. Fred Williams
University of Arkansas Press
This collection of documents represents a behind-the-scenes look at Arkansas from earliest times to 1984. Here are newspaper articles, government bulletins, legislative acts, broadsides, letters, and speeches. Collectively, they give a firsthand glimpse at how the twenty-fifth state’s history was made. Consideration is given to social and cultural aspects of Arkansas history, with special attention focused on the role played by women and blacks.
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front cover of A Documentary History of Communism and the World
A Documentary History of Communism and the World
From Revolution to Collapse
Edited by Robert V. Daniels
Brandeis University Press, 1994
In the ten years since the last edition of this book, the world has undergone tremendous and, seemingly irrevocable change. With the virtual demise of the international communist movement and the increasing isolation of the remaining old-style regimes, communism has become history. Robert V. Daniels has updated his definitive work to chronicle the last years of international communism. It contains a new chapter with 22 documents pertaining to such key ideas and events as perestroika, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the Tiananmen Massacre. Together with his Documentary History of Communism in Russia, this book provides a complete documentary history of the communist movement from Lenin and world revolution to Gorbachev and the end of world communism.
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front cover of A Documentary History of Communism in Russia
A Documentary History of Communism in Russia
From Lenin to Gorbachev
Edited by Robert V. Daniels
University Press of New England, 2001
An extensive revision of the valued but unobtainable 1960 edition. Nearly 300 key documents are now readily available in translation.
[more]

front cover of A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era
A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era
Judicial Decisions, 1867–1896
Thomas C. Mackey
University of Tennessee Press, 2012
A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era is the first comprehensive collection
of public policy actions, political speeches, and judicial decisions related to the American
Civil War. Collectively, the four volumes in this series give scholars, teachers, and students
easy access to the full texts of the most important, fundamental documents as well as hardto-
find, rarely published primary sources on this critical period in U.S. history.

The first two volumes of the series, Legislative Achievements and Political Arguments,
were released last year. The final installment, Judicial Decisions, is divided into two volumes.
The first volume, spanning the years 1857 to 1866, was released last year. This second
volume of Judicial Decisions covers the years 1867 to 1896. Included here are some of
the classic judicial decisions of this time such as the 1869 decision in Texas v. White and
the first judicial interpretation of the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment, the 1873 Slaughter-
House Cases
. Other decisions are well known to specialists but deserve wider readership
and discussion, such as the 1867 state and 1878 federal cases that upheld the separation of
the races in public accommodations (and thus constituted the common law of common
commerce) long before the more notorious 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson (also included).
These judicial voices constitute a lasting and often overlooked aspect of the age of Abraham
Lincoln. Mackey’s headnotes and introductory essays situate cases within their historical
context and trace their lasting significance. In contrast to decisions handed down
during the war, these judicial decisions lasted well past their immediate political and legal
moment and deserve continued scholarship and scrutiny.

This document collection presents the raw “stuff” of the Civil War era so that students,
scholars, and interested readers can measure and gauge how that generation met Lincoln’s
challenge to “think anew, and act anew.” A Documentary History of the American Civil
War Era
is an essential acquisition for academic and public libraries in addition to being a
valuable resource for courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, legal history, political
history, and nineteenth-century American history.
[more]

front cover of A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era
A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era
Volume 1, Legislative Achievements
Thomas C. Mackey
University of Tennessee Press, 2012
A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era is the first comprehensive collection of public policy actions, political speeches, and judicial decisions related to the American Civil War. This three-volume set gives scholars, teachers, and students easy access to the full texts of the most important, fundamental documents as well as hard-to-find, rarely published primary sources on this critical period in U.S. history.
    The first volume of the series, Legislative Achievements, contains legislation passed in response to the turmoil seizing the country on the brink of, during, and in the wake of the Civil War. Forthcoming are volume 2, Political Arguments, which contains voices of politicians, political party platforms, and administrative speeches, and volume 3, Judicial Decisions, which provides judicial opinions and decisions as the Civil War raged in the courtrooms as well as on the battlefields.
    Organized chronologically, each of the selections is preceded by an introductory headnote that explains the document’s historical significance and traces its lasting impact. These headnotes provide insight into not only law and public policy but also the broad sweep of issues that engaged Civil War–era America.
    Legislative Achievements features some of the most momentous and enduring public policy documents from the time, beginning with the controversial September 15, 1850, Fugitive Slave Act and concluding with the June 18, 1878, Posse Comitatus Act. Both military and nonmilitary legislation constitute this part, including the April 19, 1861, proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln declaring a naval blockade on Southern ports and Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s proclamation authorizing blockade runners to attack Northern shipping, both issued on the same day. Nonmilitary legislation includes statutes affecting the postwar period, such as the 1862 Homestead Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and all four of the Reconstruction Acts. Also in this section are the three constitutional amendments, the Habeas Corpus Acts of 1863 and 1867, the Freedman’s Bureau Acts of 1865 and 1866, and the 1867 Tenure of Office Act together with President Andrew Johnson’s message vetoing the Act. 
    A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era is an essential acquisition for academic and public libraries in addition to being a valuable resource for students of the Civil War and Reconstruction, legal history, public policy, and nineteenth-century American history.

THOMAS C. MACKEY is a professor of history at the University of Louisville and adjunct Professor of Law at Brandeis School of Law. He is the author of Pornography on Trial (2002)  and Pursuing Johns (2005).


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front cover of A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era
A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era
Volume 2, Political Arguments
Thomas C. Mackey
University of Tennessee Press, 2013
     A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era is the first comprehensive collection of public policy actions, political speeches, and judicial decisions related to the American Civil War. This three-volume set gives scholars and students easy access to the full texts of both the most important, fundamental documents as well as hard-to-find, rarely published primary sources on this critical period in U.S. history.
Volume 2 in the series, Political Arguments, presents the words of politicians, political party platforms, and administrative speeches. It is divided into two sections. The first, Voices of the Politicians and Political Parties, comprises the platforms of the major (and some minor) parties from1856 to 1876. Also included are such pieces as Robert E. Lee’s letter of resignation from the U.S. Army, a few key speeches by that rising politician from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, and a letter on the “American Question” written by a European observer, Karl Marx. Other items include examples of the 1860–1861 state ordinances of secession and addresses on emancipation and Reconstruction by Jefferson Davis and by the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Thaddeus Stevens. 
     Section two, Voices of the Administrations, contains records from the presidencies of James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Rutherford B. Hayes as well as a message from Confederate President Jefferson Davis telling his congress that the Southern cause was “just and holy.” Classic documents such as Lincoln’s announcement of forthcoming emancipation and the Emancipation Proclamation are here, as are lesser-known but important documents such as Francis Lieber’s 1863 revised law code for war, General Order 100, and Attorney General James Speed’s 1865 opinion supporting the Johnson administration’s decision to try the Lincoln murder conspirators by special military commission and not in the civilian courts.
     Each of the selections in <i>Political Arguments<i> is preceded by editor Thomas Mackey’s introductory headnotes that explain the document’s historical significance and trace its lasting impact. These commentaries provide insight into not just law and public policy but also the broad sweep of issues important to Civil War– era Americans.
     A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era is an essential acquisition for academic and public libraries in addition to being a valuable resource for courses on the War and Reconstruction, legal history, political history, and nineteenth- century American history.


[more]

front cover of A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era
A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era
Volume 3, Judicial Decisions, 1857-1866
Thomas C. Mackey
University of Tennessee Press, 2014
A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era is the first comprehensive collection of public policy actions, political speeches, and judicial decisions related to the American Civil War. Collectively, the four volumes in this series give scholars, teachers, and students easy access to the full texts of the most important, fundamental documents as well as hard-to-find, rarely published primary sources on this critical period in U.S. history.
            The first two volumes of the series, Legislative Achievements and Political Arguments, were released last year. The final installments, Judicial Decisions, is split into two volumes, with this one, volume 3, spanning from 1857 to 1866. It contains some of the classic judicial decisions of the time such as the 1857 decision in Dred Scott and the 1861 Ex parte Merryman decision. Other decisions are well known to specialists but deserve wider readership and discussion, such as the October 1859 Jefferson County, Virginia, indictment of John Brown and the decision in the 1864 case of political and seditious activity in Ex parte Vallandigham. These judicial voices constitute a lasting and often overlooked aspect of the age of Abraham Lincoln. Mackey’s headnotes and introductory essays situate cases within their historical context and trace their lasting significance. In contrast to the war, these judicial decisions lasted well past their immediate political and legal moment and deserve continued scholarship and scrutiny.
            This document collection presents the raw “stuff” of the Civil War era so that students, scholars, and interested readers can measure and gauge how that generation met Lincoln’s challenge to “think anew, and act anew.” A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era is an essential acquisition for academic and public libraries in addition to being a valuable resource for courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, legal history, political history, and nineteenth-century American history.

Thomas C. Mackey is a professor of history at the University of Louisville and adjunct Professor of Law at Brandeis School of Law. He is the author of Pornography on Trial and Pursuing Johns.

[more]

front cover of The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 11
The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 11
Ratification of the Constitution by the States, Maryland, No. 1
John P. Kaminski
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2015
This is the first of two volumes documenting Maryland’s public and private debates about the Constitution. This documentary series is a research tool of remarkable power, an unrivaled reference work for historical and legal scholars, librarians, and students of the Constitution.
[more]

front cover of The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 12
The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 12
Ratification of the Constitution by the States, Maryland, No. 1
John P. Kaminski
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2015
This is the first of two volumes documenting Maryland’s public and private debates about the Constitution. This documentary series is a research tool of remarkable power, an unrivaled reference work for historical and legal scholars, librarians, and students of the Constitution.
[more]

front cover of Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 23
Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 23
Ratification of the Constitution by the States: New York, No. 5
Edited by John P. Kaminski and Gaspare J. Saladino; Senior Associate Editor: Richard Leffler; Associate Editor: Charles H. Schoenleber; Assistant Editor: Margaret A. Hogan
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2009
This is the fifth and final volume documenting New York State's ratification of the Constitution. This particular volume includes the complete record of the state ratifying convention. In addition to the official journal and the proceedings and debates of the convention, the volume contains many documents never before published, including the voluminous notes of the secretary of the convention and several of the convention delegates, the correspondence of delegates and spectators at the convention, and the rich newspaper commentaries describing the day-by-day events in the convention. For the first time, historians will be able to see how the New York convention - dominated by a two-thirds majority of Antifederalists - came to adopt the Constitution. This documentary series is a research tool of remarkable power, an unrivaled work for historical and legal scholars, librarians, and students of the Constitution.
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front cover of Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 24
Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 24
Ratification of the Constitution by the States: Rhode Island, No. 1
Kaminski
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2011

This is the first of three volumes documenting Rhode Island's public and private debates about the Constitution. This documentary series is a research tool of remarkable power, an unrivaled reference work for historical and legal scholars, librarians, and students of the Constitution. The volumes are encyclopedic, consisting of manuscript and printed documents-contemporary newspapers, broadsides, and pamphlets-compiled from hundreds  of sources, copiously annotated, thoroughly indexed, and often accompanied  by microfiche supplements.  Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen has noted that The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution series "will be of enduring value centuries hence" and described it as "one of the most interesting documentary publications we have ever had."  The American Bar Association Journal has stated, "Each new volume now fills another vital part of the mosaic of national history."

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front cover of The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 25
The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, Volume 25
Ratification of the Constitution by the States: Rhode Island, No. 2
John P. Kaminski
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2012
This is the second of three volumes documenting Rhode Island's public and private debates about the Constitution. This documentary series is a research tool of remarkable power, an unrivaled reference work for historical and legal scholars, librarians, and students of the Constitution. The volumes are encyclopedic, consisting of manuscript and printed documents-contemporary newspapers, broadsides, and pamphlets-compiled from hundreds  of sources, copiously annotated, thoroughly indexed, and often accompanied  by microfiche supplements.
 Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen has noted that The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution series "will be of enduring value centuries hence" and described it as "one of the most interesting documentary publications we have ever had."  The American Bar Association Journal has stated, "Each new volume now fills another vital part of the mosaic of national history."
[more]

front cover of The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution Volume 26
The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution Volume 26
Ratification of the Constitution by the States, Rhode Island, No. 3
John P. Kaminski
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2013
This is the third and final volume documenting Rhode Island's public and private debates about the Constitution. This documentary series is a research tool of remarkable power, an unrivaled reference work for historical and legal scholars, librarians, and students of the Constitution. The volumes are encyclopedic, consisting of manuscript and printed documents-contemporary newspapers, broadsides, and pamphlets-compiled from hundreds  of sources, copiously annotated, thoroughly indexed, and often accompanied  by microfiche supplements.
 Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen has noted that The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution series "will be of enduring value centuries hence" and described it as "one of the most interesting documentary publications we have ever had."  The American Bar Association Journal has stated, "Each new volume now fills another vital part of the mosaic of national history."
[more]

front cover of Emily Dickinson’s Reception in the 1890s
Emily Dickinson’s Reception in the 1890s
A Documentary History
Willis J. Buckingham
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986

This work reprint, annotates, and indexes virtually all mention of Emily Dickinson in the first decade of her publication, tripling the known references to the poet during the nineties. Much of this material, drawn from scrapbooks of clippings, rare journals, and crumbling newspapers, was on the verge of extinction.


Modern audiences will be struck by the impact of Dickinson’s poetry on her first readers. We learn much about the taste of the period and the relationship between publishers, reviewers, and the reading public. It demonstrates that Dickinson enjoyed a wider popular reception than had been realized: readers were astonished by her creative brilliance.

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Emma Goldman
A Documentary History of the American Years, Volume 1: Made for America, 1890-1901
Emma Goldman. Edited by Candace Falk; Barry Pateman, Assoc Ed; Jessica Moran, A
University of Illinois Press, 2007

Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years reconstructs the life of Emma Goldman through significant texts and documents. These volumes collect personal letters, lecture notes, newspaper articles, court transcripts, government surveillance reports, and numerous other documents, many of which appear here in English for the first time. Supplemented with thorough annotations, multiple appendixes, and detailed chronologies, the texts bring to life the memory of this singular, pivotal figure in American and European radical history.

Volume 1: Made for America, 1890-1901 introduces readers to the young Emma Goldman as she begins her association with the international anarchist movement and especially with the German, Jewish, and Italian immigrant radicals in New York City. From early on, Goldman's movement through political and intellectual circles is marked by violence, from the attempted murder of industrialist Henry Clay Frick by Goldman's lover, Alexander Berkman, to the assassination of President William McKinley, in which Goldman was falsely implicated. The documents surrounding these events illuminate Goldman's struggle to balance anarchism's positive gains and its destructive costs. This volume introduces many of the themes that would pervade much of Goldman's later writings and speeches: the untold possibilities of anarchism; the transformative power of literature; the interplay of human relationships; and the importance of free speech, education, labor, women's freedom, and radical social reform.

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Emma Goldman, Vol. 2
A Documentary History of the American Years, Volume 2: Making Speech Free, 1902-1909
Emma Goldman. Edited by Candace Falk; Barry Pateman, Assoc Ed; Jessica Moran, As
University of Illinois Press, 2007

Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years reconstructs the life of Emma Goldman through significant texts and documents. These volumes collect personal letters, lecture notes, newspaper articles, court transcripts, government surveillance reports, and numerous other documents, many of which appear here in English for the first time. Supplemented with thorough annotations, multiple appendixes, and detailed chronologies, the texts bring to life the memory of this singular, pivotal figure in American and European radical history.

Volume 2: Making Speech Free, 1902-1909 extends many of the themes introduced in the previous volume, including Goldman's evolving attitudes toward political violence and social reform, intensified now by documentary accounts of the fomenting revolution in Russia and the legal opposition toward anarchism and labor organizing in the United States. Always an impassioned defender of free expression, Goldman's launch of her magazine Mother Earth in 1906 signaled a desire to bring radical thought into wider circulation, and its pages brought together modern literary and cultural ideas with a radical social agenda, quickly becoming a platform for her feminist critique, among her many other challenges to the status quo. With abundant examples from her writings and speeches, this volume details Goldman's emergence as one of American history's most fiercely outspoken opponents of hypocrisy and pretension in politics and public life.

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The Great Water
A Documentary History of Michigan
Matthew R Thick
Michigan State University Press, 2018
Michigan’s location among the Great Lakes has positioned it at the crossroads of many worlds. Its first hunters arrived ten thousand years ago, its first farmers arrived about six thousand years after that, and three hundred years ago the French expanded into the territory. This book is a small sample of the words of Michigan’s people—a collection of stories, letters, diary entries, news reports, and other documents—that give personal insights into important aspects of Michigan’s history. Designed to provoke thought and discussion about Michigan’s past, the documents in this reader are expressions of past ideas, markers of change, and windows into the lives of the people who lived during well-known events in Michigan history.
[more]

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Jews in Old Rus’
A Documentary History
Alexander Kulik
Harvard University Press

For the first time, this collection makes available a selection of documents on the history of Jews in old Rus’ that provide unique insight into Slavic–Jewish relations, offering both the original texts in Latin, Hebrew, Church Slavonic, and Arabic, and their English translations.

Adding nuance to our understanding of the difficult relations Rus’ had with Khazaria, Jews in Old Rus’ also realigns the position of East European Jews within the larger diaspora of European Jews. This collection meticulously presents legal rulings, religious and liturgical customs, practices regarding food and garments, linguistic acculturation, and the political loyalties of Jews in old Rus’.

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Jim Crow America
A Documentary History
Catherine M. Lewis
University of Arkansas Press, 2009
The term “Jim Crow” has had multiple meanings and a dark and complex past. It was first used in the early nineteenth century. After the Civil War it referred to the legal, customary, and often extralegal system that segregated and isolated African Americans from mainstream American life. In response to the increasing loss of their rights of citizenship and the rising tide of violence, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in 1909. The federal government eventually took an active role in dismantling Jim Crow toward the end of the Depression. But it wasn’t until the Lyndon Johnson years and all the work that led up to them that the end of Jim Crow finally came to pass. This unique book provides readers with a wealth of primary source materials from 1828 to 1980 that reveal how the Jim Crow era affects how historians practice their craft. The book is chronologically organized into five sections, each of which focuses on a different historical period in the story of Jim Crow: inventing, building, living, resisting, and dismantling. Many of the fifty-six documents and eighteen images and cartoons, many of which have not been published before, reveal something significant about this subject or offer an unconventional or unexpected perspective on this era. Some of the historical figures whose words are included are Abraham Lincoln, Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington, Richard Wright, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Adam Clayton Powell, and Marian Anderson. The book also has an annotated bibliography, a list of key players, a timeline, and key topics for consideration.
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front cover of Joseph Smith's Quorum of the Anointed, 1842-1845
Joseph Smith's Quorum of the Anointed, 1842-1845
A Documentary History
Devery S. Anderson
Signature Books, 2005
 “Joseph Smith’s Quorum of the Anointed” The first Latter-day Saint temple ceremonies were performed, not in Kirtland, Ohio, but on the second floor of Joseph Smith’s Red Brick Store in Nauvoo, Illinois. For nearly four years beginning in 1842, the prophet’s modest mercantile functioned as the de facto temple?the site of the first washings, anointings, endowments, and sealings. In contrast, the grand edifice known as the Nauvoo Temple was in operation for only two months before the Saints left Illinois for the West.

Preparations to initiate the first members of Joseph Smith’s Quorum of the Anointed, or Holy Order, as it was also known, were made on May 3, 1842. The walls of the second level of the Red Brick Store were painted with garden-themed murals, the rooms fitted with carpets, potted plants, and a veil hung from the ceiling. All the while, the ground level continued to operate as Joseph Smith’s general mercantile.

In this companion volume to The Nauvoo Endowment Companies and The Development of LDS Temple Worship, 1846-2000: A Documentary History, the editors have assembled all available primary references to the Anointed Quorum and its regular gatherings, both in the Red Brick Store and elsewhere (women were initially washed and anointed in Emma Smith’s bedroom and then escorted to the store) prior to the opening of the Nauvoo Temple. The sources include excerpts from the diaries of William Clayton, Joseph Fielding, Zina D. H. Jacobs, Heber C. Kimball, John Taylor, Willard Richards, George A. Smith, Joseph Smith, Wilford Woodruff, and Brigham Young; autobiographies and reminiscences by Joseph C. Kingsbury, George Miller, and Mercy Fielding Thompson; letters from Vilate Kimball and Lucius N. Scoville; the Manuscript History of Brigham Young; General Record of the Seventies, Book B; Bathsheba W. Smith’s unedited testimony from the 1892 Temple Lot Case; other manuscripts such as the Historian’s Office Journal and “Meetings of Anointed Quorum”; and published records such as the History of the Church, Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate and Times and Seasons.
from the jacket flap:

Despite the secrecy imposed upon members of the Anointed Quorum, word of the gatherings above Joseph Smith’s store soon spread. In one instance, housekeeper Maria Jane Johnston helped prepare the special ceremonial clothing for John Smith to wear at the group’s meetings. In another, Ebenezer Robinson innocently opened the upstairs door at the mercantile and was startled to see church apostle John Taylor in a long white robe and “turban,” carrying a sword. Only Nauvoo’s elite were invited to participate in these new ceremonies?never more than ninety individuals and even fewer during Joseph Smith’s lifetime?and, as the editors of the current volume write, only those who had been introduced to the prophet’s doctrine of plural marriage.

An unusual aspect of the Quorum of the Anointed, compared to the membership in the Nauvoo Masonic Lodge, was that women were initiated as regular members. However, the women effectively disappear after Brigham Young’s assumption of leadership in 1844, following Joseph Smith’s death, and remain virtually absent until the Nauvoo Temple is completed nearly a year and a half later. Readers will also note some of the differences in protocol between what Smith instigated and what Young eventually settled on, for instance that members could be washed and anointed repeatedly but were “endowed” only once. There were not yet proxy ordinances.

Among Latter-day Saints today, temple worship is a sensitive topic; but the editors of this volume do not reveal anything that would be considered invasive or indelicate. In fact, the accounts, which come almost exclusively from the early LDS leadership itself, manifest discretion about what to report.

Never before have these primary, authoritative sources been correlated by date for comparison and fuller understanding of the gradual development of the temple ceremonies. Readers may find an added benefit in discovering some of their own ancestors’ names included in these records; but in fact, anyone interested in LDS temple worship will find this compilation of primary documents to be invaluable.

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Kentucky and the Secession Crisis
A Documentary History
Dwight Pitcaithley
University of Tennessee Press, 2022
As the election of 1860 loomed, the United States suffered tumultuous division over the political fate of slavery in the western territories. While Northern states favored territorial sovereignty, the Deep South advocated for federal protection of slavery during the territorial period. Disagreement festered and gave way to civil war—but for some states literally caught in the middle, choosing a side was not so easy.
 
A slave state itself but bordering three non-slave-state neighbors across the Ohio River, Kentucky was in a difficult position as division swept the country. Aware that secession would nullify the Fugitive Slave Act and believing that slavery as a statewide institution would be better protected if Kentucky remained in the Union, the Bluegrass State ultimately stepped away from its Deep South sister states and chose not to secede. Kentucky and the Secession Crisis: A Documentary History showcases the discourse that followed the 1860 election and sheds light on Kentucky’s political thought processes as the state struggled toward a decision.
 
This important collection includes addresses by Governor Beriah Magoffin; Senator John J. Crittenden’s December 1860 address proposing a Constitutional solution to secession; speeches by various proponents and opponents of the Crittenden amendment; various Constitutional amendments proposed by Kentuckians; and documents related to the second session of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, the Washington Peace Conference of 1861, and the Border Slave State Conference. With a lengthy introduction and questions for discussion, Kentucky and the Secession Crisis is an insightful and valuable resource for historians as well as for the classroom.
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The Kishinev Ghetto, 1941–1942
A Documentary History of the Holocaust in Romania's Contested Borderlands
Paul A. Shapiro with chronology by Radu Ioanid and Brewster Chamberlin and translations by Angela Jianu
University of Alabama Press, 2015
The Kishinev Ghetto, 1941–1942 offers a wealth of primary sources and insightful commentary about the little-known slaughter of Jewish residents of Kishinev (Chisinau) under the military occupation by Romania under Marshal Ion Antonescu, a Hitler ally.​

The Kishinev Ghetto, 1941–1942 sheds new light on the little-known historical events surrounding the creation, administration, and liquidation of the Kishinev (Chisinau) ghetto during the first months following the Axis attack on the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) in late June 1941. Mass killings during the combined Romanian-German drive toward Kishinev in Bessarabia, after a year of Soviet rule in this Romanian border province, were followed by the shooting of thousands of Jews on the streets of the city during the first days of reestablished Romanian administration. Survivors were driven into a ghetto, persecuted, and liquidated by year’s end. The Kishinev Ghetto, 1941–1942 is the first major study of these events.
 
Often overshadowed by events in Germany and Poland, the history of the Holocaust in Romania, including what took place in Bessarabia (corresponding in large part with the territory of the modern Republic of Moldova), was obscured during decades of communist rule by denial and by policies that blocked access to wartime documentation. This book is the result of a lengthy research project that began with Paul A. Shapiro’s missions to Romania for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to negotiate access to these documents.
 
The volume includes:
·        A preface describing the origin of the project in the immediate aftermath of the Ceausescu regime in Romania.
·        A hundred-page study setting the events of the book within the historical context of Eastern European antisemitism, Romanian-Soviet conflict over control of Bessarabia, and Romania’s alliance with Nazi Germany.
·        A thoughtfully curated collection of archival documents linked to the study.
·        A chronology of related historical events.
·        Twenty-one black and white photographs and a map of the ghetto.
 
Students and scholars of Holocaust history, Judaic studies, twentieth-century Eastern European history, Romania, Moldova, and historical Bessarabia will want to own this important, revealing volume.
 
Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Life in Laredo
A Documentary History from the Laredo Archives
Robert D. Wood
University of North Texas Press, 2004

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Mary Lincoln's Insanity Case
A Documentary History
Jason Emerson
University of Illinois Press, 2012

In 1875 Mary Lincoln, the widow of a revered president, was committed to an insane asylum by her son, Robert. The trial that preceded her internment was a subject of keen national interest. The focus of public attention since Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860, Mary Lincoln had attracted plentiful criticism and visible scorn from much of the public, who perceived her as spoiled, a spendthrift, and even too much of a Southern sympathizer. Widespread scrutiny only increased following her husband's assassination in 1865 and her son Tad's death six years later, after which her overwhelming grief led to the increasingly erratic behavior that led to her being committed to a sanitarium. A second trial a year later resulted in her release, but the stigma of insanity stuck. In the years since, questions emerged with new force, as the populace and historians debated whether she had been truly insane and subsequently cured, or if she was the victim of family maneuvering.

In this volume, noted Lincoln scholar Jason Emerson provides a documentary history of Mary Lincoln's mental illness and insanity case, evenhandedly presenting every possible primary source on the subject to enable a clearer view of the facts. Beginning with documents from the immediate aftermath of her husband's assassination and ending with reminiscences by friends and family in the mid-twentieth century, Mary Lincoln's Insanity Case: A Documentary History compiles more than one hundred letters, dozens of newspaper articles, editorials, and legal documents, and the daily patient progress reports from Bellevue Place Sanitarium during Mary Lincoln's incarceration. Including many materials that have never been previously published, Emerson also collects multiple reminiscences, interviews, and diaries of people who knew Mary Lincoln or were involved in the case, including the first-hand recollection of one of the jurors in the 1875 insanity trial.

Suggesting neither accusation nor exoneration of the embattled First Lady, Mary Lincoln's Insanity Case: A Documentary History gives scholars and history enthusiasts incomparable access to the documents and information crucial to understanding this vexing chapter in American history.

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The Mormon Church and Blacks
A Documentary History
Edited by Matthew L. Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst
University of Illinois Press, 2015
The year 1978 marked a watershed year in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as it lifted a 126-year ban on ordaining black males for the priesthood. This departure from past practice focused new attention on Brigham Young's decision to abandon Joseph Smith's more inclusive original teachings. The Mormon Church and Blacks presents thirty official or authoritative Church statements on the status of African Americans in the Mormon Church. Matthew L. Harris and Newell G. Bringhurst comment on the individual documents, analyzing how they reflected uniquely Mormon characteristics and contextualizing each within the larger scope of the history of race and religion in the United States. Their analyses consider how lifting the ban shifted the status of African Americans within Mormonism, including the fact that African Americans, once denied access to certain temple rituals considered essential for Mormon salvation, could finally be considered full-fledged Latter-day Saints in both this world and the next. Throughout, Harris and Bringhurst offer an informed view of behind-the-scenes Church politicking before and after the ban. The result is an essential resource for experts and laymen alike on a much-misunderstood aspect of Mormon history and belief.
[more]

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Music, Sound, and Technology in America
A Documentary History of Early Phonograph, Cinema, and Radio
Timothy D. Taylor, Mark Katz, and Tony Grajeda, eds.
Duke University Press, 2012
This unique anthology assembles primary documents chronicling the development of the phonograph, film sound, and the radio. These three sound technologies shaped Americans' relation to music from the late nineteenth century until the end of the Second World War, by which time the technologies were thoroughly integrated into everyday life. There are more than 120 selections between the collection's first piece, an article on the phonograph written by Thomas Edison in 1878, and its last, a column advising listeners &quot;desirous of gaining more from music as presented by the radio.&quot; Among the selections are articles from popular and trade publications, advertisements, fan letters, corporate records, fiction, and sheet music. Taken together, the selections capture how the new sound technologies were shaped by developments such as urbanization, the increasing value placed on leisure time, and the rise of the advertising industry. Most importantly, they depict the ways that the new sound technologies were received by real people in particular places and moments in time.
[more]

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The Northwest Salmon Crisis
A Documentary History
Joseph Cone
Oregon State University Press, 1996

front cover of The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875–1925
The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875–1925
A Documentary History
John C. Brereton
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996
This volume describes the formative years of English composition courses in college through a study of the most prominent documents of the time: magazine articles, scholarly reports, early textbooks, teachers' testimonies-and some of the actual student papers that provoked discussion. Includes writings by leading scholars of the era such as Adams Sherman Hill, Gertrude Buck, William Edward Mead, Lane Cooper, William Lyon Phelps, and Fred Newton Scott.
[more]

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The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948
A Documentary History
Eran Kaplan
University of Wisconsin Press, 2011

In 1880 the Jewish community in Palestine encompassed some 20,000 Orthodox Jews; within sixty-five years it was transformed into a secular proto-state with well-developed political, military, and economic institutions, a vigorous Hebrew-language culture, and some 600,000 inhabitants. The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948: A Documentary History chronicles the making of modern Israel before statehood, providing in English the texts of original sources (many translated from Hebrew and other languages) accompanied by extensive introductions and commentaries from the volume editors.

This sourcebook assembles a diverse array of 62 documents, many of them unabridged, to convey the ferment, dissent, energy, and anxiety that permeated the Zionist project from its inception to the creation of the modern nation of Israel. Focusing primarily on social, economic, and cultural history rather than Zionist thought and diplomacy, the texts are organized in themed chapters. They present the views of Zionists from many political and religious camps, factory workers, farm women, militants, intellectuals promoting the Hebrew language and arts—as well as views of ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists. The volume includes important unabridged documents from the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict that are often cited but are rarely read in full. The editors, Eran Kaplan and Derek J. Penslar, provide both primary texts and informative notes and commentary, giving readers the opportunity to encounter voices from history and make judgments for themselves about matters of world-historical significance.


Best Special Interest Books, selected by the Public Library Reviewers

Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians
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Pedro de Rivera and the Military Regulations for Northern New Spain, 1724-1729
A Documentary History of His Frontier Inspection and the Reglamento de 1729
Thomas H. Naylor
University of Arizona Press, 1989
Philip V ordered an inspection of the presidios in the northern provinces which resulted in the reglamento of 1729. The study was capably done and documented by Pedro de Rivera Villalon. Includes Rivera’s report to the Viceroy of New Spain, the Reglamento of Havana , the inspection, Alvarez Barreiro’s map and descriptions. The documents are presented in their original Spanish and in translation, provide a detailed background by which modern scholars can better assess the status and role of Spain's military outposts
[more]

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The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain
A Documentary History, Volume I, 1570-1700
Thomas H. Naylor and Charles W. Polzer
University of Arizona Press, 1986
Reports, orders, journals, and letters of military officials trace frontier history through the Chicimeca War and Peace (1576-1606), early rebellions in the Sierra Madre (1601-1618), mid-century challenges and realignment (1640-1660), and northern rebellions and new presidios (1681-1695).
[more]

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The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain
A Documentary History, Volume Two, Part One: The Californias and Sinaloa-Sonora, 1700-1765
Edited by Charles W. Polzer and Thomas E. Sheridan
University of Arizona Press, 1997
Acclaimed by readers and reviewers alike, the first volume of The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain was a landmark in the documentary study of seventeenth-century Spanish Colonial Mexico. Here, Charles W. Polzer and Thomas E. Sheridan bring the same incisive scholarship and careful editing to long-awaited Volume Two, covering the years 1700-1765.The two-part second volume looks at the Spanish expansion as occurring in four north-south corridors that carried the main components of social and political activity. Divided geographically, materials in this book (part 1) relate to the two westernmost corridors, while those in the projected book (part 2) will cover the corridors north to New Mexico and northeast into Texas. Documents in both books demonstrate the importance of regional hostilities rather than exterior threats in the establishment of presidios.Materials in this book relate to events and episodes in the Californias (the peninsula of Baja California) where the situation of the presidial forces was unique in New Spain. By bringing into focus the ways that civil-religious relations affected the military garrison there, these documents contribute immeasurably to a greater understanding of how California itself emerged in history. Also covering Sinaloa and Sonora, the mainland of the west coast of New Spain, records in the book reveal how the Sinaloa coastal forces differed from those in the interior and how they were depended upon for protection in the northern expansion, both civil and missionary.Because documents on the presidios in northern New Spain are vast in number and varied in content, these selections are meant to provide for the reader or researcher a framework around which more elaborate studies might be constructed. All of the records have been translated from the Spanish language into readable, modern English and are accompanied by transcribed versions of the originals.Valuable to both non-specialists and specialists, here is an unparalleled resource important not only for the careful selection, preparation, and presentation of documents, but also for the excellent background information that puts them into context and makes them come alive.
[more]

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The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain
A Documentary History, Volume Two, Part Two: The Central Corridor and the Texas Corridor, 1700-1765
Edited by Diana Hadley, Thomas H. Naylor, and Mardith K. Schuetz-Miller
University of Arizona Press, 1997
Joining an acclaimed multivolume work funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission is a new volume of The Presidio and Militia on the Northern Frontier of New Spain. As the work of the Documentary Relations of the Southwest project, under the general editorship of Charles W. Polzer, S.J., the volumes stand alone in their translation and publication of a wide variety of documents that describe the Spanish exploration and conquest of what is now the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The presidial system of northern New Spain's Central and Texas Corridor was an evolving institution used for exploration, military presence and defense against foreign powers, local militia duty, mission support, personal service, and penal obligations. The new volume, which covers parts of what is now Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico, includes letters, diaries, judicial papers, military reports, and interrogations. Difficult for researchers to access and sometimes to decipher, the records are presented in Spanish and in English translation, annotated and introduced by the volume editors.
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Race, Politics, and Memory
A Documentary History of the Little Rock School Crisis
Catherine M. Lewis
University of Arkansas Press, 2007
In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Arkansas governor Orval Faubus viewed the desegregation of Little Rock Central High through very different lenses. The president worried that displays of rampant racism tarnished the nation's reputation as a global power and undermined efforts to thwart the spread of communism. The governor sided with his segregationist constituents to guarantee his political survival. For the nine teenagers caught in the middle, Central High was a cauldron of racial tension. These students represented the black and moderate-white community’s desire for social justice. The documents collected in this book–newspaper articles, political cartoons, excerpts from oral histories and memoirs, speeches, photographs, and editorials–help readers understand how this local, southern conflict became a national and international cause. The documents selected cover the period 1900–2006. Some have never been published before or are in out-of-print sources. Each reveals something significant about the event and its aftermath, while some offer an unconventional or unexpected perspective on the crisis and the issues it raised. A timeline, a list of key players in the crisis, and a selected, annotated bibliography are included.
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Science in America
A Documentary History, 1900-1939
Edited by Nathan Reingold and Ida H. Reingold
University of Chicago Press, 1981
From this unique collection of documents emerges a fresh, intimate, often striking picture of the life of science in the United States in the era when American investigators became central to scientific advances in many fields. Written in the course of the events described, these letters, memoranda, and other records—for the most part previously unpublished—convey personalities and issues with an immediacy hard to capture in conventional historical narratives.
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Science in Nineteenth-Century America
A Documentary History
Edited by Nathan Reingold
University of Chicago Press, 1985
Combining well-chosen correspondence of scientists with historical commentary, Reingold brings to life the developing American scientific community of the nineteenth century. "The reader catches glimpses of William Maclure mixing science and social reform, of Joseph Henry struggling to make a place for research at the Smithsonian Institution, of Gray and Dana corresponding with Darwin, of Newcomb and Michelson planning experiments on the speed of light."—John C. Greene, Science
[more]

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Slavery and Secession in Arkansas
A Documentary History
James J. Gigantino
University of Arkansas Press, 2015
2016 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

The absorbing documents collected in Slavery and Secession in Arkansas trace Arkansas’s tortuous road to secession and war. Drawn from contemporary pamphlets, broadsides, legislative debates, public addresses, newspapers, and private correspondence, these accounts show the intricate twists and turns of the political drama in Arkansas between early 1859 and the summer of 1861. From an early warning of what Republican political dominance would mean for the South, through the initial rejection of secession, to Arkansas’s final abandonment of the Union, readers, even while knowing the eventual outcome, will find the journey both suspenseful and informative.

Revealing both the unique features of the secession story in Arkansas and the issues that Arkansas shared with much of the rest of the South, this collection illustrates how Arkansans debated their place in the nation and, specifically, how the defense of slavery—as both an assurance of continued economic progress and a means of social control—remained central to the decision to leave the Union and fight alongside much of the South for four bloody years of civil war.
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Source Book in Bioethics
A Documentary History
Albert R. Jonsen, Robert M. Veatch, and LeRoy Walters, Editors
Georgetown University Press

Government agencies and commissions, courts, and legislatures have during the past several decades produced reports, rendered decisions, and passed laws that have both defined the fundamental issues in the field of bioethics and established ways of managing them in our society. Providing a history of these key bioethical decisions, this Source Book in Bioethics is the first and only comprehensive collection of the critical public documents in biomedical ethics, including many hard-to-find or out-of-print materials.

Covering the period from 1947 to 1995, this volume brings together core legislative documents, court briefs, and reports by professional organizations, public bodies, and governments around the world. Sections on human experimentation, care of the terminally ill, genetics, human reproduction, and emerging areas in bioethics include such pivotal works as "The Nuremberg Code," "The Tuskegee Report," and "In the Matter of Baby M," as well less readily available documents as "The Declaration of Inuyama," the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences statement on genetic engineering, and "The Warnock Committee Report" on reproductive technologies from the United Kingdom. Three eminent scholars in the field provide brief introductions to each document explaining the significance of these classic sources.

This historical volume will be a standard text for courses in bioethics, health policy, and death and dying, and a primary reference for anyone interested in this increasingly relevant field.

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Tennessee Secedes
A Documentary History
Dwight Pitcaithley
University of Tennessee Press, 2021

The election of 1860 put to rest a tumultuous decade of legislative contest over the institution of slavery—even as it set in motion events that led directly to its demise by civil war. While some scholarship tends to minimize the role of slavery in the secession of the Southern states in the early 1860s, Dwight Pitcaithley’s Tennessee Secedes: A Documentary History takes the opposite approach, examining the many factors that both fueled and complicated Tennessee’s unique journey toward secession in 1861.

Organized chronologically by source and speaker, Tennessee Secedes presents a selection of primary sources from December 1860 through the summer of 1861, inviting students to examine the arc of Tennessee’s secession march. Pitcaithley introduces proclamations, declarations, addresses, resolutions, proposed constitutional amendments, and other materials from Tennessee legislators, members of Congress, and delegates to the East Tennessee Convention. These sources highlight the political divisions apparent in the Volunteer State during this season of unrest. While many other Southern states saw little support for Unionism in the early 1860s, Tennessee stood in stark contrast, with a large and vocal population that ardently opposed secession.

Complete with appendices featuring 1861 election returns, communications from the Tennessee Congressional Delegation of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, and a timeline for Secession Winter—as well as questions for further discussion—Tennessee Secedes is an invaluable resource for students of the Civil War and Tennessee history, offering an insightful analysis of Tennessee’s uncertain path to the Confederacy in the summer of 1861.

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The Trial of Charles I
A Documentary History
Edited by David Lagomarsino and Charles T. Wood
Dartmouth College Press, 1989
On January 6, 1649, the House of Commons passed an act for “the Trying and Judging of Charles Stuart, King of England.” By month’s end, the King’s judges had found him “guilty of High Treason and of the murders, rapines, burnings, spoils, desolations, damage, and mischief to this nation” committed during the recently concluded Civil War. The sentence, ordering his execution “by severing of his head from his body,” was carried out in full public view on January 30. How and why a King--God’s annointed--could be executed for treason are questions that underscore the profound changes that politics and political thought were undergoing at this time. To provide a window into this pivotal period, accounts of the trial and execution taken from contemporary newspapers, pamphlets, and official records, are collected here and edited for modern readers. This compilation of eyewitness accounts has been arranged to sketch a dramatic day-by-day narrative of that fateful month, introducing the important issues in a way that brings readers close to the making of these great events. The speeches at the trial make especially vivid the clash between two contrasting theories of government--that of a divine monarchy in which a king is deemed essential to the true liberty of his people, and that of a commonwealth in which sovereignty rests with the people and is exercised by its representatives.
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The Unlevel Playing Field
A Documentary History of the African American Experience in Sport
David K. Wiggins and Patrick B. Miller
University of Illinois Press, 2003

The Unlevel Playing Field offers a rich compendium of more than 100 primary sources that chart the intertwining history of African Americans and sport. Introductions and head-notes provided by David K. Wiggins and Patrick B. Miller place each document in context, shaping an unrivaled narrative. 

Readers will find dozens of accounts by Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, A. S. “Doc” Young, Eldredge Cleaver, Nikki Giovanni, John Edgar Wideman, bell hooks, James Baldwin, Roy Wilkins, Henry Louis Gates, Gerald Early, and many others. 

The documents range from discussions of the color line in organized baseball during the Jim Crow era and portraits of turn-of-the-century figures like the champion sprint cyclist Marshall “Major” Taylor and boxer Jack Johnson. Writers also look at modern-day issues like the participation of black athletes in the 1968 Olympics, the place of African American women in sport, and examine pioneering figures like Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Althea Gibson, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Venus and Serena Williams.

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Virginia Secedes
A Documentary History
Dwight Pitcaithley
University of Tennessee Press, 2023
In January 1861, Virginia possessed the largest population of enslaved people within the United States. The institution of slavery permeated the state’s social, political, economic, and legal systems. While loyalty to the Union was strong in western Virginia as Civil War loomed, the state’s elected officials painted Abraham Lincoln and Republicans as abolitionists and reaffirmed Virginia’s commitment to slavery and white supremacy.

In this annotated volume of primary source documents from Secession Winter, Dwight T. Pitcaithley presents speeches by Virginians from the United States Congress, the Washington Peace Conference which had been called by Virginia’s general assembly, and the state’s secession convention to provide readers a glimpse into Virginia’s ultimate decision to secede from the Union. In his introductory analysis of the trial confronting Virginia’s leadership, Pitcaithley demonstrates that most elected officials wanted Virginia to remain in the Union—but only if Republicans agreed to protect slavery and guarantee its future. While secessionists rightly predicted that the incoming Lincoln administration would refuse to agree to these concessions, Unionists claimed that disunion would ultimately undermine slavery and lead to abolition regardless.

Virginia deliberated longer and proposed more constitutional solutions to avoid secession than any other state. Only after the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter and President Lincoln’s request for troops to suppress the “insurrection” did Virginia turn from saving the Union to leaving it.

Throughout Pitcaithley’s collection, one theme remains clear: that slavery and race—not issues over tariffs—were driving Virginia’s debates over secession. Complete with a Secession Winter timeline, extensive bibliography, and questions for discussion, Virginia Secedes: A Documentary History is an invaluable resource for historians and students alike.
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We Called Him Rabbi Abraham
Lincoln and American Jewry, a Documentary History
Gary Phillip Zola
Southern Illinois University Press, 2014

Over the course of American history, Jews have held many American leaders in high esteem, but they maintain a unique emotional bond with Abraham Lincoln. From the time of his presidency to the present day, American Jews have persistently viewed Lincoln as one of their own, casting him as a Jewish sojourner and, in certain respects, a Jewish role model. This pioneering compendium— The first volume of annotated documents to focus on the history of Lincoln’s image, influence, and reputation among American Jews— considers how Lincoln acquired his exceptional status and how, over the past century and a half, this fascinating relationship has evolved.

Organized into twelve chronological and thematic chapters, these little-known primary source documents—many never before published and some translated into English for the first time—consist of newspaper clippings, journal articles, letters, poems, and sermons, and provide insight into a wide variety of issues relating to Lincoln’s Jewish connection. Topics include Lincoln’s early encounters with Central European Jewish immigrants living in the Old Northwest; Lincoln’s Jewish political allies; his encounters with Jews and the Jewish community as President; Lincoln’s response to the Jewish chaplain controversy; General U. S. Grant’s General Orders No. 11 expelling “Jews, as a class” from the Military Department of Tennessee; the question of amending the U.S. Constitution to legislate the country’s so-called Christian national character; and Jewish eulogies after Lincoln’s assassination. Other chapters consider the crisis of conscience that arose when President Andrew Johnson proclaimed a national day of mourning for Lincoln on the festival of Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks), a day when Jewish law enjoins Jews to rejoice and not to mourn; Lincoln’s Jewish detractors contrasted to his boosters; how American Jews have intentionally “Judaized” Lincoln ever since his death; the leading role that American Jews have played in in crafting Lincoln’s image and in preserving his memory for the American nation; American Jewish reflections on the question “What Would Lincoln Do?”; and how Lincoln, for America’s Jewish citizenry, became the avatar of America’s highest moral aspirations.

With thoughtful chapter introductions that provide readers with a context for the annotated documents that follow, this volume provides a fascinating chronicle of American Jewry’s unfolding historical encounter with the life and symbolic image of Abraham Lincoln, shedding light on how the cultural interchange between American ideals and Jewish traditions influences the dynamics of the American Jewish experience.

Finalist, 2014 National Jewish Book Award
Finalist, 2015 Ohioana Book Award


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Women and Slavery in America
A Documentary History
Catherine M. Lewis
University of Arkansas Press, 2011
Women and Slavery offers readers an opportunity to examine the establishment, growth, and evolution of slavery in the United States as it impacted women-enslaved and free, African American and white, wealthy and poor, northern and southern. The primary documents-including newspaper articles, broadsides, cartoons, pamphlets, speeches, photographs, memoirs, and editorials-are organized thematically and represent cultural, political, religious, economic, and social perspectives on this dark and complex period in American history.
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