First American Cotton Mill

Bird's Eye View of Pawtucket & Central Falls, Rhode Island, 1877.
Map Collections (1500-Present)

On December 20, 1790, water-powered machinery for spinning and carding cotton was set in motion in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Based on the designs of English inventor Richard Arkwright, the mill was built by Samuel Slater, a recent English immigrant who apprenticed Arkwright's partner, Jebediah Strutt.

Slater had evaded British law against emigration of textile workers in order to seek his fortune in America. Considered the father of the United States textile industry, he eventually built several successful cotton mills in New England and established the town of Slatersville, Rhode Island.

Prior to the Civil War, textile manufacture was the most important American industry. The first American power loom was constructed in 1813 by a group of Boston merchants headed by Francis Cabot Lowell. Soon textile mills dotted the rivers of New England transforming the landscape, the economy, and the people. Initially, mill work was performed by daughters of local farmers. In later years, immigration became the source of mill "hands."

Sparta Cotton Mill, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1909.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991

By the 1920s, the South eclipsed New England in textile production. Not only were Southern plants located closer to raw materials, but also Southern laborers were often desperate for work. Entire families labored together in the textile mills of Georgia and the Carolinas. As in New England a century before, cheap labor was essential to high profits.

Textile worker Fannie Miles remember her transition from farm to factory at the age of nine:

I was just nine years old when we moved to a cotton mill in Darlington, South Carolina, and I started to work in the mill. I was in a world of strangers. I didn't know a soul. The first morning I was to start work, I remember coming downstairs feelin' strange and lonesome-like. My grandfather, who had a long, white beard, grabbed me in his arms and put two one-dollar bills in my hand. He said, "Take these to your mother and tell her to buy you some pretty dresses and make 'em nice for you to wear in this mill." I was mighty proud of that.

"I'm Not Lonesome," December 1, 1938.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940

Myrtle Bagwell, One of the Youngest Spinners in Spartan Mills, Spartanburg, South Carolina
Lewis Hine, photographer, May 1912.
National Child Labor Committee Collection

Often, workers moved between farming and mill work. John William Prosser described his situation in the 1920s:

I figured we could do better at a cotton mill, so we moved to Darlington, South Carolina. I got a job that paid ten cents an hour, and the boys picked up a little work every now and again. But I guess I had the movin' habit by that time, and we moved from one place to another. We'd sharecrop for a while, and then we'd rent. I'd work at a sawmill, and then blacksmith again, till we settled down and come to Columbia.

"Ain't It So, Corrie?," February 6, 1939.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940

At the Mary-Leila Cotton Mill, Greensboro, Georgia
Jack Delano, photographer, October 1941.
FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945

Learn more about American textile workers in the following collections:

• Search the American Life Histories, 1936-1940 collection on cotton mill or textile mill to find more recollections of life in the cotton mills, as well as descriptions of mill villages compiled by the staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writer's Project.
• Search FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945 on cotton mill to locate photographs of cotton mills and textile workers.
• Read the related Today in History features on the boll weevil and Carson McCullers (who grew up in Columbus, Georgia, another city whose history boasts a thriving textile industry).
• Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present, although not completely digitized, does have many related images. Search the collection on the term textile. A search on cotton will also show sites where ginned cotton is pressed and bailed before being made into textiles.
• The National Park Service preserves and interprets the history of the American Industrial Revolution at the Lowell National Historical Park in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Overhead Bridge Connecting Napping Building with Cloth Room, in Massachusetts Mills, Cloth Room, Lowell, Massachusetts
Ernest Gould with Christopher Closs, photographers, April 1989.
Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present

The town of Lowell, Massachusetts was named after the inventor of the power loom, Francis Cabot Lowell. Conditions in Lowell's mills were considered exemplary in 1800s. Nevertheless, Lowell factories saw a number of strikes, including the first successful mass strike which was led by the Industrial Workers of the World (the "Wobblies") in 1912. Lowell factories, well connected to Boston by canal and railroad, provided an early model for subsequent U.S. corporate and entrepreneurial organization.

Among the famous from Lowell are the painter James McNeill Whistler and the literary icon Jack Kerouac. The writers Robert Lowell, Amy Lowell and James Russel Lowell, although not born in Lowell, were members of the prominent Lowell family.

Hamilton Canal in Hamilton Canal, Jackson Street, Lowell, Massachusetts
Jack Boucher, photographer, 1976.
Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present

Fort Niagara Captured!

Old Fort Niagara, Youngstown, New York, circa 1900.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

In the final hours of December 18, 1813, approximately midway through the War of 1812, some 550 British soldiers crossed the Niagara River from Canada determined to seize Fort Niagara on the opposite shore in New York. By sunrise, December 19, the British had their prize and America's Niagara Frontier lay open to attack.

From Fort Niagara, the British marched on to destroy Youngstown, Lewiston, Manchester, Fort Schlosser, Black Rock, and Buffalo. While America countered these losses on other fronts, denying the British a sizable lead in the war, control of Fort Niagara allowed the British to dominate the Niagara River and regulate access to the Great Lakes where fighting continued.

The British launched their Niagara assault to retaliate against the destruction of Newark, Canada on December 10. American troops destroyed the Canadian city to deny shelter to advancing British forces, and, in so doing, left 400 city residents homeless, outraging both the British and Canadians.

Fort Niagara expected a British strike following the Newark incident but was caught unprepared on the night of the attack. Fort commander Nathaniel Leonard was miles away in Lewiston visiting family, and the garrison's picket soldiers, stationed nearby at Youngstown, had retreated indoors to escape the cold. After disarming the Youngstown pickets without a shot, the British advanced silently to the fort gate, arriving just as it opened to receive an American guard. Pushing past the entrance, the British found the majority of the fort's 433 soldiers asleep. With little opportunity to resist, the sleeping fort soon fell.

Niagara River, 1909.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991

Fort Niagara stayed in British hands throughout the remainder of the War of 1812. In accordance with the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, which settled the war and restored the prewar status quo, Britain returned the post to the United States in 1815. The fort never saw battle again.

"A Trip to Niagara," 1908.
Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920

• Read more about the War of 1812 in these Today in History features on the:
  • defeat of Tecumseh at Fort Meigs, Ohio
  • British attack on Baltimore
  • burning of Washington, D.C.
  • battle of New Orleans
• Search across American Memory on War of 1812 to find more items related to America's "second fight for independence."
• Search the pictorial collections of American Memory on the term Niagara for more images of the Niagara region, including numerous photographs of Niagara Falls.
• Just south of Fort Niagara lay the spectacular Niagara Falls, which many couples visit on their honeymoon. Search the collection Music for the Nation, 1870-1885 on the terms Niagara or honeymoon for related sheet music. Locate, for example, the 1881 piece "Honeymoon Galopp."
• Small-Town America, 1850-1920 contains 12,000 photographs of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. Browse the collection's Subject Image to view locations such as Niagara Falls and Buffalo.

The Williamsburg Bridge

Williamsburg Bridge, New York, New York, circa 1903-1910.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

On December 19, 1903, New Yorkers celebrated the opening of the Williamsburg Bridge, the second of three steel-frame suspension bridges to span the East River. Designed by Leffert L. Buck and Henry Hornbostel, it had taken over seven years to complete. Built to alleviate traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and to provide a link between Manhattan and the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the 1,600 foot Williamsburg Bridge was the world's longest suspension bridge until the 1920s.

Originally open to horse-drawn carriages, bicycles, and pedestrians, the Williamsburg Bridge soon became a vital transportation route for trolleys and trains, spurring the growth of Brooklyn's working-class neighborhoods. In the 1920s, the bridge was reconfigured to accommodate eight lanes of traffic. Today, it carries over 140,000 vehicles per day and some 100,000 subway riders.

On hand to film the opening of the Williamsburg Bridge were cameramen James Blair Smith and G.W. "Billy" Bitzer. Their films, Opening of New East River Bridge, produced by the Thomas Edison Company, and Opening the Williamsburg Bridge, produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, contain footage of the bridge and close-ups of the dignitaries and press in attendance. Note the large wooden "box" cameras carried by the press photographers.

Opening of New East River Bridge, Thomas A. Edison, Inc., December 19, 1903.
Life of a City: New York, 1898-1906

• See more photographs of the Williamsburg Bridge. Search on Williamsburg Bridge in these collections:
  • Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920
  • Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955
  • Small-Town America, 1850-1920
• Browse the subject index of Life of a City: New York, 1898-1906 to find more early films of New York.
• Learn more about the work of early motion picture cameramen James Blair Smith and Billy Bitzer by searching on their names across American Memory's original format motion pictures.
• Search the Today in History Archive on New York City to find more features on historic city events such as the opening of the subway system and Radio City Music Hall.
• See more outstanding achievements in architecture, engineering, and design. Browse HABS/HAER Highlights, a special presentation of Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present.

New Jersey Ratifies the Constitution

Now be it known, that we, the delegates of the state of New Jersey, chosen by the people thereof, for the purpose aforesaid, having maturely deliberated on and considered the aforesaid proposed Constitution, do hereby, for and on the behalf of the people of the said state of New Jersey, agree to, ratify, and confirm, the same and every part thereof.

"In Convention of the State of New Jersey" in The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (Elliot's Debates, Vol., 1).
A Century of Lawmaking for the New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875

The New Jersey ratifying caucus approved the Constitution on December 18, 1787. Highly critical of the Articles of Confederation, the delegates acted quickly to ratify the new constitution. Following the votes of Delaware and Pennsylvania, New Jersey was the third state to join the Union.

A New Mapp of East and West New Jarsey [sic]: Being An Exact Survey by Mr. John Worlidge, London, 1706.
Map Collections

Prior to the American Revolution, New Jersey was part of the original land grant to the Duke of York. He, in turn, granted it to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret in June 1664. The province was divided, in 1676, between the proprietors. By that division, East New Jersey was assigned to Carteret, and West New Jersey to William Penn and others, who had purchased it from Lord Berkeley. The division and divisiveness continued until Queen Anne, in April 1702, reunited both provinces into one province, and by commission appointed a governor over them.

In the nineteenth century, New Jersey was nicknamed "The Garden State." Abraham Browning, a Camden attorney, is credited with the name, noting that the "Garden State is an immense barrel, filled with good things to eat and open at both ends, with Pennsylvanians grabbing from one end and New Yorkers from the other." Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, farmland gave way to urban industry. Today New Jersey exports manufactured goods around the world and is a center of the biotechnology industry.

Tourism is another important industry for New Jersey. Since the nineteenth century, city dwellers have sought cool ocean breezes on the 125 miles of New Jersey coastline. President U. S. Grant was among vacationers who flocked to resorts at Long Branch and Cape May. First opened in 1870—and then only eight feet wide, the Atlantic City boardwalk continues to draw visitors to its beaches and casinos.

New Jersey is home to Princeton University and Rutgers University. Singer Frank Sinatra, suffragist Alice Paul, and football coach Alonzo Stagg were born in the Garden State.

Panoram of Trenton, New Jersey, 1909.
Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991

The American Memory collections contain a wide variety of resources relating to New Jersey.

• Use the search option in Panoramic Maps to find numerous bird's-eye view maps of New Jersey.
• Millions of stereoscopic views, a form of 3D photography, were produced between the 1850s and the 1930s. Search on the term New Jersey in Small-Town America: Stereoscopic Views from the Robert Dennis Collection, 1850-1920 to see a wide variety of New Jersey sites.
• Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American and Engineering Record, 1933-Present documents achievements in U.S. architecture, engineering, and design. Search the collection on Hoboken, an important nineteenth- and twentieth-century waterfront city in New Jersey, to see that city's piers, City Hall, and Erie-Lackawana Railroad Ferry Terminal.

Atlantic City Idyl, New Jersey,
Carl Van Vechten, photographer,
June 13, 1937.
Creative Americans: Portraits by Carl Van Vechten, 1932-1964

• Search on the term New Jersey in Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1820-1860 & 1870-1885 to retrieve "My Jersey Queen," a nineteenth-century song with references to the state.
• A search on New Jersey in Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920 yields more than 500 hits, including a view of Passaic Falls. Search on Atlantic City to find pictures of people Bathing at Atlantic City.
• Edison Motion Pictures, a section of the larger collection Inventing Entertainment: the Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of tThe Edison Companies, contains 341 early motion pictures. Search on the term New Jersey for material such as the 1895 Princess Ali, recorded at Edison's Black Maria film studio in West Orange, or the July 1900 actuality film, Burning of the Standard Oil Company's Tanks, filmed in Bayonne, New Jersey.

First Flight

First Flight, December 17, 1903
John T. Daniels, photographer.
Prints and Photographs Division
American Treasures of the Library of Congress

On the morning of December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright took turns piloting and monitoring their flying machine in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Orville piloted the first flight that lasted just twelve seconds. On the fourth and final flight of the day, Wilbur traveled 852 feet, remaining airborne for 57 seconds. That morning the brothers became the first people to demonstrate sustained flight of a heavier-than-air machine under the complete control of the pilot.

They had built the 1903 Flyer in sections in the back room of their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop. That afternoon, the Wright brothers walked the four miles to Kitty Hawk and sent a telegram to their father, Bishop Milton Wright, back home in Dayton:

Success four flights thursday morning all against twenty one mile wind started from level with engine power alone average speed through air thirty one miles longest 57 seconds inform Press home Christmas.

Telegram, Orville Wright to Bishop Milton Wright, announcing the first successful powered flight, December 17, 1903.
Words and Deeds in American History

Through their own research and experimentation, and by studying the attempts of other would-be pilots, the Wright brothers knew that heavier-than-air flight was possible. They corresponded frequently with engineer Octave Chanute, a friend and supporter of their work. On May 13, 1900, Wilbur wrote a letter to Chanute expressing his ambition to fly:

For some years, I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life.

Letter, Wilbur Wright to Octave Chanute, concerning the Wright brothers' aviation experiments, May 13, 1900.
Octave Chanute Papers.
Words and Deeds in American History

The announcement of the Wright brothers' successful flight ignited the world's passion for flying. Engineers designed their own flying machines, people of all ages wanted to witness the flights, and others wanted to sit behind the controls and fly.

The U.S. Army, seeing potential in the new technology, signed a contract with the Wright brothers in 1908 for the purchase of a machine that could travel with a passenger at a speed of 40 miles per hour. (An image of the Wright 1909 Military Flyer is available on the Web site of the U.S. Air Force Museum.) Within a decade, the Army was training pilots and flying their own fleets.

See artifacts of America's history of flight in the American Memory collections and the Library of Congress Exhibitions:

• Read more about the Wright brothers' First Flight in the Reason section of the exhibition American Treasures of the Library of Congress. Also, visit the site of the Wright Brothers National Memorial maintained by the National Park Service, or the First Flight section of the Franklin Institute Science Museum's online exhibition Flights of Inspiration.
• Search on aviation in the collection Words and Deeds in American History to read related documents from the Library's Manuscript Division.

  
  Boy Building a Model Airplane as Girl Watches, Robstown, Texas
  Arthur Rothstein, photographer, January 1942.
  FSA/OWI Color Photographs, 1938-1944

• Search on airplane in these collections to see images ranging from early planes to World War II aircraft:
  • Taking the Long View, 1851-1991
  • Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955
  • FSA/OWI Color Photographs, 1938-1944
  • Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920
  The latter collection also holds many wonderful views of Dayton taken during the years that the Wright brothers resided there.
• Learn more about one of Orville Wright's high school friends, the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Search the Today in History Archive on Dunbar.
• Read Americans' stories of flying by searching on airplane in the collection American Life Histories, 1936-1940. This search will retrieve the 1939 interview "An Air-Minded Family" in which Mrs. Edwards describes her family's obsession with planes sparked by her husband's passion for flying:

  You know every man has a hobby, his was with airplanes when he closed his garage for the day instead of playing golf or working in the yard or garden he tinkered with his planes, my brothers just sat down. He begun building airplanes about two years before we married. He made a short flight in 1909.

  "An Air-Minded Family," March 6, 1939.
  American Life Histories, 1936-1940

Where History Meets Physical Science

On December 17, 1908, Willard Frank "Wild Bill" Libby was born on a farm in Grand Valley, Colorado. Libby won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of the technique known as radiocarbon dating.

Carbon dating is now a tool of many trades—archeology, geology, history, geophysics, and preservation among others. The technique uses an unstable isotope of carbon, carbon-14, to discern the age of physical phenomena as diverse as the end of the Ice Age, an old shoe, or funerary objects from a pharaoh's tomb.

Illecillewaet Glacier from Crest, Selkirk Mountains, British Columbia
H. G. Peabody, photographer, circa 1902.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

Sandal A, 1st century B.C.E.-1st century C.E.
Scrolls From the Dead Sea: The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Scholarship

Pyramids and Sphinx, Jizah, Egypt
William Henry Jackson, photographer, December 1894.
Around the World in the 1890s, 1894-1896

As early as 1939 researchers discovered that neutron showers occur when cosmic rays hit atoms. They also learned that the neutrons were absorbed by nitrogen which then decayed into the unstable radioactive element carbon-14. Libby realized a series of additional facts:

• radioactive carbon-14 oxidized to carbon dioxide;
• plants absorbed carbon dioxide through photosynthesis;
• plants, directly or indirectly, were digested by all living organisms.

Therefore, he concluded, all living organisms, and all carbon containing products, were slightly radioactive.

The Enoch Scroll
Parchment, Copied ca. 200-150 B.C.E.
Scrolls From the Dead Sea: The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Scholarship

Libby and others built increasingly sensitive Geiger counters to measure that radioactivity. The devices measured the half-life of radioactive carbon-14 in objects. Age was deduced based on the fact that about every 5,000 years carbon-14's radioactivity decays by one-half (over the next 5,000 by half again, and so on). Among the items Libby tested and dated were prehistoric sloth dung, charcoal from Stonehenge, and the parchment wrappings of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Libby, who received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1933, joined the Manhattan Project after the U.S. entered World War II. After the war, he became a professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago where he did his work on radiocarbon dating. In 1954, Libby was appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower to the Atomic Energy Commission. He subsequently returned to academia at UCLA and passed away in 1980.

Berkeley Institute, Chemistry Lab, Brooklyn, New York
Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc., photographer, April 13, 1943.
Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955

• Search across the American Memory pictorial collections using the terms chemisty or chemical for images such as manufacturing plants and laboratories, including the Chemical Laboratory at the House of David in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
• Digital images are being added monthly to Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present which documents a wide range of building types and engineering technologies including, for example, Thomas Alva Edison's Chemistry Lab in West Orange, New Jersey. Search the collection on chemistry and chemical for more images.
• Visit the online exhibition Scrolls From the Dead Sea: The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Scholarship for a description of the scrolls and their historical context, including the Qumran community from whence they may have originated, and the story of their discovery 2,000 years later.
• Learn more about a wide variety of academic institutions in the United States. Search the Today in History Archive using the terms university and college.

I leave you with undefiled hands, an uncorrupted heart, and with ardent vows to heaven for the welfare and happiness of that country in which I and my forefathers to the third or fourth progenitor drew our first breath.

George Washington in his Farewell Address to the People of the United States, September 17, 1796.
George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress

George Washington, Full-length Portrait, Standing on Bunker, engraving by Laugier, 1839.
Prints and Photographs Division

At 10:00 P.M. on December 14, 1799, George Washington died at his Mt. Vernon home after five decades of service to his country. His last words reportedly were: "I feel myself going. I thank you for your attentions; but I pray you to take no more trouble about me. Let me go off quietly. I cannot last long." Washington was sixty-seven years old.

After the Revolutionary War, Washington hoped to live as a gentleman farmer in Virginia, yet he repeatedly deferred this wish in order to serve his country. Called to the presidency in 1789, he told the citizens of Alexandria, Virginia, on April 16 of that year, "my love of retirement is so great, that no earthly consideration, short of a conviction of duty, could have prevailed upon me to depart from my resolution 'never more to take any share in transactions of a public nature.'" Unanimously re-elected to the presidency, he completed a second term and retired in 1796. As late as 1798, however, when war with France seemed imminent, Washington again accepted command of American forces.

Washington's Tomb at Mount Vernon, Theodor Horydczak, photographer, circa 1920-1950.
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959

Henry Lee's eulogy for Washington—"first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen"—accurately and touchingly memorialized the man so often called the "father of our country." By the time of his death, Washington was admired throughout the world. As the news spread, Napoleon's armies and the British channel fleet paid homage to his memory. In this country, Gouverneur Morris delivered "An Oration upon the Death of General Washington" urging Americans to uphold the standards of wisdom and honesty set by Washington.

The astounding array of places named for the first president and the memorials celebrating his life attest to Washington's honored position in the national memory. Among these places are the United States capital, Washington, D.C., its Washington Monument, and Washington State. Commemorative artwork celebrating Washington and his accomplishments was a common feature of 19th and early 20th century homes. The many turn-of-the century postcard views of portraits, Washington's plantation, and even his military quarters further evidence public fascination with the life of George Washington.

Bronze Statue of George Washington, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Theodor Horydczak, photographer, circa 1920-1950.
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959

Explore the following American Memory resources to learn more about George Washington:

• George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress is an online collection of Washington's correspondence. Currently, more than 147,000 images are available. Search the collection by keyword or browse the letterbooks and financial papers by date. The Time Line and Essays provide context for the papers and serve as a means of viewing many of the most significant or interesting documents such as George Washington's Revolutionary War Expense Account.
• Search A Century of Lawmaking on the term George Washington to retrieve documents highlighting Washington's interaction with both the Continental Congress and the United States Congress.
• Search the Today in History Archive on George Washington to read about the life of the first president. Feature topics include Washington's birthday, his experience at Valley Forge, and his first Inaugural Address.
• Browse the subject index of Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920 to view postcard photographs of places significant in the life of the first president such as his room at Mt. Vernon as well as photographic views of the many Washington memorials.

Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College,
Ammi B. Young, artist,
Currier & Ives, [1834 or 1835].
Prints & Photographs Online Catalog

It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!

Letter, Thomas Jefferson to William Plumer regarding the Dartmouth College Case, July 21, 1816.
Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division's First 100 Years

With these words, Daniel Webster concluded his successful defense of the inviolability of the royal charter of Dartmouth College, which was originally obtained on December 13, 1769.

Daniel Webster,
Southworth & Hawes, photographer,
[between 1851 and 1860].
America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1864

In his landmark Dartmouth College v. Woodward decision (1819), Chief Justice John Marshall (1755-1835) supported the inviolability of the charter as a contract and ruled that the college, under the charter, was a private and not a public entity. As such, the school was protected from the state's regulatory power through the contract clause of the United States Constitution.

Dartmouth and Wentworth Halls, Dartmouth College,
Hanover, New Hampshire,
circa 1900.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920

The ninth oldest college in the United States, Dartmouth was founded when Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, a Congregationalist minister seeking to expand his school into a college, relocated his educational establishment from Connecticut to Hanover, in the royal Province of New Hampshire. Wheelock’s earlier school, the Moor’s Charity School, was primarily for the education of Native Americans.  The Royal Governor John Wentworth provided the land upon Dartmouth was built and conveyed the charter from King George III to establish the college. Wheelock’s charter was to create a college for the "education and instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land…and also of English Youth and any others."

The college was named in honor of William Legge, the Earl of Dartmouth, a friend of Wentworth's and an important benefactor. Salmon P. Chase and Robert Frost are among Dartmouth’s famous graduates.

Dartmouth’s first classes, consisting of just four students, were held in a single log hut in Hanover in 1770.  As of 2007 there were approximately 4,100 undergraduates and 1,600 graduate students enrolled in the four-year, private, liberal arts college. The school has thirty-nine undergraduate academic departments and programs in the arts and sciences (as well as nineteen graduate programs). Dartmouth College is the home of the nation’s first professional school of engineering, the world’s first graduate school of management, and the nation’s fourth oldest medical school.

• Search across the American Memory collections on Dartmouth to find more materials such as a panoramic photograph showing the Earl of Dartmouth laying the corner stone of new building at Dartmouth College on October 26, 1904.
• Search on Dartmouth College in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog for various images, which are primarily buildings.
•  Also search on Dartmouth College in Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present for more information on various buildings on the campus such as the Webster Cottage and Wentworth Hall.
• American Landscape and Architectural Design, 1850-1920: a Study Collection from the Harvard Graduate School of Design contains ten images of school buildings.
• Search on the term college in Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920 collection for a wide variety of images, primarily of East Coast colleges.
• Search the Today in History Archive on the terms Howard, Columbia, Fisk, Princeton, University of Chicago, University of Iowa, Yale, Vassar, Cornell, or Georgetown for features on these institutions.

Pennsylvania Ratifies the Constitution

Independence Hall, [formerly Pennsylvania State House], between 1895 and 1910.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

On December 12, 1787, delegates to the Pennsylvania ratifying convention meeting at the Pennsylvania State House voted to ratify the Constitution of 1787. Five days earlier, Delaware had won the honor of being the first state to adopt the work of the Constitutional Convention.

Pennsylvania's early approval of the proposed document helped create momentum for ratification in the rest of the thirteen states. In Pennsylvania, however, opponents of the Constitution bitterly opposed the legislature's hasty action. "The Address and Reasons of Dissent of the Minority of the Convention…," signed by twenty-one of the twenty-three members of the legislature who voted against ratification, outlines the grievances of the anti-federalists.

The minority charged that the Assembly's hasty action in calling a ratifying convention prevented the people of the state from debating the issue:

The election for members of the [ratifying] convention was held at so early a period, and the want of information was so great, that some of us did not know of it until after it was over, and we have reason to believe that great numbers of the people of Pennsylvania have not yet had an opportunity of sufficiently examining the proposed constitution.

"The Address and Reasons of Dissent of the Minority of the Convention, of the State of Pennsylvania, to Their Constituents,"
printed by E. Oswald, Philadelphia, 1787.
Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789

Passions over the vote ran so high that proponents of ratification had, as the anti-federalists bitterly recounted, arranged for a mob to seize and drag opponents to the State House, where they were "detained by force" to ensure a "quorum of the legislature." Ultimately, supporters of ratification secured victory on July 2, 1788, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution.

• Creating a Constitution, part of the Special Presentation To Form A More Perfect Union, provides an overview of the events leading up to ratification and an introduction to the documents in the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 collection. Search the collection on a state name; for example, North Carolina AND Constitution, to find more documents pertaining to the frequently bitter battles in the states over ratification.
• View Today in History features on the ratification of the Constitution by Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York, and view the feature on the signing of the final draft of the Constitution by members of the Constitutional Convention.

John Jay

John Jay, photograph of a portrait by artist Gilbert Stuart.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

John Jay, one of the nation's founding fathers, was born on December 12, 1745 to a prominent and wealthy family in the Province of New York. He attended King's College, later renamed Columbia University, and then practiced law with Robert Livingston. Having established a reputation in New York, Jay was elected to serve as delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses which debated whether the colonies should declare independence from Britain.

Jay held numerous posts of public importance throughout the Revolutionary crisis, including president of the Continental Congress, minister plenipotentiary to Spain, and peace commissioner (in which he negotiated treaties with Spain and France). In 1784, Jay was named Secretary of Foreign Affairs, one of the nation's highest ranking diplomatic posts.

In the post-war era, Jay joined Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in attacking the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, the post-Revolutionary War governing political structure in place from November 15, 1777 until the passage of the Constitution. Jay argued in his Address to the People of the State of New-York, on the Subject of the Federal Constitution that the Articles of Confederation were too weak and ineffective a form of government. He contended that:

[The Congress under the Articles of Confederation] may make war, but are not empowered to raise men or money to carry it on—they may make peace, but without power to see the terms of it observed—they may form alliances, but without ability to comply with the stipulations on their part—they may enter into treaties of commerce, but without power to inforce them at home or abroad…—In short, they may consult, and deliberate, and recommend, and make requisitions, and they who please may regard them.

John Jay, Address to the People of the State of New-York, on the Subject of the Federal Constitution, 1788.
Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789

Jay, Hamilton, and Madison aggressively argued in favor of the creation of a new and more powerful, centralized, but nonetheless balanced system of government. They articulated this vision in the Federalist Papers, a series of eighty-five articles, five authored by Jay, written to persuade the citizenry to ratify the proposed Constitution of the United States.

In 1789, George Washington nominated Jay as the first chief justice of the Supreme Court. Jay's most notable case was Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), in which Jay and the court affirmed the subordination of the states to the federal government. Unfavorable reaction to the decision led to adoption of the Eleventh Amendment which denied federal courts authority in suits by citizens against a state.

In 1794, Jay served as a special envoy to Great Britain and averted war by negotiating the Jay Treaty in which Britain agreed to evacuate the Northwest Territory. Unfavorable reaction to the treaty ruined Jay's chances for the presidency. He resigned as Chief Justice in 1794 to run and win election as governor of New York. Despite winning a second term in 1802, Jay declined and took retirement. He died on May 15, 1829.

• See Today in History features on the Federalist Papers and on Alexander Hamilton.
• Learn more about the early republic and the roles of John Jay and other Founding Fathers by browsing the collections A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation and Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention or by searching them on John Jay.
• Search the collection George Washington Papers, 1741-1799 on John Jay to read correspondence between the two men.

Mahalia Jackson

Mahalia Jackson at the Prayer Pilgrimage of Freedom,
Washington, DC, May 17, 1957
NAACP Collection,
Prints and Photographs Division
African American Odyssey
Courtesy of the NAACP

Mahalia Jackson, the "Queen of Gospel Song," was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 26, 1911. Jackson grew up singing gospel music at the Plymouth Rock Baptist Church where her father preached. At age sixteen, she migrated to Chicago where she supported herself by doing housekeeping and odd jobs.

In Chicago, Jackson joined the Greater Salem Baptist Church and began touring with a gospel quintet. The beauty of her contralto voice and the increasing popularity of gospel music during the Depression brought Jackson success. She made her first recordings as a soloist in the mid-1930s for Decca and Apollo, eventually signing with Columbia records in 1954.

Jackson resisted secular music saying, "When you sing gospel you have a feeling there is a cure for what's wrong. But when you are through with the blues, you've got nothing to rest on." Although Jackson declined to sing anything but gospel, she listened to and was heavily influenced by ragtime, jazz, and blues artists including Bessie Smith, Maime Smith, Ma Rainey, and Ida Cox.

Jackson sang regularly at Chicago's South Side Greater Baptist Church and often collaborated with Thomas Dorsey, the "Father of Gospel Music." Originally a blues musician, Dorsey began to write sacred music early in the century, using the sounds and rhythms of blues and jazz. Over the years, gospel made a lasting impact on blues and soul artists, including Aretha Franklin, who listened to Mahalia Jackson sing at Rev. C. L. Franklin's New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit.

Easter Procession,
Chicago, Illinois,
Edwin Rosskam, photographer.

In Front of Pilgrim Baptist Church on Easter Sunday,
Chicago, Illinois,
Russell Lee, photographer

Easter Procession,
Chicago, Illinois,
Edwin Rosskam, photographer
April, 1941.
FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945

Jackson hosted a radio program in Chicago for CBS, and often her powerful voice concluded the day's local television broadcast. She recorded with Duke Ellington, packed Carnegie Hall on a number of occasions, and sang for four presidents.

Mahalia Jackson - Easter Sunday - Philharmonic Hall, Lincoln Center.
Security Printing Company,
1967.
Prints and Photographs Division.

Jackson lent her prestige to the civil rights movement and became a prominent figure in the struggle. In 1955, she supported the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott led by Dr. Martin Luther King, and, at King's request, she sang "I've Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned" just before he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech during the 1963 March on Washington.

Jackson was sixty-years-old years old when she died in the Chicago suburb of Evergreen Park, Illinois. At her funeral, Coretta Scott King described the singer as "black…proud…[and] beautiful." She recalled her husband saying of Jackson, "A voice like this comes, not once in a century, but once in a millennium."

• Listen to gospel. "Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943 consists of approximately one hundred sound recordings, primarily blues and gospel songs, from the folk festival at Fort Valley State College, Georgia. "Lead Me to that Rock," "Anyhow," and "Daniel Saw the Stone" are just a few of the gospel recordings available through this collection.
• View pictures of Mahalia Jackson and Bessie Smith in Creative Americans: Portraits by Van Vechten, 1932-1964.
• Visit the online exhibition The African-American Mosaic to learn more about African-American migrations.
• Read Today in History features on other twentieth-century recording artists including Sophie Tucker, Louis Jordan, and Ella Fitzgerald.

The Erie Canal

Erie Canal at Salina Street,
Syracuse, New York,
circa 1900.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

The Erie Canal opened on October 26, 1825, providing overland water transportation between the East Coast and the Great Lakes region. Under construction for eight years, the project was the vision of New York Governor DeWitt Clinton. He convinced the New York state legislature to commit seven million dollars to the construction of a 363-mile ditch, forty feet wide and four feet deep. The canal flowed from Buffalo on the east coast of Lake Erie, through the mountains near the Mohawk Valley west of Troy, and terminated at the upper Hudson River at Albany. A tremendous success, the waterway accelerated settlement of the upper Midwest including the founding of hundreds of towns such as Clinton, in DeWitt County, Illinois.

Mr. and Mrs. Barre Stoen were among these settlers. After a fourteen-week journey from Norway to New York City, they immediately boarded a canal boat and traveled the length of the Erie Canal to Buffalo, then crossed the Great Lakes to Milwaukee, where they bought a team of oxen and headed further west. The Stoens eventually settled at Long Coulee, thirteen miles north of La Crosse, Wisconsin. The first settlers in this secluded region, the Stoens were joined shortly thereafter by other pioneers from Scandinavia. Nearly a century later, fourteen-year-old Melvina Casberg recounted the Stoens' experience including an account of the settlers' first encounter with the Native Americans of Wisconsin:

Bird's Eye View of the City of Clinton,
DeWitt County, Illinois, 1869.
Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929

One day a messenger on horseback rode over the prairie shouting fearful news to the pioneers. A band of Indians was coming directly there and they should seek places of safety. The women and children found refuge in one of the log cabins where they might be protected…The several men lay armed in the tall grass by the creek that was near their home. The tribe soon came and camped where the Holmen school now stands. After watching the Indians for a while the men decided to go and talk to them. The chief appeared very friendly, offered the peace pipe and presented various gifts. The next morning the Indians left and fear for them was gone.

"Pioneer Days."
American Life Histories, 1936-1940

Completion of the Erie Canal also stimulated the growth of New York City. Canal boats facilitated exchange of manufactured goods from the city with agricultural products from the Midwest. A 1903 actuality film from the Thomas Edison film company, Panorama Water Front and Brooklyn Bridge from East River, begins with footage of canal boats from the Erie Canal demonstrating the canal's continuing commercial importance to the port of New York at the turn of the century.

In fact, the Erie Canal remained vital well into the twentieth century. The New York State Barge Canal, completed between 1903 and 1918, incorporated the canal into a larger system of waterways that included extensions to Lake Ontario, Lake Champlain, Lake Cayuga, and Lake Seneca. Commercial use of the Barge Canal had declined by the 1980s. Since then, it has become a popular venue for pleasure boaters.

For more about the Erie Canal and the settlement of the Midwest:

• Read more about the Wisconsin village settled by the Stoen family. Search the collection American Life Histories, 1936-1940 on the term Long Coulee. American Life Histories, 1936-1940 includes several narratives recounting the experiences of immigrants who settled in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana in the nineteenth century. To find their stories, browse the title lists for these states, or search the collection on pioneer.
• Additional stories of pioneer life are available through Pioneering the Upper Midwest, ca. 1820-1910. William Nowlin recounts his family's adventurous 1834 journey on the Erie Canal in The Bark Covered House…a Description of Real Pioneer Life in the Wilderness of Michigan.
• American Memory has more than 400 photographs of man-made waterways in this country and abroad. Explore these images. Search across the American Memory pictorial collections on canal.

Walter Johnson, 1913.
Baseball Cards, 1887-1914

He's got a gun concealed about his person. You can't tell me he throws them balls with his arm.

Ring Lardner on Walter Johnson

On December 10, 1946, baseball great Walter Johnson died at the age of fifty-nine. Nicknamed "The Big Train," Johnson pitched his way to fame during twenty-one seasons with the Washington Senators. His fastball is considered to be among the best in baseball history.

Johnson joined the Senators in 1907 on the condition that the team pay his way home to Kansas if he failed in the big leagues. After a tentative first season, the former high school star found his ground eventually scoring more shutout victories (110) than any other major league pitcher. Johnson's 1913 record for pitching fifty-six consecutive scoreless innings stood for over fifty years until Don Drysdale bested it in 1968. His strikeout record (3,508) held until 1983. In all-time wins, Johnson is second only to Cy Young.

Honored in 1913 and in 1924 as the American League's Most Valuable Player, Johnson retired from play in 1927. Two years later, he took over as manager of the Senators, a position he held until 1932. In 1936, Johnson was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, along with Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, and Honus Wagner. The "Five Immortals" were the first chosen for the honor.

Washington Baseball Team, 1913.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991

• Search on Johnson in Baseball Cards, 1887-1914 to find more images of "The Big Train." To see other baseball greats, browse the collection's Player Index or Team List.
• Learn more about the early history of the game. See the special presentation Early Baseball Pictures, 1860s-1920s in Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s.
• Also, don't miss the Today in History features on legendary players Connie Mack, Satchel Paige, and Jackie Robinson.

Wyoming Day

Suffragists Casting Votes, ca. 1917.
"Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920

On December 10, 1869, John Campbell, Governor of the Wyoming Territory, approved the first law in U.S. history explicitly granting women the right to vote. Commemorated in later years as Wyoming Day, the event was one of many firsts for women achieved in the Equality State.

On November 5, 1889, Wyoming voters approved the first constitution in the world granting full voting rights to women. Wyoming voters again made history in 1924 when they elected Nellie Taylor Ross as the first woman governor in the United States.

The events leading up to the passage of the 1869 suffrage law were put into motion by Esther Slack Morris, a pioneer whose ears were ringing, according to one account, with "the words of Susan B. Anthony" when she arrived in South Pass, Wyoming in 1869.

A native of New York state, Morris embraced the women's rights movement when she was prevented, on account of the discriminatory property laws in the state of Illinois, from claiming title to a tract of land left to her by her deceased husband. By the time she moved west, she was familiar with the ideas of activists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott.

When Morris joined her second husband and family in South Pass, preparations were being made for the first election in the newly-recognized territory.

At this point, twenty of the most influential men in the community, including all the candidates of both parties, were invited to dinner at the 'shack of Mrs. Esther Morris'…To her guests she now presented the woman's case with such clarity and persuasion that each candidate gave her his solemn pledge that if elected he would introduce and support a woman suffrage bill.

Woman Suffrage and Politics, the Inner Story of the Movement
Carrie Lane Chapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Schuler, p. 75, 1923.
Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921

After winning a seat in the legislature, Democrat William Bright, who had been present at Morris's home, kept his promise and introduced a bill granting women the right to vote. Although the legislators treated the legislation as a joke, they approved it nonetheless. To their surprise, Governor Campbell signed it into law. The summoning, three months later, of the first women jurors to duty in Laramie, the capital of the territory, attracted international attention.

Teton Range, Wyoming, 1902.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991

• Find more material on the achievement of suffrage in Wyoming. Search the full text of Votes for Women, 1848-1921 on Esther Morris. After retrieving a list of hits, go to any item and use the BEST MATCH link in the page header to jump to the segment of the piece pertaining to Morris.
• Read Woman Suffrage and Politics, the Inner Story of the Movement for a detailed account of the first election in Wyoming, including a description of the virulent opposition encountered by supporters of African Americans' right to vote.
• See the time line One Hundred Years Toward Suffrage for an overview of the suffrage movement, which enjoyed some of its first successes in Western states.
• Enjoy images of the "Equality State" available in History of the American West: 1860-1920. Search on the term Wyoming to see, for example, The Grand Teton, a Crow Indian Village, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Wyoming.

Air Raid on Pearl Harbor

On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory killing more than 2,300 Americans. The U.S.S. Arizona was completely destroyed and the U.S.S. Oklahoma capsized. The attack sank three other ships and damaged many additional vessels. More than 180 aircraft were destroyed.

A hurried dispatch from the ranking United States naval officer in Pearl Harbor, Commander in Chief Pacific, to all major navy commands and fleet units provided the first official word of the attack at the ill-prepared Pearl Harbor base. It said simply: AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NOT DRILL.

"Pearl Harbor Widows have gone into war work to carry on the fight with a personal vengeance"
Corpus Christi, Texas, Howard R. Hollem, photographer, August 1942.
FSA/OWI Color Photographs, 1938-1944

Naval Dispatch from the Commander in Chief Pacific (CINCPAC) announcing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
Words and Deeds in American History

This dispatch is one of five thousand items in The Papers of Adm. John J. Ballentine (1896-1970). The collection was deposited in the Manuscript Division by the Naval Historical Foundation.

The following day President Franklin Roosevelt, addressing a joint session of Congress, called December 7 "a date which will live in infamy." Declaring war against Japan, Congress ushered the United States into World War II and forced a nation, already close to war, to abandon isolationism. Within days, Japan's allies, Germany and Italy, declared war on the United States, and the country began a rapid transition to a war-time economy in building up armaments in support of military campaigns in the Pacific, North Africa, and Europe.

Also on the day following Pearl Harbor Alan Lomax, head of the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song, sent a telegram to colleagues around the U.S. asking them to collect people's immediate reactions to the bombing. Over the next few days prominent folklorists such as John Lomax, John Henry Faulk, Charles Todd, Robert Sonkin, and Lewis Jones responded by recording "man on the street" interviews in New York, North Carolina, Texas, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere. They interviewed salesmen, electricians, janitors, oilmen, cabdrivers, housewives, students, soldiers, physicians, and others regarding the events of December 7. Among the interviewees was a California woman then visiting her family in Dallas, Texas.

"My first thought was, what a great pity that another nation should be added to those aggressors who choose to limit our freedom…I find myself at the age of eighty, an old woman, hanging on to the tail of the world, trying to keep up. I do not want the driver's seat but the eternal verities. There are certain things that I wish to express: one thing that I am very sure of is that hatred is death, but love is light. I want to contribute to the civilization of the world but…When I look at the holocaust that is going on in the world today, I'm almost ready to let go…"

Lena Jamison, "What A Great Pity," December 9, 1941
John Lomax, interviewer
After the Day of Infamy: "Man-on-the-Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor

The Office of War Information capitalized on the fear and outrage associated with the bombings to encourage support of war mobilization. Created seven months after the air raid, the OWI acted as a U.S. government propaganda agency generating pictures and copy like the above photograph of Pearl Harbor widows. Concentrating on subjects like aircraft factories, training for war, women in the workforce, and the armed forces, the OWI documented and celebrated American patriotism in the military and on the homefront.

Pearl Harbor Bombed!
NBC Program Book
Annotated typescript, December 7, 1941 and Microphone, circa 1938
Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division
From American Treasures of the Library of Congress

The Memory Section of American Treasures of the Library of Congress contains this annotated script of a December 7, 1941 NBC news report on the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The script preserves the announcer's markings for emphasis. The "program analysis" index card outlines all of the network's news broadcasts of that day, including the break in regularly scheduled programming to announce the tragic news from Pearl Harbor. Other NBC documentation at the Library outlines nearly every program heard over the network during the World War II era. Recordings of more than half of these programs are held by the Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division.

• Search across the American Memory Collections on Pearl Harbor and World War II to find additional items.
• Visit After the Day of Infamy, the "man in the street" interviews conducted by U.S. folklorists during the days immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The American Folklife Center has documented the thoughts and feelings expressed by average citizens following the events of September 11, 2001: see the September 11, 2001 Documentary Project.
• The Veterans History Project collects and preserves oral histories and other documents related to America's war veterans. The collection is housed and preserved at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. Visit Sights and Sounds: Voices from the Veteran's History Project to experience the project's online content.
• View Women Come to the Front to learn about women journalists during the Second World War. Among these women were Therese Bonney, Toni Frissell, Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, Clare Boothe Luce, Janet Flanner, and Esther Bubley.
• Search on the keyword war in "Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943 to hear a variety of songs related to WWII. Hear, for example, "Roosevelt and Hitler" (also titled "Strange Things Are Happining in the Land") written and sung by Buster Ezell.
• Search the Today in History Archive on World War II, or Franklin Roosevelt to read related pages. Read, for example, about Casablanca and the Allied invasion of North Africa.

Ceremonial Opening of the Pearl Harbor Dry Dock, Hawaii Territory, August 21, 1919.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991

The Washington Monument

Theodor Horydczak on top of Washington Monument, between 1920 and 1950.
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959

On December 6, 1884, workers placed the 3,300 pound marble capstone on the Washington Monument, and topped it with a nine-inch pyramid of cast aluminum, completing construction of the 555-foot Egyptian obelisk. Nearly fifty years earlier, the Washington National Monument Society choose Robert Mills's design to honor first American president and founding father George Washington. The privately-funded organization laid the monument's cornerstone on Independence Day, 1848, in Washington, D.C.

For 20 years, lack of funds and loss of support for the Washington National Monument Society left the obelisk incomplete at a height of about 156 feet. Finally, in 1876, President Ulysses Grant authorized the federal government to finish construction. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took over the project two years later.

Washington Monument at Sunset, between 1920 and 1950.
Theodor Horydczak, photographer
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959

Day and night, spring through winter, the Washington Monument is a focal point of the National Mall and a center of celebrations including concerts and the annual Independence Day fireworks display. The observation deck affords spectacular panoramic views of the nation's capital.

When fully constructed, the Washington Monument was the world's tallest structure. Today, the approximately 36,000 stacked blocks of granite and marble compose the world's tallest freestanding masonry structure. In a city of monuments, locals refer to the obelisk as "The Monument." By mandate, it will remain the tallest structure in Washington, D.C., dominating the skyline and accenting Pierre-Charles L'Enfant's plan for the city.

• There are many images of Washington, D.C. in American Memory. Search across the pictorial collections on Washington Monument to locate photographs taken from every vantage point.
• 192 commemorative stones line the interior walls of the Washington Monument. Read President Calvin Coolidge's speech at the Dedication of the New Mexico Stone in the Washington Monument on December 2, 1927—one of many Coolidge addresses available in Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929.
• Take a spin to the strains of the "Washington Monument Waltz," published in Washington D.C. in 1885. Search the collection Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885 on Washington Monument.

Salmon P. Chase

Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, between 1860 and 1865.
Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865

On December 6, 1864, Abraham Lincoln appointed Salmon P. Chase chief justice of the United States. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Chase studied law under Attorney General William Wirt. Championing Sunday Schools and temperance in the 1830s, by the 1840s he was an active member of the abolitionist movement. Chase defended fugitive slaves in Ohio and played a key role in creating the Free Soil Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories.

With Free Soil support, Chase was elected to the Senate in 1848. He founded the Ohio Republican party and served as the state's first Republican governor from 1855 to 1859. In office, he vigorously opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and defended the rights of African Americans. At the 1860 Republican convention, Chase permitted delegates pledged to support him to cast decisive votes for Abraham Lincoln. As a reward, in 1861, just two days after beginning his second term as senator, Chase left the Senate to serve as Lincoln's secretary of the treasury.

In 1864, Lincoln named Chase the sixth chief justice. During his time on the bench, Chase presided over the Senate's impeachment trial and acquittal of President Andrew Johnson. Chase continued to support African Americans. He drafted the first two clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Signed into law in 1868, the amendment extended citizenship rights to all people born or naturalized in the United States.

In a letter to the Colored People's Educational Monument Association, Chase asserted:

Our national experience has demonstrated that public order reposes most securely on the broad basis of universal suffrage. It has proved, also, that universal suffrage is the surest broad basis of universal guarantee and most powerful stimulus of individual, social, and political progress. May it not prove, moreover, in that work of re-organization which now engages the thoughts of all patriotic men, that universal suffrage is the best reconciler of the most comprehensive lenity with the most perfect public security and the most speedy and certain revival of general prosperity?

Hon. Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the United States to Wm. Syphax and John F. Cook, Committee
Celebration by the Colored People's Educational Monument Association in Memory of Abraham Lincoln…, 1865.
African American Perspectives, 1818-1907

Chase suffered a stroke and died on May 7, 1873. He was honored with a formal state funeral and is buried in Washington, D.C.

Learn more:

• Read "Address and Reply on the Presentation of A Testimonial to S. P. Chase." This 1845 document from African American Perspectives records a ceremony honoring Chase for his defense of escaped slave Samuel Watson.
• For a less-than-flattering review of Chase's performance on the campaign trail read page 92 of H. P. Hall's Observations. A prominent Minnesota journalist, Harlan Page Hall's memoir is available through the collection Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910.
• Today in History features on Plessy V. Ferguson, Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, The Selma March, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. place the Civil Rights Movement in context.

The Love of Wisdom is the Guide of Life.

Phi Beta Kappa motto

Wren Building, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, circa 1920-1950.
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959

On December 5, 1776, Phi Beta Kappa, America's most prestigious undergraduate honor society, was founded at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Membership in the organization is based on outstanding achievement in the liberal arts and sciences and typically limited to students in the upper tenth of their graduating class.

Organized by a group of enterprising undergraduates, Phi Beta Kappa was the nation's first Greek letter society. From 1776 to 1780, members met regularly at William and Mary to write, debate, and socialize. They also planned the organization's expansion and established the characteristics typical of American fraternities and sororities: an oath of secrecy, a code of laws, mottoes in Greek and Latin, and an elaborate initiation ritual. When the Revolutionary War forced William and Mary to close in 1780, newly-formed chapters at Harvard and Yale directed Phi Beta Kappa's growth and development.

By the time the William and Mary chapter reopened in 1851, Phi Beta Kappa was represented at colleges throughout New England. By the end of the nineteenth century, the once secretive, exclusively male social group had dropped its oath of secrecy, opened its doors to women, and transformed itself into a national honor society dedicated to fostering and recognizing excellence in the liberal arts and sciences.

Arrival of Students at Dunbarton College, Washington, D.C.
Theodor Horydczak, photographer, circa 1920-1950.
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959

Small Alcove in Library at Trinity College, Washington, D.C.
Theodor Horydczak, photographer, circa 1920-1950.
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959

Graduation Exercises at Dunbarton College, Washington, D.C.
Theodor Horydczak, photographer, circa 1920-1950.
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959

Today, Phi Beta Kappa has over 250 chapters and over half a million living members, including six of the current Supreme Court justices and presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton. In addition to sponsoring scholarships and campus activities, Phi Beta Kappa grants book and essay awards, and publishes The American Scholar, a quarterly journal named after Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 Harvard lecture warning against pedantry, imitation, traditionalism, and scholarship unrelated to life.

"Frat March Two-Step," John F. Barth, 1910
Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920.

• American Memory contains thousands of photographs of campuses and college life. Search across the American Memory Pictorial collections on college to view dormitories, sporting events, class photos and commencement ceremonies.
• Learn an old college song. Search Historic American Sheet Music on college to access ditties like "What's The Matter With Father," "College Chums Forever," and "Cap and Gown Two Step."
• See drawings and photographs of buildings which are part of William and Mary College by searching on that term in Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present. See, for example, Brafferton Hall built in 1724 as the first permanent Indian school in the colonies, and the President's House, attributed to Sir Christopher Wren.
• Search the Today in History Archive on college or university to find features on historic American schools including Columbia, Howard University, and Vassar College.

The Little Magician

Martin Van Buren, circa 1840-1862.
Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-Present

Martin Van Buren, eighth president of the United States and founder of the Democratic Party, was born on December 5, 1782 in Kinderhook, New York. Just five feet six inches tall, Van Buren earned the nicknames "The Little Magician," and the "Red Fox of Kinderhook" for his legendary skill in political manipulation. Alongside his gift for politics, however, Van Buren harbored a strong sense of idealism that led him, late in his career, to oppose the westward expansion of slavery.

Van Buren rose to national fame under the wing of Andrew Jackson, who defeated President John Quincy Adams in his 1828 bid for a second term. Before coming to Washington as a senator in 1821, Van Buren crafted the powerful New York political machine known as the "Albany Regency." In 1825, he put his formidable political skills at Jackson's disposal.

Van Buren became "Old Hickory"'s strongest Northern supporter in the election of 1828, and Jackson rewarded him with an appointment as secretary of state. The election, the first in which a candidate directly appealed for the popular vote, marked a turning point in American politics and led to the emergence of the Democratic Party.

When Jackson sought a second term in 1832, Van Buren ran for vice president. On January 13, 1833, Jackson wrote a letter to his second-in-command reiterating his determination to stand firm in the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33. The letter also reveals the president's personal relationship with Van Buren, then his most trusted advisor. "I have read several letters from you which remain unanswered," he begins:

You know I am a bad correspondent at any time-lately I have been indisposed by cold, and surrounded with the nullification of the south, and the Indians in the south and west; that has occupied all of my time, not leaving me a moment for private friendship, or political discussion with a friend.

President Andrew Jackson to Vice-President Van Buren, January 13, 1833.
Words and Deeds in American History

Martin Van Buren Residence, Kinderhook, New York, 1961.
Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955

Search on Van Buren in Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955 to find more photographs of the president's Lindenwald estate. Author Washington Irving wrote Rip Van Winkle there and is said to have gathered information for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

In 1837, Van Buren succeeded Jackson in the White House. Three months later, the Panic of 1837 sent the national economy into a tailspin. Van Buren's inability to alleviate the depression, along with his opposition to the annexation of Texas on grounds it would lead to expansion of slavery, led to his drubbing by Whig candidate William Henry Harrison in 1840. He retired to Lindenwald, his Kinderhook estate, where he died in 1862.

Learn more about the life and times of Martin Van Buren:

• Explore national politics in the 1820s and 1830s. Search the Words and Deeds in American History collection on Van Buren, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John Calhoun or John Quincy Adams.
• Read Van Buren's position on one of the burning topics of his day—the distribution of public lands. A Century of Lawmaking reports a speech Van Buren made in the Senate in May 1826. Search on Van Buren to find this and other documents pertaining to his senatorial career.
• "A Time of Universal Prosperity and What Came of It," discusses the impact of the Panic of 1837 on Michigan citizens. This essay is part of Memorials of a Half-Century by Bela Hubbard. The complete text is available through Pioneering the Upper Midwest: 1820-1910.

Boss Tweed Escapes!

There was Tweed;
Under his rule the ballot-box was freed!
Six times as big a vote he could record
As there were people living in the ward!

W.A. Croffut,
"Bourbon Ballads,"
America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets

Our Boss, Tobacco label showing Boss Tweed, copyright 1869.
Prints & Photographs Division

On December 4, 1875, William Marcy "Boss" Tweed, notorious leader of New York City's Democratic political machine, escaped from prison and fled to Europe. Between 1865 and 1871, Boss Tweed and his cronies stole millions of dollars from the city treasury. Convicted of forgery and larceny in 1873, Tweed was released in 1875. Immediately rearrested on civil charges, he was allowed daily visits to his family in the company of his jailor. On one of these trips, Tweed made his escape.

Elected an alderman in 1851, the former bookkeeper and volunteer fireman worked his way up New York City's Democratic hierarchy by holding various elected and unelected positions in the municipal government. He served one congressional term, but operated most effectively at the state level. By 1868, the year he gained a seat in the New York senate, Tweed firmly controlled the state Democratic Party. Two years later, he maneuvered passage of a revised city charter. A newly instituted board of audit became the principle means by which the Boss and his friends siphoned the city treasury of between twenty million and two-hundred million dollars.

The movement to overthrow the "Tweed Ring" included the New York Times, Harper's Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast, and reforming Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. On July 22, 1871, the newspaper began publishing an exposé of the Tweed Ring's activities. Nast followed up with cartoons roasting Tweed. "Let's stop them damned pictures," the Boss supposedly said, "I don't care so much what the papers write about—my constituents can't read—but damn it, they can see pictures." Despite bribes and threats, Nast continued to lambast Tweed weekly on the pages of Harper's. Meanwhile, Tilden's efforts to oust Tweed solidified his name as a reformer—a reputation that made him Governor of New York in 1874 and nearly put him in the White House in 1877.

With his 1873 conviction behind him, Tweed was sued by New York State for $6 million. Held in debtor's prison until he could post half that amount as bail, the former boss had few options. Still wealthy, his prison cell was fairly luxurious. Yet Tweed was determined to escape. Fleeing to Spain, he worked as a common seaman on a Spanish ship until recognized by his likeness to a Nast cartoon and captured. Extradited to New York, William Marcy Tweed died in debtor's prison on April 12, 1878.

Tweed-le-dee and Tilden-dum,
Thomas Nast, Artist,
Illustration in Harper's Weekly, July 1, 1876.
Boss Tweed, acting as a policeman, although wearing the uniform of a convict, holds two boys by the collar with one hand, and carries a billy club in the other. Reform Tweed: "If all the people want is to have somebody arrested, I'll have you plunderers convicted. You will be allowed to escape; nobody will be hurt; and then Tilden will go to the White House, and I to Albany as Governor."
Prints & Photographs Division

The political machine that created Boss Tweed and that Tweed strengthened remained a powerful force in New York City politics. Through a system of patronage and charity, Tammany Hall, the executive committee of the New York City Democratic Party, commanded the allegiance of many voters. Lacking a government safety net, poor citizens relied on the party for access to employment, or for help with funeral expenses. Public works projects like Central Park provided politicians with patronage opportunities ranging from lucrative contracts to day work digging ditches.

Use American Memory to learn more:

• Visit Immigration in the Learning Page to learn more about the forces that contributed to the growth of New York City.
• View film footage of Tammany sachem Dick Croker. According to the Edison films catalog Dick Croker Leaving Tammany Hall provides, "a very lifelike picture of the famous New York politician and Tammany Hall boss." Find this moving picture by searching the collection Inventing Entertainment: The Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies on Tammany.
• Search Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920 on Tilden or Tammany to find the songs Tilden and Reform (1876) and Tammany; A Pale Face Pow-Wow (1905).
• See 12,000 photographs of the Mid-Atlantic states New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut in Small Town America: 1850-1920. Search on the terms Tammany Hall or New York City to see a number of images from the Boss Tweed era.

A Day of Thanksgiving

Berkeley, William Henry Harrison Residence
Samuel H. Gottscho, photographer, November 14, 1961.
Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955

On December 4, 1619, thirty-eight Englishmen left their ship, ventured into the Virginia wilderness, and observed a prayer of Thanksgiving for safe passage to the New World.

Soon, the party, including a sawyer, a cooper, a shoemaker, a gun maker, and a cook, set about constructing a storehouse and an assembly hall for the plantation known as the Berkeley Hundred. Thereafter, December 4 was a day of Thanksgiving at Berkeley, "yearly and perpetually kept holy" as the plantation charter directed.

Located on the James River thirty miles west of Jamestown, the 8,000-acre plantation drew ninety settlers before it was decimated by a massacre in 1622. Motivated by the settlers' aggressive forays into Indian territory, the assault left nearly 350 people dead and reduced Virginia's English population by nearly a third.

By 1700, a plantation economy dependent on slave labor was firmly entrenched in eastern Virginia. Berkeley Plantation, built at Berkeley Hundred by the Harrison family in 1726, was one of several impressive James River plantations constructed during the first part of the seventeenth century. Nearby Shirley Plantation, begun in 1723, was the birthplace of Ann Hill Carter, mother of Civil War general Robert E. Lee. Sherwood Forest, erected in 1730, was the home of President John Tyler.

Shirley Plantation, James River, Virginia
William Henry Jackson, photographer, between 1900-1906.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

Sherwood Forest, John Tyler Residence, Virginia
Samuel H. Gottscho, photographer, November 10, 1961.
Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955

Benjamin Harrison V, born at Berkeley Plantation on December 13, 1730, signed the Declaration of Independence and served three terms as Governor of Virginia. Also born at Berkeley, his son William Henry Harrison earned fame as an Indian fighter in the West. "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" was the campaign slogan for his successful 1840 presidential bid. Just a month after his inauguration, however, Harrison died in office and was succeeded by Charles City County neighbor and vice president, John Tyler. In 1888, William Henry Harrison's grandson, Benjamin, entered the White House, despite losing the popular vote to incumbent Grover Cleveland.

During the Peninsular Campaign of the Civil War, General George B. McClellan made Berkeley Plantation his headquarters. While stationed at Berkeley, Major General Daniel Butterfield composed the bugle call "Taps."

General Benjamin Harrison—"Come on Boys!", Battle of Resaca-May 13th to 16th 1864, lithograph, Kurz and Allison, 1888.
Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-Present

• Search the collection Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 on Harrison to retrieve documents pertaining to Benjamin Harrison, revolutionary patriot and ancestor of two American presidents.
• View additional photographs of the facade and rooms of the Harrison and Tyler homes. Search on Berkeley or Sherwood Forest in Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955.
• Early Virginia Religious Petitions presents images of 423 petitions submitted to the Virginia legislature between 1774 and 1802. Use the Geographic Locations directory to find a petition dated October 22, 1793 in which Quakers from Charles City ask relief from various religious levies. Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson's 1786 Act for Establishing Religious Freedom should have prevented these incursions on the religious liberty of the Society of Friends.
• Read more about U.S. Presidents including Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Harry Truman. Search the Today in History Archive on the name of your favorite chief executive.

Goodbye to General Washington

General Washington, Detail of painting by John Trumbull, 1756-1843
photograph, 1912.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable…I…shall feel obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.

General George Washington's Farewell to his Officers, from Memoir of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge

On Thursday, December 4, 1783, General George Washington received the officers of the victorious Continental Army in the Long Room of Fraunces Tavern, on the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets, in lower Manhattan. As many as forty-four officers bid farewell to their general, as he set out for Annapolis to resign his commission. The tavern, under the proprietorship of patriot Samuel Fraunces, was conveniently located across the Bowling Green from the Whitehall Ferry landing. There, a barge waited to carry Washington across the Hudson River.

Fraunces Tavern, New York, New York, between 1900-1915.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

Until British troops evacuated the city on November 22, 1783, Fraunces Tavern was called the "Queen's Head Tavern." Its sign incorporated a portrait of Queen Charlotte.

On November 25, 1783, the American army took possession of New York City. After a formal procession, Governor Clinton gave an elegant public entertainment at the Fraunces Tavern in honor of General Washington. On December 1, a display of "fire-works and illuminations" was viewed from the Battery.

All the festivities were reported in the newspaper published by James Rivington, formerly "Printer to the King's Most Excellent Majesty." With the departure of the British, The Royal Gazette became Rivington's New-York Gazette, and Universal Advertiser. The December 6, 1783 issue of the New-York Gazette described the General's farewell to his officers:

Last Thursday noon, the principal Officers of the army in town, assembled at Fraunces Tavern, to take a final leave of their illustrious, gracious, and much loved Commander, General Washington. The passions of human nature were never more tenderly agitated, than in this interesting and distressful scene…[His] words produced extreme sensibility on both sides…

Rivington's New-York Gazette, and Universal Advertiser
December 6, 1783.

Major-General Henry Knox, portrait by Gilbert Stuart, photograph, between 1900 and 1912.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

According to Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge's account, General Henry Knox was nearest to General Washington. As the general concluded his address, the two turned to each other and "suffused in tears…embraced each other in silence." Then, each of the officers followed suit, afterwards following Washington to the ferry landing where he departed, waving to them from his barge.

General Washington had already issued his Farewell Orders to the Continental Army. The outpouring of emotion and affection expressed to Washington upon his retirement to Mt. Vernon for Christmas imposed a heavy burden of reciprocal correspondence. The volume of this correspondence is reflected in the letter-books of the George Washington Papers, 1741-1799.

The general authored many letters of recommendation for former soldiers and patriots including a lengthy testimonial for Samuel Fraunces. Fraunces may have assisted the Continental Army by obtaining intelligence from British army officers who frequented his tavern while New York was under royal government.

When he became President of the United States, Washington employed Samuel Fraunces as Steward of the Executive Mansion. At that time, the president's home was in New York City, just around the corner from the Tavern.

• Read Washington correspondence. Search the collection George Washington Papers, 1741-1799 on Fraunces, Tallmadge, or Knox to find a wealth of material including documentation of Washington's expenditures at the tavern. Search the collection on Washington farewell to locate more words from Washington at the time of his retirement.
• View the Time Line and the Essays in the George Washington Papers, 1741-1799 for additional biographical information about Washington.
• Search Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 on army for material related to the Continental Army including a document repealing "rations, subsistence, or allowances to officers over and above their pay."
• Search the Today in History Archive on George Washington to learn more about the first president. Features highlight the president's birthday, his resignation as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, and his death.

Land of Lincoln

Springfield, Illinois, Drawn by A. Ruger, 1867.
Panoramic Maps
Map Collections (1500-Present)

Illinois entered the Union on December 3, 1818. The 21st state takes its name from the Illinois Confederation—a group of Algonquian-speaking tribes native to the area. An Algonquin word, "Illinois" means "tribe of superior men."

Remnants of a much earlier civilization, thought the most sophisticated prehistoric society north of Mexico, are preserved at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in the southwestern part of the state.

French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette entered the Illinois region in 1673. Control of the territory passed to Great Britain in 1763. When the United States acquired the land that became Illinois Territory in 1783, most European settlers there were of French descent. In 1788, the Continental Congress received information concerning the inhabitants of the Illinois area. "There are sundry French settlements on the river Mississippi within the tract," the committee reported:

Near the mouth of the river Kaskaskies, there is a village which appears to have contained near eighty families from the beginning of the late revolution. There are twelve families in a small village at la Prairie du Rochers, and near fifty families—the Kahokia village. There are also four or five families at fort Chartres and St. Philips, which is five miles farther up the river. The heads of families in those villages appear each of them to have had a certain quantity of arable land allotted to them, and a proportionate quantity of meadow and of woodland or pasture.

The Committee…referred the memorial of George Morgan…respecting a tract of land in the Illinois, June 20, 1788.
Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789

Twenty years later, Congress organized the Illinois Territory. Pioneers from Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee settled the southern part of the territory, while New Englanders ventured to northern Illinois via the Erie Canal.

Land of Lincoln, the state slogan, pays homage to famous son Abraham Lincoln. Born in Kentucky, Lincoln came to Illinois in 1830. He was instrumental, along with colleagues in the Illinois legislature, in moving the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield. Settling there in 1837, Lincoln married socially prominent resident Mary Todd, practiced law, and built the political career that brought him the presidency in 1861.

Bird's-Eye View of Chicago, 1913.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991

Chicago, a minor trading post at the southwestern tip of Lake Michigan until the 1830s, developed into a railroad hub, and industrial center. After the Civil War, industrialization attracted a new wave of immigrants. People from all over the U.S. and the world ventured to Chicago to work in the meat-packing and steel industries. Even the Great Conflagration of 1871 failed to prevent "the Windy City" from becoming one of the largest urban centers in the country. It remains the third most populous city and metropolitan area in the United States.

View of Illinois Central Railroad Freight Terminal, Chicago, Illinois, Jack Delano, photographer, April 1943.
FSA/OWI Photographs, 1938-1944

Learn more about Illinois:

• Chicago residents share their experiences of life in the Windy City in a series of interviews from the 1930s. Search the American Life Histories, 1936-1940 collection on Chicago, or browse the list of Illinois Titles.
• Search the Today in History Archive on Chicago to find features on prominent Chicago residents including architects Louis Sullivan and Daniel H. Burnham, and reformers Jane Addams and Grace Abbott.
• See the Prairie State! Search these collections on Illinois, or Chicago:
  • Taking the Long View, 1851-1991
  • Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920
  • Creative Americans: Portraits by Van Vechten, 1932-1964
  • Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955
  • FSA/OWI Photographs, 1938-1944
• Search on Illinois in Map Collections (1500-Present) to see a number of small towns in the state. See, for example, an 1880 map of Elgin, an 1869 map of Moline, or an 1869 map of Urbana.
• Enjoy beautiful Posters from the WPA: 1936-1943. Search on the keyword Illinois to see, for example, posters for the 14th Illinois Cattle Feeders Meeting, the Illinois volume of the "American Guide Series," and a Father and Son Banquet, sponsored by the Chicago Urban League.
• Visit Mr. Lincoln's Virtual Library. Read the draft of the Emancipation Proclamation and examine a selection of prints and broadsides about Lincoln's assassination.
• The "Lincoln Park [Chicago] March" is one of over two hundred sheet-music compositions in "We'll Sing to Abe Our Song!": Sheet Music about Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Civil War.

Mark Twain

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn From the Book by Mark Twain," Everett Henry, Illustrator, 1959.
Language of the Land: Journeys Into Literary America

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, popularly known as Mark Twain, was born November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri and spent his childhood in nearby Hannibal. Twain is best known for the novels set in his boyhood world beside the Mississippi River, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and his masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

As a young man, Clemens worked as a typesetter for his brother Orion's newspaper before following his dream of navigating the Mississippi on paddle wheel steamboats. He piloted boats for three years until the outbreak of the Civil War stopped river traffic in 1861.

Clemens joined his brother in Nevada where Orion had been appointed Secretary of the Territory. Roughing It, first published in 1872, is Clemens's account of his journey. In the Prefatory, Clemens describes his writing style:

Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped: information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give worlds if I could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I calk up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore, I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not justification.

Prefatory to Mark Twain's Roughing It (1891).
California As I Saw It: First-Person Narratives, 1849-1900

"Envious Contemplations," Illustration in Mark Twain's Roughing It (1891), Chapter 1, page 20.
California As I Saw It: First-Person Narratives, 1849-1900

While in the West, Clemens stayed briefly at the California boarding house of uprooted Missourian Mrs. Lee Summers Whipple-Haslam. In her book Early Days in California, she recalls that her mother engaged Clemens in extended conversation:

As usual with Missourians, they imparted numerous and various details of ancient forefathers, and, after lengthy discussion, decided that according to all the rules and laws of Missouri, they were cousins.

Later, when other boarders, thinking Clemens "wonderful," asked if there were others like him in Missouri, she replied "no" and explained that "he was a Missouri freak that had broken loose from his hitching post."

While in the West, Clemens traveled to Hawaii and wrote for the Virginia City, Nevada newspaper Territorial Enterprise adopting the pseudonym Mark Twain. Two years later he moved to San Francisco where his writing gained further popularity and he developed the humorous style now famous throughout the world.

Envelope Addressed from Mark Twain to 'The Father-in-Law of the Telephone,'
from the Time Line of Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922),
Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers

The American Memory collection Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers features a letter from Mark Twain to Gardiner G. Hubbard, "The Father-in-law of the Telephone," dated December 27, 1890. In his familiar satirical style, Twain complains to Bell's father-in-law of the poor telephone service he has received in Hartford, Connecticut. He objects that there is no night service, and that he is regularly cut off while practicing his cursing. In fact, Twain enjoyed and made use of new inventions. For example, he was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript to his publisher.

• Search the Library of Congress Online Catalog, using the option "Name Browse" found on the "Subj-Name-Title-Call#" search page to compile a bibliography of works by and about the author. Search on both Mark Twain and Samuel L. Clemens
• Read several of Mark Twain's novels provided online by American Studies at the University of Virginia:
  • Innocents Abroad (1869)
  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
  • The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and The Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins (1893-1894)
• Search the full text of these novels along with the text of newspaper reviews and obituary notices about Mark Twain.
• Search the Today in History Archive on writer to find more features on American literary figures such as Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allan Poe and William Faulkner.
• Search on Mark Twain in the collection Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record to view photographs of Clemens's home in Hartford, Connecticut and of the "Mark Twain Historic District" in Hannibal, Missouri.

  
  Bird's Eye View of the City of Hannibal, Marion Co., Missouri, Drawn by Albert Ruger, 1869.
  Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929

• Learn more about Samuel Clemens's home state:
  • Visit the Today in History feature on Missouri.
  • Search on Missouri in Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929 to view maps of the state.
  • View panoramic photographs of the state in Taking the Long View, 1851-1991.
  • See the Pathfinder Search Guide for Missouri prepared by the Learning Page.
• Learn more about Alexander Graham Bell's extended family relationships by visiting the The Bell Family Trees featured in the Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers.

Daughter of the Transcendentalists

"November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year," said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden.

"That's the reason I was born in it," observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose.

"If something very pleasant should happen now, we should think it a delightful month," said Beth, who took a hopeful view of everything, even November.

"I dare say, but nothing pleasant ever does happen in this family," said Meg, who was out of sorts…"My patience, how blue we are!" cried Jo…"Oh, don't I wish I could manage things for you as I do for my heroines!…I'd have some rich relation leave you a fortune unexpectedly…"

"Jo and I are going to make fortunes for you all. Just wait ten years, and see if we don't," said Amy, who sat in a corner making mud pies, as Hannah called her little clay models of birds, fruit, and faces.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

Louisa May Alcott, the second daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott, teacher and transcendentalist philosopher, and Abigail May, social worker and reformer, was born in the "disagreeable month" of November, just like her literary creation Jo March, the rambunctious heroine of Little Women.

On November 29, 1832, Amos Bronson Alcott wrote his father-in-law of his joy in "the birth of a second daughter on my own birth-day." Convinced of the importance of early childhood, Bronson Alcott continued to keep a daily journal of each of his four daughters' growth and activities. Shortly before her second birthday, Louisa's father wrote of her:

Louisa…manifests uncommon activity and force of mind at present…by force of will and practical talent, [she] realizes all that she conceives…

Bronson Alcott, November 5, 1834.
The Journals of Bronson Alcott, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1938), page 47

During Louisa's early years, her father's innovative Temple School in Boston failed, as did the family's experiment with communal living with a group of transcendentalist mystics at Fruitlands Farm.

A happier time began after the family settled at Hillside House in Concord, Massachusetts. There, the Alcotts found a sympathetic community and like-minded friends. Louisa and her sisters were always welcome to participate in the conversations of the poets, philosophers, and reformers that made up their parents' circle.

The Old Bridge, Concord, Massachusetts, 1900.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

The Alcott girls enjoyed the natural beauty of Concord, boating on the river, ice skating on Walden Pond, and running free in the surrounding fields and woods. Henry David Thoreau was one of Louisa's instructors when she was a young girl. In one of his fanciful lessons, he taught her that a cobweb was a "handkerchief dropped by a fairy." As a teenager, Louisa enjoyed borrowing books from Ralph Waldo Emerson's collection and delighted in conversing with the "sage of Concord."

For the most part, the Alcotts taught their daughters at home. Daily journal-keeping formed a significant part of the home curriculum. Louisa and her sisters wrote a weekly newspaper in which they recorded family events and published their literary and artistic endeavors. The girls and their neighbors formed a dramatic society, and the Hillside House barn became the local theater where they performed the Louisa's melodramatic plays.

Although their home and community life was rich, the family remained financially impoverished. It was necessary that all the members of the family contribute their labor to the family's support, with the daughters working as teachers, companions, and domestics. Besides their paid labors, all members of the family contributed their time and talents to the abolition movement, the woman's suffrage movement, and to the relief of those poorer than themselves.

Louisa formed an early resolution to earn money to relieve the hardship of her mother's life. Gradually, she was able to begin earning a reliable income from stories and sketches published in The Atlantic Monthly and from dime-novel thrillers, including Behind a Mask published under the pseudonym "A. M. Barnard." Her first book of stories, Flower Fables, was published in 1855.

Patients in Ward K of Armory Square Hospital, Washington, D.C., August, 1865.
Selected Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865

During the Civil War, Louisa served as a nurse at a Union Army hospital in Washington, D.C. There, she kept careful journals which she published later as Hospital Sketches. A severe bout of typhoid fever brought her home to Concord an invalid. It is thought that she was treated with mercury for her fever, as were many others who became ill during this period. Mercury poisoning was apparently the cause of the slow debilitation which led to her death twenty years later.

The later years of Louisa's life were financially secure, and her family was able to live comfortably and pursue their many intellectual and artistic interests at their second home in Concord, Orchard House.

The Orchard House, Home of the Alcotts, Concord, Massachusetts, 1900.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

In 1868, at the suggestion of her publisher, Louisa wrote a "story for girls" that was to bring her lasting fame, the first volume of Little Women; or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, based on the experiences of her own family. Little Women was an immediate success. It was followed the next year by a second volume, Good Wives, and in subsequent years, by two sequels, Little Men and Jo's Boys.

During the 1870s, Alcott and her mother were deeply involved in the women's suffrage movement, canvassing door-to-door encouraging women to register to vote. In 1879, Louisa registered as the first woman to vote in the Concord school committee election.

Help Us to Win the Vote, 1914.
Votes for Women Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920

Her last years were shadowed by the deaths of two of her sisters and her brother-in-law. As the sole support of her parents, sisters, and her nephews and niece, she became overburdened with work and ill health. Louisa May Alcott died, two days after her father, on March 4, 1888, at the age of fifty-six.

• To compile a bibliography of works by Louisa May Alcott, search the Library of Congress Online Catalog, using the option "Name Browse" found on the "Subj-Name-Title-Call#" search page.
• Search on Concord Massachusetts in the collection Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920 to see more photographs of scenes from Louisa May Alcott's home.
• Today in History contains several features on Concord, Massachusetts and its inhabitants. Search the Today in History Archive on names such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Concord.
• Read the text of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women provided online by American Studies at the University of Virginia.
• Read the poem "Transfiguration" written by Louisa May Alcott in A Masque of Poets included in the American Memory collection The Nineteenth Century in Print: Books.

Father of the "Little Women"

Woman…is helping herself to secure her place in a better spirit and manner than any we [men] can suggest or devise,…it becomes us to take, rather than proffer Consels [sic], readily waiting to learn her wishes and aims, as she has so long, and so patiently deferred to us.

Letter from A. Bronson Alcott to Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Concord, Massachusetts, May 4, 1869
The Letters of A. Bronson Alcott, (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1969), p. 471

On November 29, 1799, Amos Bronson Alcott, educator, philosopher of American Transcendentalism, and father of the original "Little Women"—Anna, Louisa, Elizabeth, and May Alcott—was born in Wolcott, Connecticut. The son of a poor flax farmer, Alcott was almost completely self-educated. As a young man, Alcott worked as a peddler, handyman, and gardener, pursuing a self-selected course of readings in English and German literature and philosophy.

In 1830, Alcott journeyed to Boston to attend a series of lectures on abolition. There he met Samuel May, the first Unitarian minister in Massachusetts, and his sister Abigail May, a teacher and social worker. On May 23, 1830, Alcott and Abba May were married. During the next several years the Alcotts were forced to move several times, as Alcott's experimental schools were attempted, then abandoned as financially unsuccessful.

During this period, the couple's four daughters were born, and Alcott continued to develop his lifelong habit of journal-writing, chronicling the daily events in the development of his children. At the basis of his educational theory was his belief that "early education is the enduring power" in the formation of the imagination and moral life of the human being.

Tremont Temple, Boston, Massachusetts, 1900.
Touring Turn-of the Century, 1880-1920

In September 1834, Alcott opened his famous Temple School, located in the Masonic Temple on Tremont Street in Boston, where he put into effect many of his innovative educational theories. His assistant, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, who went on to found the first kindergarten in the United States, published the plan of the school the next year in her book Record of a School.

Alcott believed that learning should be a pleasant experience for children, and that the environment of the classroom should be beautiful. He built the classroom furniture himself and allowed the children to decorate the room with pictures and plants and to arrange their desks in a manner pleasing to themselves.

Alcott emphasized the cultivation of the virtues of self-discipline, self-expression, and charity. A form of democratic classroom government was instituted. His curriculum included physical education, dance, art, music, nature study and daily journal-writing. He acquired a juvenile library and encouraged the children to read classic adult works such as Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Spenser's Fairy Queene, Milton's Paradise Lost, and the poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge.

The school was, at first, very successful, and attracted a number of well-connected students. However, Alcott's inability to compromise on his ideals eventually led to its failure. In 1835, the last remaining pupils were withdrawn from the school due to Alcott's insistence on permitting the attendance of a black child.

Wayside, the Home of Hawthorne, Concord, Massachusetts, [formerly Hillside House, home of the Alcotts], 1901.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

With the financial assistance of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Alcotts moved to Hillside House in Concord, Massachusetts. Emerson also paid for Alcott's trip to England to visit a school founded upon his theories. Alcott returned with a new friend, Charles Lane, a mystic transcendentalist, with whom he embarked on a new experiment, that of communal living at the farm they purchased, Fruitlands.

The experiment in communal living was Alcott's least successful adventure and proved a great hardship to his wife and children. The experience was later satirized by his daughter Louisa in her story "Transcendental Wild Oats". After the farm's complete failure, the Alcotts returned to Concord, where the family was able to renew congenial friendships and to develop a happy family life, in spite of their constant struggle with poverty.

I have had some faithful readings, all of Carlyle including his translations—all of Goethe that came within my reach…I have found refreshment, too, in Conversing with some little Children who pass the day in my study…there is begotten in me the liveliest sense of my…duty of Teaching again.

A. Bronson Alcott, Letter to Charles Lane, January 1846,
The Letters of A. Bronson Alcott, page 124, (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1969)

Path to School of Philosophy, Concord, Massachusetts, circa 1910-1920.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

Always notable for his humility, modesty and his serene and happy spirit, Alcott continued to develop his educational ideas, teaching his children at home, and giving occasional "Conversations." These talks were directed parlor seminars in which he led a Socratic form of dialogue, in return for a small stipend. Eventually, Alcott's seminars gained a popular following. They were especially well-attended on his tours in the West.

School of Philosophy, Concord, Massachusetts, circa 1910-1920.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

In his later years, Alcott's daughter Louisa's financial success as a writer enabled the family to purchase not only necessities, but a few luxuries as well. The family moved to Orchard House where Alcott established the Concord Summer School of Philosophy in a converted barn on the property. Alcott's School of Philosophy was a gathering center for the Transcendentalists and flourished until shortly after his death in 1888.

Discover more about Alcott and the Concord Transcendentalists in American Memory:

• Bronson Alcott maintained friendships and correspondence with a variety of influential people of his time, including Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Spofford. Search the Today in History Archive for features on the reformers, philosophers, writers, and artists that formed Alcott's circle, including:
  • Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Henry David Thoreau
  • Walt Whitman
  • John Burroughs
  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
  • Daniel Chester French (A native of Concord, Massachusetts, the sculptor who created the Minute Man Statue and the Statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial received his early art instruction from Bronson Alcott's daughter May Alcott Nieriker.)
• Search on Bronson Alcott in the collection The Nineteenth Century in Print: Books to find Alcott's book Ralph Waldo Emerson; an Estimate of His Character and Genius in Prose and Verse and Record of Mr. Alcott's School, Exemplifying the Principles and Methods of Moral Culture, written by Alcott's assistant Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.
• The collection Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, circa 1820-1910 includes the full text of a book of meditations, Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, written by transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, a friend of Alcott's.
• Search on Concord Massachusetts in the collection Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920 to see more photographs of the town which was home to the Alcotts and other members of the Transcendentalist movement.
• Two Alcotts' homes in Concord are now museums. Visit the Web sites for Wayside House, formerly called "Hillside House," and for Orchard House, the home Louisa May Alcott purchased for the family with the earnings from her writing.

The First American Automobile Race

At 8:55 a.m. on November 28, 1895, six "motocycles" left Chicago's Jackson Park for a 54 mile race to Evanston, Illinois and back through the snow. Number 5, piloted by inventor J. Frank Duryea, won the race in just over 10 hours at an average speed of about 7.3 miles per hour! The winner earned $2,000, the enthusiast who named the horseless vehicles "motocycles" won $500, and the Chicago Times-Herald, sponsor of the race, declared:

Persons who are inclined…to decry the development of the horseless carriage…will be forced…to recognize it as an admitted mechanical achievement, highly adapted to some of the most urgent needs of our civilization.

"The Future of the Motocycle", The Chicago Times-Herald, November 29, 1895.

Jackson Park, Chicago, Illinois, 1908.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991

Only two years earlier in Springfield, Massachusetts, brothers Charles and J. Frank Duryea had built and driven what they claimed to be the first American gasoline-powered automobile. Yet, as if by spontaneous combustion, over 70 entries were filed for the Times-Herald race, a response so overwhelming that President Cleveland asked the War Department to oversee the event. Following their victory in the race, the Duryeas manufactured thirteen copies of the Chicago car, and J. Frank Duryea developed the "Stevens-Duryea," an expensive limousine, which remained in production into the 1920s.

Samuel Holland's Repair Shop, The Only Automobile Manufacturing Plant in North Dakota at that Time, circa 1900.
The Great Northern Plains, 1880-1920

Samuel Holland, born in Norway in 1859, came to Park River, ND in the 1880s and established a blacksmith shop where he also spent time building self-propelled motor vehicles. In 1904, the local newspaper reported he had built an automobile, and may have built as many as eight. One copy of his automobile is known to exist.

There were American antecedents to the Duryeas' winning vehicle. As early as 1826, Samuel Morey filed a patent, bearing the signatures of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, for an internal combustion engine. George Brayton, Stephania Reese, Henry Nadig, and Wallis Harris all produced self-propelled machines.

Charles Black developed an 18 horsepower "chug buggy" in 1891—the same year John Lambert developed a three wheel motor buggy. After seeing the 1895 Times-Herald race, Lambert went on to produce four wheel vehicles at his Buckeye Manufacturing plant.

The Stanley twins built a steam-powered vehicle in 1897. The "Stanley Steamer" achieved fame when brother F. E. Stanley did a mile in 2:11 on a dirt track with a 30 degree incline.

George Eastman bought the rights to the Stanleys' earlier photographic patents, supplying the brothers with capital to manufacture 200 standing orders for the Steamer, which eventually became the "Locomobile." By the time Henry Ford incorporated the Ford Motor Company in 1903, the Stanleys' plant already employed 140 workers.

In the interview "Transportation," Arthur Botsford of Thomaston, Connecticut recalled his "first and fastest auto ride" and the earliest automobile makes:

I was hikin' along over towards Terryville to get the trolley and Jack come along and I flagged him. I was late. I says, "Jack, can we make the trolley?," and he says, "'Sure," and how we did fly. We made it all right.

The different cars they used to be. I used to keep a list of 'em. There was the Pope Hartford, and the Stevens Duryea, and the Locomobile, and the Peerless and the National, and the Saxon, and the Metz—I can't remember them all.

Billy Gilbert, that used to live next to me here, he had a Stanley Steamer. He was an engineer. He's out in Californy now. Spent all his life on the railroads and he swore by steam. Wouldn't have a gasoline engine.

After he moved to Californy he wrote me a letter. Said there was a big hill out there beyond San Francisco nine miles long. Said ten tow cars was kept busy on that hill all the time. But that steamer of his just ate it up.

"Transportation," Francis Denovan, interviewer, January 5, 1939.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940

Riemer's Loco, Winning Five-Miles Event in 10:51 4-5, Grosse Pointe Track, Detroit, 1902.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

H.S. Harkness in his Mercedes-Simplex, Winning Five-Miles Event in 6:1 3-5, Grosse Pointe Track, Detroit, 1902.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

Like its predecessor horse racing, automobile racing provided the stiff competition which helped to "refine the breed." When the Stanleys brought their 150 horsepower "T. E. (Thoroughly Educated) Wogglebug" to the 1906 winter races at Ormond Beach, Florida, driver Fred Marriott clocked 127.66 mph, becoming the first to move faster than 2 miles per minute.

In 1911 the Indianapolis 500 was born. This famous race fostered the development of innovations such as the rear view mirror. By the time Berna Eli "Barney" Oldfield sped to the top of Pike's Peak in 1915, motor car production was booming and automobile racing a well-established sport.

In a January 1926 issue of the American Automobile Association's magazine, The American Motorist, Walter Carver explained the influence of racing on innovations in motorcar construction:

Probably but few readers will associate this trend of reduction in engine size with the racing game, for to most people, racing is a game or a mighty dangerous sport which draws its actors from the sons of millionaires or "nut" garage hands…Racing is and has been more than a game. Men have given their lives to prove some point of better motor car operation…speed, acceleration, braking which must be attendant upon high speed, all have been bettered as the result of somebody's efforts at designing something better which went out and won on some perilous track.

Walter Carver, "What the Show Will Show," The American Motorist, January, 1926.
Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929

Corona Speedway, Corona, California, 1913.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991

• For a wide variety of related images, search the American Memory pictorial collections on the term automobile. Limit the search further by using the phrase automobile racing. Contrast the results of these searches with the result of a search on the term car. This search will yield a much wider variety of images including Pullman cars and dining cars, the "cook's car" on a Midwestern farm, motor car companies, armored cars, and more.
• Search the collection Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929 on automobile and car to find pertinent material about the early development of the automobile. The collection contains sample issues of the periodical The American Motorist for 1926. Don't miss these articles from the January 1926 issue:
  • "What the Show Will Show" by Walter Carver, which discusses the latest automotive design and mentions the relationship of car racing to shifts in automotive design.
  • "Peter the Great, King of Speed" by C. G. Sinsabaugh, a tribute to race-car driver Peter De Paolo.
  • "Roaming Through Speed-Mad Years" by Fred J. Wagner, the reminiscences of "the official starter of practically every important automobile race for the last twenty years."
• The American Life Histories, 1936-1940 interview with Roy A. Morse provides a little farming folklore followed by an account of early automobile ownership. Search the collection on automobile to find more stories.
• Search the collection Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920 (Duke University) on automobile to find early motoring songs such as "In My Merry Oldsmobile" (1905) by Gus Edwards and "He'd Have to Get Under Get Out and Get Under (To Fix Up His Automobile)" (1913) by Maurice Abrahams.
• See a film of New York City's first annual automobile parade, held on November 4, 1899. Search on the term automobile in The Life of a City: Early Motion Pictures of New York, 1898-1906.
• Search on the terms automobile and racing automobile in History of the American West, 1860-1920 to view images such as Pike's Peak, Early Hill Climb, and Auto Race.

Crossing the Pacific

First Map of California, by Diego Gutierrez, 1562.
1492: An Ongoing Voyage

Having sailed from the Atlantic Ocean through the passage that came to be known as the Straits of Magellan, three ships under the command of native Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan entered "The Sea of the South" on November 28, 1520. Thus the first westward crossing of the Pacific Ocean was launched.

The fleet reached the island of Guam on March 6, 1521 after a voyage so remarkable for its calm that the explorers called the ocean "Pacific." Setting foot on land, the crew that had been reduced to eating leather enjoyed fresh food for the first time in 99 days.

Magellan was killed on April 27, 1521 in fighting with natives of Mactan Island in the Philippines. The following September, one of the fleet's five ships returned to Spain laden with spices, thereby completing the first circumnavigation of the globe and vindicating Magellan's vision of an alternate route to the Spice Islands.

Admiral Byrd's Ship, City of New York (After South Pole Trip), Washington, D.C., Theodor Horydczak, photographer, circa 1920-1950.
Washington as It Was, 1923-1959

• Search the Today in History Archive on explorer to find other features, such as those on Jacques Cartier, Ponce de Leon and the pages of August 3rd and October 12th on Christopher Columbus.
• Search the American Memory collections on explorer to find more material on exploration.
• Washington as It Was, 1923-1959 has several photographs of a ship used by Admiral Richard E. Byrd on one of his four expeditions to the South Pole; to locate these, search the collection on Byrd.
• Visit the Library of Congress online exhibition examining the impact of European exploration of the Americas, 1492: On Ongoing Voyage.

Delancey and the Zenger Case

Manatvs gelegen op de Noot [sic] Riuier. Joan Vinckeboons, 1639.
Cities and Towns,
Map Collections (1500-Present)

James Delancey was born into the English aristocracy on November 27, 1703. He presided over the 1733 libel suit brought by Governor William Cosby against journalist Peter Zenger. This case is a major landmark in establishing freedom of the press in America.

Delancey was educated at Cambridge and trained in law. He arrived in colonial Manhattan in 1729. Prior to being named Chief Justice by Royal Governor William Cosby, he served on the Governor's Council and as second judge of the colony's Supreme Court.

Eighteenth century American colonists demanded increased freedom while proponents of royal rule desperately sought to maintain power in the face of rising opposition and democracy. Delancey and Cosby staunchly supported the English Crown and the concept of royal privilege. Many colonial New Yorkers were individualistic entrepreneurs seeking financial success and independence and did not quietly defer to what they viewed as antiquated claims of royal privilege.

Statue of Force, Appellate Court Building, New York, between 1900 and 1906.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

Statue of Wisdom, Appellate Court Building, New York, between 1900 and 1906.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

Conflicts between proponents of royal privilege and colonists occurred throughout the 18th century. No skirmish proved as significant as the libel suit against Peter Zenger. Zenger's New York Weekly Journal enjoyed the enthusiastic support of critics of royal privilege and, in the early 1730s, published articles exposing Governor Cosby's unjust policies, backroom financial deals, and bullying tactics. Cosby condemned the Journal and imprisoned Zenger for eight months while he awaited trial for seditious libel. Zenger's imprisonment and trial created widespread public outrage and helped further fuel anti-royal sentiment.

Farm Journal 1906, Alfred Harrell, photographer.
Buckaroos In Paradise, 1945-1982

A hostile Chief Justice Delancey presided over the case. The prosecution argued that there were sufficient grounds for conviction as the publication was highly critical of Cosby and thus libelous and treasonous. In the eyes of the prosecution, the relative truth of the publication was irrelevant.

Zenger's lawyer, Andrew Hamilton (like Zenger a former indentured servant turned successful businessman), directed his defense to the jury rather than the judge, hoping that a public fearful of royal abuses of power would condemn Cosby and protect Zenger. Hamilton conceded that Zenger had published articles critical of Cosby but eloquently argued that because the articles contained truths in the form of statements of verifiable facts, they could not be libelous. The jury's "not guilty" verdict generated spontaneous cheers from anxious onlookers.

This first colonial freedom-of-the-press case established the veracity of reported statements as the principal criteria for determining grounds for libel and set a precedent against judicial tyranny in libel suits, thus marking a major advance for freedom of expression later enshrined in the United States Constitution and its First Amendment.

• Search across the American Memory collections on press to learn about the diverse topics that have been the object of journalist interest.
• Learn more about New York City. Search on New York to review the exciting and diverse archival items in:
  • Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906
  • FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945
  • Washington As It Was, 1923-1959
• To read a wide range of material concerning freedom of the press search on that term in the Periodicals section of The Nineteenth Century in Print.

Robert R. Livingston

Bust of Livingston Fresco in U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C., Theodor Horydczak, photographer, ca. 1920-1950.
Washington As It Was, 1923-1959

November 27, 1746 marks the birth of Robert R. Livingston, jurist, statesman, and political leader of the Revolutionary period. Livingston served on numerous committees in the Continental Congress, including the one that drafted the Declaration of Independence, helped draft New York's first constitution, and served as the minister to France at the time of the Louisiana Purchase.

Born into a wealthy and influential New York family, Livingston's great grandfather had purchased the Indian claims to large tracts of land along the Hudson River, eventually acquiring an estate of 160,000 acres. After studying at King's College—today known as Columbia University—Livingston formed a law partnership with another alumnus, John Jay, the eventual Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Soon after being appointed to a New York City judicial post by the British, Livingston was removed because of his support for independence for the American colonies.

In June 1776, Livingston was one of five men—along with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Roger Sherman—appointed by the Continental Congress to draft the Declaration of Independence. However, his signature is not on the document as Livingston was in New York at the time of its formal signing. Along with John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, Livingston was instrumental in his role as chancellor in persuading New York to ratify the federal Constitution. He also administered the first oath of office to President George Washington in New York on April 30, 1789.

Livingston was one of the founders of the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts, and Manufactures. George Washington, owner of the plantation at Mount Vernon, shared Livingston's interests in agricultural matters and corresponded frequently with him. On February 10, 1793 he wrote to Livingston, "that the prosperity of our Country is closely connected with our improvement in the useful Arts." Two years later, on February 16, 1795, Washington again wrote to Livingston stating, "Works of this sort are of the most interesting importance to every country…" and he sent Livingston a pamphlet on the cultivation of potatoes.

Livingston served as America's minister to France at the turn of the nineteenth century under Thomas Jefferson, who instructed him to buy New Orleans and the Floridas from Napoleon. Jefferson subsequently sent James Monroe to Paris with authority to offer the French ten million dollars. When Napoleon unexpectedly offered to sell the entire Louisiana territory for fifteen million, Livingston and Monroe decided the offer was too good to pass up and signed a treaty, subsequently ratified on October 20, 1803 by the U.S. Senate.

Clermont, between 1892 and 1899.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

Clermont Looking Aft, 1909.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

The inventor John Stevens was Livingston's brother-in-law, and they were associates in experiments relating to the development of steam navigation. Livingston also supported Robert Fulton whose steamer Clermont, named for Livingston's estate in New York, became the first successful steam-propelled vessel. For many years Livingston and Fulton held a hotly contested monopoly in steam navigation in New York State, still unresolved at the time of Livingston's death at Clermont in 1813.

• Search on Robert Livingston in The George Washington Papers, 1741-1799 to read correspondence between Washington and Livingston dating from the 1770s through the 1790s.
• Search on Robert Livingston in A Century of Lawmaking, 1774-1875 to read about Livingston's work with the Continental Congress as recorded in the Journals of the Continental Congress.
• Livingston and Madison arranged one of the most important land purchases in U.S. history. To learn more about how that purchase shaped U.S. history, search the Today in History Archive on Louisiana Purchase.
• To persuade New Yorkers to support the new Constitution, Livingston's law partner John Jay along with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote The Federalist Papers, a series of articles originally published under the pen name "Publius." To learn more about the Federalist Papers, read the Today in History feature for October 27.
• Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 includes items such as extracts of the journals of the Continental Congress, resolutions, proclamations, committee reports, and treaties. There are also links to text versions of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
• Search across the American Memory collection on the term steamboat for a wide variety of both images and written documents concerning this mode of transportation so commonly used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including John Fitch's sketch and description of a piston for steamboat propulsion from around 1795.

Rick's Place

--World War II military code for the city of Casablanca

Tangier Street Scene, 1894.
Around the World in the 1890's, 1894-1896

The film Casablanca premiered in New York City on November 26, 1942, as Allied Expeditionary Forces (AEF) secured their hold on North Africa during World War II. Morocco's chief port city, Casablanca was the setting of both the film and, later, of a major conference of the allied leadership.

In the film, hero Rick Blaine settles in Casablanca after fighting fascism in Spain. When his former lover, Ilsa, arrives at his Café with her French Resistance leader husband, Rick helps them escape. By film's end, Rick and Ilsa have given up each other to serve a greater good—freedom from fascism.

Casablanca suffered severe bombardment during "Operation Torch," the Allied invasion of North Africa under the command of General Dwight Eisenhower. Within ten weeks, however, the city served as the site of the Casablanca Conference attended by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and French Resistance leaders Charles De Gaulle and Henri Giraud. Russian leader Joseph Stalin declined to attend.

Just as the Allied invasion of Casablanca advanced box office sales, so the film Casablanca reinforced the war effort by underscoring the value of freedom and the importance of personal sacrifice. As Variety put it on December 2, 1942, "Casablanca will take the b.o.'s [box offices] of America just as swiftly and certainly as the AEF took North Africa." Casablanca's release to nationwide audiences was scheduled to coincide with the Casablanca Conference of January 14-24, 1943.

Theater Lobby, circa 1920-1950.
Washington As It Was, 1923-1959

Daily Bulletins from the War Zone, copyright 1944.
Women Come to the Front

At the Casablanca Conference the Allied leadership developed a unified military strategy, and decided Germany, Italy, and Japan must surrender unconditionally. The following month Churchill reported to Parliament:

We now have a complete plan of action…For good or for ill, we know exactly what it is that we wish to do. We have the united and agreed advice of our [Allied military] experts…and there is nothing now to be done but to work these plans out…and put them into execution one after the other.

Winston Churchill, Speeches of Winston Churchill, Vol. VII 1943-1949., (Chelsea House 1974), p. 6746-7.

Times Square, New York, New York, circa 1940.
Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955

Casablanca proved a compelling anti-Nazi film. Although its stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman did not receive awards, Casablanca won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Direction, and Best Screenplay of 1943. In 1989, Casablanca was placed on the National Film Registry of the National Film Preservation Board.

• The Library of Congress preserves films deemed "culturally, historically, or esthetically important." through the National Film Preservation Board. Each year, the board adds 25 films to the National Film Registry. To forward your recommendations to the National Film Preservation Board, follow directions on the Board's Web site. A list of film titles already on the National Film Registry is available online.
• Learn more about the media and World War II. See Women Come to the Front: Journalists, Photographers, and Broadcasters During World War II. This exhibition showcases eight women who reported on World War II from a variety of locations and perspectives.
• To find out what happened when the Marx Brothers wanted to make their own film entitled Casablanca. Read "Gala Launches Bicentennial" in the October 1997 Library of Congress Information Bulletin.
• View images of the U. S. before and during World War II. Search America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945. Photographers produced over 1600 color photographs during the latter days of the FSA-OWI project many depicting the war effort on the home front.

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth, circa 1864.
"Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920

But we'll have our rights; see if we don't: and you can't stop us from them; see if you can. You may hiss as much as you like, but it is comin'.

Sojourner Truth, Address to the Woman's Rights Convention, Broadway Tabernacle, New York, September 7, 1853
Proceedings of the Woman's Rights Convention.
Votes for Women, 1848-1921

Preacher, abolitionist, and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth died in Battle Creek, Michigan on November 26, 1883. The date of Truth's birth is uncertain, but around 1797 she was born a slave called "Isabella" in Ulster, New York. Bought and sold four times, she escaped slavery in 1826 when her owner failed to fulfill his promise to free her before the date mandated by New York law.

Nearly twenty years later, she shed the name, Isabella Van Wagener, and adopted the moniker Sojourner Truth. A prophet and sojourning minister, she spoke out against sin and slavery. Encouraged by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she added the cause of women's rights to her agenda. Today, Truth is most famous for her speech "Ain't I A Woman." She attacked the idea of the "weaker sex" reportedly saying,

I have plowed, I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And ain't I a woman? I could work as much, and eat as much as man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne children and seen most of them sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman?

Sojourner Truth
"Ain't I A Woman,"
Address to 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

A. Lincoln Showing Sojourner Truth the Bible Presented by Colored People of Baltimore, Executive Mansion, Washington, D.C., October 29, 1864.
Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-Present

When the Civil War began, Truth organized supplies for black volunteer troops. In 1864, President Lincoln received her at the White House. That same year, she advised former slaves on behalf of the National Freedmen's Relief Association. She continued to offer advice in the 1870s, encouraging African Americans to migrate to the western states of Kansas and Missouri.

Truth managed to reunite with most of her children. Three daughters joined her in Battle Creek, Michigan where she settled in the 1850s. When she died at age eighty-six, her funeral at the Congregational Church was thought to be the largest ever seen in that city.

• Votes for Women, 1848-1921, a collection of papers from the National American Woman Suffrage Association, contains the text of two Truth speeches: an 1853 address to the Woman's Rights Convention at the Broadway Tabernacle Church in New York; and, an 1867 address to the first anniversary meeting of the American Equal Rights Association. One Hundred Years toward Suffrage provides an introduction to this collection and to the women's movement.
• Find more material documenting the struggle to end slavery. Search the collection African American Perspectives, 1818-1907 on abolition.
• Read Today in History features on the Amistad Mutiny and abolitionists Eli Parrish Lovejoy, Lucretia Mott, and John Brown.