Declared that the King is not above the law; It led to the establishment of constitutional law and legal rights by stating that no freeman could be punished except through the law of the land.

CROSS-LINK: British Influences on American Government
 

The Iroquois Confederacy Constitution (The Great Binding Laws)

Agreement among Native people for collaboration and cooperation; considered by historians as an influence on the U.S. Constitution.

CROSS-LINK: English Settlers and Native Peoples

eBook Link: Native American Influences on American Government

First governing document by the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, signed November 11, 1620. It is the first agreement for self-government created and enforced in America.  The accepted translation was found in the journal of William Bradford.

CROSS-LINK: The Pilgrims, the Plymouth Colony, and When Was the First Thanksgiving
 

John Locke outlines a vision of society based on natural rights; sets the foundation for American political principles including sovereignty of the people, limitations on the power of the executive or legislature, and the idea that people can revoke the social contract if government does not meet their needs.

eBook Link: Enlightenment Thinkers and Democratic Governance
 

Patrick Henry urged raising a militia in every Virginia county in this speech that set a tone of defiance of British rule.

CROSS-LINK: Colonists' Responses to British Colonial Policies

Model for the federal Constitution and Bill of Rights; John Adams, the future President, was a primary writer. Oldest functioning written constitution.

CROSS-LINK: Massachusetts State Constitution
 

Established that the nation would expand westward by admitting new states, banned slavery in new states entering the Union north of the Ohio River, creating a boundary between free and slave states. Written by Nathan Dane and Rufus King.

Link to an activity on the Northwest Ordinance

Call for Pan-Indian Resistance

Shawnee leader Tecumseh calls for unity among native peoples and resistance to White take over of their lands.

Cross-Link: The War of 1812 and Tecumseh

Appeal to the Coloured

Citizens of the World

  Full title:  Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, 
to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, 
and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, 
Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829

William Apess Eulogy on King Philip

Memorial to the Massachusetts Legislature

Dorothea Dix's call for an end to the confinement of persons with mental disabilities in prisons.

CROSS-LINK: Dorothea Dix, 19th Century Mental Health Reformer

Lowell Women Workers Campaign for a Ten-Hour Workday

Excerpts from Factory Tracts; this publication was part of the efforts of women mill workers to expose conditions in the mills and advocate a ten hour day.

CROSS-LINK: Lowell Mill Girls

Civil Disobedience

Essay by Henry David Thoreau that justifies resistance to laws on the basis of personal conscience and belief; influenced Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.

CROSS-LINK: Walden by Henry David Thoreau

"What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"

Frederick Douglass Independence Day Speech, Rochester, New York

CROSS-LINK: The Abolitionist Movement

Petition to California Governor John Bigler

Gettysburg Address

Lincoln's speech at the Gettysburg Battlefield that recalled the Declaration of Independence as a founding vision for society and government.

CROSS-LINK: Abraham Lincoln's Presidency

This document ordered the creation of African American troops during the Civil War under the designation "United States Colored Troops."
 

CROSS-LINK: African Americans and the Civil War

Women's Journal and Suffrage News

Poet Emma Lazarus's sonnet about immigrants coming to America through New York City.  Written to raise money for the construction of a pedestal for the Statute of Liberty.

Atlanta Exposition Address

The Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles

Written by W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter, this document stressed the need for African Americans to protest segregation and discrimination and to have free compulsory education.

CROSS-LINK: W.E.B. Du Bois, the Niagara Movement, and the History of the NAACP

Indian Citizenship Act

Younghill Kang's novel of immigrant experience

CROSS-LINK: Late 19th Century Immigration to the United States

Theodore Roosevelt statement that the most important function of the federal government is to protect the human welfare of its citizens.

CROSS-LINK: Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President

Wilson Wilson's terms for ending the war without a traditional victory

CROSS-LINK: American Isolationism after World War I

Franklin Roosevelt's statement of the freedoms of people everywhere in the world; Freedom of speech; Freedom of religion; Freedom from war; Freedom from fear.  Concluded that the U.S. should end its foreign policy of neutrality.

Link here for a youtube clip of the Four Freedoms Speech

 

Gordon Parks Photographs of Ella Watson

Supreme Court Justice Robert M. Jackson's defense of freedom of speech in which he wrote:

"[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

eBook Link: Landmark First Amendment Rights Cases
 

Servicemen's Readjustment Act

Declaration of Conscience Speech

Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith condemned McCarthyism.

CROSS-LINK: Anticommunism and McCarthyism in the 1950s

Expressed the role of the United States in combating communism around the world; considered one of the finest inaugural speeches ever delivered

 Video of Kennedy's Address

CROSS-LINK: Presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Carter

Reverend Martin Luther King's call for racial justice at the March on Washington.

 Click here for MLK's I Have a Dream Speech

CROSS-LINK: Accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement

Jimmy Carter addresses public doubt and the lack of confidence of the people toward their government and their own identities as Americans.

Youtube video here

Cesar Chavez Address to the Commonwealth Club of California

Speech from Chavez as President of the United Farm Workers of America about unsafe conditions for farm workers. Includes the audio file.

CROSS-LINK: Latinx Civil Rights Movement

Reagan discussed American freedoms he hoped Russian people will enjoy and proposed greater exchanges between the two nations

Click here for a clip of the speech. It also has a link to the full version.