Kennedy Establishes the Peace Corps
On March 1 in 1961, President Kennedy established the Peace Corps. The idea for a volunteer force of young people sent to work in developing nations around the world, teaching […]
Teddy Roosevelt Discusses Trust-busting
Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt became President after the assassination of President McKinley in September, 1901. Hence his first annual message to Congress, on December 6, 1901, began with comments on this […]
Is Progress Possible? Freedmen in the South
The prospects for social advancement of black freedmen, especially in the South, were uncertain in the period immediately following Reconstruction. Jim Crow laws did not become nearly universal until after […]
The “Era of the Monroe Doctrine is Over”
On December 2, 1823, during his annual message to Congress, President James Monroe articulated a foreign policy stance for our nation that would become known as the Monroe Doctrine. He […]
Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln called for national days of Thanksgiving more than once during the Civil War. On April 10, 1862, after the union victory at Shiloh and the fall of the […]
Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation
We think of our national celebration of Thanksgiving as rooted in the harvest feast of seventeenth century Pilgrim settlers. But as an official government holiday, the celebration was inaugurated by […]
The Gettysburg Address: Lincoln’s “Silly Remarks”
Today, on the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, it is difficult to conceive that the most often memorized political speech from our history was not immediately hailed as a […]
Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plan
One hundred fifty years ago this fall, advance planning for the reconstruction of the rebelling Southern states began. In the fall of 1863, after the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, […]
Andrew Jackson Vetoes Re-Chartering the Bank of the United States
For those working through a survey of American history and reaching the Jacksonian era, we reprint here a document introduction by Professor Dan Monroe (Millikin University), one of the Honored […]
Lincoln’s Meditation on the Divine Will
On this day in 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote a brief but deeply revealing note to himself. At a dispiriting moment in the Civil War, Lincoln struggled to make sense of […]