America's story

The Civil War is still one of the bloodiest wars in which Americans have fought. It not only split the country between North and South, but in many cases it also split families. In this book, students will read speeches, newspaper articles, letters, and diaries entries, from those both at war and on the home front. Through these primary sources, students will learn about the events that led to the Southern secession, the battles fought between the Union and the Confederate armies, and life in the midst of the conflict from the people whose lives were changed by it, including women and African Americans.

When most Americans think of the civil rights movement, they think of the organized struggle for equality in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the civil rights movement actually has its roots in the Reconstruction era of the late nineteenth century as the country tried to rebuild itself after the Civil War. In this book, students will read accounts from early civil rights activists and leaders like Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Booker T. Washington, as well as from mainstays of the later movement like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Other primary sources, such as poems and Supreme Court decisions, fill in the details about the fight against racial injustice in the United States. Students will gain a better understanding of the long road to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation, and the legacy of the civil rights movement.

In 1619, Dutch traders sold twenty Africans to English settlers for the purposes of slave labor. By the late seventeenth century, enslaved Africans would become the primary source of labor in America, especially in the South. While the North relied more on technology after the Industrial Revolution, the Southern economy was based on agriculture. Despite the aversion of many Northerners to slavery after the American Revolution, the demand for cotton and tobacco in the North kept slavery, on which the antebellum Southern economy was based, alive. In this book, students will read accounts about the lives of those enslaved laborers. Through primary sources, students will also learn about the laws designed to protect the institution of slavery and how the institution was dismantled.

During the Reconstruction era, the United States attempted to rebuild itself after the end of both slavery and the Civil War. Despite some successes by Congress to secure the rights for newly freed African Americans through civil rights acts and constitutional amendments, racial conflicts plagued the South. Northerners believed the only way to resolve this was to leave the Southerners to manage their own affairs. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew federal troops from the South, officially ending Reconstruction. The consequences of this, however, would echo throughout U.S. history, ushering in decades of Jim Crow laws and segregation. In this book, students will read primary-source materials from presidents, congressmen, white Northerners and Southerners, and African Americans.

Between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nearly forty million people immigrated to the United States. Poverty, widespread famine, and the California gold rush prompted many people to leave their home countries for America. Over time, however, the government tried to slow the flow of immigration with laws like the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924. In this book, students will read accounts from immigrants about the decision to leave home, the journey to America, and life in the new world. Additionally, students will read about xenophobic responses to immigration from the descendants of colonists. Through primary sources, this book provides students with an in-depth understanding of immigration to the United States.

This book charts the course of colonial America from Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of the new world in 1492 to the beginning of the Revolutionary War in 1775. Works and personal accounts by historical figures like John Smith and Benjamin Franklin provide students an understanding of topics like life in Jamestown and colonial education. In addition to learning about European settlers and explorers through primary sources, students will learn about the Native Americans who originally inhabited the country. Similarly, students will learn about African Americans who were forced into slave labor. Overall, students will gain an understanding of the colonies and how they became the United States of America.