National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Power: Taming the Octopus: Theodore Roosevelt, the New Nationalism
Theodore Roosevelt's speech in 1910 arguing for the vigorous involvement of government in American life.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Frontier, the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
Arguably the most famous essay every written about the impact of land on American history, Frederick Jackson Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" explains how Americans' relationship with the environment shaped...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: "Yellow Sky," the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
This resource by the National Humanities Center features a short story, "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky", by Stephen Crane about the closing of the American frontier.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: "Red Men," the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
Photographs of Native Americans and an essay that notes just how assimilated Native Americans had become in Christian America.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Buffalo Bill, the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
A program from the Buffalo Bill Wild West show that depicts the thrills of the American West and illustrates how American influence was spreading beyond the nation's borders.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Manifest Destiny and Beyond: Theodore Roosevelt and the Strenuous Life
Theodore Roosevelt's speech to a Chicago men's club in which he advocates a vigorous and assertive relationship between America and other parts of the world.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: "Burden," the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
This site includes poems and editorials, some of which that praise, others that harshly condemn what Rudyard Kipling asserted was the "White Man's Burden."
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Mark Twain, the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
Two essays by Mark Twain that condemn American foreign expansion and the immorality of imperialism. Includes questions for discussion.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Response, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Five literary responses to exploration and discovery-poems, fictional accounts, a play, and journal entries-that reflect European desire, frustration, and enchantment with the New World.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Settlement, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Thirty primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore motivations, visions, patterns, goals, challenges, and relationships with indigenous peoples offered by Europeans in their settlement of the New...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Instructions, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Three maps of European settlement in Virginia, the Pacific Northwest, and the Spanish New World, and the accompanying official instructions from lenders and monarchs about the obligations, opportunities, and hopes that those...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Enslaved Peoples, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Two Spanish accounts of enslaved Indians in the Caribbean and enslaved Africans in Mexico and statements of the difficulty of maintaining slavery and the lurking threat of a slave revolt.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Go Ahead, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
A Spanish, an English, and a French account of the enormous challenges in maintaining a colonial presence in North America and of the potential national loss-of pride, wealth, and possibility for expansion-if nations abandoned these...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Cities & Towns, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Four accounts of the visits to and growth of colonial cities in Spanish, British, and French New World settlements that demonstrate why certain communities developed successfully.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: English I, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Portraits of early New Englanders as well as four buildings from seventeenth-century New England that accompany accounts in those British colonies of struggles, Indian hostilities, and economic success.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: English Ii, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Three seventeenth-century homes in Pennsylvania and New York and three accounts from those English colonies of the factors leading to prosperity and permanence.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: English Iii, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Three seventeenth-century buildings, two portraits, and three original accounts from Virginia and the Carolinas about the qualities and conditions of life in these southern English colonies that led to success and growth.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Servitude, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Two examples of indenture contracts and three accounts of indentured servitude, including positive as well as admonitory views, in the Chesapeake English colonies.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Rivalry I, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Eleven documents and two maps detailing the almost two hundred year struggle between England and Spain for hegemony in the Caribbean.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Rivalry Ii, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Two eighteenth-century maps and four accounts of the mutual perceptions, suspicions, and observations between Spanish and French explorers on the Gulf Coast.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Rule, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Three documents reflecting official views of how to rule and regulate a successful colony in New France, Jamaica, and the Spanish Indies. Includes teacher reasources for framing discussion.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Rebellion, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Five documents that examine a range of reactions to colonial rebellion and associated resistance to royal authority in English colonies in Barbados, Virginia, and Massachusetts.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Indian Relations, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
One modern historical assessment and several original accounts of the mistrust, negotiations, alliances, trading, and disease transmission between European colonizers and native peoples in North America.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Indian Wars, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Five documents representing the full range of Indian-European antagonisms, struggles for power, and outright warfare among the Spanish, Pueblo, Wampanoag, English, and French in New Spain, New France, New Mexico, and New England.