Ordinary Americans : U. S. History Through the Eyes of Everyday People

by Monk, Linda R.

• ISBN13: 9780932765475
• ISBN10: 0932765475
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-11-01
• Publisher: Varsitybooks.Com

Table of Contents

Pre-Columbian Era to 1783
A ``New World,'' A New Nation	1	(38)
Cultures Collide	3	(10)
``Forerunners of a New Mestizo Population''
The People Who Met Columbus	3	(1)
Irving Rouse
Jose Juan Arrom
``So Large a Market Place They Had Never Beheld Before''
Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs	4	(2)
Bernal Diaz
``There Came to Be Prevalent a Great Sickness''
History Through Aztec Eyes---The Florentime Codex	6	(1)
``Different Nations Have Different Conceptions of Things''
Iroquois Ideas on Education	7	(1)
Canasatego
``Deprived of All Chance of Returning to My Native Country''
A Slave's Account of Coming to America	8	(2)
Olaudah Equiano
``Let People Stay in Their Own Country''
Emigrating from Germany to Pennsylvania	10	(3)
Gottlieb Mittelberger
England's New World	13	(8)
``The Country Itself Is Large and Great''
Luring Settlers to the New World---The Virginia Company of London	13	(1)
``What Can You Get by War?''
Speech to Captain John Smith	14	(1)
Powhatan
``There Is Nothing to Be Gotten Here but Sickness and Death''
An Indentured Servant Writes Home	15	(1)
Richard Frethorne
``So Many Christians Lying in Their Blood''
Taken Captive in King Philip's War	16	(2)
Mary White Rowlandson
``New England, Thou Hast Destroyed Thyself''
The Salem Witchcraft Trials	18	(3)
Robert Calef
French and Indian War	21	(5)
``I Was Called Dickewamis''
Life Among the Seneca	21	(1)
Mary Jemison
``We Are a Powerful Confederacy''
The Iroquois Way of Union	22	(1)
Canasatego
``I Must Stand Still to Be Shot At''
Recollections of a Soldier	23	(2)
David Perry
``Compelled to Seek Refuge in Some Distant Wilderness''
A Prophecy of Cherokee Removal	25	(1)
Dragging Canoe
Revolution and Independence	26	(13)
``A General Huzza for Griffin's Wharf''
Recalling the Boston Tea Party	26	(1)
George Hewes
``Curse All Traitors!''
Letter of a Loyalist Lady	27	(1)
Anne Hulton
``March Immediately to Bunker Hill''
A View from the Front Lines	28	(2)
Captain John Chester
``We Renounce Our Connection with a Kingdom of Slaves''
Independence Resolution of the Town Meeting	30	(1)
Malden
Massachusetts
``A Natural and Unalenable Right to Freedom''
Denouncing America's Contradictions	31	(1)
Massachusetts Slave Petition
``Starvation Here Rioted in Its Glory''
Winter at Valley Forge	32	(2)
James Sullivan Martin
``Damn It, Boys, You---You Know What I Mean. Go On!''
Life with the Swamp Fox	34	(1)
Captain Tarleton Brown
``An Extraordinary Instance of Virtue in a Female Soldier''
The Story of Deborah Sampson	35	(1)
Herman Mann
``The American Flag Waving Majestically in the Faces of Our Adversaries''
Digging Trenches at Yorktown	36	(1)
James Sullivan Martin
``It Would Not Do for the Men to Fight and Starve Too''
A Camp-Follower's Account of Yorktown	37	(2)
Sarah Osborn
1783-1865
Nationalism and Sectionalism	39	(70)
Building a New Nation	41	(8)
``What Then Is the American?''
A Farmer Describes the New Nation	41	(1)
J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
``The Great Men Are Going to Get All We Have''
An Interview with Participants in Shays' Rebellion---Massachusetts Centinal	42	(1)
``Her Baby Strapped to Her Back''
A Frontiersman Remembers Sacajawea	43	(2)
Finn Burnett
``With the Smoke of That Town''
A Pottawatomie Chief Recalls the Battle of Tippecanoe	45	(1)
Shabbona
``To Surrender to a Private''
Fighting in the Battle of New Orleans---A Kentucky Soldier	46	(3)
Democracy and Reform	49	(10)
``It Was the People's Day''
Witnessing the Inauguration of Andrew Jackson	49	(1)
Margaret Bayard Smith
``Forced to Return to the Savage Life''
Fighting Removal from Their Native Lands---Protest of the Cherokee Nation to Congress	50	(2)
``We Are a Separate People!''
Respecting Cherokee Culture	52	(1)
Corn Tassel
``Not One Can Read Intelligibly''
The Beginnings of Public Education---Letters from a New Teacher	53	(1)
``A Free Boy in a Free State''
Escape on the Underground Railroad	54	(1)
James Williams
``They Had to Go Through or Die''
Remembering Harriet Tubman	55	(2)
William Still
``A Disappointed Woman''
Speaking Out for Women's Rights	57	(2)
Lucy Stone
The Industrial North	59	(6)
``I Never Cared Much for Machinery''
Life in the Lowell Mills	59	(2)
Lucy Larcom
``A Slave at Morn, A Slave at Eve''
Decrying the Factory System	61	(1)
Thomas Man
``So Many of You Contending for Your Rights''
The Labor Movement Begins---A Lowell Factory Worker	62	(1)
``The Truth About This Country''
Letters Home from New Immigrants
Alice Barlow	63	(1)
David Davies	63	(1)
``To Shut Out the Foreigners''
Natives Versus Immigrants
Daily Plebeian	64	(1)
Champion of American Labor	64	(1)
The Plantation South	65	(9)
``A Plantation as a Piece of Machinery''
Excerpts from a Planter's Diary	65	(1)
Bennet H. Barrow
``No Man Has Ever Labored More Faithfully''
An Overseer Writes to a Planter	66	(2)
John Evans
``A Cruel Mistress''
A Southern Woman Speaks Out Against Slavery	68	(3)
Angelina Grimke Weld
``Father and Mother Could Not Save Me''
A Slave Child's View of Plantation Life	71	(2)
Jacob Stroyer
``Santa Claus Brought Me These New Clothes''
A Slave's Christmas	73	(1)
Harriet Jacobs
Westward Expansion	74	(8)
``Absolute Democracy in Country Places''
An Eastern Emigrant's View of Michigan	74	(2)
Caroline S. Kirkland
``Oro! Oro! Oro!!!''
Discovering Gold in California	76	(1)
John Augustus Sutter
``Across the Plains in a Prairie Schooner''
The 1849 Gold Rush	77	(2)
Catherine Haun
``When the Last Red Man Shall Have Perished''
A Native American Mourns His People	79	(3)
Chief Seattle
Sectional Crisis and Civil War	82	(27)
``The Funeral of Liberty''
Enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law	82	(1)
Charles E. Stevens
``He Was Seated on His Coffin''
The Execution of John Brown	83	(1)
David Hunter Strother
``Maybe It Won't Be Such a Picnic''
An Indiana Farm Boy Hears of Fort Sumter	84	(2)
Theodore Upson
``Can Such a Population Be Subjugated?''
Arguing the Southern Cause	86	(1)
Henry William Ravenel
``A Pure Love of My Country Has Called Upon Me''
Reflections on the Union Cause	87	(1)
Major Sullivan Ballou
``Men Mutilated in Every Imaginable Way''
Nursing the Wounds from Shiloh	88	(2)
Kate Cumming
``The Whole Landscape Turned Red''
Fighting at Antietam	90	(1)
David Thompson
``What Is All This About?''
Questioning the War	91	(1)
R. M. Collins
``Sweet Land of Liberty''
Celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation	92	(1)
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
``Grant Under Fire''
The March Toward Vicksburg	93	(1)
S. H. M. Byers
``Surrounded by a Circle of Fire''
Enduring the Siege of Vicksburg---A Union Woman	94	(1)
``An Expression of Sadness I Had Never Before Seen''
Lee After Gettysburg	95	(1)
General John Imboden
``This Iron Rain of Death''
Shelling on Cemetery Hill	96	(1)
Warren Lee Gross
``Northern Rebels Help Southern Ones''
Witnessing the New York City Draft Riots	97	(1)
Anna Dickinson
``A Hundred Thousand Colored Troops''
The Attack on Fort Wagner	98	(1)
Lewis Douglass
``Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight''
Conscription in the Confederate Army---Private Sam Watkins	99	(1)
``Our Son Is Not More Dear to Us''
Robert Lincoln Goes to War	100	(1)
Elizabeth Keckley
``I Should Like to Hang a Yankee Myself''
Sherman's March Through Georgia	101	(1)
Eliza Andrews
``My Heart Aches for the Poor Wretches''
Union Prisoners Suffer at Andersonville	102	(2)
Eliza Andrews
``I Accept These Terms''
Lee Surrenders	104	(1)
Colonel Charles Marshall
``The Giant Sufferer''
Keeping Vigil at Lincoln's Deathbed	105	(4)
Gideon Welles
1865-1919
Industrializing America	109	(56)
Reconstruction	111	(9)
``A President Was on Trial''
The Battle Over Reconstruction	111	(2)
William H. Crook
``The Experiment Is Now To Be Tried''
Social Revolution in the South	113	(1)
Henry W. Ravenel
``Forty Acres and a Mule''
Empty Promises to Freedmen	114	(1)
John G. Pierce
``They Have Killed My Poor Grandpappy''
Terrorized by the Klan	115	(1)
Chariotte Fowler
``Asking for a Half Loaf''
Women Oppose the Fifteenth Amendment	116	(2)
Paulina Wright Davis
``Put No Barriers Between Us''
Demanding Equal Rights	118	(2)
R. H. Cain
Conquering the West	120	(7)
``One of the Old School Cowboys''
Life on a Cattle Drive	120	(1)
James H. Cook
``He Missed the Spike''
Completing the Transcontinental Railroad	121	(1)
Alexander Toponce
``More Indians Than I Ever Saw''
A Cheyenne Woman at Custer's Last Stand	122	(3)
Kate Bighead
``Soldiers Surrounded and Butchered Them''
The Massacre at Wounded Knee---Turning Hawk and American Horse	125	(2)
Gilded Age Politics	127	(5)
``How I Got Rich by Honest Graft''
Life in Tammany Hall	127	(1)
George W. Plunkitt
``Wall Street Owns the Country''
The Birth of Populism	128	(1)
Mary Lease
``Let Us Quit the Old Party''
A Black Farmer Endorses Populism	129	(1)
S.D.D
``The Property of the People''
An Army of the Unemployed Marches on the Capitol	130	(2)
Jacob S. Coxey
From Farm to Factory	132	(12)
``The First Step on New Soil''
A Russian Immigrant Comes to America	132	(1)
Mary Antin
``How Can I Call This My Home?''
A Chinese Immigrant's Story	133	(3)
Lee Chew
``Is It American to Let People Starve?''
Anarchism and the Haymarket Riot	136	(1)
Michael Schwab
``The Wild-Eyed Agitator''
An Anarchist Assassinates President McKinley---Ohio State Journal	137	(1)
``To Make a Millionaire a Billionaire''
Life in a Company Town	138	(1)
Pullman Strikers
``You Get Off the Earth''
The Miners' Plight	139	(1)
Mother Jones
``To Defend the Bill of Rights''
The I.W.W. Fights for Free Speech	140	(2)
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
``To Give People Everything They Want''
Henry Ford's Ideas on Mass Production	142	(2)
Ida Tarbell
The American Empire	144	(6)
``An Advancing Step in Manifest Destiny''
Purchasing Alaska---The New York World	144	(1)
``Into a Chute of Death''
Roosevelt and the Rough Riders	145	(2)
Richard Harding Davis
``Among the Bravest of This Land''
Black Soldiers at San Juan Hill	147	(1)
Presley Holliday
``The War Against the Mosquito''
Building the Panama Canal	148	(2)
Albert Edwards
The Progressive Era	150	(7)
``Ignorance Is the Real Enemy''
A Muckraker Describes His Craft	150	(1)
Ray Stannard Baker
``A Big Moral Movement in Democracy''
Political Reforms of Progressivism	151	(2)
William Allen White
``God Must Work in Some Other Mine''
Decrying Child Labor	153	(2)
John Spargo
``Mob Violence Has No Place''
Supporting Antilynching Laws	155	(2)
Ida B. Wells
World War I	157	(8)
``Women Fighting for Liberty''
Force-Feeding Suffragists in Prison	157	(1)
Rose Winslow
``Without Negro Labor''
Compulsory Work Laws in the South	158	(1)
Walter F. White
``Make America Safe for Democracy First''
Protesting the War	159	(1)
Joseph Gilbert
``Going Over the Top''
Warfare in the Trenches	160	(1)
Norman Roberts
``If We Don't Lick the Huns Now''
A Soldier's Reasons for Fighting---Private Eldon Canright	161	(1)
``I'm a Lady Leatherneck''
The First Female Marines---Private Martha L. Wilchinski	162	(1)
``There Is No Armistice for Charley''
Nursing the Wounds of War	163	(2)
Shirley Millard
1919-1945
Democracy and Adversity	165	(50)
Postwar Politics	167	(6)
``Because I Am a Radical and an Italian''
The Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti
Nicola Sacco	167	(1)
Bartolomeo Vanzetti	167	(1)
``America Belongs to Americans''
The Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan	168	(2)
Hiram Evans
``Africa Wants You''
Promoting the Back to Africa Movement	170	(1)
Emily Christmas Kinch
``Wild Schemes to Defeat the Law''
Converting Hair Tonic to Whiskey	171	(2)
George Bieber
The Roaring Twenties	173	(6)
``We Hear Fine Music from Boston''
Radio Expands Middle America's Horizons	173	(1)
Robert S. Lynd
Helen Merrell Lynd
``Hit the Trail to Better Times!''
Automobiles Revolutionize America	174	(1)
Robert S. Lynd
Helen Merrell Lynd
``The Flapper Grew Bolder''
Changing Roles for Young Women	175	(1)
Preston William Slosson
``No Woman Can Call Herself Free''
Advocating Birth Control	176	(2)
Margaret Sanger
``It Was Pure Improvisation''
Life in the Jazz Age	178	(1)
Willie Smith
The Great Depression	179	(11)
``This Was Real Panic''
Wall Street Crashes	179	(1)
Jonathan Norton Leonard
``No Help Wanted''
Unemployed During the Depression	180	(2)
E. W. Bakke
``What If Our Check Does Not Come?''
Living on Relief	182	(1)
Ann Rivington
``Dear Mrs. Roosevelt''
A Child's Letter to the First Lady	183	(2)
C. V. B
``If a White Woman Accused a Black Man''
The Scottsboro Boys Stand Trial	185	(2)
Clarence Norris
``Until That Moment, We Were Nonpeople''
The Flint Sit-Down Strike	187	(1)
Bob Stinson
``All Friends in the Union''
Minorities and the CIO	188	(2)
Jim Cole
World War II	190	(25)
``Abandon Ship! Abandon Ship!''
Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor	190	(1)
Stephen Bower Young
``I Could See the Rising Sun''
A Civilian Witnesses the Bombing	191	(1)
Cornelia MacEwen Hurd
``To Do What Was American''
Celebrating the Fourth of July in an Internment Camp	192	(2)
Mary Tsukamoto
``It Takes More Than Waving a Flag to Win a War''
Sacrifices on the Home Front	194	(1)
Mary Speir
``Things That Only Men Had Done Before''
New Roles for Women in Wartime	195	(1)
Winona Espinosa
``Right in the Plexiglas Nose''
Bombing Raids on Germany	196	(1)
Joseph Theodore Hallock
``In All That Flying Hell''
Commanding Tanks in North Africa	197	(1)
Samuel Allen
``I Feel Like It's Me Killin' `Em''
Leading Green Troops into Battle	198	(1)
Ernie Pyle
``We Took That Beach''
Beating the Odds in Normandy	199	(2)
Ernie Pyle
``Come Out Fighting''
Victories of an African-American Tanker Group	201	(2)
Charles A. Gates
``The Ovens Were Still Hot''
A Jewish American Witnesses Buchenwald	203	(2)
Philip Lief
``How Do You Think You Would Have Behaved Under Hitler?''
Looking for Good Germans	205	(1)
David Davidson
``We Swore Never to Forget''
U.S. and Soviet Troops Meet at the Elbe	206	(2)
Joseph Polowsky
``Six Feet of Earth''
The Death of FDR	208	(1)
Grace Tully
``Don't Hesitate to Fight the Japs Dirty''
Cultural Differences in Warfare	209	(1)
Eugene B. Sledge
``A Terrible Thing Had Been Unleashed''
Working on the Manhattan Project	210	(2)
Philip Morrison
``The Damn Thing Probably Saved My Life''
From Iwo Jima to Hiroshima	212	(1)
Ted Allenby
``Which One Might Have Been My Mother''
A Child's Memory of Hiroshima	213	(2)
Hideko Tamura Friedman
1945-1992
The Challenges of Power	215	(74)
Postwar America	217	(7)
``Civilize `Em With Chewing Gum!''
Reforming Hitler's Youth	217	(2)
Franklin M. Davis, Jr.
``We Had Not Moved An Inch''
Fighting the Cold War in Korea	219	(1)
James Brady
``Not One Knew Why They Were Dying''
Questioning the Korean War's Cost	220	(1)
Corporal Martin Russ
``No American Is Safe''
The Origins of McCarthyism	221	(1)
John Howard Lawson
``Are You Now or Have You Ever Been''
Testifying Before HUAC---Congressional Transcripts	222	(1)
``Something New to Own''
Life in the Affluent Society	223	(1)
Lucille Windam
The Civil Rights Movement	224	(15)
``Race Hatred Personified''
The Murder of Emmett Till	224	(1)
Mamie Mobley
``Now Is Your Time''
Leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott	225	(1)
Jo Ann Robinson
``Not a Second-Class Citizen''
Integrating Little Rock Central High School	226	(2)
Ernest Green
``Ashamed to Be White''
Mississippi Freedom Summer---A Northern College Student	228	(1)
``What Was the Point of Being Scared?''
From Sharecropper to Civil Rights Worker	229	(2)
Fannie Lou Hamer
``It Was Worth It''
Celebrating the Right to Vote	231	(1)
Unita Blackwell
``We Were Just Ordinary People''
A Child Marches in Selma	232	(2)
Sheyann Webb
``He Took On America for Us''
Malcolm X Speaks	234	(1)
Sonia Sanchez
``Poor White Trash Like Me''
Bringing Black and White Together	235	(2)
Peggy Terry
``You Can't Come Here''
Busing in Boston	237	(2)
Ruth Batson
Activists on Many Fronts	239	(11)
``Carrying Forth Democracy''
Life in the Peace Corps
Roger Landrum	239	(1)
Robert Burkhardt	239	(1)
Donna Shalala	240	(1)
``When You Start at the Bottom''
Giving Poor Children a Head Start	240	(1)
Tracy Whittaker
``We Want a Share''
Organizing Farmworkers in the Fields	241	(2)
Jessie Lopez de la Cruz
``A Helluva Smoke Signal!''
The Rise of the American Indian Movement	243	(3)
Mary Crow Dog
``Creating Herstory''
The Women's Liberation Movement	246	(1)
Robin Morgan
``We, the Young People''
Campuses Erupt in Protest	247	(3)
Mark Rudd
The Vietnam War	250	(19)
``A No-Winner from the Beginning''
Policymaking and the Vietnam War	250	(2)
Richard Holbrooke
``Our Country, Right or Wrong''
Defending the Vietnam War	252	(1)
Joseph E. Sintoni
``No Cause Other Than Our Own Survival''
Fighting a Different Kind of War	253	(1)
Philip Caputo
``We Lost the Race''
Helicopters to the Rescue	254	(1)
Robert Mason
``Helping Someone Die''
A Nurse's Trauma	255	(1)
Dusty
``Could I Take That Kind of Torture?''
Life in the Hanoi Hilton	256	(2)
Eugene B. ``Red'' McDaniel
``No Crime Is a Crime Durin' War''
Witnessing Atrocities on Both Sides	258	(1)
Arthur E. ``Gene'' Woodley, Jr.
``More Blacks Were Dying''
An African-American Soldier's Experience	259	(1)
Don F. Browne
``There Aren't Any Rules''
Photographing an Execution	260	(3)
Eddie Adams
``Who Can You Believe?''
A Disabled Veteran Protests the War	263	(1)
Ron Kovic
``God Cried for Vietnam That Day''
The Fall of Saigon	264	(1)
Diep Thi Nguyen
``He Left Me Only the Tears''
An Amerasian Child Yearns for Her Father	265	(1)
Mai-Uyen ``Jolie'' Nguyen
``Has Everyone Forgot?''
Victims of Agent Orange	266	(1)
nancy Mahowald
``Perhaps Now I Can Bury You''
Grieving at America's Wailing Wall---A Vietnam Veteran	267	(2)
The Nation in Crisis	269	(10)
``I Did Not Have a Choice''
Jane Roe and Abortion	269	(1)
Norma McCorvey
``The Entire Community Seemed To Be Sick!''
Living on Love Canal	270	(2)
Lois Marie Gibbs
``I Knew It Was Wrong''
Confessions of a Watergate Bagman	272	(2)
Tony Ulasewicz
``Dear President Carter''
Kids' Letters to the White House---American Children	274	(2)
``Maybe Tomorrow''
Held Hostage in Iran	276	(1)
Bill Belk
``Peace, Like War, Is Waged''
Celebrating the Camp David Accords	277	(2)
Robert Maddox
The Reagan Revolution and Beyond	279	(10)
``Back to Where They Were Before''
Poor and Unemployed in the 1980s	279	(1)
Frank Lumpkin
``An Upper-Class Working Girl''
Morning in America	280	(1)
Sugar Rautbord
``Polish People Have Never Known Freedom''
A Solidarity Worker Immigrates to America	281	(1)
Jozef Patyna
``Stop This Madness''
Joining the Nuclear Freeze Movement	282	(2)
Jean Gump
``Equal Responsibility''
A Woman Fights in the Persian Gulf War	284	(2)
Rhonda Cornum
``That Everyone's American Dream Would Come True''
Looking to Our Future	286	(3)
Dan Helfrich
Credits	289