Martin Delanys Advice to Former Slaves (July 23. 1865). The speech was reported in the letter of Lieutenant Edward M. Stoeber to Major S. M. Taylor of the Bureau Refugees, Freed men, and Abandoned Lands South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, sent from Beaufort, S.C., July 24, 1865. Printed in pan in Ira Berlin, Steven Hahn, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, "The Terrain of Freedom: The Struggle over the Meaning of Free Labor in the U.S. South," His...

"Mechanic" (Unknown), "Voting by Classes" (October 13, 1863) . In Columbus [Georgia] Daily Sun, October 13,1863, p. 1.

Joel Tyler Headley, The Great Riots of New York (1873). First printed as The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873: Including a Full and Complete Account of The Four Days' Draft Riot of 1863 (New York: E. B. Treat, 1873). Reprinted as Joel Tyler Headley, The Great Riots of New York: 1712-1873 (New York: Thunders Mouth Press, 2004), pp. 109-13.

In 1848, a historic assembly of women gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton organized the Seneca Falls Convention with Lucretia Mott, who, like her, had been excluded from the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London eight years earlier. Modeling her declaration closely on the Declaration of Independence, Stanton extended it to list the grievances of women. The Declaration also called for the right for women to vote, a radical dem...

On October, 16, 1859, John Brown and nearly two dozen comrades seized the armory at Harper's Ferry in West Virginia, hoping to use its massive arsenal in the struggle to forcibly end slavery. Captured and brought to trial at nearby Charles Town, Brown was found guilty of treason. One month before his execution, John Brown addressed a courtroom in Charlestown, West Virginia, defending his role in the action at Harper's Ferry. Henry David Thoreau, although himself did not ...

Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South (1857). First printed in New York by Burdick Brothers in 1857. Reprinted in Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, ed. George M. Frederickson (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. 42-46.

Marriage Protest of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell (May 1, 1855). Quoted in T. W. Higginson, "Marriage of Lucy Stone Under Protest," The Liberator (Boston, Massachusetts), vol. 25, no. 18 (Whole no. 1085) (May 4, 1855), p. 71.

From Great Documents in American Indian History, Edited by Moquin, Wayne and Charles Van Doren (1973).

Reverend Theodore Parker, "Speech of Theodore Parker at the Faneuii Hall Meeting" (May26,1854). In Charles Emery Stevens, Anthony Burns: A History (Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1856), pp. 289-95.

This report is from volume 1 of Stanton, Anthony, and Gage's History of Woman Suffrage. It is a brief account of Sojourner Truth's address at the convention of 1853 in New York. It is sometimes called the Mob Convention, because the audience consistently hissed at the speakers throughout the convention. The text, like many others of Truth's were written later from memory and from newspaper reports.

A speech given at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852.

Delivered 1851 at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio

In 1848, Thoreau gave lectures at the Concord Lyceum entitled "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government". This formed the basis for his essay, which was first published under the title Resistance to Civil Government in 1849 in an anthology called Æsthetic Papers.

S. Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845). In S. Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Woman in the Nineteenth Century: And, Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition and Duties. of Woman, Arthur B. Fuller ed. (New York: Greeley and McElrath, 1845), pp. 25-30.

The sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké were not only outspoken abolitionists, denouncing the evils of slavery, but were early advocates for women's rights. In 1848, Angelina Grimké addressed a crowd at Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, her last public speech. While she spoke, thousands gathered to protest, and attacked the hall, throwing stones and breaking its windows. Later that night, they burned the hall to the ground.

An Eyewitness Account of the Flour Riot in New York (February 1837). First printed in the Commercial Register (New York, New York), February 14, 1837, and then in Niles' Weekly Register (Baltimore, Maryland), 5th series, voL 1, no. 26 (February 25, 1837), pp. 433-44.

Here are the words of the pioneer African-American activist Maria Stewart. Stewart began writing and lecturing against slavery in the early 18302, despite pressure from peers to keep silent, and became a contributor to William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. In the 1833 speech, she advances the cause of abolition, but her comments ("we have planted the vines, they have eaten the fruits of them") speak also to sexism and the degradation of women's ...

This document is a part of the Jefferson Papers Project, housed at the National Archives. “To Thomas Jefferson from Benjamin Banneker, 19 August 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified November 26, 2017, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-22-02-0049. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 22, 6 August 1791 – 31 December 1791, ed. Charles T. Cullen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 49–54.]

Henry Knox Letter to George Washington (October 23, 1786). In W. W. Abbott and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Papers of George Washington: Confederation Series, Volume 4: April1786-January 1787, vol. 4 (Charlottesville, VA University Press of Virginia, 1995). pp. 299-302.

By Thomas Paine; Published in 1776, Common Sense challenged the authority of the British government and the royal monarchy. The plain language that Paine used spoke to the common people of America and was the first work to openly ask for independence from Great Britain.