America and Its Sources

A Guided Journey through Key Documents, 1865-present

Erin L. Conlin, Stephan Schaffrath, Erin L. Conlin, Stephan Schaffrath

• Publisher: Milestone Documents
• Year: 2019
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781935306375
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

America and Its Sources: A Guided Journey through Key Documents, 1865-present is an innovative sourcebook designed for non-majors, ESL students, and other students who struggle with large amounts of reading. Through 14 focused units, the editors guide students from important post-1865 documents to major sources from contemporary America. Each unit includes a brief introduction to the era, unit questions, 5 expertly edited primary sources with overviews and guiding questions, and a unit review. This affordable sourcebook offers students the essential tools they need to examine and analyze primary sources without overwhelming them with lengthy and difficult texts.

1.1 Early America and the Civil War

Overview

This course begins around the Civil War and Reconstruction, but it’s important to understand how those events came about. The five readings in this unit span over 200 years of U.S. history (from 1623 to 1865). They reveal what life was like for early Americans, both white indentured servants (Richard Frethorne) and enslaved Africans and African Americans (Virginia Acts, Dred Scott v. Sanford). They also illustrate the impact of slavery on the nation (South Carolina’s Declaration of the Causes of Secession and Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address). Read together, these sources should help you think about how slavery and its legacy have shaped the nation and created ongoing challenges for America.

Before you read the actual documents, create a timeline for these documents. Then think about other things that happened around that time. Above the timeline, write things you do know (or think you know with a question mark) about that time period (anywhere in the world). Underneath the timeline, write things you would like to know. Your timeline should look like a fishbone when it’s done. The messier, the better.

Unit Questions

1. How comfortable do you feel with the language? Rate it between “not at all comfortable” to “very comfortable.” How different is it from the dialects (kinds) of English that you use every day? How much time will it take to look up words that you are not sure about?

2. How did individual colonies/states and the federal government create and uphold the institution of slavery over time? Use specific examples from multiple readings to support your argument.

3. What do the documents show us about the emerging relationship between race and citizenship in America? How did this create long-term problems for the nation?

1.2 Richard Frethorne: Letter to His Parents (1623)

Historical Context

People arrived in America under a variety of circumstances. Some colonists were wealthier individuals looking to invest in England’s newest territories. Many more were impoverished people looking for a better life in the New World. And thousands of people were kidnapped, enslaved, and forced to come to America.

Individuals who could not afford to pay for their travel often became “indentured servants.” They signed a contract, or “indenture,” in which they agreed to serve the master who paid for their ship passage. Indentures established specific conditions of employment. Typically, an indenture lasted four to seven years. It included ship passage to the colony as well as shelter, clothing, and food during the contract period. Upon completion of the contract, the indentured person would receive “freedom dues.” The conditions varied, but sometimes this included additional food and clothing, land, and a firearm. As you’ll see from the reading, however, a contract did not guarantee fair treatment.

Guiding Questions

As you read the document from indentured servant Richard Frethorne, take notes and answer the following questions:

1. What does Frethorne’s letter reveal about his living conditions in America as an indentured servant? Make a list of problems that Frethorne explains. What words would you use to describe his situation?

2. Why was Frethorne writing to his parents?

3. Compare Frethorne’s situation four centuries ago to people’s situations today. Do you know of people who are in a similar situation to Frethorne? (Consider access to food, freedom, safety, etc.)

Document Text

Loving and Kind Father and Mother:

My most humble duty remembered to you, hoping in god of your good health, as I myself am at the making hereof. This is to let you understand that I your child am in a most heavy case by reason of the country, [which] is such that it causeth much sickness, [such] as the scurvy and the bloody flux and diverse other diseases, which maketh the body very poor and weak. And when we are sick there is nothing to comfort us; for since I came out of the ship I never ate anything but peas, and loblollie (that is, water gruel). As for deer or venison I never saw any since I came into this land. There is indeed some fowl, but we are not allowed to go and get it, but must work hard both early and late for a mess of water gruel and a mouthful of bread and beef. A mouthful of bread for a penny loaf must serve for four men which is most pitiful. . . .

. . . We live in fear of the enemy every hour, yet we have had a combat with them on the Sunday before Shrovetide, and we took two alive and made slaves of them. But it was by policy, for we are in great danger; for our plantation is very weak by reason of the death and sickness of our company. For we came but twenty for the merchants, and they are half dead just; and we look every hour when two more should go. . . . And the nighest help that we have is ten mile of us, and when the rogues overcame this place [the] last [time] they slew 80 persons. . . .

. . . I have nothing to comfort me, nor is there nothing to be gotten here but sickness and death, except [in the event] that one had money to lay out in some things for profit. But I have nothing at all no, not a shirt to my back but two rags (2), nor clothes but one poor suit, nor but one pair of shoes, but one pair of stockings, but one cap, [and] but two bands [collars]. My cloak is stolen by one of my fellows, and to his dying hour [he] would not tell me what he did with it; but some of my fellows saw him have butter and beef out of a ship, which my cloak, I doubt [not], paid for. . . .

. . . And indeed so I find it now, to my great grief and misery; and [I] saith that if you love me you will redeem me suddenly, for which I do entreat and beg. And if you cannot get the merchants to redeem me for some little money, then for God’s sake get a gathering or entreat some good folks to lay out some little sum of money in meal and cheese and butter and beef. Any eating meat will yield great profit. . . . But if you send cheese, you must have a care how you pack it in barrels; and you must put cooper’s chips between every cheese, or else the heat of the hold will rot them. . . .

ROT

RICHARD FRETHORNE,

MARTIN’S HUNDRED

1.3 Virginia Slave Acts (1660s)

Historical Context

The excerpts below come from two different acts (pieces of legislation) created by the Virginia Colony, which was ruled by England. At this point in time, England did not practice slavery, therefore it had no laws to govern how a slave system operated. Additionally, following in the tradition of many European nations, England embraced a patriarchal system, meaning a person’s inheritance and social status passed through the males of the family (typically from father to son).

Guiding Questions

1. Make a diagram or flowchart that explains the fate of a people who are of mixed race. Is there a legal way out of slavery for descendants of people who were brought/trafficked from Africa as slaves according to these legal documents?

2. Make a prediction: How do you think these colonial policies break with traditional English policies?

3. What do the acts reveal about Virginia’s strategy for creating a slave society?

Document Text

Virginia’s Act XII: Negro Women’s Children to Serve according to the Condition of the Mother (1662)

Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother, And that if any christian shall commit fornication with a negro man or woman, he or she so offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act.

Virginia’s Act III: Baptism Does Not Exempt Slaves from Bondage (1667)

Whereas some doubts have arisen whether ch...

Table of contents

• America and Its Sources: A Guided Journey through Key Documents, 1865-present
• Introduction
• About the Editors
• Acknowledgments
• How to Read Primary Sources
• 1.1 Early America and the Civil War
• 2.1 Reconstruction and Redemption
• 3.1 Westward Expansion and American Identity
• 4.1 Industrialization and Social Reform
• 5.1 World War I and the Turbulent Twenties
• 6.1 The Great Depression
• 7.1 World War II and the Home Front
• 8.1 The Cold War
• 9.1 Affluence, Unrest, and Civil Rights
• 10.1 Expanding Civil Rights
• 11.1 Vietnam and Counterculture
• 12.1 The Triumph of Conservatism
• 13.1 Deindustrialization and the Booming Nineties
• 14.1 Twenty-First Century America