Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Maturation of American Culture

WEB Secession Era Editorials Project [At Furman]
Many online texts, with a a special emphasis on the Civil War and Southern History. Many texts are taken from newspaper editorials.
WEB Making of America [At Michigan]
5000 imprints from 1850-75 on line, but as image files rather than text.

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The Legal Framework of American Life

WEB US Supreme Court Decisions [At Yahoo]
Ex parte Milligan, 1866 [At USInfo]
The Supreme court insists on the rights of individuals, even during war.
Morrill Act, 1862 [At USInfo]
Allowed western states to establish land grant college.
Bradwell v. Illinois, 1873 [At USInfo]
The supreme court agreed that women could be banned from the bar.
Pendleton Act, 1883 [At USInfo]
Regulated the neutrality of the civil service.
Muller v. Oregon, 1908 [At USInfo]
Allowed states to create worker protection laws
Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 [At USInfo]
Established the legal basis for American apartheid in the South.
Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 1886 [At USInfo]
Yick Wo v. Hopkins is the first instance of the Court inferring the existence of discrimination from data about a law's application, a technique that would be used again in the 1960s to strike down statutes discriminating against African Americans.

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The Gilded Age

Henry Demarest Lloyd: "The Lords of Industry," North American Review 331 (June 1884) [Added 7/3/98]
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929): The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899, [At this Site], or see Full text [At Virginia]
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929): Conspicuous Consumption, 1902 [At this Site]
Henry B.F. Macfarland: Mr. McKinley as President, The Atlantic Monthly, March 1901, [At The Atlantic, subscription required]

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The Emergence of Modern Politics

Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887): Memorial to the Massachusetts Legislature, 1843 [At USInfo]
On social reform of prisons and facilities for the mentally ill.
Horace Mann (1796-1859): Report No. 12 of the Massachusetts School Board, 1848 [At USInfo]
People's Party Platform, 1896 [At USInfo]
Radical rural/farmers' party. The roots of American "populism"..
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919, Pres., 1901-1909): The New Nationalism, 1910 [At USInfo]
The famous speech at Ossowatomie, Kansas, on August 31, 1910, which contains the kernel of the "Progressive" ideas which would lead to the modern American welfare state. So a speech outlining modern Aamerican "liberalism" by a Republican.
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924, pres. 1913-1921): First Inaugural, 1913 [At USInfo]
Wilson's vision, in contrast to Roosevelt's, is of a small-unit economy presided over by a government of limited powers. In other words, a speech echoing major themese in modern American conservatism by a Democratic president.
Theodore Roosevelt: Political Assessments in the Coming Campaign, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1892 [At The Atlantic, subscription required]

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American Thought

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Concord Hymn July 4, 1837 [At U Oklahoma]
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Self-Reliance, 1841 [At USInfo]
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) The Transcendentalist, 1842 [At Emerson Central]
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): The Young American, 1844 [At Emerson Central]
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Nature; adresses, and lectures [At Emerson Central]
William Ellery Channing (1780-1842): On The Elevation of The Laboring Classes, 1840 [At this Site]
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862): Civil Disobedience, 1846 [At USInfo] Very long selections.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862): Slavery in Massachusetts, 1854 [At eserver][Full Text]
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): On Democracy, 1868 [At this Site]
Mark Twain: An American's View of Europe from Innocents Abroad, 1869, [At this Site]
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910): The Challenge of Facts, pub. 1914 [At this Site]
A prominent American social Darwinist mixes social Darwinism with aspects of a Calvinistic work ethic, provides Darwinist explantion of the family, and attacks Socialism.

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American Literature

WEB Hypertexts in American Culture [At Virginia]
2ND Edward Simmonds: A Student's History of American Literature [At Bibliomania]
Henry Longfellow (1807-1882): The Song of Hiawatha, 1855 [At Project Gutenberg]
Walt Whitman (1809-1892): Song of Myself, 1855 [At this Site]
Walt Whitman (1809-1892): Song of Myself 1855 [At this Site]
Walt Whitman: Democratic Vistas [At Virginia]
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888): An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving [At ibiblio]
Mark Twain [pseud of Samuel Clemens](1835-1910): The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn [At Project Gutenberg][Full Text]
William Faulkner (1897-1962): A Rose For Emily [At Ariyam][Full Text]

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NOTES:

Dates of accession of material added since July 1998 can be seen in the New Additions page.. The date of inception was 9/22/1997.

Links to files at other site are indicated by [At some indication of the site name or location]. Locally available texts are marked by [At this Site].

WEB indicates a link to one of small number of high quality web sites which provide either more texts or an especially valuable overview.

Since September 22, 1997, this site has been accessed times
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created 1997: last revised 4/3/2007