One of the most widely adopted primary source U.S. history readers, America Firsthand presents history in the words of the people who made it, inviting and provoking students to think critically about the past. The seventh edition continues to bring the past to life with more visual and textual sources that increase diversity, represent current scholarship, and engage students.
VOLUME ONE: READINGS FROM SETTLEMENT TO RECONSTRUCTION
PART 1 INDIANS AND EUROPEANS: NEW WORLD ENCOUNTERS
Points of View: Contact & Conquest (1502-1521)
1. Dispatches of the Conquest from the New World*
Hernando Cortés
2. A Nahua Account of the Conquest of Mexico*
Anonymous
3. Destruction of the Indies
Bartolomé de Las Casas
4. Description of Virginia
John Smith
5. Encounter with the Indians
Father Paul Le Jeune
6. Captured by Indians
Mary Jemison
Visual Portfolio: New World Contact
PART 2 THE COLONIAL EXPERIENCE: A RAPIDLY CHANGING SOCIETY
Points of View: The Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692)
7. The Case against George Burroughs
Ann Putnam et al.
8. Reconsidering the Verdict
Cotton Mather et al.
9. The African Slave Trade
Olaudah Equiano
10. On the Misfortune of Indentured Servants
Gottlieb Mittelberger
11. A Man of the American Enlightenment
Benjamin Franklin
12. Leaving an Abusive Husband
Abigail Abbot Bailey
Visual Portfolio: Colonial Life and Architecture*
PART 3 RESISTANCE AND REVOLUTION: STRUGGLING FOR LIBERTY
Points of View: The Boston Massacre (1770)
13. A British Officer's Description
Thomas Preston
14. Colonial Accounts
George Robert Twelves Hewes and the Boston Gazette and Country Journal
15. "The Bloody Massacre"*
Engraving by Paul Revere
16. A Soldier's View of the Revolutionary War
Joseph Plumb Martin
17. Choosing Sides
Boston King
18. Secret Correspondence of a Loyalist Wife
Catherine Van Cortlandt
19. Republican Motherhood
Eliza Pinckney and Abigail Adams
20. Shays's Rebellion: Prelude to the Constitution
George Richards Minot
PART 4 DEFINING AMERICA: THE EXPANDING NATION
Points of View: Religion in the New Nation (1800-1830)
21. The Great Revival of 1800
James B. Finley
22. Religion in America*
Harriet Martineau
23. How the West Was Won
An Officer of the "Army of the West"
24. Crossing the Great Divide
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
25. A Ride on the Erie Canal*
Francis Trollope
26. The Trail of Tears
John Ross
27. Pulling a Handcart to the Mormon Zion
Priscilla Merriman Evans
28. Life in California before the Gold Discovery*
Guadalupe Vallejo, Prudencia Higuera et al.
29. Miners during the California Gold Rush*
Daguerreotype by Joseph B. Starkweather
PART 5 AN AGE OF REFORM: REARRANGING SOCIAL PATTERNS
Points of View: Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831)
30. A Slave Insurrection
Nat Turner
31. Who is to Blame?
William Lloyd Garrison et al.
32. The Lowell Textile Workers
Harriet Hanson Robinson
33. Life Under the Lash
Charles Ball, Francis Henderson et al.
34. Life of a Female Slave*
Harriet Jacobs
35. A Pioneer for Women's Rights
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
36. "The Early Life of This Boy"*
John Brown
Visual Portfolio: Slavery and Freedom
PART 6 CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION: THE PRICE OF WAR
Points of View: Pickett's Charge: High Tide of the Confederacy (July 3, 1863)
37. "The Last and Bloodies Fight": A Union Account*
Franklin Haskell
38. "Field of Carnage": A Confederate Account*
Walter Harrison
39. Three Days of Terror
Ellen Leonard
40. Healing Wounds
Cornelia Hancock
41. A Slaveowner's Journal at the End of the Civil War
Henry William Ravenel
42. African Americans during Reconstruction
Felix Haywood et al.
43. White Southerners' Reactions to Reconstruction
Caleb G. Forshey and Reverend James Sinclair
44. Ruins in Charleston, South Carolina, 1865 or 1866*
Photograph by George N. Barnard
* new to this edition