Using Old Maps as Tools to Explore Our World
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In this bulletin board activity, students work collaboratively to explore sections of old maps. By closely examining these unique historical documents, students learn to see maps as more than just tools for locating places. And, whatever the grade level, this activity prompts students to grapple with the basic elements of the social studies: people, space, time, meaning, and purpose.
Maps are essential tools in modern life but they also are primary source documents reflecting the people, time, and culture that produced them. They can be read at different levels and used for various purposes. In every case, however, some fundamentals of social learning can come into focus when a class looks carefully at a single map. Visual literacy, critical analysis, synthetic learning, and interdisciplinary thinking all come into play. But, maps are often too large to use at student desks. So a bulletin board activity based on cutting the map into manageable section—a "divide and conquer" strategy—provides a way out. If the map is not too big, enlarging it on a copy machine to clarify its details will often increase its pedagogical value.
After selecting a map, the teacher should photocopy it with two concerns in mind:
- It should be a suitable size for an available bulletin board or display area. AND
- It should be divisible into a number of equal parts.
In the classroom, groups of students will work with single sections of the map, using a specific procedure (see Handout 1) that will help them uncover meaning in the map. When the separate pieces are reassembled at the end of the activity, the class will have a unique final product: a historical map with accompanying narrative captions that explain its significance. The bulletin board display can then be read by others in the school’s community, including other classes, teachers, parents and the general public.
- Scheduling: Place this lesson into your school’s curriculum and your course calendar. Decide if you want to do it once or several times with a series of maps distributed throughout the academic year.
- Determining goals: Choose the type of map that would be most appropriate for your learning objectives. For example, if your goal is to use maps at several different scales, you could feature four activities in the course of the year using maps of the world, nation, state, and local community.
- Finding a map: Although current maps might be readily available, old maps are preferred because students will be able to see how they are "dated." By "datedness" we mean how they reflect not only past geographies and technologies, but also a former cultural and historical context. Help in finding suitable maps is available both on web pages and at your local library, historical society, community college, or state university’s map library.
- Exploring meaning: Once you have selected a map, find out as much about it as possible for your own benefit. Why did you select it? What intrigues you about it? Make a list of questions it raises, and keep a record of how you went about gathering information to help you understand the map. Remember that the essence of your preparation is to provide a model for your students.
- Enlarging and dividing it: Enlarge the map using a photocopy machine. At the same time, divide it into manageable sections. If you have 36 students in class and want them to work in groups of six, you will need six sections to the map. Make at least two copies of these board-size segments so you can proceed without interruption if one of them is damaged.
- Making copies: If you have enough resources, make a small 8½ x 11 inch version of the whole map for each group or student.
- Gathering supplies: Make sure you have enough supplies for coloring the map (if necessary); stiff paper for making panels for call outs; ribbons for connecting points on the map with these commentaries; and tacks, pins, or tape to attach everything.
- Practice makes perfect: A "trial" mounting of the bulletin board at least a day before the lesson will point out potential problems.
- Planning evaluation: Along with your lesson plan, develop some type of evaluation procedure so that you will be prepared to share this lesson with colleagues and interested parties (a curriculum director, parents, or even a local newspaper). Photographs of the end result as well as the lesson's stages of development might prove to be of great value. Maps, after all, can be compelling visual resources offering various ways to turn a class into a learning community. You will know you are on your way to success as students begin to see maps as more than devices to locate places.
NOTE: The below steps are outlined in Handout 1 which students can use to guide their work.
- Preparing students: First take a few minutes to set up the lesson, show students the focus map, explain how it fits into the curriculum, outline the six stages of the lesson using Handout 1, and then describe the end result. Then the class as a whole should develop a context for the map by addressing the four questions in part one of the handout.
- Student groups: During Part Two divide the class into small groups, each of which will focus on one part of the map, developing questions and searching for answers as directed on Handout 1.
- Calling out details: Part Three centers on students developing "call outs" to point to some detail of interest on the map. If this device is new to the class, start by providing an example of a call out ("look how small that state is" or "what is the strange symbol?"). Also help students realize the importance of questions in reaching for understanding. Pairing students is one possible way to encourage them to exchange ideas.
- Monitoring presentations: Part Four offers several opportunities for you to step back into a leadership role as needed, perhaps rephrasing a group's tentative statements or emphasizing that a map is constructed by selecting some details and omitting others (e.g., a map's "silences").
- Writing commentaries: At this stage each student should "read" the map in his or her own way and make a statement about the map's meaning or purpose. Extend the lesson by editing these commentaries. All of them could be made available (on a rotating basis) at the side or bottom of the display.
- Polishing the apple: A draft is seldom good enough for a presentation copy, both in the classroom and in real life. You will need to decide how much time to spend here. In any event, "Polishing the Apple" offers opportunities for evaluation, assessment, and involving students with special needs or talents.
- The map selected may prove too challenging for some classes. This might be a good time to walk the students through the lesson and then use the map bulletin board approach again later in the term with a different map.
- Mounting an attractive bulletin board that collects input from every student can be a daunting task. Seek help and guidance from art and English teachers. A media specialist might also be very helpful.
- This lesson has the potential to grow like Topsy, so careful advance planning and time management are essential.
- Community Map: Youngstown, OH, 1905-1906 This example is from an old "Quadrangle," map—a series produced by the U.S. Geological Survey since the 1890's. Every part of the nation is covered at once in this series of large-scale topographic maps. Other maps with this type of detailed local coverage can be found in county atlases, local history books, insurance atlases, and governmental records. Check with your community library to find a suitable map, especially one which includes the site of your school. This example is a detail from the Youngstown Quadrangle, edition of April 1908. It shows the Ohio city as it was in 1905-1906, the date of the survey. The small squares indicate residences.
- State Map: Highway Map of Southern California, 1924 Secure an old highway map of your state. (These are often available at flea markets, second-hand shops, libraries, historical societies, on the internet, or from antique automobile enthusiasts.) This example is a detail from the "Highway Map of Southern California" given away by the Security Trust & Savings Bank of Los Angeles. The Automobile Club of Southern California produced the map in 1924 through the Clason Map Company of Los Angeles.
- A Map of the United States, 1864 This map of the United States, entitled "Map of the Rebellion, As It Was in 1861 and As It Is in 1864" appeared in Harper’s Weekly, the leading news magazine of the time. The issue was dated March 19, 1864.
- A World Map, 1792 The Abbe Gaultier developed this map in England. The author was a French educational reformer who believed that schools should be fun. It was produced in England because the author had fled from the French Revolution. Students can use this display copy to answer a series of questions asked by the teacher, receiving points according to the quality of their answers. Note that the map presents the geographical situation and knowledge of the time.
Cartography Associates. David Rumsey Map Collection. 2009. http//www.davidrumsey.com/. 20,000 antique maps.
Greenhood, David. Mapping. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964. Originally published in 1944, this revised edition is still the best general introduction to maps.
Teachinghistory.org. "Featuring Maps!" History Education News 5, (2010). http://teachinghistory.org/files/HEN/HEN-05.pdf (accessed June 1, 2010).
Wood, Denis. The Power of Maps. New York: Guilford, 1992. An artist and designer looks at maps through modern eyes. In 2010 he will sharpen his perspective in Rethinking the Power of Maps.
And listen to Danzer explain map analysis at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media's History Matters.
Building the Erie Canal
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How would the Erie Canal have changed your life and the lives of those around you? Politics, trade, and the land itself were all affected.
This lesson from Teachers’ Domain examines how the construction of the Erie Canal affected the geographic, economic, and political landscape of the United States. In exploring these issues, students are presented with four computer-based activities.
The first two activities—viewing documentary video clips—are engaging, brief, and informative. These clips could be projected to the whole class if a teacher does not have access to multiple computers.
The third—an interactive graphic organizer—allows students to categorize different consequences of the construction of the Erie Canal in terms of geographic, political, and economic effects. The interactive graphic organizer allows students to draw connections between consequences in different categories and explain how they are interconnected in a pop-up comment box. After they are done, students can print out the graphic organizer.
The final activity in the lesson, which requires students to read and write, can be done either on a computer or not. It asks students to synthesize information from the video clip and a background reading (available in two different reading levels), and students can choose from three different writing assignments.
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Yes
Featured video contains interviews with reputable scholars.
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Historical background provided in videos and handouts.
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Students take notes throughout the assignment and write a short essay evaluating the major changes resulting from the construction of the Erie Canal.
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Using evidence from the documentary video and a background reading, students assess and examine the economic, political, and geographic effects of the Erie Canal on the nation.
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Two versions of background handout are included for different grade levels.
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A graphic organizer helps students organize their ideas and draw connections between the various effects resulting from the Erie Canal’s construction.
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Students can write an essay on the canal’s effects on America or New York State. Students can write a journal from the perspective of someone who experienced the effects of the Erie Canal five years after its construction.
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Requires access to multiple computers, but can be adapted for classroom use in which only one computer and a projector are needed to stream the video.
U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1994
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[SUBSCRIPTION REQUIRED] This vast archive includes many documents and reports produced by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and published between 1817 and 1980, for a total of more than 355,000 items. These items include 48,000 maps, 9,000 illustrations, thousands of reports, and numerous records of committee hearings and floor proceedings. All items are full-text searchable and can be browsed by subject, such as education, economics, food and agriculture, health, Indian affairs, armed forces and conflicts, environment and natural resources, and social issues. Within each of these broad categories, there are hundreds of subject headings, such as "animal welfare" (83 items), "alien labor" (306 items), and "ordnance testing" (353 items). The "Indian Affairs" category, for example, presents thousands of items on agencies and organizations relating to Indian affairs, Indian reservations, treaties, names of Indian tribes, as well as documents relating to hundreds of laws and supreme court cases. There is also a bill number search, an alphabetical list of names of all acts of Congress, and a listing of all documents by U.S. Congress session. All documents can be downloaded in PDF format. In addition, a separate browse feature entitled "Serial Set Maps" facilitates access to thousands of maps from counties and cities across the country. Many of these date to the Civil War-era or later and include images of forts and depictions of field operations. Readex plans to expand coverage through 1994.
Peace Corps
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The Peace Corps has a three-fold mission. First and foremost, the organization sends volunteers to communities around the world which have requested assistance in creating sustainable solutions to real world problems. Second (and third, really), is an interest in increasing international understanding and friendship—of non-Americans for Americans and vice versa.
One of the most exciting options the Peace Corps offers educators is the World Wise Schools Correspondence Match program. The program permits educators to request a pen pal relationship with a Peace Corps volunteer in a region of the world and area of interest (agriculture, business, education, health, or environment) of their choosing. Maybe your students could discuss the lasting impact of the Vietnam War with a volunteer in Southeast Asia or how U.S. business history has altered life in China or Central America. This could also be an excellent way to introduce social studies students to the connection between history and geography and fields more often taught at the collegiate level, such as anthropology and international relations.
Another feature offered is a collection of more than 120 lesson plans. These are not focused on history per se, but you may be able to find a lesson which will strengthen themes you are pursuing in the classroom. One such lesson involves planning a service learning project. Oral histories are a classic way to combine service learning and history.
Daily Objects, 19th-century America
Video One
- Erastus Salisbury Field, American, 1805-1900, Joseph Moore and His Family, c. 1839, oil on canvas, 109.23 x 237.17 cm (82 3/8 x 93 3/8 in.), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Maxim Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815-1865, 58.25, Term of use: Life of project, Photograph copyright 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- Lambert Hitchcock (American, 1795-1852), Side Chair, 1826-1829, Mixed hardwoods, paint, and rush, 33 x 17 3/4 x 20 in. (83.8 x 45.1 x 50.8 cm), Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Bequest of Lucy D. Hale, 1990.28.2.
Video Two
- Erastus Salisbury Field, American, 1805-1900, Joseph Moore and His Family, about 1839, oil on canvas, 109.23 x 237.17 cm (82 3/8 x 93 3/8 in.), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Maxim Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815-1865, 58.25, Term of use: Life of project, Photograph copyright 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- Looking glass, American, about 1830-40, Object Place: Connecticut Valley, United States, Mahogany, gilt; glass, H: 37 5/8 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Maxim Karolik, RES.58.3, Term of use: Life of project, Photograph copyright 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- Tie pin, about 1830-40, Object Place: New England, United States, Gold and black enamel, hair, Overall: 2.2 cm (7/8 in.), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Maxim Karolik, RES.58.5, Term of use: Life of project, Photograph copyright 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- Buckle, about 1830-1840, Object Place: Massachusetts, United States, Mother-of-pearl, Overall: 8.3 cm (3 1/4 in.), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Maxim Karolik, RES.58.7, Term of use: Life of project, Photograph copyright 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- Brooch, about 1830-50, Object Place: New England, United States, Gold, stone, Overall: 1.9 cm (3/4 in.), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Maxim Karolik, RES.58.6, Term of use: Life of project, Photograph copyright 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Video Three
- "Across the Continent: Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way"; lithograph; hand colored; Currier and Ives (publisher); Ives, J.M. (lithographer); Palmer, F. (Fanny), 1812-1876 (artist), BANC PIC 1963.002: 1530-D. Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
- The Parley, 1903 (oil on canvas), Remington, Frederic (1861-1909) / Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, USA / Hogg Brothers Collection, Gift of Miss Ima Hogg / The Bridgeman Art Library International.
- Cottone Auctions
- Country Home
- Federalist Antiques
- Hitchcock Chair Company
- Larry Miller, Flickr
- Library of Congress
- Minneapolis Institute of Arts
- National Archives and Records Administration
- New Jersey State Museum
- Producer's Blog: Currier & Ives
- Project Gutenberg
- Style in the Heartland
- University of Virginia
Historian David Jaffee analyzes three 19th-century objects (a Hitchcock chair, a family portrait, and a lithograph of the West), discussing how they were made, how they were used, and what they can tell us about the past. Jaffee models several historical thinking skills, including:
- (1) Close reading of the portrait and the lithograph, paying attention to symbols, objects, and other visual clues to understand the images.
- (2) Attention to key source information, such as the date and artist of the lithograph to highlight the significance of its portrayal of the west through the eyes of easterners.
- (3) Contrasting the Hitchcock chair as a manufactured object with its use in the portrait as a carefully selected symbol of the family’s wealth and possessions.
- (4) Examining the larger context of all three objects to connect them with economic, cultural, and social change.
This is a side chair, meaning it's not an armchair. Doesn't have arms. Much more interestingly, it's a Hitchcock chair. Now, Hitchcock chairs are both known as chairs that were made by the Hitchcock Company or Lambert Hitchcock initially, the entrepreneur in Connecticut. But more significantly they're a certain genre of chair. So lots of different painted chairs of the first half of the 19th century, sort of festooned with lots of cornucopia and sort of gold stenciling, cane seats, were known as Hitchcock chairs. So it's got a larger sort of import because of that.
But it's extremely popular. You can still find lots of these in antique shops.
What I find really interesting about it first of all, is the decoration. And I think that's what it was meant to say. It's a decorated chair, not just a plain, black chair.
What I know from my own prior knowledge of course, is that often painted decoration stands in for sort of other kinds of decoration. In earlier chairs, one would have used rich carving, which takes a lot of experience by the artisan. So here, instead of having rich depth in the carving, we have two things which stand in for that three-dimensionality. We have turnings. This is done on a lathe. These are done—also mass-produced, so that these parts are relatively interchangeable.
So at the same time as these Hitchcock chairs were being mass produced, $1.50 a piece, usually sold in sets, someone like Eli Terry in the Connecticut clock industry is also making cheap shelf clocks by relatively interchangeable parts, so that the gears in the clocks are made all at once and they can be fit into a variety of different clocks. So that obviously is going to cut down on cost.
And also on the skill level for the chair workers assembling the chair. So, much of the work is really done by semi-skilled workers rather than an older style where one person made one chair at a time.
In some chair industries they would have made some parts at the sawmill. They would have then made other parts or assembled them in a shop. And then third, they would have had women and children seating the chairs by hand in homes. And then collected everything together.
So, in the case of Hitchcock's innovation, sort of like the Lowell Mills, is that he did everything together in a factory, which really allowed him great advances in terms of scale—savings by scale.
When you look at the back, on the back of the seat it will say, "Hitchcock warranted." And so it's got a stencil on the back—this is the first entrepreneur to do this—so that they're sort of warranted that if, you know, there's a problem with this, you can sort of return them.
So again it's this assumption, and this is a new stage, that these will be distributed throughout the United States. There will not be a face-to-face encounter between maker and consumer, so that you would need to have this sort of publicized warranty in a way that if you actually knew the craftsman 20 years earlier you wouldn't need that sort of published, stamped warranty.
So what Hitchcock's great idea was to take a bit of this and a bit of that, put it together, push it forward with division of labor, and also extensive marketing, and really produce something that's a prototype of a sort of mass-produced object that bespeaks gentility to a wide section of the American public from top to bottom, and do it at a really low price. And that really is what accounts for the popularity of the chair at the time, and I think also its significance for us to sort of look at and talk about.
It's much easier to talk about the making of these than it is the use of them. So we move from something that's available in antique stores or lots of museums, to a painting which is a singular thing. This one, Erastus Salisbury Field’s Joseph Moore and His Family, about 1839 it was done by Field, is that we can see the Hitchcock chairs in the painting.
So paintings are a good iconographic source of, okay, there are these things made, they now sit in museum collections or private collections. But did anyone care? Did anyone use them? And then second, how did they use them? What kinds of rooms did they appear in? Did they appear in porches, as porch furniture? Did they appear as kitchen seats? Or in this case, did they appear in the parlor, the fanciest room of a house?
So, here we have interestingly enough, there's a family of four children, two adults. Everyone is in black, white and black. The father and the mother are sitting in these Hitchcock chairs. They're very brightly—we can see the cornucopia on Joseph's chair along with the striping on the legs that peers out, so this gives you a sense of the vibrancy when these were new.
There's stenciling on the stand right behind the family. In that case, the stenciling is used along with the mirror that's above them to give the imitation of mahogany, of richer wood. So stenciling can be used also as a means of imitation. So there's lots of this faux décor going on.
Because, again, these middling people are looking on one hand to establish a connection to sort of what was once previously luxurious goods, and so they are using, just like the portrait itself, something that used to be beyond the reach of a middling family.
This is a family dressed in their best. This is not an ordinary experience. This was an exceptional experience.
So we often need to look at, what are the moments in a family's lifecycle when a portrait might be made? Marriage. Death. Addition to the family. So again, these are exceptional moments, and we can sort of trace out the lifecycle.
So, this is in some ways like an inventory. It's an inventory of all the nice things that they've acquired, and actually some of these objects that Elmira's holding in her hand, some of the furniture, these two chairs, are actually passed down from the family with the portrait and exist in the same collection at the Museum of Fine Arts. So, we always sort of wonder about that. Are these things sort of like that the portraitist brought in and gave to the family so they could look fancier? Or actually are they their real possessions? Are they their real clothes? So, here we have I think, the jewelry that she's wearing, has passed along in the family collection, so we know that these adornments are theirs.
And then, I think with students it's really fun to work from, what do you see? What are the different things you see? And I think students can do a good job with that to, what do you think they're used for?
What does it mean? What did this portrait mean to the family that commissioned it? What did it mean to the family that displayed it?
This thing is almost six feet wide. It fills a whole wall at the Museum of Fine Arts. You wouldn't know that from this. It could easily be a miniatu&8212;you know, small. So, that's something you really want to sort of make sure that's in there because something that's six feet would take a lot more time, a lot more money.
Now, what's of course most interesting about this one is its title, "Across the Continent, Westward Course of Empire Takes Its Way." It has all the elements, all the stereotypical elements, of the sort of westward movement. We actually know the engraver, Frances Flora Bond Palmer, she’s a—Fanny Palmer as she was called. She's the most famous Currier & Ives employee, and also was a painter in her own right, as a British immigrant.
When I look at it, I see most—first of all a diagonal. It cuts across the image. And what cuts it across is the railroad. The railroad moves from east to west, from one corner to the other corner, as far as the eye can see, the rails go to this sort of featureless line that is the future.
On one side of the diagonal I see a natural scene. It's a heavily constructed natural scene, but nonetheless it is nature. It has a beautiful series of lakes or waterways that move up to a set of Rockies or whatever. Trees as far as one can see along with more of a prairie landscape.
But, right next to the railroad on the immediate foreground are two Native Americans on horses. They are part of the natural world, which again is a stereotype. Sitting on their horses with their spears pointed, or lances, sort of looking somewhat forlorn. In fact, the plumes of smoke from the railway go in their direction, pretty much sort of cover them. So there is a certain element of disrespect going on, that they are being left in the traces of the railway, left behind.
So that is the past. On the other side of the diagonal is a very different scene. This is civilization. This is a cluster of log cabins in the foreground. One in the foremost—closest to us, is a log cabin with a sign emblazoned on it, "Public School." What is more typical, stands in for civilization for these pioneers, is the public school. The engine of progress. The engine of civilization. Whatever community wanted to set up to proclaim that they were connected, you know, to their past and to their future.
So, the railway sort of cuts across. There are people watching, well dressed, sort of watching the railway. There are men all the way on the left that are hacking out, cutting down, trees. So again, it has this 19th-century—the emblem of progress is stripping away the forest, cutting down the trees. The more stumps, the better. This is not an ecological consciousness; this is a progressive consciousness.
And the fact that it's so stereotypical makes it wonderful to use, because it lays out the formulas. It's expansive in its meaning, and thousands of these were made, and thousands of these went up in people's homes on their walls, framed. So it really has the element of sort of mass produced, mass marketed, even though it's made by hand in many of its elements, and distributed widely, and really speaks for these tropes of American memory. What the past is, but more importantly, what the future might be.
The trick I think, with the Fanny Palmer, is of course to teach this as a heavily symbolic image made by an Eastern establishment, rather than a representation of pioneer activity. Almost all the images we have of the West, and this goes through the 19th-century Frederick Remington or others, are made by Easterners. And that's a question itself. So, was this something that—you know, why would someone have wanted to own this? Even better yet, what would someone think about going west if they saw this? Would this make it attractive? Probably, yes, actually, because the Indians are off on one side, civilization's on the other. There are public schools. This looks like, you know, real progress is going on. It's a fairly safe environment.
Now, when we read women's letters at the same time, from the Illinois prairie or from the Oregon or whatever, we often get much more discordant notes about isolation. So, instead of the social thickness of ties here that are easily reproducible and make it attractive for men and women, these women write about the fact that they've lost their friends. Nearest settlement is—nearest farmhouse is three miles away. And maybe only on Sundays, or the men go into town to do business, but they stay home with their ever-increasing family.
Jefferson's Confidential Letter to Congress
Video One
- Monticello/illustration by Lucia Stanton.
- Oil, Shooting the Rapids, Frances Anne Hopkins, 1879. Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1989-401-2.
- Oil on canvas, Image of View from Floyd's Grave, 1300 Miles above St. Louis, George Catlin, 1832. Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Video Two
- Oil on canvas, Mouth of the Platte River, 900 Miles above St. Louis, George Catlin, 1832. Smithsonian American Art Museum.
- Oil on canvas, Floyd's Grave, Where Lewis and Clark Buried Sergeant Floyd in 1804, George Catlin, 1832. Smithsonian American Art Museum.
- Oil on canvas, Young Omahaw, War Eagle, Little Missouri, and Pawnees, Charles Bird King, 1821. Smithsonian American Art Museum.
- Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, Letter press copy of manuscript letter, June 20, 1803, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.
- Charles M. Russell, Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia, 1905, Opaque and transparent watercolor over graphite underdrawing on paper, 18 3/4 x 23 7/8 inches, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1961.195.
- Cherry's Fine Guns
- Google Books
- Harper's Weekly
- Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia
- Live Auctioneers
- Monticello/Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.
- National Archives and Records Administration
- New York Public Library Digital Gallery
- Sondra Kicklighter, Photo.net
Historian Leah Glaser analyzes a letter to the U.S. Congress from Thomas Jefferson requesting funding for the Lewis and Clark expedition. In this letter, Jefferson explains his rationale and his vision for the future of the country. Glaser models several historical thinking skills, including:
- (1) close reading of the letter to explore Jefferson’s language and thinking about American Indians and the future of the United States;
- (2) attention to key source information, such as the date of the letter and the audience; and
- (3) placing the letter within a larger context, using it to explore Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian nation, relations with American Indians, westward expansion, and political strategy in the early 19th century.
This is called "Jefferson's Confidential Letter to Congress," and it certainly is more than it seems. It's often put with the collection of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery materials. And essentially it's the letter where he asks for money from Congress, for getting money for the Corps of Discovery. And he asked for $2,500, but it's not till the very end. And what's interesting about it and the reason I like it and I teach with it, is because it's clearly not about the money. He's trying to tell Congress a much bigger story, and you really get a large idea in this one little letter of his whole theory of where the country should go and expansion and his philosophy of expansion and Indian policy and where Congress fits into it.
At the beginning you get no indication that he's going to be asking for money and what it's for or anything like that. But I think the most important phrase here is that he ends with "the public good" because that's going to be a theme throughout the letter.
Then he says, "The Indian tribes residing within the limits of the United States have, for a considerable time, been growing more and more uneasy at the constant diminution of the territory they occupy, although affected by their own voluntary sales, and the policy has long been gaining strength with them of refusing absolutely all further sale on any conditions, insomuch at this time, it hazards their friendship and excites dangerous jealousies in their minds to make any overture for the purchase of the smallest portions of their land. Very few tribes only are not yet obstinately in these dispositions."
So basically he's saying that, you know, we've been purchasing land from these Indian tribes, and all of a sudden they're not very happy about it anymore and they won't do it anymore, so we're going to have to figure something else out.
"First, to encourage them to abandon hunting, to apply to the raising stock, to agriculture and domestic manufacture, and thereby prove to themselves that less land and labor will maintain them in this, better than in their former mode of living. The extensive forests necessary in the hunting life will then become useless, and they will see advantage in exchanging them for the means of improving their farms, and of increasing their domestic comforts."
This is my favorite part of this letter, because it's basically trying to ask the Indians to do what he wants everybody to do: to be yeoman farmers. And a yeoman farmer is Jefferson's dream of the agrarian nation. The self-reliant, independent farmer who lives off his own land, and the idea that everybody will have their own land and nobody, you know, will be dependent on anybody else, and we will all be equal.
And basically he's saying we need to convince the Indians of this, too, and once they just farm they won't need any of that hunting land, and we can then easily take it from them. It won't be this big struggle. And, so this is basically a policy of assimilation. "We need them to be like us, and then they won't need all that land anymore.'
And then secondly, "To multiply trading houses among them, and place within their reach those things which will contribute more to their domestic comfort than the possession of extensive, but uncultivated, wilds. Experience and reflection will develop to them the wisdom of exchanging what they can spare and we want, for what we can spare and they want. In leading them to agriculture, to manufactures, and to civilization, in bringing together their and our settlements, and in preparing them ultimately to participate in the benefit of our governments, I trust and believe we are acting in their greatest good."
So again, we make them like our stuff, we trade stuff with them. They become sort of part of our economic system, and they become more like us, and we won't have necessarily all this conflict.
And then finally gets to that last paragraph. "While the extension of the public commerce among the Indian tribes may deprive of that source of profit such of our citizens as are engaged in it, it might be worthy the attention of Congress, in their care of individual as well as in the general interest, to the point in another direction, the enterprise of these citizens as profitably for themselves and more usefully for the public."
This again he's talking about that greater good. Yeah, there's people making money, individuals making money, but this is the bigger picture.
"It is, however, understood, that the country on that river is inhabited by numerous tribes, who furnish great supplies of furs and peltry to the trade of another nation, carried on in a high latitude through an infinite number of portages and lakes, shut up by ice through a long season. The commerce on that line could bear no competition with that of the Missouri, traversing a moderate climate, offering no competition to the best accounts, a continued navigation from its source, and possibly, with a single portage from the Western Ocean, and finding to the Atlantic a choice of channels through the Illinois or Wabash, the lakes of the Hudson, through the Ohio, the Susquehanna, or the Potomac or James rivers, and through the Tennessee and Savannah rivers."
That one line is a little sneak in here of a very important concept, which people argue was the principal reason for the Lewis and Clark expedition, and that was the Northwest Passage, all those rivers he's talking about. This theory that he has, sitting in Virginia, that there's an all-water route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And so while we're doing this stuff with the trading houses, you know, we might just be able to find this all-water route to the Pacific.
I guess you tend to hear about the Louisiana Purchase. He's surprised, and just happens, "Oh, I wasn't thinking that at all." But you see with the date of this letter in January of 1803, that he was thinking about this area a lot before the opportunity presented itself and might have already heard rumors that France wanted to dump this land. Spain had been caring for it for a while. France was now not able to deal with all that territory. And certainly, he was not perhaps anticipating the whole block of it, but he certainly had his eye on it.
Well, we talk a lot about Jefferson's theory of the agrarian nation beforehand. I talk a lot about the yeoman farmer and the values of property and the whole—John Locke's vision of life, liberty, and property, not the pursuit of happiness, but that idea of property, even though it's dropped from the Declaration of Independence, still maintains, you know, great power and investment in his mind.
And so we talk a lot, especially when we talk about the West, of that idea of the agrarian nation. This vision that this is America's garden, and it's going—this is how we're going to be different from Europe. This is how we're going to get away from the original sin of slavery. We're not going to depend on anybody.
I give a little background about Washington's civilization program and the role that Indians play in the Constitution, then I sort of give them this and it pulls it all together a little bit, Jefferson ties it all together. And then the next day we talk about Lewis and Clark, basically, and they read his instructions. We don't pick apart every sentence necessarily, but I sort of just ask them to get into groups and outline the argument. Outline how he gets from the beginning to asking for money. What is his argument and what is he asking them to do? Why is he putting this in terms of commerce, and what does that have to do with Indians? Where do Lewis and Clark, you know, come in in all of this? How does he convince Congress that it's in their interest to fund this expedition?
Sometimes I have them read the original and sometimes I give them both, because if they really try—Jefferson has pretty good handwriting, and so they can get most of it. You know, the limitations are it's a little wordy in areas. And it is a complex argument, but that's kind of the point of the document. That's why I like it, because he makes a very simple request very complicated.
I think there's a lot of different documents as I said that would be a lot simpler, like the list given to the Indians. But, that gets specifically to the Lewis and Clark expedition. And what I think is a bonus about this is it's the precursor to the Lewis and Clark expedition, and it gives the plan in the beginning, that it wasn't all just haphazard, and that even though plans didn't always go well, over and over, the United States really did stick to Jefferson's vision as best it could. Just kept insisting the West was this place for an agrarian nation, and we're going to make it so, until [our nature] comes back and says, "No, that's not—this is not like the East. This is a different place." Even great men like Jefferson perhaps misunderstood it, but this misunderstanding is important to understand, because it had ramifications.
Photographer to the World-The Detroit Publishing Company
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Based on an exhibit of the same name, this website provides a look at the Detroit Publishing Company (DPC) photographs of the Western United States from 1895 to 1924. The site is arranged for easy browsing into nine sections: DPC History, "How did they do it?," Cityscapes, Everyday Life, Foreign Views, Getting Around, Michigan Views, Nature, and Workplace; and each section contains 24 to 38 photographs. The first section covers the early years of the company and provides information about DPC photographers and the creation and distribution of pictures. The everyday life photos include images of cowboys shooting craps, children in Chinatown, and an African American Emancipation Day celebration in Richmond, VA. The foreign views section consists of snapshots taken in Mexico, Venezuela, the Bahamas, and Switzerland. Roughly 40 photographs focus on the state of Michigan. The nature images, the most popular of the company's photographs, are majestic and many of them fed the growing tourist industry. The section of workplace images rounds out this site and includes harvest scenes, loggers in Michigan, smelters, oyster pickers in Louisiana, and cotton gin workers. For those interested in the history of photography, this easily navigable site is a valuable resource.