This is an article that was in the newspapers, the Patriot press in the 18th century. I tend to find these normally by looking through newspapers, which are generally on microfilm or in special collections. This one, however, I found in a specific collection, which is called the American Archives, edited by Peter Force. And what Peter Force did, in the early 19th century, was go and collect records from newspapers, from state papers, committee papers, and gather them together in several volumes and publish them as part of forming a documentary history of the American Revolution. So, this is a report that appeared in the colonial press. I'm not sure exactly where, but my guess is Boston or Hartford. Possibly more than one press because they tended to copy reports from each other. That's how they got their news, from other newspapers. And it's a report from Providence, RI.

The reason I'm interested in this sort of document is that I'm trying to get a kind of "close to the ground" look at the American Revolution. I want to know what the Patriot movement was like. The movement from, say, 1765 through the Revolution of people protesting parliamentary taxation and legislation. And I want to know less about the leading men who met in conventions and congresses, and who petitioned the King. I know a fair amount about them. I want to know about people on the local ground, ordinary people, women as well as men, and I want to know what was it like for them to become Patriots. And the questions I would bring to looking at these reports and newspapers would include: What is this telling me about ordinary people's participation? Not just what ideas might they bring to joining the revolution, or becoming a Patriot. But also what practices, what things did they have to do to be a Patriot? How do you practice being a Patriot? What does it really mean to join this movement? And what's it like, again, not in the official bodies that we think of as Patriot leaders, but kind of on the local ground, in this case in Providence, RI.

The first thing I was struck by was actually the last sentence, this image of this "Son of Liberty" going around the shops with his lampblack, which is the soot from oil lamps, a kind of black carbon soot. And unpainting the word "tea." It certainly makes me think of more famous events, like the Boston Tea Party. Although that's a real destruction of other people's property, they throw tea that doesn't belong to them into the harbor in Boston. But this seems sort of a smaller offering of one's own tea. But nonetheless, something of a gathering, a really dramatic gathering, where Patriots are expressing their political views.

Elsewhere in the second paragraph it says a great number of inhabitants—you'd really like to know, how many, how many that is compared to all of the inhabitants of Providence. They mention specifically some worthy women. So we know in this case the word "inhabitants" includes women, which sometimes it might or sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't specifically mention anyone else. We get the impression though that this is not limited to people who were qualified to vote. Certainly if women are there, it's not limited to qualified town voters. And possibly therefore there were men and boys present—apprentices, servants, slaves, sailors, any number of people who would normally not be voting and acting politically in that way, even in a town meeting. But who could attend a marketplace to purchase things, or in this case to refuse to purchase or to give up things or to observe.

One thing that I think is intriguing too is there's an argument about tea in this. It's not just a description saying people came to burn their tea. It describes tea for you. That it's needless, we don't need it. It's been detrimental to our liberty and interest and health. And that's intriguing because you can see the logic by which it's detrimental to Patriots' liberty and interest. They don't want to pay taxes on it. They don't think Parliament should be taxing this. Health is another question, and it's interesting that the Patriots raised this issue of how its supposed to be unhealthy just when Britain puts a tax on it, that's not really a common thought in the 18th century—that tea is unhealthy. In fact, people take it in part for medicinal purposes.

There's other information here that you can begin to pick up. That in addition to throwing the tea in the fire, they throw in some newspapers and a printed copy of a speech by Lord North that they disapprove of. And you can go and track down what was Lord North probably speaking about. Rivington's paper, a New York paper, Rivington's a Loyalist, and he's arguing on behalf of parliamentary power. So it's interesting they throw those newspapers in the fire as well. So it's not merely getting rid of the tea. It's all that English stuff.

I think one thing to notice about it is this isn't the kind of newspaper report we would expect, that we would get, of this happening. Even though it's written in the third person by someone describing it as if he or she was there, very authoritative, "this happened." It offers opinions in places where we might expect that you'd interview someone. It doesn't interview Jane Doe and have her say, "Well, I'm really cheerful to be throwing my tea in the fire, because I don't need this noxious weed." It's the reporter telling you and the reporter using language which testifies to his, and I think we can probably use the male pronoun here, position. In reading these it's tricky you will sometimes read pieces like this which talk about true friends of the country and lovers of freedom. And you'll discover the writer is talking about the Loyalists, the Tories, because, of course, they think too that they're the true lovers of America and freedom. So you have to sometimes read for a while to figure that out. In this case it's pretty straight forward, since they're burning Tory newspapers and throwing away tea and supporting the Sons of Liberty.

I'd really like to know more. What happened in organizing this? How did this come about? Who planned it and what was it like to attend and to observe? For example, all right, at noon you hear that you were invited to testify your good disposition to the Patriot cause by bringing your tea. Well, what does it mean if you don't feel like doing it? Does that mean if I don't bring my tea, my neighbors will, from here on out, know that I don't have a good disposition towards the Patriot cause. Does that label me a Tory who is sympathetic to Britain or to parliamentary power?

Similarly, this point that there appeared great cheerfulness in destroying the tea. And that these worthy women made free will offerings of their stocks of the tea. Well, that's a nice description, but you do wonder about those women who maybe didn't want to burn their tea. None of that is covered. If there are women who said, "Not me, I'm keeping my tea," you don't find that out here.

And finally, I think the real clue to the question of coercion or not comes in the last sentence describing a spirited "Son of Liberty" going along the street with his brush and lampblack and unpainting the word "tea" on the shop signs. Well, one wonders what the merchants, whose shops those were, where presumably they sold tea, thought about that. And it strikes me, that we don't have any information here, did he get permission from these merchants ahead of time? Or was this an act that put the merchants in a position where they would have to become quite unpopular with the Patriots if they decided to continue selling tea?

One of the first things I'd do is keep by me a dictionary so I could look up words, particularly a dictionary like the Oxford English Dictionary that has 18th-century meanings. Because often there's a word that will have changed in meaning. One example, they use the term, "the true interest of America." The term "interesting" which people in the 18th century would use to describe a situation, they say "that's an interesting situation." It doesn't mean, "I'm kind of interested in it intellectually," it means it involves people's economic interest, okay. They mean "interest" exactly in that sense almost all the time. And there are other examples, so one thing would be, don't be too far away from a good dictionary and preferably one that can tell you how things were used in the 18th century.

I'd certainly look for any references to people or events and make sure I knew what those were. Look in the history book, see if I could find out who's being referred to, who they assume everyone knows about. I'd go real carefully through the sentences, because 18th-century language, often the sentences are very long, with lots of different clauses which is complicated for us to understand today. And, certainly with newspapers at this time period, where they are either Patriot or Tory newspapers, I'd be looking for the point of view of the writer. In this case, the point of view is someone who's in favor the Patriots. So, that gives us the last thing which is I'd look for what isn't here. And in the case of a Patriot point of view, well, we don't hear about anybody in Providence who disagreed with this. And there, we don't know if there was or was not someone. That's simply absent from this.

One is I would try to contextualize the immediate incident that's being described here, this particular event in Providence, RI. And, the way that I might do that is by looking at other events taking place in Providence, by supporting this document with other descriptions of the event. I would hope I could find in letters or diaries, a description of this tea burning that took place in the marketplace. And I might particularly hope I could find a Tory, or a Loyalist, point of view, somebody who was upset that this happened. And I'd go and look in diaries and letters around the time of March 2nd, and following, look for that.

The second is, after looking at that particular incident, look more broadly at other places where this took place. And it turns out if you just follow in the newspapers, and read diaries and letters from the time, tea burnings are not uncommon in 1775. A variety of them take place in New Hampshire and New Haven, certainly in the New England area, and on into the middle colonies, you can find examples of gatherings like this. So this kind of event is a second context.

The third context, I'd look at the kind of document this is, which is a report in a newspaper. And think a little bit about reading other newspapers, reading to see if this is typical or atypical. I think its reasonably typical. There are a variety of these similar reports of Patriot events in different newspapers of this time period. And to know a little something about how people are reading this. We know that newspaper subscriptions are skyrocketing at this time. And also that people are reading them in taverns. The taverns tend to subscribe. And even people who are illiterate or don't read that well, can have it read to them in taverns. So that's one of the ways this kind of document gets dispersed throughout the colonies.

And then finally I'd want to think carefully about the chronology, about the moment that this represents of March 1775. It's clearly a divisive moment and a moment when people are under some pressure, here in Providence and in other places, to take sides. To get out there and not to say, "I agree with this or that position, I agree with these rights." But vote with your feet, or in this case, vote with your tea. To show up publicly, and to denounce tea drinking and tea drinkers, and take a side and get off the fence. And that makes sense. It's March 1775, it's after the Boston Tea party, which is December of [17]73, so there's a precedent, these people know there's been destruction of tea, which has been very controversial. The first Continental Congress has met and has encouraged people not to drink tea, so we know these people are supporting the Continental Congress, even though that that's never mentioned in here. And it's about, let's see, a month and a little bit, before the outbreak of warfare, so it's a very tense time in New England.

Well, the document that I have here in front of me is a copy of Franklin Roosevelt’s second inaugural address—delivered in January 1937; and it happens to be the first presidential inauguration that took place in January. Since George Washington’s time down to the '30s inaugurations happened in March and that was changed to January, so that’s a kind of historical factoid that gives this a little bit of interest. But this document, as much as any single document can, reminds us of what the New Deal was all about, what its relationship to the Great Depression of the 1930s was, and what its implications were for this society going forward. And I think as much as any single document can reveal, it shows us what Franklin Roosevelt’s deepest intentions were, what his highest priorities were, what his agenda was in the period of the 1930s.

So this is 1937. He’d come to power—come to the presidency three years earlier in 1933, when the unemployment rate was 25%—the most god-awful economic crisis that ever struck this society. Here he is being re-inaugurated for a second term four years later. Quite obviously and not surprisingly, as any president would do under the circumstances, he's bragging a bit about the things he accomplished during his first term; drawing the contrast between how bad things were when he took office and how much better they are now. He goes through a little bit of a list of the specific things that are better: unemployment is down and gross national product is up and so on and so forth. Then he says, kind of summarily, he said, “Our progress out of the Depression is obvious.” That’s the kind of summary statement of what he’s talking about. And he says again, further on the same note, he says, “We have come far from the days of stagnation and despair.”

Now so far this is standard presidential boilerplate on any situation, who wouldn’t—under the circumstances—pat himself on the back for the things he’s accomplished in the preceding four years. But then he says something absolutely extraordinary in the annals of presidential addresses, especially inaugural addresses. It’s a sentence that when I first read it just leapt off the page at me for its surprising quality and for its explanatory quality. After having just gone through this little recital of how things are better now than they were, he says, “Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster.” Now wait a minute, what’s he saying? Prosperity’s returning, we’re better off, the Depression is lifting, we’re going ahead on a much more confident basis than we were; but this—these “symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster.” The sentence doesn’t explain itself, you really have to know what the context was and know something about Roosevelt’s ultimate intentions, and ultimately the consequences of what he tried to accomplish and did accomplish in the 1930s.

That single sentence—"such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster"—is such a shock and such a surprise. If you read it all carefully you realize, why would he say that at the moment of his own greatest self-congratulation upon being reelected/reinaugurated? So I think if you can get students to focus on that sentence: Why would a president in that moment in that particular circumstance say such a thing? What could be on his mind that he would so apparently undercut his own agenda on this occasion? I think what explains it—where the answer lies is in that immediately subsequent passage about the third of the nation. So there’s a way to connect something that’s quite surprising about "prosperity is a portent of disaster" with something that is maybe a little bit familiar, which is the "I see one third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished." So you can put those two together and I think it’s a very effective teaching combination.

When I teach this document, I usually asking the class—before I’ve asked them to read the whole document—I ask them if they’ve heard the phrase “I see one third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished.” As time goes by, I suppose, fewer students have ever heard it at all, but most of them usually have had—it’s got some echo in their brains someplace, they’ve heard it or a version of it someplace or other.

So then I explain this is a speech that Roosevelt gave in the midst of the Great Depression, what do you think he was talking about? Again, not without reason, most students will say, “Well, he’s talking about all those people who are unemployed and having such hard times during the Depression.” And I say, “Well, fair enough, but now let's read the rest of the speech and see what he’s really talking about.” Then when they hit that sentence, if I give them the space and if I tee them up properly, that when they get to that sentence—“Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster”—that does bring them up short. They say, “Wait, what’s he talking about here? How could any president undercut his own self-congratulation for the return of prosperity?” I make the point that what follows this is this lyrical litany about the one third of the nation, and that’s his real objective. This goes to a deeper point, it seems to me, and it goes to the point of putting to rest that idea that the New Deal was just whatever Roosevelt threw at the wall, whatever stuck became the New Deal.

I believe, and I think this document goes along way to making the case, that Roosevelt had a vision, and it’s proper to call him a visionary. In fact, in my reading of the evidence he had this vision before the Depression ever happened. You can see this in his private correspondence in the 1920s [and] in his prior political career, that the major thing he wanted to accomplish if he ever got the chance was to make American society more secure, less risky, and more inclusive. To bring more people into the mainstream of American life and to reduce elements of risk that perpetually over the previous century had brought people into the mainstream and then ejected them from it again. Life was unstable for so many people, for millions of people. That’s what he wanted to change, and the New Deal put in place a series of structural reforms that accomplished a lot of that objective.

[The New Deal put in place a series of structural reforms that accomplished a lot of that objective.] The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation—which gave federal guarantees to bank deposits—at a stroke ended the century-old or more practice of panicked runs on banks when times got tough. Banks failed—between 1931 and 1933, over 5,000 banks failed in this country. Between 1933 and the end of the 20th century, probably fewer than 500 banks failed, I don’t know the exact number but in that order of magnitude. Why? Because the FDIC imparted a measure of stability, predictability, risk reduction to banking. Glass-Steagall Act, which is actually where the FDIC legislation is embedded as well, separated investment from commercial banking. It made the day-to-day operations that the average citizen dealt with a different beast from the big investment banking houses like Goldman Sachs and Lehmans Brothers and so on and so on. Which for a long time, until the opening years of the 20th [21st] century, protected the core banking system from the speculative and risky activities that go on in the investment banking business.

The Home-Owners Loan Corporation, which became the Federal Housing Authority, created a system of private insurance overseen by the federal government that stabilized mortgage lending and made that a lot less risky. Its that structural reform which actually built suburbia and built the Sun Belt in the decades after World War II because mortgage money was so much more available than it had been earlier. It [also] changed the terms on which people could buy homes—it changed them drastically. So we went from a society in which only about 40% of citizens owned their own homes as the Great Depression opened, to a society in which about 60% of Americans owned their own homes by 1960. So it didn’t take, it took about a generation for this to work its effects.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is another New Deal era reform that brought a measure of transparency and open information/accessible information into stock market trading. Again, that did a lot to dampen—not eliminate entirely—but to dampen a lot of the speculative fevers that had driven Wall Street up and down and sidewise over the preceding century. So its no accident, it’s absolutely no accident, that in the 70 years or so after the New Deal this society saw no economic crisis even remotely approaching the scale, volatility, and explosive character of the Great Depression of the '30s.

The Great Depression of the '30s is a unique event, and it’s a singular event in its severity, but it’s in a family of events that go back into the 1830s; there’s centuries worth of these kinds of severe economic shocks to the system. The New Deal put a very substantial end to that for the remainder of the 20th century at least. That was not an accident, that was part of a conscious design on Roosevelt’s part to remake the society, bring new institutions into being, reduce risk, bring elements of security into the lives of millions of citizens and institutions and economic sectors like banking, investing, and so on. That didn’t just happen; it was part of a conscious political program. And it seems to me this speech, this second inaugural address, is about as succinct and pointed a piece of documentary evidence that you can find that makes that case.

All of these things were part of a very coherent, unified program to make life less risky. It was—it became less risky for millions upon millions of people in the two or three generations following the 1930s. So we see here a glimpse, you might say, into Roosevelt’s deepest ideological agenda when he tells us prosperity might be a portent of disaster because his reform agenda is not yet accomplished.

In my book I use this picture of Franklin Roosevelt arriving at the capital in 1932. Now we have a picture before that of Roosevelt riding with Herbert Hoover from the White House to the capital. These are two men who had been friends since 1917, they had worked together in the Woodrow Wilson administration, they had considered running as a Hoover/Roosevelt ticket for the Democrats in 1920, except that Hoover decided that he was really a Republican and went for them and Roosevelt went for vice president that year on the Democratic ticket. Then they sort of drifted apart, and in 1928 Roosevelt became governor of New York, Hoover became president and then they became rivals in 1932. Their relationship became more and more bitter to the point when they rode from the White House to the capital they practically didn't speak to each other.

At this point they've arrived at the Capital, Hoover is nowhere to be seen, but Roosevelt is out standing with his family. Roosevelt had been stricken with polio in 1921 and he had lost the use of his legs. This was going to be an issue in the election of 1932—would we elect a president who was paralyzed? Hoover knew about Roosevelt's condition and he speculated that the nation would not elect a "half-man" and that Roosevelt might collapse in office. I think Hoover thought that Roosevelt would not be an effective campaigner that he would probably be too weak to carry on a campaign. Roosevelt, in fact, is an enormously vigorous campaigner, [he] spends the time traveling back and forth across the country, being photographed constantly. Hoover, who has been working seven days a week late into the night over the problems of the Depression, has aged terribly in his four years—the photographs of him make him look 82 years old. So Roosevelt looks much healthier and more vigorous than Hoover does.

Roosevelt goes to great lengths to disguise his illness. People wrote stories about it, saying that he had been stricken [with polio] and people knew he had polio, that had been front-page stories in 1921. But, he did not appear in public in a wheelchair, he had leg braces, he had his pants tailored to cover the braces, he walked with a cane, and he always walked with a strong-armed person next to him. During much of the campaign his son James—who is standing here in the bowler hat—was the one who stood next to him. Especially in the back of the trains, when they would step out, the Roosevelt family would be all around him.

Roosevelt had a nice little way of introducing his family to audiences so that you were all part of the family essentially. He would always end with "and my little boy Jimmy," because Jimmy was two or three inches taller than he was and everybody would laugh at that point, but that would diffuse the issue that he was hanging on to Jimmy's arm really to keep himself standing.

So here is Roosevelt dressed for the inauguration, in his top hat, striped pants, the cane, holding on to Jimmy's arm. Standing next to them is Eleanor Roosevelt, who does not look like she's really happy to be there. Eleanor Roosevelt was a very independent-minded person; she and her husband had really developed independent lives, especially in the 1820s. She was very politically active and she really did not look forward to him being President of the United States. She did not campaign very much with him, she hated being on smoke-filled trains—which went very slowly, because of Roosevelt's condition he didn't like the train to speed because he was in a wheelchair in the train. So it went relatively slowly across the country. Then you would stop in these little towns; everybody got out the back [to] say pretty much the same things to the same types of crowds. The wife was supposed to stand pleasantly on the side, receive a bouquet of flowers, not say anything. Eleanor was just beside herself. She actually left the campaign trail in mid-October to go back to New York to teach in the school—the private school—where she was teaching American history at the time.

She—I'm not even sure she voted for Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, she may have voted for Norman Thomas. She really did not want him to be President of the United States and you can just see this in her body language and the way she's looking at this point. She had great anxiety over what this was going to do to [him]. The irony is that she became a great first lady. She realized this gave her an opportunity to promote all the issues she was interested in, to travel and to do things. But she didn't know that on March 4, 1933, this was all coming in the future.

Now the reason I have this photograph is because of the young man standing on the edge of the picture, looking very nervous, in striped pants and a cut-away: his name is Mark Trice. Mark Trice came to the U.S. capital during World War I as a pageboy and then he stayed; that was not uncommon in those days, people were just drawn to politics. He stayed and he worked for the Sergeant at Arms and he was the Deputy Sergeant at Arms in 1933. He was a Republican appointee.

In February of 1933 the U.S. Senate fired the Sergeant at Arms. He knew that he was losing his job because his party had lost the majority. He was an old newspaper reporter and he wrote a story about what he really thought about Congress to be published in the March edition of a magazine, not realizing that the March edition came out in February. When it came out—and when his critical comments about Congress were in there—the Senate called him forward to demand to know what he had in mind, and then fired him. That made Mark Trice the acting Sergeant at Arms for Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration. He was very young, he was very scared, he was also very Republican, which is interesting that he was in charge of this Democratic president's inauguration.

When I came to work for the Senate in 1976, Mark Trice was still around—he had been a variety of functions, he had been the Republican secretary, he'd been the Secretary of the Senate. He was retired at this point but he couldn't keep away from the capital. He'd come to the Senate Historical Office and tell us stories—just sit there and tell wonderful stories. He gave us this photograph and other photographs of the time. We tried desperate to do an oral history interview with him; I really wanted to record what he had to say. But he felt that he had kept the confidences of these politicians for so long that he could not record it. And he literally one day ran out of the office when we tried to tape-record his stories that he was telling us. But this photograph from him, I think, is a great keepsake of that moment [and] it tells you a lot about those people and about the way that they're presenting themselves to the world.

Photographs are part of the documentary evidence, they're not exclusive, you can't—unless you've done the research to find out what's really going on here—you can look at this picture and not really realize how Roosevelt is presenting himself. But if you look closely you can notice that there's just something that's a little odd about the cuffs of his pants, the way they've been cut, and they're there to cover these very heavy steel braces that Roosevelt used. There's actually a small piece of the brace that goes underneath the heel that you can see there. When he's sitting down sometimes you can see a little bit more of it.

Franklin Roosevelt only mentioned his braces once in public. That was in January or February of 1945 when he had just come back from Yalta. He went to speak in the House chamber and instead of standing, he sat at a table—it was the only time he ever sat for a major speech like that. He apologized to the Congress, but he said, "With 10 pounds of heavy steal around my legs, it's easier for me to sit down." That was the sole reference he ever made to those braces. You can actually see the braces in other pictures where he's sitting down. But there's just a slight awkwardness to the pose.

He walked by pushing his legs forward. Actually, when he became ill, he developed his upper body so he had very powerful arms and shoulders. And getting on and off of trains they actually built parallel bars and he swung his way down. So he gave the illusion of walking, but he was never able to walk again after he was stricken with polio in 1921.

There's a misconception that Roosevelt hid his polio. The fact of the matter is every year on his birthday children used to send dimes to the March of Dimes in his honor. They would have pieces on newsreels in the movie theaters; they would actually raise money at movie theaters. Roosevelt became a poster person for polio victims, and eventually of course, when he dies, they put his face on the dime because of the March of Dimes. His illness actually contributes to the final solution to coming up with a cure for polio or prevention for polio. But what he was really trying to show was that he was not limited by polio. That he could go around, he could get anywhere, he could do anything, even though he couldn't walk well.

Some of the people thought he was just lame. Of course the editorial cartoonists used to draw pictures of Roosevelt running, jumping, jumping out of an airplane in a parachute, chasing a bull with a pitchfork, doing the types of things that editorial cartoonists like to do. Which people had the sense that Roosevelt could move. People could see Roosevelt standing up in the newsreels and all the rest. Now if you were in a crowd who had come to see Roosevelt, you would see that he was in some cases physically lifted out of a car, you could see that he was not able to walk smoothly, but he was able to get from point A to point B. They would often put potted plants and other things in front of him so you didn't see him from the waist down. But it was clear that he wasn't walking easily and freely at that point.

His favorite recreation was sailing, which of course you sit down while you're sailing. And again, he looked very outdoorsy, very healthy, in that respect. He had been a very agile, healthy person before that—one of the better golfers, for instance, who became president. He actually had a small golf course made for himself that he could golf in in his wheel chair for a while. But he projected an image of being able to move around, not being limited. I think that was the main issue.

I think he's disguising his disability; he made a great effort not to draw attention to it. His press secretary, whenever he was asked about it, would just say it's not a story. The Democrats had actually prepared a pamphlet in defense of Roosevelt about his health conditions to put out if it became a public issue [but] they never released it during the campaign. The Republicans and just his general opponents—and that included Democrats who ran against him for the nomination—they conducted a whispering campaign about Roosevelt. A lot of the whispering campaign was, "Well, it's not really polio, it's really syphilis!" or "it’s a mental illness," or "it’s a stroke," like Woodrow Wilson. They had terrible scenarios that were spread around and there were lots of rumors. So one reason why Roosevelt was out being vigorous in his campaign was to dispel those rumors.

Again, the fact is, anybody who was aware what the—had been reading the newspapers at all in the 1920s and 1930s was not surprised about the news that Roosevelt had polio or that he didn't walk easily. But Roosevelt went to great lengths to minimize that; for instance, at his inauguration there was a viewing stand and they created a chair for him—which was a long pole with a seat—so that he could appear to be standing up for hours while watching this, [but] he was actually sitting down. That was part of the image that he was projecting.

People pose for photographs, this is a posed photograph: Roosevelt is looking "presidential," Eleanor is looking in despair, poor Jimmy is looking a little nervous in the process, and Mark Trice is scared to death. You can just sort of see there all four of them in that image there.

My project was to write a history of the election of 1932, which is an election that everybody figured they all knew, it was a forgone conclusion that because of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt was going to be elected president. In fact, many accounts reduced the election of 1932 to a single sentence, "The Depression elected Franklin Roosevelt president." So the question is, how do you write a book about something everyone else can write off in a single sentence? I came to the conclusion that people read backwards into history, we know how history ends and we have 20/20 hindsight and we make assumptions from the end. But those who lived through it didn't see the end first, they started at the beginning and they worked their way to the end, much of which was very problematic.

The thing that surprised me when I read the sources was that Herbert Hoover thought he was going to win reelection in 1932, and there were a lot of very good, very competent political commentators who thought he had a very good chance of doing that. Actually, statistically if you look at what was happening in early 1932 there was an upswing in the economy. About a million people went back to work, and business was beginning to move again. Hoover thought that if that continued until November of 1932 he would be reelected; it was not a bad assumption in a lot of ways. He thought he could run the traditional 'rose garden' campaign the presidents did in those days. Which [meant] they stayed in the White House and they made official proclamations and they let their cabinet go out and campaign for them. Calvin Coolidge did that in 1924, and it was seen to be unseemly for presidents to get in a train and go around the country and pitch for themselves. So Hoover played a very low-keyed campaign from the time of his nomination in June throughout the summer.

A couple of things happened to change all of his expectations. One was the reason why the economy was coming back was because the Federal Reserve had loosened up on credit in early 1932. And the reason they did that was because Congress, which was in panic over the Depression, was pushing for inflationary solutions—lots of government spending, let's get money into circulation, let's get people back, let's hire people to work and there were all sorts of federal emergency relief programs that were being proposed in Congress. So the Federal Reserve to steer Congress out of that loosened up credit and things were going fine.

Well, in the summer of 1932, Congress adjourned—they went home—which they did, they usually worked for six months of the year and then they were gone for six months a year. The Federal Reserve sort of breathed a great sigh of relief and tightened back up on credit, under the old orthodox financial system they were trying to balance the budget. One way to do this is to tighten up on credit. Well, the economy went into a tailspin, the million people who had gone back to work at the beginning of the year had all lost their jobs, plus more by the end of the year. In fact, the economy went into a total tailspin, even after the election until March of 1933 when Roosevelt was finally inaugurated.

This is happening in the summer and the fall and it takes a while for Hoover to recognize what the public mood really is. The turning point is the main elections in September, and that's what this cartoon by Clifford Berryman—which ran in the Washington Star—depicts. Clifford Berryman was a cartoonist most famous for creating the teddy bear. When Theodore Roosevelt was president he—Theodore Roosevelt—refused to shoot a small bear on a hunting trip and so Berryman created a cartoon about this and the small teddy bear became very popular as a children's toy and that became Berryman's symbol for the rest of his career. He was still drawing cartoons when Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and I think Eisenhower were president; his son then took over drawing the cartoons and continued to draw them until Nixon was president. All of those cartoons have been given to the National Archives and they're in the Center for Legislative Archives.

So as I was getting ready to write my book, I contacted the National Archives and I said, "What Berryman cartoons are available for the election of 1932?" One thing you're looking for, of course, are sources that you can use that are not copyrighted, and the Berryman cartoons are all public domain. So, the Archives gave me about a half a dozen cartoons from that election; I wound up using two in the book. This one I used because I thought it captured the moment when the Republicans knew they were in trouble and when Hoover realized that he was in trouble.

Now Maine, because of the weather, always held its state elections in September before the snows came. That was considered to be a barometer of what public opinion was. There was an old slogan, going back to the Civil War, "As Maine goes, so goes the Union." Maine tended to vote Republican—actually since the end of the Civil War—the Republicans were the majority party; so therefore, whatever Maine voted did tend to reflect what was going on. Also, in those days the Republican Party's base really was in New England and in the Midwest. So a Republican president candidate was probably never going to get an electoral vote in the South, not as many in the West—it's up for grabs, the West was a contested area. But Republicans from McKinley on counted that they were going to carry the Midwest and they were going to carry New England and the Northeastern states.

Hoover figured that, even though he had done fairly well in the South in 1928, he probably was not going to do very well there in 1932. The reason he did so well in 1928 was that he was running against the first Catholic candidate, there was huge anti-Catholic sentiment in the South—Al Smith did very poorly in the South, Hoover did very well. But that was not an issue in 1932. Then he thought that the West was sort of radical and he probably wouldn't carry much of the West, but that he would carry New England and Northeastern states.

So when Maine went Democratic in September of 1932, when they elected a Democratic governor and Democratic members of the House of Representatives everybody was shocked. When Franklin Roosevelt was campaigning—the news came as he was campaigning—and everybody in the stands yelled, "As Maine goes so goes the Union!" meaning you're going to do this, Maine has already voted Democratic. In fact, John Nance Garner, who was the vice presidential candidate for Roosevelt told the crowd, "Maine's already voted Democratic, you might as well make it unanimous." So that became a slogan, it boosted Roosevelt's spirits and added to his crowds that he was getting.

It shocked Hoover, and Berryman captured this perfectly, I thought, in this cartoon. The Republican elephant—and the elephant was the symbol of the Republican party going back to the days of Thomas Nast and the Civil War era—is obviously ill, in a terrible funk with a cloud over its head.

It has several nurses; one of the nurses is Vice President Curtis. Charles Curtis had been majority leader of the Senate, he was vice president but he was not Hoover's choice for vice president, he was sort of thrust on Hoover by the Republican convention. Hoover referred to him always as the "Old Gentleman," had very little to do with him; in fact, during Hoover's presidency there was a George Gershwin play called Of Thee We Sing, and there's a vice president in the play who's modeled after Curtis who can only get into the White House on public tours. So this is Charles Curtis, well, Curtis is this solicitous nurse taking care of the elephant.

Also Everett Sanders, who's the chairman of the Republican National Committee, is the other nurse fretting over this. And "Doctor" Hoover is saying, well, we're going to have to do something to—you know, give some new medication, we've got to get this patient back on his feet because this is the first omen of tough times coming up in this election.

In fact, one of the sources that I used most heavily for this project was the diary of Hoover's press secretary, a man named Ted Joslin. Joslin wrote a little page everyday while he was Press Secretary and in his book—in his little notes—Hoover says, "This is a disaster for us" when he gets the results. "We are going to have to change our tactics, we're going to have to campaign vigorously." Hoover realizes the rose garden campaign is out, he's got to raise a lot of money, and he's got to get out on the campaign hustings and he's got to campaign. From that point on, Hoover changes course and does become a very active candidate in October. It's almost too late for him at that stage.

But this cartoon captures that moment. And I think in that sense, for students coming to the project, it personalizes it a little bit, it shows them the urgency and it's also a humorous account of the period. That’s one of the great things about editorial cartoons in general, that visual depiction with a bit of humor. And in the case of Berryman of course the faces are all very close to what the people actually look like, it's just that the bodies have been twisted around to make them a little bit funnier and [he's] dressed them up as nurses and doctors at that point.

One of the things that editorial cartoonists like to do is put people into funny costumes. It's very common in the late 19th, early 20th century for them to dress men as women. For instance presidential candidates are all going to Cinderella's ball, which one is going to be—who are the ugly stepsisters and who's going to be the "Cinderella" at the ball. Of course these were bearded men dressed up in frilly frocks and all the rest of it to make it a little bit funnier and to bring them all down to size a bit. In this case Curtis and Sanders were not particularly dynamic figures so it's sort of making fun of them to turn them into nurses.

Women were not major political players, they were just getting into it because starting in 1920 women got the right to vote. A lot of women didn't use the right to vote actually at that period; there were a few women who were elected to office, not many. In 1932 there was a women candidate for the Senate in Illinois and she's defeated. Really it takes a while for women candidates to take over. So politics is still "men's business," but the cartoonists still turn the men into female figures.

Now, "Doctor" Hoover is dressed as a man. Hoover ran his administration, he was in charge, nobody would have put Hoover in a nurse's costume. He was the doctor. He had been seen actually before this as the nation's physician. Before he became president he had been Secretary of Commerce during a major flood that took place in the Mississippi River. He was sent in to help [with] emergency relief. Before that during World War I he had provided emergency relief for the Belgians and others in Europe. So Doctor Hoover was the man who came in when you were sick and in trouble. That was the great irony of his presidency—the nation was in trouble and Doctor Hoover failed and people had expected him to play the role he had played before he had become president. For a lot of ideological reasons Hoover refused to do that. But again, an editorial cartoonist would have never gotten away with putting Herbert Hoover in a skirt in any of these cartoons.

One of the cartoonists who's very influential at this period is a man named Rollin Kirby. Kirby reported for—or drew cartoons for—the New York World, which was a liberal, Democratic newspaper; which did not survive the Depression, it went out of business in 1931, it was folded into [a] very conservative newspaper in New York. It dispersed all of its editorial writers, people like Walter Lippmann and others—and also the cartoonists—so Kirby began drawing for national syndicate, or rather having a single newspaper. His cartoons were syndicated all over the country.

When Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, went to the Chicago convention, he flew to the Chicago convention, to accept the nomination in 1932, this broke all precedent. Kirby was impressed by this and caught up with that. In the midst of Roosevelt's speech—which reporters had not gotten an advanced copy of the speech, because Roosevelt was actually putting it together as he spoke. He was taking a draft from one set of advisors and a draft by another advisor and mixing the two, as he tended to do during the campaign. There's a line in there [in which] Roosevelt promises a "New Deal" for the American people. His speechwriter had lifted this from a series of articles that was appearing in the New Republic at the time, it was a nice applause line, and it sort of reflected back to his cousin Theodore Roosevelt's Square Deal.

But Roosevelt really didn't see this as the defining description of his upcoming administration. In fact, he doesn't use the phrase for the next several speeches. It's only because Rollin Kirby, the cartoonist, drew this cartoon of a plane flying over with the words "New Deal" on it and a farmer in the field looking up at this plane going by as the symbol of "change is in the air." Newspaper editorial writers, and headline writers, and others began to realize that the New Deal was a nice little catchphrase to describe this sort of disparate notion of the types of things that Franklin Roosevelt was proposing. So Roosevelt himself later embraced the idea of the New Deal, but the editorial cartoonists were actually ahead of him in this case. That's the idea, you want to get it down to the nub, get the idea in the point it can be visual, everybody understands what it's about, makes the point, and they—in some cases—get a chuckle out of it and then they turn the page and go on to the sports.

Because the editorial cartoonists are aiming at a general public—they're not aiming at a highly educated people—they're aiming at a "man on the street" image. They want to make sure that everyone knows exactly what this is, which is the reason why they put lots of labels on to everything that they're doing so you don't make any mistakes about it. The really clever cartoonists don't need a lot of labels—the picture tells the story—but usually there's a very strong visual sense with an editorial cartoon. There are stacks and stacks of these cartoons—Berryman's at the National Archives, the Library of Congress has the Herblock cartoons from the Washington Post. It’s a huge collection, and Herblock was doing cartoons from the 1930s to up through George W. Bush's presidency.

These are terrific teaching tools; we can go back to the 19th century and use Thomas Nast cartoons. Earlier than that if you deal with the American Revolution, they have cartoons but they're so complicated and they have so many layers in labels that in many ways they overwhelm the student. But visually the cartoons become more pointed the further on you go, and certainly at least from the 1860s on they are just absolutely terrific teaching tools.

I think cartoons have changed with audiences and audience expectations. How much time people had to spend to look at these things. You know, looking at Tom Jones is a novel and the convoluted nature of those things, people enjoyed that and they could relate to that. Of course you're also talking about a much smaller reading class of people who would have looked at a magazine or a newspaper that would have carried a cartoon like this. For mass consumption, cartoons are much simpler. So for instance Benjamin Franklin draws the snake that's divided and it says "unite or die" and that's something that anybody—even the mob—will recognize and see. For the genteel drawing-room class, then you have lots of pictures that draw on religious allegories and others. You can see this change over time.

I think the late 19th century is one of the great periods for editorial cartoons. Part of this was printing needs, the artist would sketch but then it would have to be copied over by engravers. Well you have to make it a little less complicated to do that, to make the transfer. Then you had the Germans coming in, and it was a very strong German press in the United States in the late 1880s, 1890s, and on. Pulitzer and other people coming out of it, getting experience there. Hiring editorial cartoonists—people like Keppler and others—drawing originally for the German-speaking population of the United States, then translating it into English. They brought in all sorts of fanciful, fairytale, Brothers Grimm type of images into the cartoons.

They began to settle on certain very recognizable images. Nast uses the elephant for the Republicans, he's got a donkey for the Democrats—but sometimes a rooster for the Democrats, sometimes the Tammany tiger for the Democrats—but it begins to develop a lot along those lines. Uncle Sam becomes a familiar figure. Santa Claus actually was a cartoon figure that appears in the same period by the same cartoonists. So by the 1900s, the average person who picks up a newspaper can tell right away if this is a cartoon about the Republicans or the Democrats and the pictures are getting simpler and simpler.

Who issued it? The Congress that was gathered in Philadelphia in July of 1776, the so-called Continental Congress. Who were they? They were a bunch of men who had been elected or appointed by individuals within the 13 colonies to meet together to discuss their opposition to the existing legitimate government of the colonies, the British government.

This carried the weight of an official proclamation from this new government of the United States, so it was written in a formal language and an illiterate farmer or a sailor or a farm woman would not necessarily understand the meaning of all the terms or charges. However, the fact that a lot of them would have it read to them meant that the reading of the Declaration was just the point of departure. It was the first point of a larger public debate and discussion about what was going on.

There's this very powerful language that would have an impact, an emotional impact, on an audience. And then the people would be standing around and say, "Well, what does that mean—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?" Or "What does it mean, he's forbidden his Governor to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance."

This was a bold experiment and a lot of people could get very excited by that. It was an important device to mobilize the people and to get them excited. The Continental Army had a hard time getting people. The Continental Congress was always short of money. The states were always very slow to pass taxes and to send the money to the Continental Congress. So the reality fell short of the grand ideals that were expressed in the Declaration.

Events had been building up to the Declaration for over a decade. At the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, most people assumed that the North American British Colonies were happy to be part of the British Empire. They were prospering under British rule. The people of the Colonies considered themselves the loyal subjects of the Crown. But after the French and Indian War, Britain initiated a whole series of policies and laws that from the colonists' perspective, changed the relationship that had existed between Britain and the Colonies.

Prior to the Stamp Act crisis of 1765, when Britain wanted money from the colonists, they would go to the colonies individually. In each of the 13 colonies, there was a legislature that was elected by the people and Britain would ask those legislators to pass taxes on the people of that particular colony that would then be submitted to England. After the French and Indian War, there was a change in British policy. The leaders in Britain, because they had gone into so much debt fighting the French and Indian War and the people in Britain itself were already heavily taxed, were looking for new sources of revenue. So they started making policies which involved Parliament passing taxes that were imposed on the colonists. And from the colonists' point of view, this was changing the rules of the game. Parliament was taxing them and they elected no members to Parliament. So from their point of view, they were being taxed without their consent.

From the point of view of Britain, Parliament legislated and passed taxes for the Empire as a whole. The colonists were represented virtually in Parliament even though they elected no particular representatives. The colonists feared that if they allowed any of these taxes passed by Parliament, then there would be one tax after another. They would be deprived of their property completely.

There was a substantial minority by 1774 or 1775 who already believed that it was impossible to remain in the British Empire and remain a free people. But the process of convincing larger numbers of people took more time. A key moment there was the publication in January of 1776 of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. That pamphlet really reached out to large numbers of people and explained it in terms that they could understand why independence was necessary.

I think it needs to be understood in terms of the Order of July 1775. It's a document called a Declaration of the Causes and Necessities for Taking Up Arms. That was passed by the Continental Congress and that set up the Continental Army. That explains why the colonists are upset and I think it's very interesting to see what changed in their language. Jefferson wrote that as well, so I think it's really interesting to see why in 1775 they were willing to take up arms, but not declare independence and they were willing to do that a year later. In the 1775 document, they don't blame the King. They only blame Parliament and his ministers for these problems. And that's the big difference between 1775 and 1776.

And there's another document written by Jefferson in 1774 called a Summary View of the Rights of British America. That was not an official document of the Continental Congress, but it was issued as a pamphlet. That represents the thinking of the most radical of the delegates in 1774 who are already anticipating independence and seeing why it was becoming increasingly untenable for the colonies to remain in the British Empire.

The Continental Congress first met in 1774. Then disassembled, then reassembled in the spring of 1775. But did not declare independence until July of 1776. In an era before public opinion polls, these delegates had to go by their personal sense of the people via letters, via newspapers, via word of mouth. And only then, by the summer of 1776, did they feel that the people were going to back up their Declaration of Independence with the taking up of arms and with support of this cause.

What was the official status of the Continental Congress? They had none. The Continental Congress was an extra-legal or illegal assembly. The only authority they had was the authority that the people in the colonies gave them. They were not operating within the existing boundaries of the colonial charters or of any rule of law that the British government recognized.

They knew that if they declared independence without having a substantial proportion of the population supportive of them, they would hang. They were committing treason. They were not interested in leading a revolution that no one wanted to follow. It was really important that they waited as long as they did.

The stakes were very high. What people don't like to think about is that these delegates were becoming outlaws. They were operating outside the official rules that governed the legal system of Britain. They were establishing a separate nation. Looking back, we can put this patriotic halo around it. But from Britain's point of view, what the colonists were doing was disloyal, seditious, wrong, treasonable. I think because we won, Americans think it was right from the start, but it depends on your perspective. From the British point of view, it wasn't.

Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed the resolutions to Congress in June of 1776 that said these colonies should be free and independent. So the Continental Congress then appointed a committee of five to draft the Articles of Independence. The committee of five consisted of Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was a very young member of the delegation. He had drafted a number of previous documents related to the Continental Congress. He was known to be a very good writer. So that's why the committee of five decided to delegate the task of writing the draft to Jefferson. He wrote the draft which was then submitted to the committee of five for editing; which was then vetted by the entire Continental Congress.

A lot of the changes that were made were basically editorial, but some of the changes were more substantial. They took out some of the exaggerated language that Jefferson was prone to use that was trying to stir up people against Great Britain. But they also took out a key paragraph where it accused the King of waging cruel war against human nature itself by enslaving people, by carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere. This whole paragraph was excised from the final Declaration because it was understood that the southern states would never support the Declaration if there was this diatribe against slavery in it. I think that's the most important editorial change that was made by the Congress in the draft that Jefferson wrote.

It's a document that has several audiences. One audience is the people of Great Britain. Telling the people of Great Britain and the government of Great Britain that the people of the United States are a separate nation and should be treated as a separate nation henceforth. Another audience is the foreign nations of Europe. The Americans needed to let these foreign nations know that they were an independent nation to get loans and military assistance, especially from France, so that they could wage this war against Britain.

Finally, the last audience was the people of the United States themselves. It was an official statement to the people of the United States that we're no longer resisting the policies of Britain by staying within the boundaries of this nation, but we are now a whole separate country and we're a separate people.

It's a hard document to come to without background. I think reading aloud is a good tool and starting with the responses of the students. How does this make you feel? What does it inspire in you? Do any phrases stand out? Then talking about the curiosities—why they're blaming the King. "He," "he," "he," "he," "he." And then talking about the phrases that seem curious or obvious to us today.

The document has to be understood both as a rhetorical tool and official statement. That it's creating a new government. And that over time its meaning has changed a lot. I think taking it phrase by phrase. Certain things become apparent, like why do they keep phrasing it in terms of "necessity compels us?" That's something you can get by just reading it. Looking at the fact that they blame so much on the King.

Looking at the rhetorical tricks that are used. We're submitting these facts to the "candid world." Looking at what different parts of the Declaration are doing. The one part, appealing to the people of Britain. Another part, talking about the functions of government. The beginning part making these broad general sweeping statements that pertain across time and place. What are the laws of nature? How do we know what nature's laws are? What are inalienable rights?

Why is it important that government insures these inalienable rights? What if people held revolutions every time they got dissatisfied with government? When is a government just and when is it unjust? How do we decide? Can you rebel against a government which is based on the people, that is a constitutional form of government rather than a government in which there's a king? What kinds of protests should they engage in before they take up arms and try to overthrow a government? What makes a government legitimate? Why do we consider our government legitimate? What if you don't? What's the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution?

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another and to assume among the powers of the nation the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them."

First of all, there's an invocation here of the laws of nature and of nature's God. That's a reference to laws that are higher than the laws of Great Britain, that are higher than the British Parliament, that are higher than the British King. You're appealing to a higher authority and I think that's really necessary to justify and legitimate what they're about to say and do. And then they say, "A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation," so they're going to explain to the world why they are separating.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident." This is a very typical enlightenment concept. "Self- evident" truths are truths of nature and by studying nature, a reasonable person can discover what is true.

And one of these truths is that "all men are created equal." This is the phrase that provokes incredible discussion. What do they mean by "all men are created equal?" In America, you don't have inherited ranks and privileges. You don't have a hereditary monarch. All people in America are equal before the law and I think that's the most fundamental meaning of equal that they're talking about here.

They're "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." So there are these God-given rights that reasonable people can find in nature.

It was a very common political construct derived from John Locke's second treatise on government—all men are born free and equal. But you have to understand what equal meant in those terms. In a state of nature, men are equal. They have the equal right to give their consent to be governed. What's powerful about this statement is that it is so unqualified and so open to interpretations.

John Locke talked about life, liberty, and property. There's a lot of discussion about why it was changed in the Declaration from "property" to "pursuit of happiness." Property is obviously a much more restrictive term. It's confined to those, usually white males, who could own property. Pursuit of happiness is a much broader term that opens up this possibility to men, women, children, even black people, theoretically.

By choosing the phrase "pursuit of happiness" rather than "property," there's an immediate implication that this government isn't just for men of property. It's for all people who have rights. Then the question becomes, well, who has rights. So the document itself is written in a way that opens it up to multiple interpretations. It worked as a rhetorical strategy in fighting British tyranny, as an appeal to a large number of people in the United States and abroad. That's why they used those terms.

Whether they anticipated extending all of the privileges of citizenship to women and black people at the time is definitely not the case, but they definitely wanted the benefits of government to extend beyond those who owned property.

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they're accustomed." What they're saying here is that people shouldn't and don't start revolutions whenever they're unhappy. They only do it when the problems are very serious, when they have tried by every possible means to resolve their grievances peacefully.

When there are these serious causes, it's "their right" and "their duty" to throw off such a government. I think it's important that they say "right." It is their right. It is their duty. They're not just doing this because they want to. They're doing it because the laws of nature compel them. And that's a persistent theme in the Declaration of Independence. Necessity compels us to do this. We don't want to do this. We're not choosing to do it because we're rabble-rousers. We're doing it because the laws of nature tell us that we must do this. Otherwise, we will be the equivalent of slaves. Our liberty will be taken away from us.

"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having a direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States." When the King becomes a tyrant, revolution is necessary to preserve the liberties of the people. "To prove this, let Facts be submitted to the candid world." That's a very good rhetorical device. Let's the facts be submitted so any objective observer given this list will understand why the Colonies are starting this revolution, why they're declaring their independence. And they will side with us.

It's interesting to look at the list in the Declaration, that each sentence begins: "He has," "He has," "He has." And who is the "he"? Well, the "he" is the King of England, King George III. What seems inexplicable at first is why the colonists blame all these on George III. It wasn't George III, at least initially, who singlehandedly imposed taxes or deprived the colonists of trial by jury or quartered troops among the colonists. It was Parliament. But it was understood that the King gave his assent to laws of Parliament and that the King theoretically had the ultimate say in approving laws of Parliament. So if George III had wanted to veto any of these laws, at least theoretically, he could have.

No British monarch since the early 18th century had actually vetoed a law of Parliament, but the colonists believed that the King was their ultimate guardian and protector in Britain and that's who they appealed to ultimately for help. And that's who they felt ultimately let them down.

Also, you don't rebel against Parliament. You can only rebel when the King becomes a tyrant and when the King is no longer the protector or guardian of your liberties. They have to lay these issues at his feet in order for rebellion to be justified. So I think this list of grievances is interesting in its particulars and more generally, because they blame all this stuff that previously might have been blamed on Parliament on the King.

"He has refused his Assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good." That is a reference to the fact that after the colonial legislatures approved a law, then it would go to the governor in that colony for approval. Then it would be sent to England for approval. And there are cases in which the Crown refused to pass certain laws that the colonists thought would be good for them.

The colonists feel like Britain is coming between them and their just right to representative government in their own colonies.

"He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people." I think one of the things that really started to get to the colonists was the fact that the Royal Governors, whenever they were threatened because the assemblies were passing resolutions opposing British laws, would then send the representatives home. They would dissolve the legislatures and the legislatures could not reconvene on their own merits.

They would go down to a local tavern and reconvene in the name of the people, but they didn't have the legal authority of the legitimate government, the royal government. And so the colonists increasingly felt that Britain was violating their right to representation in their own colonial legislatures.

"Suspending our legislatures"—that refers to the fact that in certain colonies, the Parliament prohibited the legislature from meeting. That violated the people's basic right to elect representatives who would govern them. And then the Declaratory Act of 1766, which was passed in the wake of the repeal of the Stamp Act, said that Parliament had the right to pass laws governing the colonies in any case whatsoever and Parliament intended that to apply to taxes.

And the colonists said that no, they would agree to laws that Parliament passed that were for the governance of the Empire, but they would not agree to pay any taxes that were not passed by their own representatives. Those in particular refer to this issue of no taxation without representation.

The Anglo-American idea of taxes was that taxes are a gift of the people to the government and the government uses those taxes to preserve life, liberty, and property for the security of the state, for the security of the people. The people can't be forced to give these taxes without their consent. That doesn't mean that the people meet personally to vote on taxes, but through their representatives. So as long as they are electing representatives to an assembly, then that assembly has the right to vote taxes and they are bound to pay those taxes even if they don't agree with the particular policies. They can change the person who they elect.

"In every stage of these Oppressions, We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humblest terms." And from the colonists' point of view, at every point since 1765 when they first became aware of what they perceived as change in British policy, they took steps to let Britain know that they were upset. They did this by sending petitions to the King, to the House of Lords, to the House of Commons. They did this by passing resolutions in their colonial legislatures. They did this by boycotting British goods. They did this by gathering together in a Continental Congress and by passing resolutions as a united group.

The government didn't listen. The people of Britain didn't listen. "Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."

One of my favorite paragraphs is this next one. "Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren." This is a reference to the British people. "We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity and we have conjured them by ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence."

They're referring to the fact that the people of the Colonies felt that the people of Britain were also suffering under the King and Parliament. They pointed to a number of laws that had caused riots or protests in Great Britain. John Wilkes was a dissenter who'd been elected as a member of Parliament and who was denied his seat by Parliament. There was a great outcry in Britain and so the people of the colonies felt that the King and Parliament were becoming oppressive, not just to the colonists in North America but to the people of Britain themselves. And if they made common cause, then Parliament and the King would stop it.

But the people of Britain didn't rise up the way the colonists expected and make common cause with them. They didn't see themselves as allied. What this paragraph is doing is saying: we've appealed to you to join in our fight against tyranny but you've ignored us.

"We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity." Again, this phrase "acquiesce in the necessity." We don't want to do this. We are being forced; Britain's tyranny is making us do this. "We acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends." It's like a divorce. It's like the breaking of family ties. You are a foreign nation to us now, just like France. When we're at war, you're our enemies. When we're at peace, you'll be our friends. But you are no longer kin to us. This is probably the most heart-wrenching paragraph in the Declaration because it is where one people becomes two peoples.

The next paragraph says all these things that Congress is going to do. We're the representatives and we declare that the "United Colonies are Free and Independent States," "Absolved from Allegiance to the Crown." This allegiance is "dissolved." They have the "full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce." But why are they doing this? They're saying, 'We are the people's representatives, so we are now the legitimate governing body of this new entity, the United States of America. We have the people's confidence and we can do all the things that other nation states can do.'

We can make treaties to levy war. We can have peace negotiations. If Britain wants to deal with us, if France wants to deal with us, you should send your emissaries to us, the Continental Congress. Not to the different colonies. Not to any splinter groups. We are the legitimate representatives of the colonies.

We have the authority of the good people of these colonies and that's in whose name we are declaring independence. And we "pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Honor."

There were always significant numbers of people in the colonies/United States, who were either neutral about the cause of independence or who supported Britain. But what you have to understand is that the war was long, the process of attaining independence took many years. People changed their positions over time. So when the British army was in your locality, a lot of people turned out to be neutral or loyalist. When the Continental Army was in your vicinity, you tended to support the Continentals.

The British army made a lot of people who were initially supportive of the Crown come over to the American cause. The British government continued to be so intractable, the war dragged on for such a long time. A lot of men were called up to their local militias and were shot at by British.

Once independence was declared, the outcome was by no means assured. They could very well have lost the war. The Continental Army could have been destroyed. In fact, it was almost destroyed the very summer that the Declaration of Independence was being issued because Washington was fighting in New York and he almost lost his entire army.

They create it. They sign it. They send it out. It's read. Bells are rung. Bonfires are lit across the colonies. There are celebrations. But the war was already going on in July of 1776. The Continental Army had been created July of 1775, so this really formalized what was already going on.

George Washington had been appointed head of the Continental Army a year before. He was fighting a very important battle in New York as the Declaration was being passed. On the ground level, it didn't make that much difference. One of the most significant consequences was that it allowed France to start aiding the colonies. Sending money and then eventually entering into a formal treaty that was signed in 1778 that promised money and men and supplies to the United States. And, without France's support, the United States would never have been able to win the war, especially the support of their navy.

I also think for the people of the United States the fact that they knew what they were fighting for in very concrete terms was very important.

It's important not to overstate the importance of the Declaration of Independence per se at the time. The document was important because it did formally declare the United States a separate nation, a new nation, and because it made other countries who might want to aid the United States know with whom to talk, that is the Continental Congress. And it was sort of a rallying point for the American people to understand that now they were fighting for a separate nation, not just to convince Britain to treat them better.

But the Declaration of Independence actually faded from prominence during the American Revolution and in the years immediately after. And for a long time, Thomas Jefferson was not identified as the sole or even most important author of the document. It was thought to be the creation of the Continental Congress and it symbolized the collective sentiments of the people of the United States.

It was only in the 1790s when Thomas Jefferson became the leader of a new political party, the Democratic Republicans, that the Declaration of Independence was revived. His political opponents, the Federalists, deliberately refused to read the Declaration of Independence at Fourth of July celebrations because they didn't like the radical implications of it—the idea that all men are created equal, the idea that we should all pursue happiness.

The Declaration of Independence is a fantastic way to understand American history because many protest groups throughout American history model their own protests on the Declaration. Frederick Douglass talks about: Why do black slaves celebrate the Fourth of July? Why do black slaves not want to celebrate it? Why are they left out of the Declaration? Women write the Seneca Falls Declaration. They rewrite the Declaration in terms of men and women. Various labor groups throughout American history write their own declarations of independence, saying why they feel oppressed or excluded or marginalized or not equal. I think it's the power of the ideals that have persisted throughout history.

But the specific provisions are very much rooted in the historical events that lead up to 1776. Depending on your audience, you could either understand it primarily as a basis for change, radical change, in various times and places. Or you could understand it as a specific historical document that was written in response to specific historical problems.

The first letter, first chronologically, was a letter written in October of 1862 by Jasper Barney, a private in an Illinois regiment. He fought for the Union Army, he was a farmer from Illinois and he is writing to his brother-in-law, another family member, about the state of the war and particularly about Emancipation.

The second letter is written the following month, November of 1862, but it is by a white Confederate soldier, prosperous farmer John White to his wife. And he is writing at a moment when militarily, the Confederacy is enjoying more success but Confederate civilians are living with the uncertainties of having a war fought in their own backyard. He's also writing about the Emancipation Proclamation and the fears that it has stirred up amongst Confederate civilians at home. His letter is a very personal letter too, in that he is quite forthcoming with his wife about how much he misses home and how torn he feels between his desire to be home and protect his family and the need to fight this war.

And then the third letter is written in February of 1864. It is by a black member of the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery, a black regiment. And he is writing from the city of New Orleans, which his regiment is occupying at the time to really articulate what he and many other black soldiers see as the stakes, as why this war matters for black Americans in particular.

Men in a regiment, or at least in a company, tended to enlist together. So letters that come from home will be read probably by more than one person, will probably be read out loud. A letter to home will often include a passage that says, "Brother A says to say, 'X, Y, Z'" With Civil War soldier's letters the vagaries of letter survival can skew our picture a little bit. The letters to home have a much greater survival rate than the letters from home to the front.

The letters from home don't survive because soldiers have nothing that they can do with them. Also, before battle soldiers are likely to destroy any personal letters that they have on them. Their fear is if personal letters are found on them that the enemy will somehow use that information.

The Union has the U.S. Postal Service; the Confederacy never really has a very efficient or working postal service. There's travel back and forth between home and the frontlines all the time, so often somebody from home or nearby is in camp and going home and you send letters that way and when that person comes they bring letters. There are also private express companies.

Jasper Barney's in the hospital when he writes the letter. He is trying to recover from a wound so the first part of the letter is about recovering from his wound and that actually in one sense is typical because almost every soldier's letter talks about his health to almost excessive degrees.

The letter is written in October of 1862, and in the fall of 1862 there's quite a lot of turbulence on the Northern home front and regarding the Union Army cause in general. The war militarily had gone fairly well for the Union in the early months of 1862 and then in the summer of 1862 the war started going poorly for the Union militarily and the North sort of woke up to the fact that this was going to be a much longer war than anybody had anticipated. So by the fall of 1862 the Northern home front and soldiers are still trying to cope with that realization.

One of those new measures that is taken to fight the war is the Emancipation Proclamation. The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation had been issued on September 22nd of 1862 and the Emancipation Proclamation really changed the whole aim of a war that had been begun to save the Union. Now it becomes a war also to end slavery. Now those two goals had never been completely separable but the official line had always been "This is a war to save the Union" and not to have really much of anything to do with slavery. Those changes really rocked much of the Civil War North, particularly the Northern home front.

You have quite a lot of dissent among white Northerners over the Emancipation Proclamation. Black Northerners, there is no dissent. They think this is exactly what has been needed since well before the war began. There are a number of issues at stake in the 1862 elections. There are economic issues, there are issues having to do with civil liberties, what actions can and cannot the United States government take during wartime and there's the war and of course there's the Emancipation Proclamation.

Meanwhile you have a number of new soldiers entering the ranks. So you have elections, tumult and dissent, and a host of new soldiers coming into the army, all at about the same time. And that's when this letter is written.

This letter is written by Barney who has actually been in the army for a while. So he is writing as an experienced soldier to his brother-in-law who has just joined. Barney, who would normally show a certain modicum of deference or respect for his more socially-elite and older brother-in-law thinks that this is too important an issue to stand on ceremony and so he tells him straight up, I think that you're wrong, I think that the Emancipation Proclamation is exactly what is needed to end this war. And what is more, you're going to think so too as soon as you have been in the war for any length of time.

Barney is fairly typical, he certainly wouldn't have called himself an abolitionist, he certainly would not have predicted that in less than a year he would be calling for the end of an institution that's older than the nation itself. It's quite a radical thing to talk about ending slavery in the 1860s. He's undergone what is a huge transformation in his thinking. As you can see from the letter to his brother in law, his family has not really kept up with this transition. So a gulf has really opened between many soldiers and their families at home.

He is on the Emancipation question even on the first paragraph, he says, "Now my lady love is more attentive for I got a letter from her yesterday. She is all right on the goose question." "All right on the goose" means how you stand on the slavery question, she agrees with him about Emancipation so he is pleased about that.

Then in the next paragraph he's addressing what he sees as his brother-in-law's mistaken views. "You say in your letter that you or your regiment is not in for freeing the Negroes. I am sorry to hear it. You wanted to know what I and my comrades thought of the Negro question. I think Old Abe's Proclamation is all right and there is very few old soldiers that is against it. It is my opinion that yourself and the greater part of your regiment will be in favor of it before you are in the service six months. I was of the same opinion of yourself when I first came into the service but I have learned better. You said you thought the thing would come to a finish by spring if the Negroes was left alone, but I think you will soon find out different. For it is my opinion that the war will never come to a close while the Negroes is left where they are to raise supplies for the rebel army. Even if we could suppress the rebellion and leave the main root where it was before, it wouldn't be long before they would try the same game as before. But if we take away the main root of evil and confiscate all their property they will have nothing to fight for hereafter."

First of all, it's the war that has changed his opinion. Second of all, it's going to change his brother-in-law's opinion too. His reasoning is actually quite pragmatic, what he's talking about is the recognition that without the institution of slavery there never would have been a war. So if we want the war to end and if we want not to fight it again we have to get rid of the cause. That passage encapsulates quite well a major shift in thinking that goes on. It's a pretty astute analysis on his part and on many soldiers' part that there's no way that the Confederacy could have conducted a four-year war without a slave labor force. The Confederate workforce is mobilized, is in the army.

"Old Abe gave them 90 days and that was long enough for them to come to terms and save their property and Negroes, but it seems like they wanted to go the whole hog or none. Now, I think it is perfectly right to take the hog and leave them none and then if they ain't satisfied, I am in for banishing every rebel and rebel sympathizer from the U.S. I am a whole soul Union man and believe in giving the rebels a lesson to be remembered in after generations. Then we will never be troubled with civil war again."

He's talking about the precise terms of the Emancipation Proclamation here. The Emancipation Proclamation issued on September 22nd is actually more, probably the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and what it says is that the slaves in the states that are still in rebellion against the Union as of January 1st, 1863, will be freed.

And so essentially it's an ultimatum delivered to states in rebellion and the reverse of it would say, therefore if you return to the Union before January 1st, 1863, your slaves won't be freed. And the Proclamation says that because it is operating in a context of a Constitution that protects slavery.

And so, the Emancipation Proclamation can only justify itself as a war measure. So what he is saying is, Lincoln gave the states 90 days to come back. He gives them a chance to retain slavery and if they won't take that chance, if their demands in terms of greater protection for slavery are more important to them than coming back in the Union and keeping slavery where it is then they made their own bed and let them lie in it.

By the time Barney writes this letter he has no qualms at all about confiscating the property of even non-combatants. As he sees it now the only thing that's going to end this war is to take a much harder line, to take away the root of the war.

And in the next paragraph he wants to assure his brother-in-law that 'I am not some wild-eyed abolitionist here, I am not a crazy reformer, this is in fact what most of us hardened commonsensical soldiers think.' He says, "Well, I think I gave you a very good sample of the opinions of myself and comrades."

I think the next paragraph is a good clue into the sort of limits of growing Emancipation sentiment among the Union Army, in other words he is all for ending slavery, but ending slavery is quite different in his view from increasing rights of former slaves or anything approaching racial equality.

You see that when he says, "P.S. I am not in favor of freeing the Negroes and leaving them to run free and mingle among us. Neither is such the intention of Old Abe, but we will send them off and colonize them. The government is already making preparations for the same and you may be assured it will be carried into effect."

So he doesn't know what should become of former slaves, but he certainly doesn't want them living among his own friends and family in the North. He refers to a passage in the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that does not mandate but suggests as a possible outcome for former slaves, 'maybe they'd be happier if we send them back to Africa or to some place in South America and they could start their own society.'

By the time of the final Proclamation all reference to colonization has been omitted. Slavery was Southern, but prejudice was nationwide. And so colonization was sort of a way of coping with the tension between the insistence that we really need to get rid of slavery and uncertainty about what do we do with real slaves?

The Confederate soldier is named John White. He is part of the army of Northern Virginia, which is the fabled army of Robert E. Lee and he is writing from Fredericksburg, VA, in late November of 1862. So he's essentially writing while Union forces are getting ready to try and take Fredericksburg. It's cold, it's miserable, it's wet, his letter may or may not make it outside of battle lines. He's writing to his wife, there are armies in her backyard. Moreover, White's wife lives in a part of the state where there are slaves and there is a terror that the war is going to inspire a slave insurrection. Those fears are present from the very beginning of the war but at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation they become even more acute.

There is more uncertainty and there is a lot more worry in his letter. Even though militarily the war's going a lot better for his side at this time than it is for Barney's side. The Confederacy is very centralized, much more centralized than the Union and the Confederate Government nationalizes the economy to a much greater degree than the Union could even dream of doing.

And there's major disagreement about whether the Confederate State has any authority to do this. The reason why that disagreement doesn't spill over into a massive rush to rejoin the Union is all that stuff stinks, but it's not as bad as the Union. And I think that's the calculus that goes on in the minds of most Confederate soldiers. It's not liking the Union more than liking or feeling any attachment to the Confederacy that keeps the Confederate army in the ranks. Civilians are ready to throw in the towel a lot earlier than soldiers are.

He starts off by talking about a local neighbor's and he explains that's how he got some letters from his wife and is able to send some letters to her. But then, he hasn't even gone through the state of his health or the health of all their children or their friends at home before he gets to his concerns about the possibility of slave insurrection.

So his two main concerns, right from the outset are one, we can't be in touch with each other as much as I would like us to be and two, you're worried and I'm worried about slave uprising.

He talks about the battle that he calls Sharpsburg and Union soldiers would call Antietam. The battle of Antietam took place on September 17th of 1862, right before the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Confederacy stages a number of invasions of Union soil in the fall of 1862. Robert E. Lee's army marches into Maryland and the Union Army meets the Confederate Army at Sharpsburg, the name of the town in Maryland, along a creek called Antietam Creek.

The Confederates tend to name battles after the town nearest where a battle is fought while the Union tends to name battles after natural features, most often bodies of water. Militarily that battle was a draw, but it counts as enough of a Union victory because the Confederates were trying to invade the North. Their invasion was stopped at Antietam. And so the Confederates retreat back into the Confederacy.

Confederates do not see this as a devastating defeat by any means, but the Union has been so desperate for a victory because Lincoln has been trying to find a way to issue the Emancipation Proclamation since the summer of 1862. But he did not want to do it at a time when the Union Army appeared to be failing because then it would just look like a desperate move and that's not how he wanted it to look.

As you can see from White's description of the battle, he saw it as a terrible battle. But he doesn't really see it as a major Confederate defeat.

"Oh Matt, it almost makes me shudder to think of it. How will the 17th of September live in the memory of the 32nd Virginia Regiment and its friends? Oh, it was an awful day. Imagine my feelings, if you can, when I saw my comrades and friends falling all around me from the death-dealing shot and shell of the enemy and knew not how soon it would be my fate. Thanks be to a kind providence, I came out unhurt but narrowly escaped. A ball passed through my blanket between my body and right arm. I shot my gun until I could hardly get a cartridge down her. Finally, they gave way and ran, hotly pursued by our brigade, the 32nd leading the charge until pursuit was dangerous. They were said to be three to our one."

He's writing this more than a month later, but it's still a pretty fresh impression of his experience of battle. It's such an overwhelming experience to be in a Civil War battle. The impressions are roaring noise, and smoke, and a horrific smell. And those are hard sensations to really write precise words about. And so there are a series of stock phrases that soldiers tend to fall back on. There's nothing in her experience that he could compare it to. It doesn't so much make his description hollow as highlight the enormity of the experience, because he's clearly an eloquent man, and yet that's too overpowering for him.

But it's really important to him for two reasons, one, the enormity of the battle itself but two, it becomes the occasion for this Emancipation Proclamation. White and his wife aren't shocked by the Emancipation Proclamation so much, they sort of have expected it, they thought since the beginning that the Union was out to destroy slavery and all this talk of Union is really just a red herring. But the Emancipation Proclamation makes those fears more real for them. Moreover, they worry that slaves are going to hear about this Emancipation Proclamation and will become emboldened and as a result will start holding uprisings and possibly go on killing sprees.

"Dear Matt, I must tell you I am in a hard place and know not what to do. When I think of my sufferings, both in mind and body which are indescribable and how much my services are needed home, I am tempted to try and get there. I see no probability of getting there if I remain in the service. The war is likely to last for years yet and I cannot reasonably expect to survive it. Besides this, you are threatened with an insurrection," which is again a reference to the slave uprising that they fear is going to happen because of the Emancipation Proclamation, "and how better can I die than defending my family and fireside. To do this, I came in the war and now that you are threated, I consider it my Christian duty to come to your rescue and protection. Dear Matt, you know that I love my country but I love my family better."

And I think in that passage he captures the dilemma that's going to be a dilemma for a great number of Confederate soldiers. And the dilemma is this; most Confederate soldiers don't own slaves. Two thirds of white families in the Confederacy are not slave owners. But they're not stupid, they know full well that this war was begun to protect the institution of slavery and they're not embarrassed about that. In fact, they agree that it was important and the reason why is not necessarily that they own slaves, they live in a place where 40 percent of the population is black. Parts of the Confederacy, the majority is black slaves. And they honestly believe that the two races cannot live together harmoniously without the institution of slavery.

"Dear Matt, you know that I love my country but I love my family better." Now that sounds to me like a very unguarded moment. That's not the sort of sentence you would want anyone you didn't really trust to see. Particularly in wartime when there were questions of loyalty, when there were questions of patriotism, when your own honor rests in part on your reputation for fearlessly defending your country. There's no censorship, there's no official mechanism by which superior officers are going to read his mail. But you don't know that it's not going to go amiss, that it's not going to get dropped somewhere and have someone pick it up. So that he took that risk really underscores the sincerity of that line for me.

The problem is, that if the heart of the motivation is to protect what one sees as the best interests, the health and the safety of one's family. And then the war to protect one's family starts threatening one's family, what do you do? Does he best protect his family by staying in the army and trying to secure an independent Confederacy where slavery will be protected forever or does he best help his family and protect his family by going home so that if there is an insurrection he's there to take care of them? And that tension will haunt him and will haunt most Confederate soldiers really for the rest of the war and is at the heart of the war experience for a very great many Confederate soldiers.

The third letter is written by a black Union soldier to the editor of the most prominent African American newspaper during the Civil War, the Weekly Anglo-African and black soldiers throughout their term of the service in the Union Armies do this. They write to Northern newspapers, particularly black newspapers, about their soldiering experience. The majority of black Union soldiers were former slaves who could not read and write and so we don't have letters from them. Who we have letters from are the minority, who are Northern free blacks, who could read and write before the war. They sort of see themselves as having obligations, not just to their family, representing the war experience to their family, but to a broader, at least black, public.

He is writing from New Orleans, LA, in February of 1864. This soldier is a member of the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery. New Orleans has been under Union control since May of 1862 so he is really an occupation force.

He is also fighting two battles at once because initially black Northerners who tried to join the Union Army were refused. Black soldiers were not accepted into the Union ranks until 1862 and they didn't join in big numbers until 1863.

Once they're in the ranks, they're paid less. At first there are no black officers and at first they are barred from combat duty. So he is fighting to save the Union and to redefine it, to redefine it as a place where he and people like him are seen as citizens, are seen as invested with the same rights and promises as white Americans are. And you see evidence, I think, of both battles in this letter. The immediate audience for the Anglo-African is Northern blacks. However, all newspapers in the 19th century have a habit of picking up letters, columns, articles from one paper and running it in their own pages. There is always the chance that this could run in a white newspaper too.

So he always has a definite audience and a potential audience in mind.

"I will give a brief account of the battalion to which I am now attached, and to which I hope to belong until this cruel war is ended, and the nation enjoys once more the blessings of peace." Well there he's talking about Union versus the Confederacy but then the next passage after that he's onto the battle for respect for citizenship, for equality within the Union itself.

"The Battalion is composed of as good material and contains as brave hearts as any equal number of men that ever shouldered a musket in this war." We are just as good, we are just as brave as any other soldiers, including the white ones, is what he's saying there. "These men have left their own dear homes, their wives and children, of their own free will: why, then, should they not fight?" We have made the decision to fight in this war, just as white men have, so if one of the sort of hallmarks of fitness for citizenship is the ability to reason, to excerpt one's own free will, look, we have done that.

"Yes they will," fight, "as they know full well that this is the golden opportunity that they have given them to establish their manhood, and capability as soldiers before the world."

Manhood shows up all the time in black soldier's letters and it can have one of two meanings. Sometimes it means recognition of the full humanity of all black Americans. In this one, though, he clearly means the adult male identity of black men because one characteristic of the adult man in 19th-century American culture is the ability to take care of a family, the ability to support a wife and children. And its men who are entitled to full political rights and he has twice told his readers that 'we have characteristics of manhood. One is in the moral agency, that we of our own free will decided to do something and two is, we have wives and children, we support families. We therefore have the attributes of adult males and are entitled to the rights of adult males.' So he means manhood in that explicitly gendered way.

The next and final paragraph is a very conventional one. This is the sort of thing that shows up in a number of public letters. "If it be my lot to fall on the battle-field, I shall be content to die far from home and friends, if my ears are saluted by the shout of my comrades, 'The battle is over; the stars and stripes wave triumphantly, and the slave is free!' This is a letter that is not just telling loved ones how he feels but is really also fighting this very public campaign for respect for black soldiers and for African Americans in general.

He signs it with the name Macy and this is another challenge of working with black soldiers' letters. They take pseudonyms all the time. I don't know who this soldier is. That could have been a nickname, it could have been his first name, and he in fact does give his company and his regiment. But he doesn't sign his full name and so positive identification is a lot harder with black soldiers than with white soldiers.

I think juxtaposition works pretty well with letters. The Union and Confederate and the white and the black letters really do sound different. Students I think generally like reading letters too. They feel like real people that seems interesting to them. But having them read the letters against each other, just asking them what jumps out to you, what are they talking about, what strikes you, what surprises you, initial reactions.

With these particular letters it'll work pretty well. If what you want them to talk about is the Emancipation Proclamation it's all over those first two letters. Another strategy, a sort of teaching assignment might be to imagine the letter in response. You could talk about home front and battlefield using these letters because you could ask students to imagine how might Jasper Barney's brother-in-law have responded to this letter. Asking them to imagine responses I think also really makes them really engaged with the questions and the issues that are raised by the letters.

There's not a lot of talk about politics in the Union letter and there's often politics in Union letters. There's not overt criticism of Jefferson Davis or some aspect of the Confederacy in the Confederate letter which there often is in Confederate letters. At the time black soldiers are fighting for equal pay and you'd expect that to show up and it doesn't. In February of 1864 that's a hot issue and it not showing up is a little surprising. That is the drawback to using one letter. Of the letters that went amiss from John White, 12 of them might have talked about something that you would expect, but this letter doesn't. So, it's hard sometimes to resist the temptation to think we know everything about him from this one letter. We don't.