*Illustrated with nearly 50 pictures of famous Americans and documents
*Includes Table of Contents
The story of the United States of America is one of a nation founded upon the loftiest ideals of representative government attempting to fulfill its goals while encountering competing domestic and global forces. From the beginning, Americans have been debating how their national government should govern. The issue of balancing powers within the federal government and between the federal government and the states has dominated the national discourse since before the drafting of the Constitution, and this debate has led to the establishment of the first political parties, influenced the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Constitutional powers such as the Commerce Clause, and even became a casus belli during the Civil War. The current size of the federal government was the foremost political issue in the country’s most recent elections.
At the same time, the nation has often struggled to reconcile its guarantee of universal rights and individual liberties with several stark realities, including the presence of millions of slaves at the time of the Declaration of Independence and a world that still consists of dozens of authoritarian regimes today. The struggle over equal rights eventually erupted into a Civil War that devastated entire swaths of the nation, and it took another century before the Civil Rights Movement established desegregation and obtained civil rights for minorities. This theme also affects the nation’s foreign policy in painstakingly clear ways, from a Cold War that lasted over 40 years to a present time in which we still debate whether it is proper to intervene in foreign countries to export democracy or pursue human rights agendas with allies who oppress their citizens.
Harvard Classics Volume 43 compiled a collection of essential American documents, comprised of 47 treaties, speeches, historical accounts and governmental documents that cover the United States from the settling of the continent to the founding of the country and through the Civil War and early 20th century. This collection includes the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, some Federalist Papers, as well as Inaugural Addresses, an account of the Battle of Gettysburg, and Lincoln’s classic Gettysburg Address, Letter to Mrs. Bixby, and Second Inaugural Address. The collection concludes with certain treaties, such as the Alaska Purchase.
This edition of Harvard Classics Volume 43: American Historical Documents is illustrated with nearly 50 pictures of the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, leaders of the Civil War, and more. It also includes a Table of Contents for easier navigation.
