The American reader: words that moved a nation

Colonial days and the revolution: The Mayflower Compact

The Landing / William Bradford

Poor Richard's Almanack / Benjamin Franklin

Lists of Virtues / Benjamin Franklin

Defense of Freedom of the Press / Andrew Hamilton

A Demand to Limit Search and Seizure / James Ottis

Yankee Doodle

Liberty and Knowledge / John Adams

The Liberty Song / John Dickinson

Chief Logan's Lament

The Slaves' Appeal to the Royal Governor of Massachusetts

Speech to the Second Virginia Convention / Patrick Henry

The Declaration of Independence / Thomas Jefferson

A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia / Thomas Jefferson

Common Sense / Thomas Paine

The American Crisis / Thomas Paine

Liberty Tree / Thomas Paine

Correspondence with John / Abigail Adams

Letters from an American Farmer / J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur

The Federalist, No. 1 / Alexander Hamilton.

The new nation: Farewell Address / George Washington

Hail, Columbia / Joseph Hopkinson

First Inaugural Address / Thomas Jefferson

The Star-Spangled Banner / Francis Scott Key

The Old Oaken Bucket / Samuel Woodworth

Home, Sweet Home / John Howard Payne

A Visit from St. Nicholas / Clement Clarke Moore

The Meaning of Patriotism in America / Frances Wright

Against Nullification / Daniel Webster

Woodman, Spare That Tree / George Perkins Morris

The Height of the Ridiculous / Oliver Wendell Holmes

Old Ironsides / Oliver Wendell Holmes

America / Samuel F. Smith.

Antebellum America: reform and expansion

Concord Hymn / Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-Reliance / Ralph Waldo Emerson

On Top of Old Smoky

Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean

The Raven / Edgar Allan Poe

A Psalm of Life / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Village Blacksmith / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Paul Revere's Ride / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Civil Disobedience / Henry David Thoreau

Walden / Henry David Thoreau

The Barefoot Boy / John Greenleaf Whittier

Against the Mexican War / Thomas Corwin

The Case for Public Schools / Horace Mann

Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions

Address to the Ohio Women's Rights Convention / Sojourner Truth

Oh! Susanna / Stephen Foster

Old Folks at Home / Stephen Foster

Address to the Legislature of New York on Women's Rights / Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A Disappointed Woman / Lucy Stone

Success / Emily Dickinson.

Prelude to war: Walker's Appeal / David Walker

Prospectus for The Liberator / William Lloyd Garrison

Stanzas for the Times / John Greenleaf Whittier

Prejudice Against the Colored Man / Theodore S. Wright

Bearing Witness Against Slavery / Angelina Grimke

An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America / Henry Highland Garnet

The Present Crisis / James Russell Lowell

Independence Day Speech at Rochester / Frederick Douglass

The House Divided Speech / Abraham Lincoln

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Last Statement to the Court / John Brown

The Cooper Union Speech / Abraham Lincoln

Go Down, Moses.

The Civil War: Dixie / Daniel Decatur Emmett

First Inaugural Address / Abraham Lincoln

The Bonnie Blue Flag / Harry McCarthy

Maryland, My Maryland / James Ryder Randall

Battle Cry of Freedom / George F. Root

The John Brown Song

Battle Hymn of the Republic / Julia Ward Howe

Barbara Frietchie / John Greenleaf Whittier

The Gettysburg Address / Abraham Lincoln

Second Inaugural Address / Abraham Lincoln

I Hear America Singing / Walt Whitman

O Captain! O Captain! / Walt Whitman

Speech to the American Anti-Slavery Society / Frederick Douglass.

After the Civil War: The Blue and the Gray / Francis Miles Finch

Women's Right to Vote / Susan B. Anthony

The Ballard of John Henry

Home on the Range

I've Been Working on the Railroad

A Century of Dishonor / Helen Hunt Jackson

Speech at the National Convention of Colored Men / Frederick Douglass

The New Colossus / Emma Lazarus

Clementine

Casey at the Bat / Ernest Lawrence Thayer

When the Frost Is on the Pumkin / James Whitcomb Riley

When de Co'n Pone's Hot / Paul Laurence Dunbar

What Does the Working Man Want? / Samuel Gompers

The Pledge of Allegiance

The Mountains of California / John Muir

Solitude / Ella Wheeler Wilcox

America the Beautiful / Katharine Lee Bates

Little Boy Blue / Eugene Field

The Atlanta Exposition Address / Booker T. Washington

Repy to Booker T. Washington / John Hope

Dissent from Plessy v. Ferguson / John Marshall Harlan

In Praise of the Srenuous Life / Theodore Roosevelt

Against Imperialism / George Frisbie Hoar

No / Jose de Diego.

The Progressive Age: The Solitude of the Self / Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Women and Economics / Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Man with the Hoe / Edwin Markham

Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing / James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson

Should Higher Education for Women Differ? / M. Carey Thomas

The Battle with the Slum / Jacob A. Riis

Prejudice Against Women / Carrie Chapman Catt

The Talented Tenth / W.E.B. du Bois

Advice to a Black Schoolgirl / W.E.B. du Bois

The Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles

Take Me Out to the Ball Game / Albert von Tilzer and Jack Norworth

The Preacher and the Slave / Joe Hill

Trees / Joyce Kilmer

The New Freedom / Woodrow Wilson

Protest to President Wilson / William Monroe Trotter

Statement of Principles / Calvin Coolidge

Anne Rutledge / Edgar Lee Masters

Mending Wall / Robert Frost

The Road not Taken / Robert Frost

Fire and Ice / Robert Frost

Evolution / Alice Duer Miller

Chicago / Carl Sandburg

Solidarity Forever / Ralph Chaplin.

World War I and after: Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight / Vachel Lindsay

The Leaden-Eyed / Vachel Lindsay

I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier / Alfred Bryan and Al Piantadosi

I Have a Rendezvous with Death / Alan Seeger

War Message to Congress / Woodrow Wilson

Against Entry into the War / George Norris

Over There / George M. Cohan

Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning / Irving Berlin

The Marines' Hymn

The Field Artillery Song / Edmund L. Gruber

Grass / Carl Sandburg

Statement to the Court / Eugene V. Debs

The Right to One's Body / Margaret Sanger

First Fig / Edna St. Vincent Millay

Poems of Angel Island

A Korean Discovers New York / Younghill Kang

American Names / Stephen Vincent Benet

America / Claude McKay

Yet Do I Marvel / Countee Cullen

O Black and Unknown Bards / James Weldon Johnson

The Negro Speaks of Rivers / Langston Hughes

I, Too / Langston Hughes

The American System of Self-Government / Herbert Hoover.

The Depression and World War II: Happy Days Are Here Again / Milton Ager and Jack Yellen

First Inaugural Address / Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Second Inaugural Address / Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? / E.Y. Harburg and Jay Gorney

Union Maid / Woody Guthrie

So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh (Dusty Old Dust) / Woody Guthrie

Which Side Are You on? / Florence Reece

I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night / Alfred Hayes

FDR at the DAR / Franklin Delano Roosevelt

God Bless America / Irving Berlin

This Is the Army, Mr. Jones / Woody Guthrie

Freedom / E.B. White

High Flight / John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Anchors Aweigh / Charles A. Zimmerman

The Four Freedoms / Franklin Delano Roosevelt

War Message to Congress / Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Poems of the Issei

The Army Air Corps / Robert Crawford

Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition / Frank Loesser

The Spirit of Liberty / Learned Hand

Elegy for a Dead Soldier / Karl Shapiro.

After World War II: The Baruch Plan for Control of Atomic Energy / Bernard Baruch

Confirmation Hearings / David Lilienthal

A Plea for Civil Rights / Hubert Humphrey

Inaugural Address / Harry S. Truman

Declaration of Conscience / Margaret Chase Smith

Nobel Acceptance Speech / William Faulkner

The Silent Generation / Louis Simpson

Refugee in America / Langston Hughes

Harlem / Langston Hughes

Brown v. Board of Education

Farewell Address / Dwight D. Eisenhower

It Could Be a Wonderful World / Hy Zaret and Lou Singer

Duty, Honor, Country / Douglas McCarthur.

The '60s: Inaugural Address / John F. Kennedy

Where Have All the Flowers Gone? / Pete Seeger

Address to the Broadcasting Industry / Newton Minow

The Port Huron Statement / Tom Hayden

Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream / Ed McCurdy

Silent Spring / Rachel Carson

Letter from a Burmingham Jail / Martin Luther King, Jr.

Speech at the Berlin Wall / John F. Kennedy

The March on Washington / Martin Luther King, Jr.

We Shall Overcome

O Freedom

If I Had a Hammer / Lee Hayes and Pete Seeger

Blowin' in the Wind / Bob Dylan

Ballad of Birmingham / Dudley Randall

The Feminine Mystique / Betty Friedan

Little Boxes / Malvina Reynolds

Howard University Address / Lyndon B. Johnson

On the Death of Martin Luther King, Jr. / Robert F. Kennedy

Stupid America / Abelardo Delgado.

American ideas: The Wilderness Idea / Wallace Stegner

Speech at Moscow State University / Ronald Reagan

The American Idea / Theodore H. White.

Colonial days and the revolution

The new nation

Antebellum America: Reform and expansion

Prelude to war

The Civil War

After the Civil War

The progressive age

World War I and after

The Depression and World War II

After World War II

Troubled times -The 1960's

Contemporary times.