About this Book

Collected from diaries, letters, memoirs, court records, articles, tracts, pamphlets, and advertisements in the incomparable collections of the Library of Congress, Witnessing America provides the authentic and fascinating story of our country's past by using the words of those who actually lived it. Most of the firsthand accounts are those of ordinary men and women: foot soldiers and laborers, pioneer wives and schoolteachers, farmers and slaves. Interspersed with these are a few extraordinary selections from such notable figures as W. E. B. Du Bois, Emma Goldman, Carry Nation, Benjamin Franklin, Buffalo Bill, and others, recording what they personally saw, heard, and experienced in a growing America. Covering the period from the very earliest arrivals in the New World to the start of the twentieth century, Witnessing America contains selections on the first settlers as well as immigrants, stories about schooling, marriage and love, working, hunting, houses and housekeeping, food and drink, enduring hard times and enjoying high times, religion, the law and lawbreaking, medicine and sickness, dying, burials, and even ghosts. The result is an astonishingly varied and comprehensive portrait of America's social and cultural history and the life of its peoples from cradle to grave, handsomely illustrated throughout with unusual and rare pieces of art from the Library of Congress.