John white's diary -- George Percy: A discourse of the plantation of the southern colonie in virginia -- John Smith: Captain tells of his captivity -- William Bradford: Landing of the pilgrims -- The hard beginnings -- John Winthrop: Governor Winthrop writes to his wife -- Thomas Morton: The revels at merry mount -- Roger Williams: The commonwealth as a ship -- Mary Rowlandson: Mary Rowlandson's story of her captivity -- Increase Mather: Portents and demons -- Cotton Mather: The bewitched child -- The trial of george burroughs -- Stephen Vincent Benet Giles Cory: We aren't superstitious -- Samuel Sewall: Samuel sewall goes courting -- Edward Burrough: A declaration of hte sad and great persecution and martyrdom ... of the quakers, in new england -- William Byrd: On the track of hte dividing line -- Jonathan Edwards: Jonathan Edwards considers his conversion -- The wrath of god, a sermon -- John Woolman: A pure heart charms the indians -- Michel-Guillaume Jean De Crevecoeur: What is an american -- The bay psalm book -- The new england primer -- Anne Bradstreet: Contemplations -- Michael Wigglesworth: The day of doom -- Vanity of vanities -- Benjamin Tompson: The good old times -- Edward Taylor: The ebb and flow -- Upon what base was fired the lath -- Housewifery -- Forefather's song -- The original yankee -- Old settler's' sayings -- Yankee comparisons -- The quaint custom of bundling -- A letter on bundling -- Colonial food and drink -- Jonathan moulton and the devil -- Benjamin Franklin: Beginning a career -- Poor richards' maxims -- Dialogue between franklin and the gout -- A dream: letter to madame helvetius -- Letter, to a relative -- Letter, to joseph banks -- Samuel Andrew Peters: The whapperknocker, the woodchuck, and cuba, and the skunk -- The humility, the whippoorwill, and athe tree-frog -- Daniel Boone: Adventuring into kentucky -- Patrick Henry: Give me liberty of give me death -- Thomas Paine: Common sense -- The american crisis -- Four days in july: We hold these truths to be self evident -- Cornel Lengyel -- George Washington -- Parson Weems: The cherry tree story -- A reply to his critics, a letter -- Washington refuses a crown, a letter -- Letter, to martha washington -- The mild concerns of ordinary life -- Thomas Jefferson -- The unanimous declaration of the thirteen united states of america -- First inaugural address -- A girl's education, a letter -- On the character of george washington, a letter -- Jefferson recalls the past and considers the present, a letter -- At seventy six jefferson answers a query about his health -- William Slade: Life and death on a prison ship -- Richard Dale: John paul jones and the bon homme richard -- Abigail Adams: Letters to her husband -- Philadelphia society, a letter -- Hugh Henry Brackenridge: The captain declines a duel -- Philip Freneau: The indian burying ground -- The wild honeysuckle -- On the death of benjamin franklin -- Joel Barlow: The husking -- The eating of the pudding -- A poignant farewell, a letter -- James Madison: United we stand -- Alexander Hamilton: For a strong central government -- Hamilton's last statement -- Aaron Burr: Letter, to his daughter theodosia -- Noah Webster: Toward an american tongue -- John Quincy Adams: The cause of god and man, from his diary -- John Randolph: The fairer and better part of creation, a letter -- Songs and ballads of the times -- The virginia song -- Thomas Paine: The liberty tree -- Edward Bangs: The yankee's return from camp (Yankee Doodle) -- Nathan Hale, a ballad -- The fate of john burgoyne, a ballad -- William Billings: Let tyrants shake their iron rod -- John Pierpont: Warren's address to the american soldiers -- Francis Hopkinson: The battle of the kegs -- Joseph Hopkinson: Hail columbia -- Francis Scott Key: The star spangled banner -- The country school -- Country couplets -- Signs and seasons -- Philip Hone: Living in new york, from his diary -- Washington Irving: The renowned wouter van twiller -- Rip van winkle -- Frontier folklore -- David crockett -- Crockett's courting -- Crockett's death in the alamo -- Homespun myths -- James Fenimore Cooper: An encouter, from The pilot -- William Cullen Bryant: To a waterfowl -- Thanatopsis -- To the fringed gentian -- The antiquity of freedom -- America -- The death of lincoln -- Joseph Rodman Drake: The american flag -- Ralph Waldo Emerson: Beauty -- We will speak our own minds -- Emerson's journals -- Days -- Good-bye -- The rhodora -- The snow storm -- Ode, inscribed to w. h. channing -- Give all to love -- Fable -- Brahma -- Concord hymn -- Ode, concord, july 4, 1857 -- Nathaniel Hawthorne: The maypole of merry mount -- Dr. heidegger's experiment -- The house of seven gables -- The look of lincoln -- Jones Very: The new world -- The dead -- Richard Henry Dana, Jr.: Two years before the mast -- Henry David Thoreau: The houses at walden pond -- Foxes, squirrels, bluejays, chickadees and partridges -- Why i went to jail -- January days, from his journals -- Smoke -- Mist -- Haze -- Francis Parkman: France acquires a new world -- Rumblings of war -- John Brown: John brown's body, attributed to charles sprague hall -- John brown's speech to the court -- John brown's last days, from god's angry man by leonard ehrlich -- Edgar Allan Poe: The gold bug -- The cask of amontillado -- To helen -- Israfel -- The city in the sea -- Alone -- To one in paradise -- A dream within a dream -- Romance -- The haunted palace -- The valley of unrest -- Annabel lee -- Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle tom's cabin -- Abraham Lincoln: Farewell remarks, springfield, february 11, 1861 -- Address in independence hall, philadelphia, february 22, 1861 -- First inaugural address, to major general joseph hooker -- Letter, to mrs. bixby -- Address to gettysburg national cemetery -- Second inaugural address -- A little treasury of lincoln's humor -- The logic of secession -- Jefferson davis to the united states senate, january 21, 1861 -- An officer resigns, letters of robert e. lee -Mary Boykin Chesnut -- John Beatty -- John Beauchamp Jones -- John Greenleaf Whittier: The moral warfare -- The kansas emigrants -- Laus deo -- Barbara frietchie -- Skipper ireson's ride -- New england winter from Snow Bound -- The eternal goodness -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: My lost youth -- Paul revere's ride -- The ship of state -- The arrow and the song -- A psalm of life -- Hymn to the night -- The children's hour -- The wreck of hte hesperus -- The village blacksmith -- The tide rises, the tide falls -- Chaucer -- Hiawatha's childhood -- The day is done -- Oliver Wendell Holmes: Old ironsides -- The last leaf -- The chambered nautilus -- The height of hte ridiculous -- The deacon's masterpiece; or the wonderful one hoss shay -- The key to the side door -- The brahmin caste of new england -- John Godfrey Saxe: Early rising -- The blind men and the elephant -- Phineas Taylor Barnum: In the days of my youth -- James Russell Lowell: Prelude to The vision of Sir Launfal -- The present crisis -- Stanzas on freedom -- Ez for war -- What mr. robinson thinks -- The pious editor's creed -- The courtin' -- Walt Whitman: I hear america singing -- Song of myself -- Come up from the fields father -- When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd -- Oh captain! My captain! -- Vigil strange i kept on the field one night -- Miracles -- The commonplace -- Reconciliation -- To a locomotive in winter -- One's self i sing -- A noiseless patient spider -- Joy, shipmate, joy -- After the supper and talk -- The last invocation -- Poets to come -- A nation of nations -- The practice of manly sports -- Specimen days -- Omnibus jaunts and drivers -- Fifty hours left wounded on the field -- Patent office hospital -- The wound dresser -- Abraham lincoln -- Charles Heber Clark: The obituary poet -- A candid candidate -- Bret Harte: The outcasts of poker flat -- Her letter -- Joel Chandler Harris: The wonderful tar baby story -- How mr. rabbit was too sharp for mr. fox -- Edgar wilson nye: Twombley's tale -- The grammatical boy -- Godey's Lady's Book: Popping the question -- Wisdom in love making -- How to be the perfect housewife -- The philosophy of rain -- Frances Miriam Whicher: Hezekiah bedott -- Benjamin P. Shillaber: Mrs. partington's malaprops -- George Washington Harris: Rare ripe garden seed -- Henry Wheeler Shaw: The mule -- Pioneers -- Pigs -- Billings' musings -- Charles Farrar Browne: High handed outrage at utiky -- Interview with president lincoln -- Among the spirits -- Frank R. Stockton: The lady or the tiger.