A selection of primary source documents that capture the relation of American ideas to actions and institutions. The material is organized around particular issues of American development related to politics, economics, education, religion, reform and minority rights. The documents range from the political arguments and debates of Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln to the literary works of Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Royall Tyler, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
