Ten Documents That Created America

Ten Documents That Created America is a collection of essays, speeches, legislation, and political theory that helped to form the United States of America as it is known today.

Journey on a literary history of the United States with ten of the most powerful and influential documents ever written in this country’s history including The Declaration of Independence, the founding document of America; Common Sense, a political pamphlet by activist and Founding Father Thomas Paine advocating for a socially equitable government; The Articles of Confederation, which laid the framework for the United States government; The United States Constitution, the supreme law of the United States; The Bill of Rights, which comprises the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution; The Indian Removal Act of 1830, the first systematic effort on behalf of the United States government to remove Native peoples from their land; The Indian Appropriations Acts of 1851 and 1871, which created the reservation system and removed Native sovereignty; “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” a speech given by Frederick Douglass–a formerly enslaved African-American–to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society; the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order by President Abraham Lincoln that granted enslaved Africans their freedom from chattel slavery; and General Order No. 3, a legal decree by Union General Gordon Granger enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston, Texas.

Professionally typeset with a stunning new cover, Ten Documents That Created America is a portrait of a nation’s greatest triumphs and devastating failures, that both celebrates and examines the all too familiar words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."