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Mary Prince's 1831 book is one of the earliest narratives that revealed the ugly facts about slavery in the West Indies. The book begins with a brief description of her childhood, before recounting her adult experiences as a slave. Her strong spirit enabled her to survive and to take up the abolitionist cause.

The abolitionist and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth (born Isabella Baumfree) was freed from slavery in 1827 by the New York Gradual Abolition Act. This speech of hers was delivered in 1853 at a Woman's Rights Convention at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York. She rebuked the men who did not support their mothers' and wives' struggles, while encouraging women to persist in the fight for rights.

Today, we are obsessed with the lives and the morality of the rich, particularly the top one percent. William Graham Sumner, classic liberal social scientist, Yale teacher, first American sociology professor, and essayist, presents some fascinating opinions on the rich, as well as well-constructed points in favor of wealth, in this piece first published in 1883.

The essay "The Destiny of Colored Americans" was first published in The North Star, the abolitionist newspaper of Frederick Douglass. It sets out the enduring relationship between Afro-Americans and the United States. Douglass is concerned not only with physical freedom but the right to education, work, and building a life.

A grandfather tells of the violence in Boston on March 5, 1770, which was a pivotal event in the lead-up to the American Revolution in this classic story by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Anna Howard Shaw is indeed a fascinating figure in American history. Physician, Suffragette, social reformer, and one of the first female ordained Methodist ministers, but where Shaw really shines is as an orator. A vanguard of feminism in the United States, Shaw made many an address in the name of equal rights for women, and The Fundamental Principle of a Republic was among her finest.

Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947) was the founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. In this 1916 speech, The Crisis, she called for vigorous action towards attaining women’s suffrage. It was in no small part due to Catt’s tireless efforts that American women were granted the right to vote in 1920.

In this article that appeared in the December 1866 issue of The Atlantic, Frederick Douglass states that no republic is safe that tolerates a privileged class or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to maintain them. The two main themes are Douglass’ criticism of President Jackson and his urgent call to extend voting rights to African Americans.

After graduating from Atlanta University, Lucy Craft Laney (1854-1933) began a lifelong career as an educator and the founder of numerous institutions for the upliftment of freedmen and their children. In 1883 she founded the first school for black children in Augusta, Georgia. She was principal of the Haines Institute for Industrial and Normal Education for 50 years.

John Brown was an American abolitionist who believed the only way to emancipate the slaves was via violent revolution. Early in October 1859, Brown and a group of his followers seized an armory in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, with a plan to use the armaments to further their cause. Brown was captured and, two months later, was sentenced to death. During the hearing, Brown made his final speech to the judge and jury; he defended his actions and righteous goal and highlighted the hypocritical justice system of the time.

The life story of Billy Dixon, a buffalo hunter and scout from the Texas Panhandle who was active as far as Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, offers a genuine depiction of life on the old western frontier. Billy helped found the town of Adobe Walls, ended a siege during the Second Battle of Adobe Walls with a long-distance shot, and received the US Medal of Honor for his bravery at the Buffalo Wallow Fight. Billy later served as postmaster at Adobe Walls, sheriff of Hutchinson County, Texas, and state land commissioner.

Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) was a Minister in the Society of Friends, an abolitionist and activist for women’s rights. This speech was delivered at a Woman's Rights Convention in Philadelphia in 1854. She urged her hearers to reject "priestcraft and superstition" and to pursue "true Christianity" and the "word of God in the soul.”

In 1870 in Warrensburg, Missouri, a well-known foxhound named Drum was shot during a hunting excursion. Drum’s owner sued the shooter for damages, and lawyer and skilled orator George Graham Vest made the courtroom address on behalf of the plaintiff. What followed was, not a recounting of testimonies and evidence as expected, but a historical, poetic, and philosophical ode to man’s best friend.

The chronicle of Theodore Adolphus “Dot” Babb is a factual and fascinating account of his and his younger sister’s 1865 capture by a Comanche band near what is today Decatur, Texas. They were taken to an area in what became the state of Oklahoma and adopted into the tribe, where Babb observed all facets of the tribe’s customs and participated in activities like horse taming, until both children were ransomed by their father in 1867. Babb kept in contact with the tribe and the next decade the family lived with the Comanche for a year before settling in Wichita Falls.

This address was delivered before the Congress of Women in Chicago by Mary Newbury Adams in 1893. She encourages the study of women in high positions, in the governments, and the royalty of Europe. She provides numerous examples of great women and their achievements throughout history.

The abolitionist, essayist, teacher, and women’s rights activist Maria W. Stewart is thought to have been the first African American woman to raise matters of equality and justice in a US public forum, the New England Anti-Slavery Society in Boston. In her 1832 lecture, Why Sit Ye Here and Die?, she demanded equal rights for African American women while criticizing both the slavery of the South and the lack of opportunity and equality in the North. Her biblical style of oratory and fierce opposition to injustice still inspire today.

Recollections on Hunting in Kentucky is a collection of ruminations and interviews by Hugh Bell, recorded by Lyman Copeland Draper sometime around 1841, and were found amongst the Draper manuscripts. The firsthand account of the Kentucky wilderness and the life and times of early settlers in that region is fascinating and brings us one step closer to better understanding the beginnings of the America we know today.

Jedediah Strong Smith (1799-1831) was an author, cartographer, frontiersman trader, and explorer of the Pacific Northwest, credited with discovering the South Pass, a natural crossing point of the Rocky Mountains for pioneers on the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails during the 19th century. The book covers his visits to and troubles with the authorities of then-Mexican California and his travels through Utah, Nevada, and the Oregon Country. Smith’s letters, maps, and journals played a major part in boosting US expansion toward the West.

In February 1833, the African American orator and abolitionist Maria W. Stewart gave a controversial speech at Boston’s African Masonic Lodge which drew a hostile response from the audience, as she criticized her own people for not standing up for themselves. She accused black men of being indifferent to African rights and liberty, claiming that they “lacked ambition and courage”. The audience’s negative reaction to her inflammatory rhetoric led to Maria’s formal retirement from public speaking at a farewell adddress in September of that year.

Booker T. Washington’s 1901 autobiography can be read as a redemption story echoing many similar voices of its time. Starting from the humiliation he experienced as a slave, he ponders the meaning of identity in a situation that seeks to dehumanize. He furthers his story by expanding on his difficulties in obtaining an education and the need for change in our minds as well as societal structures.