Credit: Library of Congress Media type: cartoon Museum Number: LC-USZ62-2036 Annotation: This wood engraving of an anti-women’s rights cartoon appeared in Harper’s Weekly on June 11, 1859. Year: 1859

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: broadside Museum Number: Annotation: This handbill urging opponents of abolitionists to obstruct an anti-slavery meeting demonstrates the depth of pro-slavery feeling. Although the handbill advocates peaceful means, violence sometimes erupted between the two factions. An emotion-laden handbill was a factor in the well-known Boston riot of October 21, 1835. In that incident,…

Credit: The Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, The University of Virginia Library Media type: book illustration Museum Number: Annotation: Written by John S. C. Abbott and published in 1833 by the American tract Society, an organization which published millions of evangelical Christian pamphlets in the twentieth century, The Mother at Home was written to clearly illustrate the roles…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: book illustration Museum Number: Annotation: Coinciding with the rise of the middle class in American society, Easy Lessons for the Little One is characteristic of the type of “conduct literature” popularized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Aside from offering simple instruction in manners and morals, “conduct literature” also attempted to use…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: advertisement Museum Number: Portfolio 204, Folder 6 Year: 1860

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: advertisement Museum Number: LC-USZ62-75898 Annotation: Trade card advertisement for Carter’s Little Liver Pills showing man dressing and woman with headache. Though available as a patent medicine into the mid 20th century, no evidence was ever brought forward to substantiate the claims that Carter’s Little Liver Pills had any effect for better or worse…

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: advertisement Museum Number: LC-USZC4-2458 Annotation: Man from the Pony Express, on horseback, fleeing from Indians, on Indian burial grounds. In early 1860, western American natives began to interfere with pony express riders in an effort to disrupt Anglo lines of communication with the intent to slow western expansion. The attacks resulted in the…