Exercises of the Youths

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: LC-USZ62-37992 Annotation: This engraving shows native youths shooting arrows, throwing balls at target placed atop tall pole, and running races. Year: 1591

Pocahontas (Reproduction of 1616 Original)

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: LC-D416-18753 Annotation: This image is taken from a painting made of the Native American woman popularly known as Pocahontas, from a painting by William Sheppard. The portrait is dated 1616, coinciding with her only voyage to England in June of that year. The image is one of two strikingly similar…

A Noblewoman of Pomeiock

Credit: Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA Media type: engraving Description: English: Native woman of Pomeiock carrying a clay vessel, and her daughter holding a doll and a rattle. Museum Number: LC-USZ62-76084 Year: 1590

The Dances at their Great Feasts

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: LC-USZ62-37992 Annotation: This engraving shows native youths shooting arrows, throwing balls at target placed atop tall pole, and running races. Year: 1591

The First Americans

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Murder of David Van Der Leyen and Levina Ghyselins

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: LC-USZ62-119890 Annotation: This engraving depicts the execution of David van der Leyen and Levina Ghyselins, described variously as Dutch Anabaptists or Mennonites, by Catholic authorities in Ghent in 1554. Strangled and burned, van der Leyen was finally dispatched with an iron fork. Bracht’s Martyr’s Mirror is considered by modern Mennonites…

The Columbus Doors

Credit: Architect of the Capitol Media type: doors Museum Number: Annotation: The Columbus Doors that stand at the east entrance of the U.S. Capitol Rotunda are an imposing sight. They stand nearly 17 feet tall and weigh 20,000 pounds. The artist was Randolph Roger, and his alto-relief bronze doors make a powerful statement about not only their subject,…

Baptism of Pocahontas, 1614

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: painting Museum Number: Annotation: Like the other seventeenth-century British colonies, Virginia aspired to convert the native populations. The Virginia Company’s instructions to its governors required them to make conversion one of their objectives. The most famous early convert was Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, head of the Powhatan Confederacy. Pocahontas was baptized by…

The Catechism in Timucuan

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: book-image Museum Number: Annotation: This rare and important text is one of the earliest known artifacts in any Indian language from what is now the United States. Francisco Pareja came to Florida in 1595 and worked among the native peoples for thirty-one years, particularly among the Timucuan peoples. The systematic destruction of…

Captain John Smith

Credit: Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. Media type: painting Museum Number: Year: 1616

Dowry for Montezuma’s Daughter (Hernando Cortés)

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: letter-image Museum Number: Annotation: In this document, Hernando Cortés justifies a large dowry to Doña Isabel, the late Emperor Montezuma’s (1480?-1520) eldest daughter, when she married a nobleman of considerable standing in New Spain. Cortés recounts the importance of Montezuma’s aid to the Spanish during the conquest of Mexico. Cortés, who served…

Francis Drake’s Voyage in an Early Map

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: map Museum Number: Annotation: Italian artist Baptista Boazio created these handsome hand-colored engravings to accompany A summarie and true discourse of Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian Voyage, published in London by Biggs and Croftes in 1588-1589. The maps are illustrated in fascinating detail with the fleet of twenty-three ships, as well as…

Colonial Era

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The Old Plantation

Credit: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum Media type: painting Museum Number: Year: 1790

The Car of History

Credit: Architect of the Capitol Media type: statue Museum Number: Annotation: House of Representatives statue; Clio, the Muse of History, stands in a winged chariot representing the passage of time and records events as they occur. The car rests on a marble globe on which signs of the Zodiac are carved in relief. The chariot wheel is the…

U.S. Constitution

Media type: miscellaneous-image Annotation: The United States Constitution ratified September 17, 1787. Year: 1787

Woman Mourning By Tomb

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: painting Museum Number: LC-USZC4-1840 Year: 1842

Early National Period

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The Liberator

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: miscellaneous-image Museum Number: Annotation: The Liberator Year: 1831

Dancing For Eels

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: painting Museum Number: LC-USZC4-4542 Annotation: Scene from a Play Year: 1848

John Brown Lithograph

Credit: US National Park Service Media type: lithograph Museum Number: Annotation: John Brown Year: 1867

Home Sweet Home

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: LC-USZC4-1661 Annotation: Image of an American family relaxing on a porch, c.1877. Year: 1877

Pre-Civil War

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$150 Reward For Runaway

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: advertisement Museum Number: Portfolio 22, Folder 12b Annotation: Advertisement run in Kentucky newspaper ofering up to a $150 reward for the return of a runaway slave named Henry May. Even with the passage of fugitive slave legislature in the mid 19th century and the persistant use of “slave catchers”, advertisements offering rewards for…

Declaration of the Anti-Slavery Convention

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: broadside Museum Number: Portfolio 153, Folder 26 Annotation: Sixty abolitionist leaders from ten states met in Philadelphia in 1833 to create a national organization to bring about the immediate emancipation of all slaves. This organization was named the American Anti-slavery Society, and the participants elected officers and adopted a constitution and declaration. ,…

(Untitled)

Credit: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Media type: photograph Museum Number: Year: 1862

Thou Shalt Tread Upon the Lion and Adder…, Declaration of Anti-Slavery Convention Assembled in Philadelphia, December 4, 1833

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: woodprint Museum Number: Portfolio 153, Folder 26 Annotation: In 1833, sixty abolitionist leaders from ten states met in Philadelphia to create a national organization to bring about immediate emancipation of all slaves. The American Anti-slavery Society elected officers and adopted a constitution and declaration. Drafted by William Lloyd Garrison, the declaration pledged its…

Plantation Economy in the Old South

Credit: The Warner Collection of Gulf States Paper Corporation, Tuscaloosa, Alabama Media type: painting Museum Number: Annotation: Plantation Life Year: 1876

Slavery in America

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Radical Members of the First Legislature After the War, South Carolina

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: engraving Museum Number: LC-USZ62-28044 Annotation: An African American Majority in the South Carolina Legislature. Because blacks in South Carolina vastly outnumbered whites, the newly-enfranchised voters were able to send so many African American representatives to the state assembly that they outnumbered the whites. Many were able legislators who worked to rewrite the state…

Julia Ward Howe

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: photograph Museum Number: LC-USZ62-53518 DLC Annotation: Julia Ward Howe is the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” She was also a well-known abolitionist and social activist. Year: 1908

Morrill

Credit: Library of Congress Media type: photograph Museum Number: LC-MSS-44297-33-063 Year: 1861