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John Winthrop "A model of Christian Charity"
John Winthrop was on board the Arbella preaching this sermon on their way to the new world. In this sermon he was trying to make all the people aboard the Arbella to join together under the eyes of everyone around the world. “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill” -
William Broadford "Of Plymouth Plantaion"
William Bradford wrote this retrospective view of the way of life was made over a span of 40 years of his life. He explains how people lived back in those days on the Plymouth Plantation.
“That neither he nor any of his should injure or do hurt to any of their people” -
Jonathan Edwards "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"
Jonathan Edwards was preaching this sermon so that his congregation would be in fear of God.
“God is dreadfully provoked, His anger is as great toward them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of His wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment” -
Ben Franklin "The Autobiography"
Ben Franklin wrote The Autobiography about his life and what he had to go through during time in the New World. This story was about how he had to start from nothing and slowly build his way up and end up becoming one of the most influential people in the history of The United States of America.
“I was fatigued with traveling, rowing, and want of rest, I was very hungry; and my whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar, and about a shilling in copper.” -
Patrick Hemry "Speech to the Virginia Convention"
Patrick Henry made a speech during the Virginia Convention to the President of the United States about how Britain has not listened to our requests. He says that we must go to war with Great Britain to gain power on our own land.
“;but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” -
William Cullen Byant "Thanatopsis"
Thanatopsis is a long poem written to explain death. Bryant does this by using a gloomy style that almost depresses the author, but then reassures the reader by saying everyone dies and goes to the “over soul”, no matter who you are. “By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.” -
Ralph Waldo Emerson "Nature"
Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson is about how people need to stop being closed in to the cramp area of the city and go into nature. He believes that nature holds all the answers and that if you have a problem you need to look to nature to find the answers.“It was a singular experience that long acquaintance which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking over and selling them” -
Nathaniel Hawthrone "The Minister's Black Veil"
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” is story about the ministers secret sin. The secret sin he has causes him to decide to wear a black veil for the rest of his life and as a result, he loses his fiancé. “It is but a mortal veil--it is not for eternity!” -
Henry David Thoreau "Civil Disobedience"
Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience is his way of explaining what a government should do to be a successful one. He believes that the people should govern themselves.
“That government is best which governs least” -
Henry David Thoreau "Walden"
Walden by Henry David Thoreau is about his time living on the Walden Pond. It is a collection of short stories about what he experienced and what he saw there.
“Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain-storms in the spring or fall,” -
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "A Cross of Snow"
Longfellow’s Cross of Snow was about two pictures, one of his late wife, and the other of a mountain with a large trench in the side of it where the snow never melts. He tells about how the trench is so deep that the snow on the mountain, the sun never hits the snow to melt it away.
“That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast.” -
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls"
Longfellow’s The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls is about how even though we affect nature, nature goes on with its cycles and will slowly erase your “footprints.”
“Efface the footprints in the sands, And the tide rises, the tide falls.” -
Charlotte Perkins Gilman "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was a story to deject physician practices used on women. The main character slowly becomes more insane as the story progresses because she was locked up in a room to do almost nothing. “I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder”. -
Washington Irving "The Devil and Tom Walker"
“The Devil and Tom Walker” is an Anti-Transcendentalist short story about a greedy man. He ends up making a deal with the devil and becomes rich, but spends the rest of his life trying to avoid giving his soul to him. “Tom lost his patience and his piety. “The devil take me,” said he, “if I have made a farthing!”