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Establishing Liberty
Citizenship Reading Room
Sagamore Institute has curated a list of 20 of the most important texts for understanding the nature and requirements of American Civic Life. Please browse the texts listed below and click to learn about various perspectives on citizenship and democracy.
- Mayflower Compact (1620)
- The Declaration of Independence (1776)
- Northwest Ordinance (1787)
- S. Constitution (1787)
- Federalist 1, 10, 51 (Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, 1787-88)
- George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796)
- Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address (1801)
- Majority opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803)
- Democracy in America Volume II, Part ii, Chapter 4 (Alexis de Tocqueville, 1837)
- “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions” (Abraham Lincoln, 1838)
- “The Jubilee of the Constitution: A Discourse” (John Quincy Adams, 1839)
- “Seneca Falls Keynote Address” (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1848)
- “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (Frederick Douglass, 1852)
- “Statement on the Dred Scott Decision” (Abraham Lincoln, 1857)
- The Gettysburg Address
- The Second Inaugural Address
- Dissent in Plessy v Ferguson (John Marshall Harlan, 1896)
- “Speech on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence” (Calvin Coolidge, 1926)
- “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” (Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963)
- “A Great People Has Been Moved to Defend a Great Nation” (George W. Bush, 2001)