News & Opinions
How Much Do We Know about American History?
0 Comments06/30/11
The Fourth of July, known formally as Independence Day, did not become an official U.S. holiday until 1941. To celebrate this Independence Day, the Milestone editors invite you to test your knowledge of U.S. history. Newsweek’s 2011 poll showed that nearly 40 percent of the 1,000 Americans in a randomly chosen sample group could not pass an abbreviated version of the U.S. citizenship test—that’s the same test given to immigrants seeking American citizenship.
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Doc of the Day: Pope Urban II Calls Crusaders into Battle
by Neil Schlager · June 03, 2011
On June 3, 1098, Christian Crusaders of the First Crusade seized Antioch, Turkey. Read Pope Urban II’s Call to Crusade.
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Doc of the Day: Surrender of Army of Northern Virginia
by Neil Schlager · June 02, 2011
On June 2, 1865, General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of forces west of the Mississippi, became the last Confederate leader to surrender, bringing a formal end to the American Civil War two months after Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House. Read the Articles of Agreement Relating to the Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia.
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Doc of the Day: Lend-Lease Act
by Neil Schlager · June 01, 2011
On June 1, 1942, the United States began to send Lend-Lease materials to the Soviet Union. Read the text of the Lend-Lease Act, allowing the United States to offer war supplies to the country’s allies, thereby pushing the United States closer to full participation in World War II.
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Doc of the Day: Kansas-Nebraska Act
by Neil Schlager · May 31, 2011
On May 31, 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and attempting to settle the question of the expansion of slavery by allowing each territory to decide the matter for itself.
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Doc of the Day: Nehru on Indian Independence
by Neil Schlager · May 27, 2011
On this day in 1964 Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, died. Read his Speeches on the Granting of Indian Independence.
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Doc of the Day: Andrew Johnson Impeachment Articles
by Neil Schlager · May 26, 2011
On May 26, 1868, after a two-month trial, the U.S. Senate acquitted President Andrew Johnson of impeachment charges. Read the Articles of Impeachment, which the charge that he disobeyed the Tenure of Office Act.
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Doc of the Day: Articles of Confederation
by Neil Schlager · May 25, 2011
On May 25, 1787, the Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia to amend the Articles of Confederation. Read the document text and learn about its strengths and weaknesses.
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Document of the Day: John Foster Dulles on China
by Neil Schlager · May 24, 2011
On this day in 1959, John Foster Dulles, a primary architect of America’s cold war foreign policy during the 1950s, died. Read his Address on U.S. Policy toward Communist China.
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A History Lover’s Summer Reading List: 2011
May 18, 2011
Ah, the joys of compiling a summer reading list. . . . The Milestone editors suggest five vastly different 2011 releases for readers seeking a warm-weather book fix of historic proportions. The following titles (in no particular order) made it onto our first annual Summer Reading List:
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Highlighting and Taking Notes at Milestone Documents
March 03, 2011
Did you know that there is a free, easy way to highlight passages and take notes at our website—or any website, for that matter? Just create your own free account at Diigo. Then, on any web page, you can use the Diigo toolbar to highlight a passage and/or take notes about it. All of your notes are saved in the “My Library” section of your Diigo account, and whenever you return to the page, your highlights and notes will show up. You can also share your notes and highlights with your friends. To make your life even easier, Diigo also has apps for the iPhone and iPad as well as Android phones.
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Doc of the Day: Declaration of the Rights of Man
July 14, 2010
The French Revolution actually began in the spring and summer of 1789, when food riots erupted throughout France. However, the traditional date marking the start of the Revolution is July 14, 1789, when revolutionaries stormed and seized the royal prison, the Bastille, in Paris. The next month, the National Assembly issued the Decrees Abolishing the Feudal System and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
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The Literary Genius of Winston Churchill and Teddy Roosevelt
by Neil Schlager · July 12, 2010
I have just finished reading part 2 of William Manchester‘s famous biography of Winston Churchill, The Last Lion: Alone, 1932-1940. As the subtitle suggests, it covers the years leading up to Britain’s involvement in World War I. These were years when Churchill was a political has-been, a powerless MP who was virtually the sole voice arguing that Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany could not be negotiated with, that Britain needed to shore up its defenses and military forces quickly, that his country faced a grave danger. By the time the book closes, Churchill has just become prime minister, Germany has declared war on Britain, and the country’s battle for survival has been truly joined.
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Doc of the Day: Declaration of Independence
July 02, 2010
On July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson’s amended draft of the Declaration of Independence, a document declaring independence from Great Britain, was presented to the Continental Congress for a vote. Although the initial effort by the framers of the American system of government was not to separate from Great Britain, by 1776 they were forced to make a choice: subservience or revolution. Concluding that independence was their only option, they felt, as men of the Enlightenment, in the Age of Reason, that they were bound by honor to declare to the world the reasons for their radical act.
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In the News: The Legacy of Senator Robert Byrd
June 28, 2010
Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the longest-serving member of the U.S. Senate, died Monday, June 28. He was 92. Early in his political career, Byrd was known as a staunch conservative. In fact, one of the most controversial chapters of his life was his brief membership in the Ku Klux Klan. During the 1950s and 1960s, he voted against key civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall as the first black Supreme Court justice in U.S. history. However, in subsequent decades, Byrd became increasingly liberal, focusing on government spending for social programs that improved education and health care and voting for civil rights.
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Magna Carta: Classroom Resources
June 14, 2010
We are continually adding new content to our Teacher Resources area, and among our new materials are three classroom handouts about the Magna Carta. The document’s origins date to June 1215, when a group of English barons forced King John of England to accept the sixty-three provisions of the Magna Carta (“Great Charter”) at Runnymede, England. The Magna Carta was not originally intended to secure rights for all English citizens. Rather, it was meant to assert the feudal rights of England’s barons, who had become disenchanted with King John’s rule. Soon after it was signed, John ignored the tenets of the charter and began warring with his barons again. Despite the motivations of the authors and signers, the document has come to symbolize the very foundation of civil liberties.
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Welcome to the New MilestoneDocuments.com
by Neil Schlager · March 22, 2010
I am pleased to welcome you to the brand-new Milestone Documents Web sit. Our site has been completely overhauled and now provides many more resources for history students, teachers, history buffs, and general researchers.
Aside from the new site design, the biggest change that readers will notice is the inclusion of hundreds of new primary source documents from both U.S. and world history. We now feel that we have the most comprehensive collection of critical primary documents on the Web. Moreover, we’ve selected the documents on our site with great care and consideration, working with dozens of scholars and educators to bring you the most-studied documents in high school and lower undergraduate history, government, and political science classrooms.
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