ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

Frontispiece	Americans assembled on the National Mall for the 1963 March on Washington. Warren K. Leffler / Library of Congress.
xxii	John Durand painted the precocious six-year-old New Yorker Jane Beekman in 1767, holding a book and seized with inspiration. Jane Beekman by John Duran, 1767, oil on canvas. Photo © New York Historical Society.
3	“America” first appeared as the name of an undefined land mass on a map of the world made in 1507. Martin Waldseemüller / Library of Congress.
4	On an ink-splotched sketch of northwest Haiti, Columbus labeled “la española,” Hispaniola, “the little Spanish island.” The Granger Collection.
15	A drawing originally made in the seventh century by Isidore of Seville became, in 1472, the first printed map of the world; twenty years later, it was obsolete. British Library, London, UK, © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved / Bridgeman Images.
16	Artists working for the sixteenth-century mestizo Diego Muñoz Camargo illustrated the Spanish punishment for native converts who abandoned Christianity. Glasgow University Library, Scotland / Bridgeman Images.
21	An Aztec artist rendered the Spanish conquistadors, led by Cortés, invading Mexico. The Granger Collection.
24	Mexican casta, or caste, paintings purported to chart sixteen different possible intermarriages of Spanish, Indian, and African men and women and their offspring. Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlan, Mexico / Courtesy of Schalkwijk / Art Resource, NY.
31	This deerskin cloak, likely worn by Powhatan, was by the middle of the seventeenth century housed in a museum in Oxford, England. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, UK / Bridgeman Images.
35	The Virginia Company recruited colonists with advertisements that lavishly promised an Eden-like bounty. Library of Congress.
44	In 1629, Massachusetts Bay adopted a colony seal that, by way of justifying settlement, pictured a nearly naked Indian, begging the English to “Come Over and Help Us.” Massachusetts Archives.
46	European slave traders inspecting people for purchase sometimes licked their skin, believing it possible to determine whether they were healthy or sick by the taste of their sweat. Traite General du Commerce de l’Amerique by Chambon. Bibliothèque Municipale, Nantes France (PRC BW).
51	In 1681, Charles II granted lands to the English Quaker William Penn, who founded a “holy experiment” in the eponymous colony of Pennsylvania. Library of Congress.
65	Benjamin Franklin’s 1754 woodcut served as both a political cartoon and a map of the colonies. Library of Congress.
68	George Whitefield’s preaching stirred ordinary Americans and set them swooning, but it also inspired study, and intellectual independence, represented here in the form of a woman, in the lower left, wearing spectacles to study Scripture. Private Collection / Bridgeman Images.
72	Boston-born artist John Singleton Copley left the colonies in 1774, never to return; in 1783, while living in London, he depicted the 1781 Battle of Jersey in a 12 × 8 foot painting—only a detail is shown here—and offered his own argument about American liberty by picturing, near its center, a black man firing a gun. © Tate, London 2018.
73	In protest of slavery, Benjamin Lay rejected anything produced by slave labor, became a hermit, and lived in a cave. William Williams / National Portrait Gallery.
80	London-printed maps commemorating the treaty that ended the Seven Years’ War in 1763 marked out the importance of both the Caribbean and the continent. Library of Congress.
85	People held in slavery in Jamaica rebelled throughout the middle decades of the eighteenth century, leaving Jamaican slave owners reliant on British military protection and unwilling to join colonists on the continent in rebelling against British rule. Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris, France / Bridgeman Images.
89	A British minister with the 1774 bill closing the port of Boston in his pocket pours tea down the throat of “America”—here, and often, depicted as a naked Indian woman—while another looks under her skirt. American Antiquarian Society.
101	This political cartoon, published in London, shows “Britain,” on one side of the scale, warning, “No one injures me with impunity,” while, on the other side, “America,” trampled by her allies (Spain, France, and the Netherlands), cries, “My Ingratitude is Justly punished.” American Antiquarian Society.
103	Benjamin West, American-born History Painter to the King, began a painting of the British and American peace commissioners—including Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay—but never finished the canvas. Courtesy, Winterthur; painting: American Commissioners of the Preliminary Peace Negotiations with Great Britain by Benjamin West (1783–1819), oil paint on canvas, London, England, gift of Henry Francis du Pont, 1957.856.
109	Printers published the proposed Constitution as a broadside but also included it in newspapers, almanacs, and pamphlets. Gilder Lehrman.
115	The value of paper currency fluctuated wildly, and by the end of the Revolutionary War, money printed on behalf of the Continental Congress had become nearly worthless. American Antiquarian Society.
118	James Madison took copious notes on the proceedings of the constitutional convention. James Madison / Library of Congress.
129	A 1787 engraving pictures Federalists and Anti-Federalists pulling in two different directions a wagon labeled “Connecticut,” stuck in a ditch and loaded with debts and (worthless) paper money. Amos Doolittle / Library of Congress.
132	George Washington was inaugurated on the balcony of Federal Hall, formerly New York’s city hall. Courtesy, Winterthur; etching: FEDERAL HALL / The Seat of CONGRESS by Amos Doolittle, Peter Lacour, 1790, New Haven, CT, ink, watercolor on laid paper, bequest of Henry Francis du Pont, 1957.816.
143	Federalists and Anti-Federalists had different reactions to the Haitian revolution. Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris, France, Roger-Viollet, Paris / Bridgeman Images.
148	An 1800 print commemorating the life of Washington pictures him holding the “The American Constitution,” a tablet etched in stone. Library of Congress.
150	Arthur Fitzwilliam Tate’s 1854 canvas Arguing the Point depicts a hunter and a farmer debating an election while reading a paper brought by a townsman, while the farmer’s daughter tries to break in on the conversation. Arguing the Point; Settling the Presidency by Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait (1819–1905); photo: R. W. Norton Art Gallery.
153	Philadelphians of all ranks celebrate the Fourth of July in 1812 in this watercolor by John Lewis Krimmel, a German immigrant. Fourth of July Celebration in Center Square by John Lewis Krimmel, HSP large graphics collection [V65] / Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
160	An election of 1800 campaign banner for Thomas Jefferson, promised “John Adams No More.” Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.#45-553 (PRC CT).
169	Jefferson imagined an “empire of liberty,” a republic of yeoman farmers, equal and independent. Library of Congress.
174	This political caricature, engraved and inked in Massachusetts about 1804 and sold in New Hampshire by 1807, depicts Jefferson as a rooster and Sally Hemings as his hen, testament to how widespread were rumors about the president’s relationship with one of his slaves. American Antiquarian Society.
183	Andrew Jackson’s 1824 bid for the presidency introduced all manner of paraphernalia, including this campaign sewing box. David Frent Collection / Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions, HA.com.
184	Paper ballots were in general use by the 1820s, usually in the form of “party tickets” for an entire slate of candidates, like this Democratic Party ticket from Ohio in 1828. Library of Congress.
187	Jackson’s inauguration in 1829 brought an unprecedented crowd to the Capitol—a crowd that followed him to the White House. Robert Cruikshank / Library of Congress.
189	In the 1830s, railroads emerged as a symbol of progress, pictured, as in this engraving, as if cutting through the wilderness and carrying civilization across the continent. LC-USZ62-51439 (b&w film copy neg.).
194	The textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, on the banks of the Merrimack River, were the first in the United States to use power looms. Library of Congress.
196	The tent meetings of the Second Great Awakening had much in common with Jacksonian-era political rallies, but, where men dominated party politics, women dominated the revival movement. The Granger Collection.
200	An unidentified woman, about the age of Maria W. Stewart when she first wrote for the Liberator, posed for a daguerreotype, holding a book, an emblem of her learnedness. Courtesy of the George Eastman Museum.
213	The Cherokees devised their own writing system, adopted their own constitution, and began printing their own newspaper, the Phoenix, in 1828. Library of Congress.
222	Pioneers heading west gathered at settlements like Major John Dougherty’s trading post on the Missouri River. Denver Public Library, Western History Division #F3226 (PRC B/W).
225	During the Panic of 1837, a destitute family cowers when debt collectors come to the door, demanding hard money; fading portraits of Jackson and Van Buren hang on the wall behind them. Library of Congress.
227	An 1848 cartoon pictured William Henry Harrison as the engine of a train fueled by hard cider and pulling a log cabin while President Martin Van Buren, driving “Uncle Sam’s Cab,” pulled by a blindered horse, stumbles on a pile of (Henry) Clay. Robert N. Elton/Library of Congress.
232	In Richard Caton Woodville’s 1848 painting, a crowd gathers on the porch of the “American Hotel”—a symbol of the Union—eagerly awaiting the “War News from Mexico.” Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas #2010.74.
237	President Tyler officiates at a wedding between the Texas star and America in a political cartoon from a New Orleans newspaper in 1844—the year Tyler himself married. Andrew Jackson Houston Papers #3445, Courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
245	Zachary Taylor tries to balance the congressional scales between the “Wilmot Proviso” and “Southern Rights.” Library of Congress.
246	Americans who objected to the extension of slavery often pictured Texans (and Mexicans) as mixed-race and brutal. In this political cartoon, “young Texas,” whose tattoos read “Murder,” “Slavery,” and “Rape,” sits on a whipped and manacled slave. E. Jones / The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.
248	Frederick Douglass, the most photographed man in antebellum America, believed photography to be a democratic art. The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USAMajor Acquisitions Centennial Endowment / Bridgeman Images.
253	The leading 1848 presidential candidates race to the White House by telegraph (Lewis Cass) and railroad (Zachary Taylor); Henry Clay tries to gain on them in a rowboat; laggard Martin Van Buren follows on a skinny horse; and a black man, representing abolition, lies facedown in the dirt, defeated. Edwin Forrest Durang / Libary of Congress.
272	Photographs like the Alexander Gardner’s portraits of the dead at Antietam chronicled the war and its many devastations. Alexander Gardner / Library of Congress.
280	African American photographer Augustus Washington captured this likeness of John Brown in his daguerreotype studio in Connecticut in 1846 or 1847. Brown, his right hand raised as if taking an oath, stands in front of the flag of the Subterranean Pass-Way, his more militant version of the Underground Railroad. Augustus Washington.
286	Mathew Brady’s 1860 daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln, cropped, was reproduced as a campaign button. Mathew B. Brady / Library of Congress.
289	Broadsides printed early in 1861 notified citizens of the seceding states that their legislatures had dissolved the Union by repealing their ratification of the 1787 Constitution. Library of Congress.
294	Alexander Gardner, another kind of sharpshooter, took this photograph of a dead Confederate sharpshooter at Gettysburg. Alexander Gardner / Library of Congress.
298	On Emancipation Day, January 1, 1863, black men, women, and children celebrated outside Beaufort, South Carolina. Timothy H. O’Sullivan.
302	Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, a Northern paper, in 1863 ran this before-and-after illustration of Southern women first urging their men to rebellion and later staging bread riots. Library of Congress.
306	Mourners lined New York’s Union Square in 1865 as Lincoln’s funeral procession passed by while, perched on a rooftop, a photographer captured a bird’s-eye shot of the scene. Library of Congress.
308	The growing power of the federal government was extravagantly displayed at increasingly lavish presidential inaugurations. Universal History Archive / UIG / Bridgeman Images.
311	Residents of Richmond, Virginia, celebrated the anniversary of Emancipation Day in 1888, beneath a banner of Abraham Lincoln. Cook Collection, Valentine Museum #1388.
316	Lew Wa Ho worked at a dry goods shop in St. Louis; the photograph was included in his Immigration Service case file as evidence of employment. National Archives, Pacific Region (Seattle) Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
319	A pamphlet published in 1916 celebrated “the noble ride of the Ku Klux Klan of the Reconstruction Period” and insisted on its “rightful place in history as the saviour of the South, and, thereby, the saviour of the nation.” Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture # 2011.155.15.
325	In an 1886 cartoon, Uncle Sam kicks Chinese immigrants out of the United States, demonstrating the intensity of anti-Chinese feeling in the first decade of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Shober & Carqueville / Library of Congress.
331	A family unable to pay the mortgage on a farm in western Kansas headed back east to Illinois, having chronicled the journey on the canvas of their wagon: “left Nov. 20, 1894; arrived Dec. 26, 1894.” Kansas Historical Society.
351	Judge magazine in 1896 pictured William Jennings Bryan bearing his cross of gold, wielding a crown of thorns, and standing on an open Bible while a follower, behind him, waves a flag that reads “Anarchy.” Grant E. Hamilton / Library of Congress.
357	Ida B. Wells’s indictment of lynching was first published in 1892. Udo J. Keppler / Library of Congress.
361	The 120-acre Ford Motor plant in Highland Park, Michigan, opened in 1910, the largest manufacturing site in the world. From the Collections of The Henry Ford.
367	In 1898, newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst both used the war to increase circulation. Leon Barritt / Library of Congress.
370	Charles Mitchell was lynched in Urbana, Ohio, in 1897, one of thousands of black men lynched during the Jim Crow era. Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 2.2002.3604; photo: Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College.
372	In a 1910 magazine cover, top-hatted banker J. Pierpont Morgan grabs at all of New York City’s banks—even a toddler’s piggy bank. Frank A. Nanki vell / Library of Congress.
374	A 1900 cartoon depicts Theodore Roosevelt as a centaur, branded “GOP,” bucking wildly while firing two guns, one labeled “Speeches,” the other, “Wild Talk.” Udo J. Keppler / Library of Congress.
385	Photographer Jesse Tarbox Beals took this shot of a suffrage parade in New York in 1910. Jessie Tarbox Beals / Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
408	A 1921 cartoon depicts Uncle Sam deploying a funnel to stanch the flow of immigrants from Europe. Library of Congress.
415	Shall Christianity Remain Christian?, a pamphlet published in 1922, pictured a journey from doubt to atheism as an inevitable descent. Ernest James Pace / Courtesy of Presbyterian Historical Society.
421	A family in Hood River, Oregon, gathers around the radio in 1925. National Archives.
425	Dorothea Lange photographed farmers on relief in California’s Imperial Valley in 1936. Dorothea Lange, Courtesy Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Sedge-wick Memorial Collection.
429	Franklin Delano Roosevelt bypassed the press and spoke to the people directly by radio. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing.
432	Eleanor Roosevelt created an entirely new role for the First Lady, not least by spending time touring the country. In May 1935, she toured a coal mine in Bellaire, Ohio. AP Photo.
439	Sharecroppers were evicted from their homes in 1936 in Arkansas after joining a tenant farmers’ union. John Vachon / Library of Congress.
453	Joseph Goebbels, Germany’s minister of propaganda, made especially effective use of radio, here used to address Hitler Youth. Hulton-Deutsch / Hulton-Deutsch Collection / Corbis / Getty Images.
468	Newspapers around the country reported a panic during the 1938 broadcast of Orson Welles’s The War of the Worlds. NY Daily News Archive / Getty Images.
472	The day after the United States bombed Hiroshima, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran, as an editorial, a crayon drawing titled A New Era in Man’s Understanding of Nature’s Forces. Daniel Robert Fitzpatrick / Courtesy State Historical Society of Missouri.
485	A 1943 Office of War Information poster celebrated the combined strength of the Allied forces. US Army, Signal Corps / Courtesy Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
486	Wartime mobilization called on women to join the military, as in this U.S. Navy recruiting poster from 1942. Henry Koerner / Library of Congress. 493 Soldiers communicated from the trenches by way of radio, here in the Philippine island of Leyte in 1944. John Philip Falter / Library of Congress.
495	Dorothea Lange photographed the forced relocation of Japanese Americans in California in 1942. Dorothea Lange / National Archives.
500	A billboard in Detroit in 1942 called for the continuation of segregated housing. Office of War Information, Arthur Siegel, Courtesy of Harry S. Truman Library.
509	FDR and Winston Churchill conferred on a warship at the outset of the Yalta Conference in 1945. Courtesy the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum.
513	In 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and other U.S. generals stopped at a newly liberated concentration camp at Ohrdruf, where the remains of burned bodies were found on railroad tracks. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park.
518	John Mauchly’s ENIAC, sometimes called the Giant Brain, marked the beginning of the age of information. Bettmann Archive / Getty Images.
521	In an era of American abundance, TV sets in a store window broadcast Eisenhower’s announcement of his decision to run for reelection in 1956. Grey Villet / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images.
524	Vassar mathematician Grace Murray Hopper programmed Mark I. Grace Murray Hopper Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
528	The G.I. Bill made it possible for a generation of Americans to attend college. In September 1947, three jubilant former servicemen leave a student union at Indiana University, waving their notices of admission. Indiana University Photographic Services Neg # 47-1082 (PRC has B/W).
533	Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker, who founded Campaigns, Inc., in California in 1933, attained national prominence at the end of the 1940s through their successful defeat of Truman’s health insurance plan. George Skadding / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images.
556	Suburban housewives served as the foot soldiers of the conservative movement; here, women rally in support of Joseph McCarthy. Bettmann Archive / Getty Images.
564	CBS News, whose team included Walter Cronkite, commissioned the first commercial computer, UNIVAC, to predict the outcome of the election of 1952. Keystone-France / Gamma-Keystone / Getty Images.
567	U.S. Army Chief Counsel Joseph Welch holds his head in his hand as Joseph McCarthy speaks during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. Robert Phillips / The LIFE Images Collection / Getty Images.
569	Reverend Billy Graham, here preaching in Washington, DC, in 1952, reached a nationwide audience but boasted an especially strong following in Congress. Mark Kauffman / The LIFE Premium Collection / Getty Images.
585	Elizabeth Eckford was turned away from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, by order of the state’s governor, Orval Faubus. Francis Miller / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images.
587	On the cover of Life, MIT scientists attempt to calculate the orbit of the Soviet satellite Sputnik while the magazine promises to explain “Why Reds Got It First.” Dmitri Kessel / Life magazine, Copyright Time Inc. / The LIFE Premium Collection / Getty Images.
589	Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev debated the merits of capitalism and communism in a model American kitchen on display in Moscow, 1959. Photo by Howard Sochurek / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images #50475727.
595	Students from North Carolina A&T College staged a sit-in at a lunch counter in a Woolworth’s in Greensboro. Bettman Archive / Getty Images.
601	The joint appearance between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960 was the first televised presidential “debate”; another matchup would not take place until 1976. CBS Photo Archive / Getty Images.
612	Johnson, here touching down in the presidential helicopter in rural Appalachia, made a Poverty Tour in 1964 to see what Dwight Macdonald called “our invisible poor.” Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.
618	Johnson applied “The Treatment” to Abe Fortas in July 1965, the month before Fortas took a seat on the Supreme Court. Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library photo by Yoichi Okamoto.
620	Americans watched the war in Vietnam from their living rooms. Library of Congress.
631	Young men in Central Park, New York, mourned Martin Luther King Jr. following his assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Benedict Fernandez, Courtesy Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Beinecke Fund.
634	Poet and boxer Rodolfo Gonzales, a leader of the Chicano movement, spoke at a rally in Denver in 1970. Dave Buresh / The Denver Post / Getty Images.
645	Nixon left the White House by helicopter on August 9, 1974. Bettman Archive / Getty Images.
646	Phyllis Schlafly led a resurgent conservative movement in the 1970s by making opposition to equal rights one of its signature issues. Bettman Archive / Getty Images.
655	Betty Ford, who attended the National Women’s Conference in Houston in 1977, was among several powerful Republicans who objected to using women to draw a line between the political parties. Bettye Lane / Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
669	Ronald Reagan, a man of immense personal charm, greeted supporters in Indiana during his 1980 campaign. Kristoffer Tripplaar / Alamy Stock Photo.
676	The lines between the parties hardened over guns and abortion, one meaning freedom and the other murder, though which meant which depended on the party. Courtesy Ronald Reagan Library.
687	ACT UP demonstrators protested outside New York’s city hall in 1988. Bettye Lane / Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
690	No single act so well captured the end of the Cold War as the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Luis Veiga / Getty Images.
693	Bill and Hillary Clinton frequently appeared together on the campaign trail in 1992. Cynthia Johnson / Liason / Getty Images.
717	A battle over a recount in the election of 2000 left the outcome in doubt for weeks. LeFranc / Gamma-Rapho / Getty Image.
719	Firefighters searched Ground Zero long after the collapse of both towers. Photo by James Nachtwey ’70 The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth.
730	Wired magazine began appearing in 1993 and by 2000 announced that the Internet had ushered in “One Nation, Interconnected.” Wired © Condé Nast.
741	The Iraq War mired U.S. soldiers in counterinsurgency campaigns. Matt Cardy / Getty Images.
751	Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 drew the largest crowd ever assembled on the Mall. Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images.
756	Tax Day protests held on April 15, 2009, marked the birth of the Tea Party movement, which countered Obama’s call for change with a call for a return to the principles of the founding fathers. Emmanuel Dunand / AFP / Getty Images.
773	Not long after his 2017 inauguration, President Trump greeted visitors to the White House in front of a portrait of Hillary Clinton. Aude Guerrucci-Pool / Getty Images.
784	Glenn Ligon’s 2012 Double America, in neon and paint, was partly inspired by the opening words of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” © Glenn Ligon; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.