Preface

What Is Dissent?

PART ONE Pre-Revolutionary Roots, 1607–1760

Introduction: The Long Roots of Modern Dissent

Roger Williams (c. 1603–1683)

The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, 1644

Anne Hutchinson (1591–1643)

The Trial of Anne Hutchinson, 1637

Alice Tilly (1594–c. 1660)

Petition for the Release of Alice Tilly, 1649

Mary Dyer (c. 1611–1660)

Mary Dyer's First Letter Written From Prison, 1659
Nathaniel Bacon (1647–1676)
Declaration in the Name of the People, July 30, 1676

Quaker Antislavery Petition

A Minute Against Slavery, 1688

Letter from an Anonymous Slave

Releese Us Out of This Cruell Bondegg, 1723

Native American Voices (1609–1752)

Powhatan, Speech to John Smith, 1609

Garangula, Speech to Governor La Barre of New
France, 1684

Loron Sauguaarum, Negotiations for the Casco Bay Treaty, 1727

Mashpee, Petition to the Massachusetts General Court, 1752

John Peter Zenger (1697–1746)

The New York Weekly Journal, 1733

Eighteenth-Century Runaway Women

Advertisements from the PennsylvaniaGazette, 1742–1748

PART TWO Revolution and the Birth of a Nation, 1760–1820

Introduction: The Republic Takes Shape

John Woolman (1720–1772)

“Considerations on Keeping Negroes, Part Second,” 1762

John Killbuck (1737–1811)

Speech to the Governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia,

December 4, 1771

Samuel Adams (1722–1803)

The Rights of the Colonists, November 20, 1772

Revolutionary Women

Hannah Griffiths, Poem, 1768

Ladies of Edenton, North Carolina, Agreement, 1774-1775
Thomas Paine (1737–1809)

Common Sense, 1776

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) and John Adams (1735–1826)

Letters, 1776

Thomas Hutchinson (1711–1780)

A Loyalist Critique of the Declaration of Independence,

1776

Slave Petition

Petition for Gradual Emancipation, 1777

United Indian Nations

Protest to the United States Congress, 1786

Shays’s Rebellion, 1786–1787

Statement of Grievances, 1786

George Mason (1725–1792)

Objections to This Constitution of Government, 1787

Judith Sargent Murray (1751–1820)

“On the Equality of the Sexes,” 1790

Shawnee, Miami, Ottawa, and Seneca Proposal

Proposal to Maintain Indian Lands, 1793

Protest Against the Alien and Sedition Acts

The Virginia Resolutions, 1798

Tecumseh (1768–1813)

Letter to Governor William Henry Harrison, 1810

Speech to the Southern Tribes, 1811

Congressmen Protest the War of 1812

Federalist Protest, 1812

Free Blacks of Philadelphia

Protest Against Colonization Policy, 1817

PART THREE Questioning the Nation, 1820–1860

Introduction: The Reforming Impulse

Theodore Frelinghuysen (1787–1862)

Speech Protesting the Indian Removal Bill, April 9, 1830

Cherokee Chief John Ross (1790–1866)

Letter Protesting the Treaty of New Echota, 1836

David Walker (1785–1830)

Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, 1830

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879)

The Liberator, Vol. I, No. I, January 1, 1831

William Apess (1798–1839)

“An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man,” 1833

Laborers of Boston

Ten-Hour Circular, 1835

Angelina Grimké (1805–1879) and Sarah Grimké (1792–1873)

Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, 1836

“The Original Equality of Woman,” 1837

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

“Self-Reliance,” 1841

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850)

Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Part 3, 1844

LowellMills Girls

Lowell Female Industrial Reform and Mutual Aid Society, 1847

ElizabethCady Stanton (1815–1902)

Speech at Seneca Falls, July 19, 1848

Declaration of Sentiments, 1848

Sojourner Truth (c. 1797–1883)

Ain’t I A Woman?, 1851

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895)

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?, July 5, 1852

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“On Resistance to Civil Government,” 1849

Lucy Stone (1818–1893)

Statement on Marriage, 1855

The Know-Nothings

American Party Platform, Philadelphia, February 21, 1856

John Brown (1800–1859)

Address to the Virginia Court at Charles Town, Virginia,

November 2, 1859

PART FOUR Civil War and Reconstruction, 1860–1877

Introduction: A Divided Nation

Clement L. Vallandigham (1820–1871)

Response to Lincoln’s Address to Congress, July 10, 1861

William Brownlow (1805–1877)

Knoxville Whig Antisecession Editorial, May 25, 1861

The Arkansas Peace Society

Arkansas Peace Society Documents, 1861

Joseph E. Brown (1821–1894)

Message to the Legislature, March 10, 1864

Cyrus Pringle (1838–1911)

The Record of a Quaker Conscience, 1863

African American Soldiers of the Union Army

Correspondence Protesting Unequal Pay, 1863-1864

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895)

What the Black Man Wants, April 1865

ZionPresbyterian Church

Petition to the United States Congress, November 24,

1865

American Equal Rights Association

National Convention Resolutions, New York, May 1867

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

From an Account of the Trial of Susan B. Anthony,

July 3, 1873

Is It a Crime for a U.S. Citizen to Vote?, 1873

PART FIVE Industry and Reform, 1877–1912

Introduction: Progress and Discontent

Terence Powderly (1849–1924)

Preamble to the Constitution of the Knights of Labor,

January 3, 1878

“Eight Hours,” by I. G. Blanchard and Jesse Jones, 1880s

Chief Joseph (1840–1904)

Appeal to the Hayes Administration, 1879

Mary Elizabeth Lease (1850–1933)

Speech to the WCTU, 1890

The People’s Party

The Omaha Platform, July 1892

Jane Addams (1860–1935)

The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements,

1892

Frances E. Willard (1839–1898)

Speech to the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance

Union, 1893

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)

Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are, 1895

W. E. B. DuBois (1868–1963)

“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” 1903

Address to the Niagara Conference, Harpers Ferry,

West Virginia, 1906

Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931)

Lynch Law in Georgia, June 20, 1899

“Tortured and Burned Alive,” 1899

Carl Schurz (1829–1906)

Address at the University of Chicago Denouncing U.S.

Imperialism, January 4, 1899

Mother Jones (1830–1930)

“The March of the Mill Children,” 1903

John Muir (1838–1914)

“The Hetch Hetchy Valley,” January 1908

Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

“Marriage and Love,” 1911

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918)

Christianizing the Social Order, 1912

The Socialist Party

Socialist Party Platform, May 12, 1912

PART SIX Conflict and Depression, 1912–1945

Introduction: Becoming a World Power

Joe Hill (1879–1915)

“We Will Sing One Song,” 1913

“The Preacher and the Slave Girl,” 1913

Robert M. LaFollette (1855–1925)

Defense of Free Speech, October 6, 1917

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926)

Antiwar Speech, Canton, Ohio, June 1918

RandolphBourne (1886–1918)

“War Is the Health of the State,” 1918

A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979)

“On Socialism,” 1919

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940)

Speech to the Universal Negro Improvement Association,

Philadelphia, 1919

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966)

“The Goal,” 1920

H. L. Mencken (1880–1956)

“Last Words,” 1926

“Mencken’s Creed”

Father Charles Coughlin (1891–1979)

National Radio Address, November 1934

National Radio Address, June 1936

Huey Long (1893–1935)

Speech in the U.S. Senate, February 5, 1934

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967)

“The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd,” 1939

“Jesus Christ,” 1940

J. Saunders Redding (1906–1988) and Charles F. Wilson (Unknown)

J. Saunders Redding, “A Negro Looks at This War,” 1942

Charles F. Wilson, Letter to President Roosevelt, 1944

David Dellinger (1915–2004)

Why I Refused to Register in the October 1940 Draft and a Little of What It Led To

Minoru Yasui (1916–1986)

Reflections on Executive Order 9066

Resistance

Statement upon Sentencing, 1942

Letters from Jail to His Sister Yuka Yasui, 19421943

PART SEVEN The Affluent Society, 1945–1966

Introduction: The Crack in the Picture Window

John Howard Lawson (1894–1977)

Lawson’s Statement That Was Excluded from the Public

Record, 1947

Margaret Chase Smith (1897–1995)

Declaration of Conscience, 1950

Paul Robeson (1898–1976)

Testimony Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities,

June 12, 1956

Harry Hay (1912–2002)

Speech at the Gay Spirit Visions Conference, Highlands, North Carolina,

November 1990

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997)

“America,” 1956

Songs of the Civil Rights Movement

Pete Seeger, “I Ain’t Scared of Your Jail,” 1963

Carver Neblett, “If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus,” 1960

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968)

Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977)

Testimony Before the Credentials Committee of the Democratic

National Convention, 1964

Malcolm X (1925–1965)

The Black Revolution, 1964

Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998)

Berkeley Speech, October 1966

The Black Panther Party

Black Panther Party Platform, 1966

Students for a Democratic Society

The Port Huron Statement, 1962

Protest Music I

Phil Ochs, “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” 1965

Malvina Reynolds, “Little Boxes,” 1962

Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” 1965

PART EIGHT Mobilization: Vietnam and the Counterculture, 1964–1975

Introduction: The Movement

Mario Savio (1942–1996)

Speech at the University of California at Berkeley,

December 2, 1964

Carl Oglesby (1935– )

Speech Denouncing the War in Vietnam, Washington, DC,

November 27, 1965

The Weather Underground

You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way

the Wind Blows, 1969

John Kerry (1943– )

Statement to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,

April 23, 1971

Timothy Leary (1920–1996)

Using LSD to Imprint the Tibetan-Buddhist Experience, 1964

Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989)

Introduction, Steal This Book, 1970

Protest Music II

Pete Seeger, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” 1967

Country Joe McDonald, “I Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die

Rag,” 1965

John Fogerty, Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Fortunate Son,” 1969

Redstockings

The Redstockings Manifesto, 1969

S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men)

S.C.U.M. Manifesto, 1968

Gloria Steinem (1934– )

“‘Women’s Liberation’ Aims to Free Men, Too,” June 7, 1970

Stonewall

Stonewall Documents, 1969

The American Indian Movement

A Proclamation: To the Great White Father and All His People, 1969

PART NINE Contemporary Dissent, 1975–Present

Introduction: Crossing the Threshold into the New Millennium—

Globalization vs. Jihad

Paul Weyrich (1941– )

“A Conservative’s Lament: After Iran, We Need to Change

Our System and Grand Strategy,” March 8, 1987

ACT UP

Vito Russo, “Why We Fight,” 1988

Gay Liberation

Statement of Phill Wilson, Director of Public Policy, AIDS Project,

Los Angeles, 1994

Statement of Letitia Gomez, Executive Director, Latino/a Lesbian

and Gay Organization, 1994

The Michigan Militia

In Defense of Liberty II, 1995

Theodore Kaczynski (1942– )

The Unabomber Manifesto, 1996

Interview with Theodore Kaczynski, June 1999

Ralph Nader (1934– )

It’s Time to End Corporate Welfare As We Know It, 1996

Ani DiFranco (1970– )

“self evident,” 2001

Protest Music III

Mos Def, “New World Water,” 1999

Immortal Technique, “The 4th Branch,” 2003

Steve Earle, “Rich Man’s War,” 2004

Amnesty International

Amnesty International’s Concerns Regarding Post–September 11

Detentions in the U.S.A., March 14, 2002

Earth Liberation Front

Written Testimony Supplied to the U.S. House of Representatives

for the February 12, 2002,Hearing on “Ecoterrorism”

Not in Our Name

Statement of Conscience, 2003

Veterans Against the Iraq War

Call to Conscience from Veterans to Active Duty Troops

and Reservists, 2003

Message to the Troops: Resist!, October 11, 2002

The American Civil Liberties Union

Freedom Under Fire: Dissent in Post-9/11 America,

May 2003

MoveOn.org

The Many Faces of the Media, 2004

Michael Berg (1945– )

“George Bush Never Looked Into Nick’s Eyes,” May 21, 2004

Cindy Sheehan (1957– )

A Lie of Historic Proportions, August 8, 2005

Carly’s Poem—A Nation Rocked to Sleep, August 15, 2005

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

About the Documents

Text Credits

Index

Promotional Information

This concise collection of primary sources presents the story of US History as told by dissenters who, throughout the course of American history, have fought to gain rights they believed were denied to them or others, or who disagreed with the government or majority opinion.

Table of Contents

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