I was this close to wearing Eisenhower’s pajamas. During my junior year in college, I interned at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Every now and again, when I had a few minutes of free time, I poked around the collection of artifacts in storage. There was Lincoln’s top hat. On a high shelf was the table where Lee surrendered to Grant. A pullout metal rack filled with paintings also housed a disturbing framed collection of hair from the first sixteen presidents. One day I spied a box containing President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s pajamas. These were the PJs Ike wore while recovering in Denver from his 1955 heart attack. Oh, the temptation to slip them on, but reason and self-preservation prevailed. Back on the shelf they went.

Those whom the past enchants were often first beguiled by the stuff of history. Touching those objects helps collapse time, putting us in the immediate presence of someone else at some other time. I once held John Brown’s gun and while peering down the long barrel wondered who or what he was aiming at. His trigger finger and mine overlapped and briefly spirited me back to 1850s Pottawatomie, Kansas, where Brown waged his own civil war against slavery. The past is contained in those leavings, the letters and diaries, the political cartoons and music, the paintings and the guns and pajamas. Primary sources bring alive the past and help us to understand its significance and meaning.

This collection of primary sources aims to engage you in a conversation with the past. There will be times when you burst out laughing. Some sources will make you so mad you’ll want to throw the book across the room. (Please don’t. I spent a lot of time writing it, but I share your frustration.) Other times, you’ll shake your head in disbelief. (Yes, they really thought that back then!) You are about to enter an amazing world of difference populated with people some of whom you will admire, many of whom you won’t like, and others whom you will despair of ever really knowing or understanding. Good. I hope you laugh. I hope you get mad. I even hope you get confused at times and scratch your head wondering what on earth these people were talking about. Out of your responses to these texts comes insight.

My advice? Read these texts with a fist full of questions. Historians do something called “sourcing” when they first encounter a primary text, and it is a good practice for you, too. Start with the author. Who wrote or created the source? What do you know about this person? Was he rich, poor, or middling? Was she educated? Where was he or she born and to what sort of family? You might know the answers to some of these questions, but even if you do not, keeping the questions in mind might help you understand where the author is coming from. When was this source created? While it is important to know the date, it can also be revealing to know when in the person’s life he or she created the source. Was she a young girl or an older woman raising children? Was he at the beginning of his career or already famous? What was happening when the source was created? We call this “context,” and it is an important element in making sense of the source you are reading. (You will encounter the word context often in the Reading and Discussion Questions and Comparative Questions following the sources and at the end of each chapter.) In addition to author and context, consider audience and purpose. Who was this source for, and why was it created? Was the source intended for a public or private audience? Was the source created to persuade or to inform? Was the author talking to allies or foes? What did he or she assume about their audience? A final and related point touches upon the format of the source. What type of source is it? Historians think about and interpret sources differently. You might be more honest in a private letter to your spouse than you would be in a letter to a political opponent, for example. Similarly, a campaign poster for a particular candidate has a different purpose than a portrait of a politician commissioned for a private residence. As these examples show, the format of a source is often linked to audience and purpose.

What a source tells a historian is not always self-evident. Very few of the sources that historians use were created for historians. (No one writes letters that begin: “Dear Historian of a hundred years from now, here is what I am thinking about the Obama presidency.”) Historians need to “read between the lines” to derive meaning. As you read the documents in this book, you can unearth the meaning in these sources by asking questions, thinking about context, paying attention to vocabulary and cultural references, and comparing them to other sources related to the same topic or event.

This form of active reading takes a bit more time than it would if you were to simply read starting at the first word and running through to the end. To truly think like a historian, be an active reader. Engage the texts. Ask them questions. Write in the book. Draw circles around important words or phrases. Write “key point” in the margins where you think the author is hitting his mark. Don’t be afraid to throw in a few question marks where you get confused. If you have a furrowed brow, chances are someone else in class is confused, too. Bring it up in discussion and you’ll be the class superhero. Take advantage of the questions I pose at the end of each source and chapter. I wrote them to inspire you to go back to the texts and think about what you read. The end-of-chapter Comparative Questions encourage you to see connections between and among multiple texts.

Remember, the past is about having a conversation. These texts speak to one another. It is OK to eavesdrop on their discussions. In fact (here’s me being bold), I think you have an obligation to listen in on their chatter. Many of the issues these sources address, though sometimes distant to us in time, remain relevant: What is just? What kind of society do we want to live in? How should we treat each other? How do we balance rights and responsibilities? These enduring questions are not solved by the authors included in this book. But they all have a perspective that helps to clarify our own responses.

My hope is that you will engage these texts to understand how different people, in different places and different times, constructed the specific world they inhabited. I hope, too, that you find your voice and come to know that you have an opportunity and a responsibility to engage in the conversation. The thrill of history is to know that you are part of a very long conversation about meaning. So, the next time you are wearing Ike’s PJs while shouldering John Brown’s gun, think about the contribution to that conversation you want others to remember you by. What will you say?