THE VALUE OF DOCUMENTS

THE VALUE OF DOCUMENTS

Historical documents not only provide readers with indelible markers of historical changes that have occurred, they also illuminate the role human beings played in making those changes. Documents instruct us about the achievements and limitations of the past as they inspire and caution us for the future. Documents also instill in us a strong sense of historical humility. Americans in the past were not less good or more evil, less right or more wrong, than we are today. Their ideas, their experiences, and their times were different from ours in many respects, but they made the nation we inhabit. Ideally, the documents in Reading the American Past will give you an appreciation of what it took, and will continue to take, to make American history happen.