Benjamin Franklin

This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the United States, where Works published prior to 1978 were copyright protected for a maximum of 75 years. See Circular 1 "COPYRIGHT BASICS" from the U.S. Copyright Office. Works published before 1923 are now in the public domain and also in countries that figure copyright from the date of death of the artist (post mortem auctoris) and that most commonly run for a period of 50 to 70 years from that date. In this case Creator/Artist Name: Joseph Siffred Duplessis. Date of birth/death 1725 1802. High Resolution Image‎ (2,134 × 2,868 pixels, file size: 2.36 MB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Benjamin Franklin, the most distinguished scientific and literary American of his age, was the first American diplomat. He served Benjamin Franklin Picturefrom 1776 to 1778 on a three-man commission to France charged with the critical task of gaining French support for American independence. French aristocrats and intellectuals embraced Franklin as the personification of the New World Enlightenment.

His likeness appeared on medallions, rings, watches, and snuffboxes, while fashionable ladies adopted the coiffure a la Franklin in imitation of the fur cap he wore instead of a wig. His popularity and diplomatic skill--along with the first American battlefield success at Saratoga--convinced France to recognize American independence and conclude an alliance with the thirteen states in 1778. Franklin presented his credentials to the French court in 1779, becoming the first American Minister (the 18th American century equivalent of ambassador) to be received by a foreign government.

Franklin’s home in Passy, just outside Paris, became the center of American diplomacy in Europe. When Thomas Jefferson succeeded Franklin in 1785, the French Foreign Minister, Vergennes asked: "It is you who replace Dr. Franklin?" Jefferson replied, "No one can replace him, Sir; I am only his successor." Benjamin Franklin: First American Diplomat, 1776-1785

Benjamin Franklin From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Benjamin Franklin (January 17 [O.S. January 6] 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the most important and influental Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a leading author, political theorist, politician, printer, scientist, inventor, civic activist, and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As a political writer and activist he, more than anyone, invented the idea of an American nation, and as a diplomat during the American Revolution, he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence possible.

Franklin was famous for his curiosity, his writings (popular, political and scientific), his inventions, and his diversity of interests. As a leader of the Enlightenment, he gained the recognition of scientists and intellectuals across Europe. An agent in London before the Revolution, and Minister to France during the war, he, more than anyone else, defined the new nation in the minds of Europe.

His success in securing French military and financial aid was a great contributor to the American victory over Britain. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the iron furnace stove (also known as the Franklin stove), a carriage odometer and a musical instrument known as the armonica. He was an early proponent of colonial unity. Many historians hail him as the "First American."

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article, Benjamin Franklin

The Tragic Prelude. John Brown

Name: John Brown Tragic Prelude. Description: The Tragic Prelude. John Brown. Copy of mural by John Steuart Curry in the State Capitol in Topeka, KS, ca. 1937-42. (National Park Service) Exact Date Shot Unknown NARA FILE #: 079-CWC-3F-10 WAR & CONFLICT BOOK #: 115. Released to Public High Resolution Image

Source: Defense Visual Information Center Still HDSN9901774. Date: Date Shot: 1 Jan 1937. Author: John Steuart Curry, for the Creator, Department of the Interior. National Park Service. Civil War Centennial Commission.

Permission: This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States Federal Government under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code. See Copyright.

Note: This only applies to works of the Federal Government and not to the work of any individual U.S. state, territory, commonwealth, county, municipality, or any other subdivision.

other_versions: The Tragic Prelude. John Brown. Copy of mural by John Steuart Curry in the State Capitol in Topeka, Kansas, circa 1937-42., 1957 - 1965. ARC Identifier: 520060. Local Identifier: 79-CWC-3F(10). Access Restrictions: Unrestricted. Use Restrictions: Unrestricted.

Bleeding Kansas From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bleeding Kansas, sometimes referred to in history as Bloody Kansas or the Border War, was a sequence of violent events involving Free-Staters (anti-slavery) and pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" elements that took place in Kansas Territory and the western frontier towns of the U.S. state of Missouri between roughly 1854 and 1858 attempting to influence whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state. The term "Bleeding Kansas" was coined by Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune. The events in Bleeding Kansas directly presaged the American Civil War.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territory and provided the cause of the ensuing guerilla warfare. Enshrined in the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which nullified the Missouri Compromise, is the principle now known as "popular sovereignty", an idea heavily supported by U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories. Popular sovereignty was an attempt to offer concessions to the Southern states through making possible the expansion of slavery into both western and northern territories. Popular sovereignty, also known in Kansas Territory as squatter sovereignty, was first developed by U.S. Senator Lewis Cass.

The act established that the question of the expansion of slavery in the new states of Kansas and Nebraska would be decided by the inhabitants of the states. Initially, it was assumed that few slaveowners would attempt to settle in Kansas and make it a slave state, because it was thought to be too far north for profitable exploitation of slaves. However, the eastern portion of Kansas along the Missouri river was as suitable for slave-based agriculture as the nearby 'black belt' of Missouri in which most of Missouri's slaves were held.

The settlement and formation of the state government in Kansas became highly politicized beyond the borders of the territory. There were a number of reasons for this. Missouri, a slave state, was uniquely exposed to free states, with Illinois and Iowa bordering it on the east and north. Most parts of Missouri held very few slaves, and slaveowners were a very small proportion of the state's population. If Kansas entered the Union as a free state, Missouri would have free soil on three sides. Since manumission, abolition activity, and escape were all more common in the border south, the existence of nearby free soil was a threat to Missouri slaveowners.

Also, in the Senate, each state is apportioned two senate seats. A rough balance had existed between free and slave states, but each addition of a state threatened to tip the balance, disrupting the status quo.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article, Bleeding Kansas

Andrew Jackson

Creator: Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. (09/18/1947 - 02/28/1964) ( Most Recent) Type of Archival Materials: Photographs and other Graphic Materials. Level of Description: Item from Record Group 111: Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, 1860 - 1982. Location: Still Picture Records LICON, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001 PHONE: 301-837-3530, FAX: 301-837-3621, EMAIL: stillpix@nara.gov

Coverage Dates: ca. 1900 - 1982. Part of: Series: Signal Corps Photographs of American Military Activity, 1754 - 1954. Access Restrictions: Unrestricted. Use Restrictions: Unrestricted.

Variant Control Number(s): NAIL Control Number: NWDNS-111-SC-94193. Copy 1 Copy Status: Preservation-Reproduction. Storage Facility: National Archives at College Park - Archives II (College Park, MD) Media. Media Type: Negative

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States Federal Government under the terms of 17 U.S.C. § 105.

Generally speaking, works created by U.S. Government employees are not eligible for copyright protection in the United States. See Circular 1 "COPYRIGHT BASICS" PDF from the U.S. Copyright Office.

Andrew Jackson From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the 7th President of the United States (1829–1837). He was also military governor of Florida (1821), commander of the American forces at the Battle of New Orleans (1815), and the eponym of the era of Jacksonian democracy. He was a polarizing figure who dominated American politics in the 1820s and 1830s. His political ambition combined with the masses of people shaped the modern Democratic Party. Nicknamed "Old Hickory" because he was renowned for his toughness, Jackson was the first President primarily associated with the frontier as he based his career in Tennessee.

Andrew Jackson was born to Presbyterian Scots-Irish immigrants Andrew and Elizabeth Jackson in Lancaster County, South Carolina, on March 15, 1767.[2] He was the youngest of three brothers and was born just weeks after his father's death. Both North Carolina and South Carolina have claimed Jackson as a "native son," because the community straddled the state line, and there was conflicting lore in the neighborhood about his exact birth site.

Controversies about Jackson's birthplace went far beyond the dispute between North and South Carolina. Because his origins were humble and obscure compared to those of his predecessors, wild rumors abounded about Jackson's past. Joseph Nathan Kane, in his almanac-style book Facts About the Presidents, lists no fewer than eight localities, including two foreign countries, that were mentioned in the popular press as Jackson's "real" birthplace including Ireland where both of Jackson's parents were born.

Jackson himself always stated definitively that he was born in a cabin just inside South Carolina. Having received a sporadic education, Jackson, at age thirteen and during the American Revolutionary War, joined a local regiment as a courier

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article, Andrew Jackson

John Brown (abolitionist)

Digital ID: cph 3b35940 Source: b&w film copy neg. Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-89569 (b&w film copy neg.) Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA Retrieve uncompressed archival TIFF version (1,488 kilobytes) TITLE: [John Brown, three-quarter length portrait, facing left, holding New York Tribune] CALL NUMBER: PGA - Anonymous (A size) [P&P] REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZ62-89569 (b&w film copy neg.)

MEDIUM: 1 print : lithograph. CREATED, PUBLISHED: [1859(?)]

This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the United States, where Works published prior to 1978 were copyright protected for a maximum of 75 years. See Circular 1 "COPYRIGHT BASICS" from the U.S. Copyright Office. Works published before 1923 are now in the public domain and also in countries that figure copyright from the date of death of the artist (post mortem auctoris) and that most commonly run for a period of 50 to 70 years from that date.

REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. DIGITAL ID: (b&w film copy neg.) cph 3b35940. hdl.loc.gov/cph.3b35940, VIDEO FRAME ID: LCPP003B-35940 (from b&w film copy neg.), CONTROL #: 97515662

John Brown (abolitionist) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was the first white American abolitionist to advocate and practice insurrection as a means to abolish slavery. President Abraham Lincoln said he was a "misguided fanatic" and Brown has been called "the most controversial of all 19th-century Americans." His attempt in 1859 to start a liberation movement among enslaved African Americans in Harpers Ferry, Virginia electrified the nation, even though not a single slave answered his call. He was tried for treason against the state of Virginia and was hanged, but his behavior at the trial seemed heroic to millions of Americans. Southerners alleged that his rebellion was the tip of an abolitionist iceberg and represented the wishes of the Republican Party, but those charges were vehemently denied by the Republicans. Historians agree that the Harpers Ferry raid in 1859 escalated tensions that a year later led to secession and the American Civil War.

Brown first gained attention when he led small groups of volunteers during the Bleeding Kansas crisis. Unlike most other Northerners, who still advocated peaceful resistance to the pro-slavery faction, Brown demanded violent action in response to Southern aggression. Dissatisfied with the pacifism encouraged by the organized abolitionist movement, he was quoted to have said "These men are all talk. What we need is action - action!" His belief in confrontation led him to kill five pro-slavery southerners in what became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre in May 1856, in response to the raid of the "free soil" city of Lawrence.

Brown's most famous deed was the 1859 raid he led on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (in modern-day West Virginia). During the raid, he seized the federal arsenal, killing seven people (including a free black) and injuring ten or so more. He intended to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, but the attack failed. Within 36 hours, each of Brown's men had fled or been killed or captured by local farmers, militiamen, and U.S. Marines led by Robert E. Lee. Brown's subsequent capture by federal forces, his trial for treason to the state of Virginia, and his execution by hanging were an important part of the origins of the American Civil War, which followed sixteen months later. His role and actions prior to the Civil War, as an abolitionist, and the tactics he chose still make him a controversial figure today. Depending on one's point of view, he is sometimes heralded as a heroic martyr and a visionary or vilified as a madman and a terrorist.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article, John Brown (abolitionist)