This book is exactly what its title suggests: a series of American Historical Documents, copied verbatim, and in approximately chronological order. The work starts with the earliest records of Europeans in the New World, the journeys of Viking Explorers including Leif the Lucky, Thorstein Ericsson, and others. The next documents, from five centuries later, contain accounts by Columbus (1493), Amerigo Vespucci (1497), and John Cabot (1497). It contains documents concerning colonial government including the First Charter of Virginia (1606), the Mayflower Compact (1620), and the governing documents of Connecticut (1639) and Massachusetts (1641). The documents pertaining to the founding of the United States are not limited to such household names as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but also include other formative documents: the Mecklenburg Declaration of Indepenedence (1775), the Articles of Confederation (1777), some of the Federalist Papers (1787), and the Treaty with Great Britain (1783). The new United States consolidated their position as an independent nation capable of settling its own foreign policy decisions with the Treaty with the Six Nations (1794), the Louisiana Purchase (1803), another Treaty with Great Britain (1812), a Treaty with Spain (1819), the Monroe Doctrine (1823), and the Treaty with Mexico (1849). Documents related to the Civil War include the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1861), the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), the Gettysburg Address (1863), the famous Letter to Mrs. Bixby (1864), and Lee's Surrender (1865). After the war, the book includes such documents as the Alaska Purchase of 1867, the Annexation of Hawaii (1898), another Treaty with Spain (442), and, finally, the Convention Between the United States and the Republic of Panama (1904).