USG.2.5

=Explain how a shared American civic identity is embodied in founding-era documents and in core documents of subsequent periods of United States history. =

//Essential Documents (for more see, Primary Sources in United States history)//

 * ===The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848). For more information on women's suffrage movement before the Civil War, see USI.33.===

[|Gettysburg Address recited by Jeff Daniel's video on youtube]
 * Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (1863) and Second Inaugural Address (1865)


 * Theodore Roosevelt’s “The New Nationalism” speech (1910)


 * Woodrow Wilson’s “Peace Without Victory” speech (1917)


 * Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech (1941)


 * John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address (1961)

[[image:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Martin_Luther_King_Jr_with_medallion_NYWTS.jpg width="176" height="237" align="right"]]

 * Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Letter from Birmingham City Jail (1963)

[[image:Multimedia.png link="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMiqEUBux3o"]][|"I Have a Dream" speech on youtube]
[|Ronald Reagan First Inaugural Speech]
 * Reagan's Inaugural speech was extremely influential to American society. It came at a time where Americans were suffering from what now is called "Vietnam Syndrome".
 * In this era of American history, Americans still had 52 hostages in Iran and the United States was just finally able to get them back after over a year and many failed attempts such as "eagle claw" Americans started to loose their ideas about American strength and exceptionalism, Furthermore, they rapidly lost faith in the American government.
 * Reagan's speech was not only an Inaugural speech but a speech to try to change and boost American moral.

[|9/11 speech from youtube]
 * George W. Bush's 9/11 speech (2001)

[|Obama Victory Speech (2008)] The ideals of a unified American people coming together to perform their civic duties to vote is apparent.


 * Supreme Court [|Justice Robert H. Jackson’s opinion] for the Court in [|West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)] **
 * In this case, the Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to compel schoolchildren to salute the American flag, declaring that although the flag was symbol, the school district's effort at the "compulsory unification of opinion" went against the intent of the First Amendment.
 * Writing for the majority, Justice Robert Jackson declared "[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

Click here for [|more on the case] from the Cornell University Law School.

For background, see also Grade 1.4 on Student Rights and the Pledge of Allegiance

The Court upheld the conviction of two defendants under the Espionage Act for distributing political leaflets denouncing America' s decision to send troops to Russia. The leaflets, the majority opinion concluded, were an appeal to violent revolution and encouraged resistance to America's war effort.
 * ===**Supreme Court Justice [|Oliver Wendell Holmes’ dissenting opinion] in the case of [|Abrams v. United States (1919)]**===

In his dissenting opinion, Oliver Wendell Holmes declared "it is only the present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about that warrants Congress in setting a limit to the expression of opinion where private rights are not concerned." Holmes further stated "that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."

[|Timeline for important women in U.S. government]