30 Astounding Historic Works from the Momentus Project

Hope you like history, because there is tons of it in this article! A few weeks ago we started to see some interesting black and white pieces of art pop up around the web regarding American History. While there was no link back to the original source, we were bummed out and stopped searching. The curiousity was bothering us, so we wanted to try again and find the source. While browsing Tumblr, I stumbled upon the Momentus Project which had the illustrations we found earlier.

The Momentus Project was born out of a strange obsession with United States history. The goal of this project is to visualize the most defining moments in the United States history! It’s incredible to see creative artwork and history collide to tell a visual story. The project includes some very talented designers/illustrators who are listed here. From all the recent attention and hard work by his fellow designers Evan Stremke, project creator, is extremely happy to see this project being recognized by the community.

Note: There is still more peices on the way stay tuned, and visit Momentusproject.com

1. The Boston Tea Party

Artist: Jeff Finley

Background:

The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea coming into the colonies. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and other political protests often refer to it.

2.  The Revolutionary War

Artist: Jon Contino

Background:

The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America. They first rejected the authority of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them from overseas without representation, and then expelled all royal officials. By 1774 each colony had established a Provincial Congress, or an equivalent governmental institution, to form individual self-governing states, but still within the empire. The British responded by sending combat troops to re-impose direct rule. Through representatives sent in 1775 to the Second Continental Congress, the new states joined together at first to defend their respective self-governance and manage the armed conflict against the British known as the American Revolutionary War.

3.  The Declaration of Independence

Artist: Ellis Latham-Brown

Background:

The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. John Adams put forth a resolution earlier in the year which made a formal declaration inevitable. A committee was assembled to draft the formal declaration, which was to be ready when congress voted on independence. Adams persuaded the committee to select Thomas Jefferson to compose the original draft of the document, which congress would edit to produce the final version.

4. The Louisiana Purchase

Artist: Emory Allen

Background:

The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America of 828,800 square miles of France’s claim to the territory of Louisiana in 1803. The U.S. paid $11,250,000 plus cancellation of debts worth $3,750,000, for a total sum of 15 million dollars for the Louisiana territory. The purchase was a vital moment in the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. Basically we got a heck of a deal!

5.  The Lewis & Clark Expedition

Artist: Blake Suarez

Background:

The 1804–1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition was the first United States expedition to the Pacific Coast. Commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson and led by two Virginia-born veterans of Indian wars in the Ohio Valley, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the expedition had several goals. Their objects were both scientific and commercial – to study the area’s plants, animal life, and geography, and to discover how the region could be exploited economically.

6. The Trail of Tears

Artist: Matt Riley

Background:

The Trail of Tears is a name given to the relocation and movement of Native American nations from southeastern parts of the United States following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. It has been described as an act of genocide by at least one modern historian and is one of many embarrassing part of American history. The removal included many members of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, and Choctaw nations, among others in the United States. Their origin of homeland was the Indian Territory, a.k.a eastern sections of the present-day state of Oklahoma. Many Native Americans suffered from exposure, disease and starvation on the way to their destinations. Many died along the way, including 4,000 of the 15,000 relocated Cherokee.

7.  The Dred Scott Case

Artist: Jay Schaul

Background:

Dred Scott vs Sandford, 1857, was a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that people of African descent brought into the United States and held as slaves, descendants or not, were not protected by the Constitution and could never be U.S. citizens. The court also held that the U.S. Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories and that, because slaves were not citizens, they could not sue in court. Furthermore, the Court ruled that slaves, as chattels or private property, could not be taken away from their owners without due process.

8.  The Battle of Antietam

Artist: Glenn Thomas

Background:

The Battle of Antietam, a.k.a the Battle of Sharpsburg, fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign. This was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000 casualties.

9.  The Emancipation Proclamation

Artist: Richard Perez

Background:

The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War under his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation’s 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with the rest freed as Union armies advanced. The Proclamation made abolition a central goal of the war, outraged white Southerners who envisioned a race war, angered some Northern Democrats, energized anti-slavery forces, and weakened forces in Europe that wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy.

10. The Wright Brothers Take Flight

Artist: Nate Utesch

Background:

The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur,  were two Americans credited with inventing and building the world’s first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903. In the two years afterward, the brothers developed their flying machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. Although not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.