The author analyzes the program documents of the Slovak national movement as historiographical sources. He focuses on historical thinking of Slovak patriots in the year of revolution 1848 and then in the early 1860s. He compares the two fundamental political documents of the national movement, namely the "Requests of the Slovak Nation" (1848) and the "Memorandum of the Slovak Nation" (1861). In the later the Slovak politicians proposed a fundamentally different discourse in comparison to the "Requests" (1848).