92 items
No American document has had a greater global impact than the Declaration of Independence. It has been fundamental to American history longer than any other text because it was the first to use the name "the United States of America":...
The United States and the Caribbean, 1877–1920
Between 1877 and 1920, the United States’ relationship with the Caribbean region underwent a profound change, which was closely tied to the transformation of the United States to an industrial and imperial power. Although the Civil...
Douglass and Lincoln: A Convergence
In 1880, Osborn Oldroyd invited Frederick Douglass to write something for a collection of tributes to Abraham Lincoln, published two years later as The Lincoln Memorial: Album-Immortelles . Douglass was uncharacteristically brief, but...
"To give all a chance": Lincoln, Abolition, and Economic Freedom
To read carefully the Lincoln economic parable of the ant (reprinted here) suggests a lost truth about our sixteenth president: during most of Abraham Lincoln’s political career he focused not on anti-slavery but on economic policy....
"In the end you are sure to succeed": Lincoln on Perseverance
If there was one quality Abraham Lincoln believed essential both to individual success and to social advancement, it was industriousness. A child of the impoverished frontier who went on to take proud advantage of what historian Gabor...
African American Voting Rights
African American Voting Rights from The Gilder Lehrman Institute on Vimeo .
Immigration and Migration
The United States emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century as an industrial powerhouse, producing goods that then circulated around the world. People in distant countries used American-made clothes, shoes, textiles,...
Alexander Hamilton and the Ratification of the Constitution
Return to Alexander Hamilton: Witness to the Founding Era .
Alexander Hamilton Establishes the US Economy
Return to Alexander Hamilton: Witness to the Founding Era .
Alexander Hamilton and Washington’s Presidency
Return to Alexander Hamilton: Witness to the Founding Era .
The American Revolution through the Eyes of Hamilton
Return to Alexander Hamilton: Witness to the Founding Era .
Hamilton's New York: Lower Manhattan Walking Tour
Join the Gilder Lehrman Institute and Professor Cindy Lobel on a virtual walking tour of Alexander Hamilton’s Lower Manhattan.
Why Documents Matter: An Interactive Digital Edition
Welcome to Why Documents Matter: An Interactive Digital Edition —a selection of primary sources from the Gilder Lehrman Collection curated and annotated for K–12 classrooms (print edition available here ). Scroll through the entire...
Alexander Hamilton: Witness to the Founding Era
This series of online exhibitions explores the importance of Alexander Hamilton to the founding of the United States. Each mini-exhibition features locations where Alexander Hamilton made history and documents written by or about him...
Revolutionary in America
The image is so clear in our minds, seen first in elementary school and reinforced countless times since: a few dozen gentlemen with powdered wigs and period suits (coats, waistcoats, and knee-length breeches) gathered in a large...
Sally Hemings
Exploring extraordinary Black lives of the Founding Era, such as that of Sally Hemings, can transform our understanding of American history. Born in Virginia in 1773, Sally Hemings was an enslaved woman in the household of Thomas...
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