730 items
View a copy of Jackson’s Message to Congress in the Gilder Lehrman Collection by clicking here . For additional resources click here . Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based...
Washington's Farewell Address
View a copy of Washington’s Farewell Address in the Gilder Lehrman Collection by clicking here . For a resource regarding the possibility of Washington staying on for a third term click here . Click here to download this five-lesson...
The Declaration of Independence
View the Declaration in the Gilder Lehrman Collection by clicking here and here . For additional primary resources click here and here . Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based...
Students’ Constitutional Rights in Public School
Essential Question When may the rights of students in school be restricted? Materials Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, 1969 , Boston College New Jersey v. T.L.O., 1985 , Legal Information Institute, Cornell University...
Ronald Reagan on Reducing the Size of Government
Essential Questions How can the powers of government be divided to best run our nation in this modern era? What role should the federal government play in shaping our economy? Document Ronald Reagan’s State of the Union Message,...
Dwight D. Eisenhower's Domestic Leadership
Essential Questions What constitutes great presidential leadership? How did Eisenhower demonstrate great leadership through his support of the Federal-Aid Highway Act (1956) and his warning about the growth of the Military-Industrial...
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address
View this item in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize...
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" Speech
Unit Overview This unit is part of the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s Teaching Literacy through History resources, designed to align to the Common Core State Standards. These units were developed to enable students to understand,...
Study Aid: The Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people...
Study Aid: Checks and Balances
Checks and Balances Executive Branch carries out the laws can veto laws can call special sessions of Congress controls enforcement of laws nominates judges can pardon people convicted of federal crimes commander in chief develops...
The Cold War: Discussing the Speech of President Kennedy in 1963
Introduction The Cold War is the term for the rivalry between the two blocs of contending states that emerged following the Second World War. It was a series of confrontations played out on the world stage between the non-Communist...
Lincoln on abolition in England and the United States, 1858
Though Lincoln spoke frequently during the 1858 Illinois Senate race against Stephen Douglas—a campaign that propelled Lincoln to the political forefront and helped shape him into a presidential candidate—very few Lincoln manuscripts...
Slavery in the New York State census, 1800
While numbers do not explain the everyday realities of slavery in the eighteenth century, they do provide a sense of the pervasiveness of the peculiar institution even in a northern state like New York. This broadside provides figures...
Sergeant Francis Fletcher of the 54th Massachusetts on equal pay for Black soldiers, 1864
Francis H. Fletcher, a 22-year-old clerk from Salem, Massachusetts, enlisted as a private in Company A of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment on February 13, 1863. One year after the regiment left Boston with great fanfare,...
A Founding Father on the Missouri Compromise, 1819
In 1819 a courageous group of Northern congressmen and senators opened debate on the most divisive of antebellum political issues—slavery. Since the Quaker petitions of 1790, Congress had been silent on slavery. That silence was...
Frederick Douglass on Jim Crow, 1887
Frederick Douglass tirelessly labored to end slavery but true equality remained out of reach. Despite the successful passage of several Constitutional amendments and federal laws after the Civil War, unwritten rules and Jim Crow laws...
Suffragists invoke Lincoln, 1910
In 1910 Washington State voted to approve full woman suffrage, a vote that was influenced by publications and posters such as this one. This poster, declaring that "Lincoln said women should vote," invoked the words of Abraham Lincoln...
Breaking from Great Britain, 1776
Sid Lapidus Collection: Liberty and the American Revolution By 1776, Thomas Paine had become the most influential writer defending the break from Great Britain. Born in England, Paine arrived in the colonies in 1774, at age 34. His...
Statistics: Immigration in America, Ku Klux Klan membership: 1915-1940s
The following charts are presented in the book The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930 by Kenneth T. Jackson. The first chart represents the states with the highest recorded membership in the Klan during this time period. The...
Alexander Hamilton’s "gloomy" view of the American Revolution, 1780
By October 1780, in the midst of the American Revolution, Alexander Hamilton was discouraged by the apparent apathy of the American people and the ineffectuality of their elected representatives, as well as by the recent discovery of...
Thomas Jefferson's opposition to the Federalists, 1810
The Federalist Party evolved from the core of Federalists, like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, who wrote and defended the US Constitution in 1787–1788. The political party advocated a strong central government and supported...
Ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, 1866
President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves only in Confederate states still at war with the Union on January 1, 1863, and as a wartime order, it could be reversed by subsequent presidential proclamation,...
Our Constitution: The Bill of Rights (Grades 7–9)
View the Constitution in the Gilder Lehrman Collection by clicking here and here . For a resource on the variations between a draft and the final version of the Constitution of the United State, click here . Unit Objective These...
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