188 items
For our first live web chat for Affiliate Schools, Fordham University historian Saul Cornell joined Gilder Lehrman Institute President James Basker to discuss constitutional history and the modern-day implications of dissent in the...
John Adams Describes the "Ten Talents" of George Washington: Document in a Minute
Gilder Lehrman curator Beth Huffer discusses a letter from John Adams to Benjamin Rush in which Adams describes Washington's greatest talents as a "handsome Face," an "elegant Form," and "graceful Attitudes and Movement."
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"One Last Time" from Hamilton
A performance of "One Last Time" from the Broadway musical Hamilton . Performed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Christopher Jackson, Sydney James Harcourt, and Ian Weinberger at the 2015 George Washington Prize dinner in New York City.
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America the Newcomer: Claiming the Louisiana Purchase
The Lewis and Clark expedition is rightly considered one of the great American stories. In May of 1804 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set off by keelboat up the Missouri River with thirty-one men, the "Corps of Discovery," on an...
The Age of Jefferson and Madison
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both played important roles in the era of the American Revolution. Jefferson was the lead author of the Declaration of Independence that launched the American experiment in republican government;...
Henry Knox’s Order of March to Trenton, 1776
On Christmas Day in 1776 the American Revolution was on the verge of collapsing. Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American forces had been driven from New York City to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and reduced...
George Washington on the abolition of slavery, 1786
Of the nine presidents who were slaveholders, only George Washington freed all his own slaves upon his death. Before the Revolution, Washington, like most White Americans, took slavery for granted. At the time of the Revolution, one...
Two versions of the Preamble to the Constitution, 1787
On May 25, 1787, the fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention began meeting in a room, no bigger than a large schoolroom, in Philadelphia’s State House. They posted sentries at the doors and windows to keep their "secrets...
George Washington’s reluctance to become president, 1789
From 1787 to 1789, as the Constitution was submitted for ratification by the states, most Americans assumed that George Washington would be the first president. In this April 1789 letter to General Henry Knox, his friend from the...
The duel: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, 1804
Alexander Hamilton, former secretary of the treasury, and Aaron Burr, sitting vice president of the United States, had feuded publicly for years. Their long-standing enmity came to a head in the spring of 1804. After an exchange of...
A map of the Louisiana Territory, 1806
The 1803 Louisiana Purchase from France during Thomas Jefferson’s first term as president more than doubled the size of the United States. Jefferson’s next step was to learn all about this new territory of the United States. He chose...
Jefferson on British aggression, 1815
In this letter in defense of American nationalism, Thomas Jefferson denounced the blustering of certain members of the British House of Lords who blamed the War of 1812 on US aggression. Jefferson’s letter followed a report from James...
Washington on a proposed third term and political parties, 1799
By 1798, George Washington had led America to victory in the Revolution, helped create the American government, and served two terms as the nation’s first president (1789–1797). He was called back to service, though, by President John...
John Adams on the abolition of slavery, 1801
On January 24, 1801, President John Adams responded to two abolitionists who had sent him an anti-slavery pamphlet by Quaker reformer Warner Mifflin (1745–1798). In the letter, Adams expresses his views on slavery, the dangers posed...
Surrender of the British General Cornwallis to the Americans, October 19, 1781
These three documents—a map, a manuscript, and a print—tell the story of the surrender of British commander Charles Cornwallis to American General George Washington. In October 1781, the successful siege of Yorktown, Virginia, by...
"Jefferson is in every view less dangerous than Burr": Hamilton on the election of 1800
The presidential election of 1800 had resulted in a tie between the two Democratic Republicans, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The founders had not foreseen the rise of political parties and the effects that development would have...
George Washington discusses Shays’ Rebellion and the upcoming Constitutional Convention, 1787
On January 25, 1787, Daniel Shays and his insurrectionists confronted a Massachusetts state militia force outside the Springfield armory. Shays’ Rebellion had begun in the summer of 1786, when Shays, a former Continental Army captain,...
Speech in favor of the Twelfth Amendment, 1803
Until 1804, American presidents were elected under a system established in the US Constitution in which each member of the Electoral College voted for two presidential candidates. The candidate who received the most votes became...
Historical Context: The Constitution and Slavery
On the 200th anniversary of the ratification of the US Constitution, Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to sit on the Supreme Court, said that the Constitution was "defective from the start." He pointed out that the framers...
Historical Context: The First National Census
Early in August 1790, David Howe, an assistant federal marshal, began the difficult task of counting all the people who lived in Hancock County, Maine. One of 650 federal census takers, charged with making "a...perfect enumeration.....
Historical Context: The Survival of the US Constitution
The United States has the oldest written national framework of government in the world. At the end of the twentieth century, there were about 159 other national constitutions in the world, and 101 had been adopted since 1970. While...
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...
Annette Gordon-Reed - "The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family"
Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and a professor of history at Harvard. Order The Hemingses of Monticello at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the...
Daina Ramey Berry & Leslie Harris - "Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas"
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Caroline Winterer - "American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason"
Caroline Winterer is William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford University. Order American Enlightenments at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through...
Alan Taylor - "Thomas Jefferson's Education"
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Richard Brookhiser - "Give Me Liberty: A History of America's Exceptional Idea"
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Harold Holzer - "The Presidents Vs. The Press: The Endless Battle between the White House and the Media—from the Founding Fathers to Fake News"
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Chris Brown - "Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism"
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Manisha Sinha - "The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition"
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Kariann Yokota - "Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation"
Kariann Yokota is an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado, Denver. Order Unbecoming British at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided....
Marcus Nevius - "City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763–1856"
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Catherine Kerrison - "Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America"
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Kate Masur - "Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction"
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Richard Haass - "The World: A Brief Introduction"
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John Avlon - "Washington's Farewell: The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations"
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Alexander Keyssar - "Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?"
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Martha Saxton - "The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington"
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Van Gosse - "The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War
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David Head - "A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution"
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Robert Watson - "George Washington's Final Battle: The Epic Struggle to Build a Capital City and Nation"
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Carolyn Eastman - "The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States' First Forgotten Celebrity"
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Matthew Costello - "The Property of the Nation: George Washington's Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President"
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Tamika Nunley - "At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C."
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David Armitage - "The Declaration of Independence: A Global History"
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Jessica Marie Johnson - "Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World"
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Clint Smith - "How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery across America"
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Julie Winch - "Between Slavery and Freedom: Free People of Color in America From Settlement to the Civil War"
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