492 items
When twenty-six-year-old Henry Knox, the Continental Army’s artillery commander, penned this letter to his wife, Lucy, on July 8, 1776, patriot morale was at a low point. The summer of 1776 was a particularly hard time as word of...
The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
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, and analyze original texts of historical...
The New Deal: Legislation & Policies
Historical Background When the stock market crashed in October of 1929, American citizens faced economic challenges unlike anything previously experienced in U.S. history. By the time Franklin Delano Roosevelt became President in 1933...
Rise of the Populists and William Jennings Bryan
Historical Background As the United States evolved into an industrial powerhouse in the decades following the Civil War, the growing strength of the railroads and the banks particularly, coupled with the impact of mechanization on...
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,...
Mass Production, Suburbia & Conformity in the 1950s
Essential Question How did conformity apply as a value to the living choices of Americans during the 1950’s? Materials Postwar Society Data and Questions (PDF) Little Boxes , written by Malvina Reynolds (1962) (Lyrics) Two Photos &...
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...
The Civil War and early submarine warfare, 1863
Civil War combat foreshadowed modern warfare with the introduction of the machine gun, repeater rifles, and trench warfare, and the use of trains to quickly move troops. However, one of the most celebrated tactical innovations of the...
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,...
George Washington and the Newburgh Conspiracy, 1783
In March of 1783, George Washington faced a serious threat to his authority and to the civil government of the new nation. The Continental Army, based in Newburgh, New York, was awaiting word of peace negotiations between Great...
Indenture agreement, 1742
Colonial Americans engaged in many forms of unfree labor, with great numbers of youths moving away from their families to become servants or apprentices. The terms of their service were spelled out in contracts called indentures,...
A soldier’s reasons for enlisting, 1942
"Our country is the entire world and mankind our countrymen!!!" In April of 1942, Sidney Diamond, a chemical engineering student at City College in New York, enlisted in the United States Army against the wishes of his friends and...
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...
American Music Goes to War
Entertainment is always a national asset. Invaluable in time of peace, it is indispensable in wartime. —Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1943 Background Music during World War II had an unprecedented impact on America, both on the home front...
Union soldier turns medic at Gettysburg, 1863
After three days of fierce fighting on July 1–3, 1863, nearly 40,000 battered soldiers lay scattered across the blood-soaked fields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. As the torrential summer rain poured down on the wounded, Private Elbert...
African American soldiers at the Battle of Fort Wagner, 1863
On July 18, 1863, on Morris Island near Charleston, South Carolina, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a Union regiment of free African American men, began their assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold. After the...
George Washington from Valley Forge on the urgent need for men and supplies, 1777
George Washington’s words in this letter represent a stirring plea for help at the darkest moment of the American Revolution. As few other documents do, this letter illustrates Valley Forge as an icon of American perseverance and...
Mary Todd Lincoln on life after the White House, 1870
Mary Todd Lincoln’s years in the White House were a combination of triumph and tragedy. Never fully accepted by the public and vilified by the press for overspending, her tenure as First Lady was unstable at best. After the death of...
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...
General Sherman on the "March to the Sea," 1865
In the fall of 1864, Gen. James H. Wilson took command of Gen. William T. Sherman’s cavalry. Sherman and Wilson met and discussed various operations in Sherman’s “March to the Sea” from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. Wilson’s...
Lucy Knox on the home front during the Revolutionary War, 1777
Like many others before and after her, Lucy Knox performed a continuous juggling act as a busy wife and mother. Born into an aristocratic family, she had the advantage of a good education. At the age of seventeen she was disowned by...
Robert E. Lee’s message to his troops before the Battle of Spotsylvania, 1864
Just after the devastating fighting in Virginia at the Battle of the Wilderness and prior to the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864, Confederate General Robert E. Lee drafted this inspirational message to his troops on the back of a...
A former Confederate officer on slavery and the Civil War, 1907
How can a soldier be proud of the country he defends while at the same time opposed to the cause he is fighting for? John S. Mosby, the renowned Confederate partisan leader, dealt with this moral dilemma years after the Civil War...
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