Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

90,976 items

History Now Essay

Magellan: Missing in Action

Laurence Bergreen

Geography, Literature, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Ferdinand Magellan, celebrated as the first circumnavigator, has long been the orphan of history. Although he did not survive his famous voyage, Magellan became both an icon of exploration and an outcast—disowned by his native...

Appears in:

12 | The Age Of Exploration Summer 2007

History Now Essay

Robber Barons or Captains of Industry?

T. J. Stiles

Economics, Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On February 9, 1859, Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times , said something strange about Cornelius Vanderbilt. Raymond didn’t like Vanderbilt, a steamship tycoon with such a vast fleet that he was known as the Commodore,...

Appears in:

24 | Shaping the American Economy Summer 2010

History Now Essay

When the Past Speaks to the Present: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

Annette Gordon-Reed

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History and a professor of history at Harvard University. Her books include The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2008), which received the Pulitzer...

Appears in:

2 | Primary Sources on Slavery Winter 2004

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

Essay

The Fifties

Alan Brinkley

The years from the end of World War II to the end of the 1950s were dominated by four powerful changes in American life. The first was the birth of the Cold War, and the great fears that it created. The second was the dramatic growth...

History Now Essay

Bridging the Caribbean: Puerto Rican Roots in Nineteenth-Century America

Virginia Sánchez Korrol

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In recent years, the media has tended to portray US Latinos of Hispanic Caribbean ancestry as new immigrants, but this characterization ignores the long connections between these immigrants and the United States. And because Puerto...

Appears in:

3 | Immigration Spring 2005

History Now Essay

The Great Depression: An Overview

David M. Kennedy

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Herbert Hoover got many things wrong about the great economic calamity that destroyed his presidency and his historical reputation, but he got one fundamental thing right. Much legend to the contrary, the Great Depression was not...

Appears in:

The Great Depression

History Now Essay

Remembering the Alamo

Char Miller

Geography, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Just hours before John F. Kennedy was to deliver one of the most important speeches of the 1960 presidential campaign in Houston, Texas, the Massachusetts Democrat stood in front of the Alamo. Here, before some 30,000 San Antonians,...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

Essay

1945 to the Present

William H. Chafe

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

No event proved more important to the course of modern American history than World War II. The war cast America onto the world stage as a mighty economic and military giant. It rescued the country from the Great Depression, created...

History Now Essay

The Consequences of Defeat in Vietnam

Mark Atwood Lawrence

Government and Civics, World History

As historians of the Vietnam War know all too well, the amount of documentation about the conflict available in US archives—to say nothing of foreign repositories—can be overwhelming. To master even a small slice of this material is a...

Appears in:

27 | The Cold War Spring 2011

History Now Essay

George Washington and the Constitution

Theodore J. Crackel

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

George Washington was among the first of America’s statesmen to recognize the flaws in the government under the Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation. His experience in the Revolutionary War had convinced him that...

Appears in:

13 | The Constitution Fall 2007

History Now Essay

The Riddles of "Confederate Emancipation"

Bruce Levine

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In July 1861, Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, was exulting over the victory of his troops at the first Battle of Manassas (or Bull Run) and calling it a sign of eventual triumph in the war as a...

Appears in:

26 | New Interpretations of the Civil War Winter 2010

Essay

The American Civil War

Gary W. Gallagher

6, 7, 8, 9

The Civil War marked a defining moment in United States history. Long simmering sectional tensions reached a critical stage in 1860–1861 when eleven slaveholding states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. Political...

Essay

The Development of the West

Ned Blackhawk

In the summer of 1876, two dramatically different places captured the American nation’s attention. As the summer began, fairgoers in Philadelphia teemed into the Centennial Exhibition held to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary...

History Now Essay

A Place in History: Historical Perspective on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

James Oliver Horton

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In the late fall of 1983, the US Congress passed a bill declaring the third Monday of January each year as Martin Luther King Jr. Day. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law on November 2, 1983, fifteen years after King’s...

Appears in:

4 | American National Holidays Summer 2005

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

Lincoln’s Religion

Richard Carwardine

Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

"Lincoln often, if not wholly, was an atheist," insisted one of Lincoln’s political associates, James H. Matheny. The young Lincoln had "called Christ a bastard," "ridiculed the Bible," and duped pious voters into believing he was "a...

Appears in:

18 | Abraham Lincoln in His Time and Ours Winter 2008

History Now Essay

Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Matter of Influence

Hollis Robbins

Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

One hundred years after Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, the poet Langston Hughes called the novel, "the most cussed and discussed book of its time." Hughes’s observation is particularly apt in that it avoids...

Appears in:

16 | Books That Changed History Summer 2008

History Now Essay

Before Jackie: How Strikeout King Satchel Paige Struck Down Jim Crow

Larry Tye

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Satchel Paige was pitching in the Negro Leagues in California when he got the news he had been anticipating for two decades. Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey had just signed a Negro to a big-league contract—the first Negro in...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

History Now Essay

The Form and Function of the Supreme Court

Charles Anthony Smith

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Supreme Court often stands at the center of the storm of politics. High profile cases over individual liberties, federal or state power, or even presidential elections can dominate the news and attention of the public. The close...

Appears in:

15 | The Supreme Court Spring 2008

Essay

The Seventies

Judith Stein

Long overshadowed by the tumultuous 1960s and the transformative 1980s, the 1970s has finally been recognized as an era in its own right. And it is more than Watergate, big hair, and disco. During the 1970s, postwar affluence was...

History Now Essay

“Rachel Weeping for Her Children”: Black Women and the Abolition of Slavery

Margaret Washington

Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

During the period leading up to the Civil War, black women all over the North comprised a stalwart but now largely forgotten abolitionist army. In myriad ways, these race-conscious women worked to bring immediate emancipation to the...

Appears in:

5 | Abolition Fall 2005

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

Essay

The Rise of Industrial America, 1877-1900

Richard White

Economics, Government and Civics

When in 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner entitled their co-authored novel The Gilded Age , they gave the late nineteenth century its popular name. The term reflected the combination of outward wealth and dazzle with inner...

History Now Essay

Truman and His Doctrine: Revolutionary, Unprecedented, and Bipartisan

Elizabeth Edwards Spalding

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In February 1947, the British government privately told the United States that it would no longer be able to guarantee the security and independence of Greece and Turkey. President Harry S. Truman had known this time would come and...

Appears in:

27 | The Cold War Spring 2011

History Now Essay

From Citizen to Enemy: The Tragedy of Japanese Internment

Julie Des Jardins

Government and Civics, World History

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Although World War II is covered in most school curricula, the story of American citizens who were stripped of their civil liberties here, on American soil, during that war is often omitted. Yet what happened to first-generation...

Appears in:

14 | World War II Winter 2007

History Now Essay

The Presidential Election of 1800: A Story of Crisis, Controversy, and Change

Joanne B. Freeman

Government and Civics

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Nasty political mud-slinging. Campaign attacks and counterattacks. Personal insults. Outrageous newspaper invective. Dire predictions of warfare and national collapse. Innovative new forms of politicking capitalizing on a growing...

Appears in:

1 | Elections Fall 2004

History Now Essay

A Local and National Story: The Civil Rights Movement in Postwar Washington, DC

Wendell E. Pritchett

Government and Civics

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The history of the Civil Rights Movement is the story of numerous grassroots campaigns loosely coordinated and assisted by a small number of national organizations. Every local struggle had its own actors, issues, and nuances, and all...

Appears in:

8 | The Civil Rights Movement Summer 2006

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

Site Search

90,976 items

Magellan: Missing in Action

Robber Barons or Captains of Industry?

When the Past Speaks to the Present: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings

The Fifties

Bridging the Caribbean: Puerto Rican Roots in Nineteenth-Century America

The Great Depression: An Overview

Remembering the Alamo

1945 to the Present

The Consequences of Defeat in Vietnam

George Washington and the Constitution

The Riddles of "Confederate Emancipation"

The American Civil War

The Development of the West

A Place in History: Historical Perspective on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Lincoln’s Religion

Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Matter of Influence

Before Jackie: How Strikeout King Satchel Paige Struck Down Jim Crow

The Form and Function of the Supreme Court

The Seventies

“Rachel Weeping for Her Children”: Black Women and the Abolition of Slavery

The Rise of Industrial America, 1877-1900

Truman and His Doctrine: Revolutionary, Unprecedented, and Bipartisan

From Citizen to Enemy: The Tragedy of Japanese Internment

The Presidential Election of 1800: A Story of Crisis, Controversy, and Change

A Local and National Story: The Civil Rights Movement in Postwar Washington, DC

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