Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

90,976 items

Essay

History Times: The Colonial Era

Gilder Lehrman Institute

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

2, 3, 4, 5

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean Imagine saying goodbye to family, friends, and familiar places to take a dangerous voyage across thousands of miles of ocean in a small wooden ship. Your destination: a strange and often hostile land. Yet,...

Essay

History Times: The Industrial Revolution

Gilder Lehrman Institute

K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

A Changing Nation The second half of the nineteenth century can be described as a time of innovation, invention, and rapid growth—a period known as the "Industrial Revolution." Many inventions from this period never caught on or have...

Essay

History Times: A Nation of Immigrants

Gilder Lehrman Institute

Economics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Coming to the Land of Opportunity Throughout American history, millions of people around the world have left their homelands for a chance to start a new life in this country—and they continue to come here to this day. People who come...

Essay

The Social and Intellectual Legacy of the American Revolution

Gary B. Nash

Government and Civics

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

"We can see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used. We are now really another people, and cannot again go back to ignorance and prejudice. The mind once enlightened cannot...

Essay

The Open Door Policy and the Boxer War: The US and China

Warren I. Cohen

By 1899, the United States had become a world power. It was not only the world’s greatest industrial nation, but in the war with Spain it had demonstrated a willingness to use its power militarily. It had acquired possessions near and...

Essay

Anti-Communism in the 1950s

Wendy Wall

In 1950, fewer than 50,000 Americans out of a total US population of 150 million were members of the Communist Party. Yet in the late 1940s and early 1950s, American fears of internal communist subversion reached a nearly hysterical...

Essay

The United States and the Caribbean, 1877–1920

Jason Colby

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...

Essay

Prohibition and Its Effects

Lisa Andersen

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

The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in January 1919 and enacted in January 1920, outlawed the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors." This amendment was the culmination of decades of effort...

Essay

To Understand a Scandal: Watergate beyond Nixon

David Sarias

Government and Civics

In the early hours of June 17, 1972, police officers arrested five men suspected of breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC’s Watergate office building. This building would lend its...

History Now Essay

When Myth and Meaning Overshadow History: Remembering the Alamo

Linda K. Salvucci

Rare are the students who enter US classrooms without some preconceived notions regarding the Alamo. Thanks to more than a dozen films produced at regular intervals over the last century, to Walt Disney’s television series for baby...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

Women and the Progressive Movement

Miriam Cohen

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

At the end of the nineteenth century, American politicians, journalists, professionals, and volunteers mobilized on behalf of reforms meant to deal with a variety of social problems associated with industrialization. Woman activists,...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

Modern Women Persuading Modern Men: The Nineteenth Amendment and the Movement for Woman Suffrage, 1916–1920

Jonathan Soffer

Government and Civics

Today we take women’s suffrage for granted, but many activists of the nineteenth century, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, struggled their whole lives for the vote, and did not live to see it. As a presidential...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

The Zimmermann Telegram and American Entry into World War I

Michael S. Neiberg

World History

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

The fact that the telegram before him bore Arthur Zimmermann’s name made its contents that much harder for Walter Hines Page to believe. Page was the American ambassador to Great Britain and on a cold London morning in late February...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

D-Day or Operation Overlord, June 6, 1944

Antony Beevor

World History

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

As dawn broke on June 6, 1944, the Allied invasion fleet became visible crossing the choppy waters of the English Channel to France. None of those who took part in D-Day, whether soldier, sailor, or airman, would ever forget the sight...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

The Battle for Baltimore

Alan Taylor

Bitter over the American declaration of war in 1812, when the British Empire had faced the emperor Napoleon at the peak of his power, the British sought payback in 1814. The war erupted over American anger at the British for seizing...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

George Washington’s French and Indian War

Theodore J. Crackel

World History

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

By the 1580s the French were ahead of the British in reaching into the interior of North America. They had established trading companies there, and their ships regularly brought furs back to France. Early in the seventeenth century...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

The Vietnam War and the My Lai Massacre

George Herring

The murder of more than 400 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai and My Khe by US soldiers on March 16, 1968, stands as one of the darkest days in the nation’s military history. It left an indelible stain on America’s record in Vietnam, the...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

Technology in the Persian Gulf War of 1991

Robert Citino

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

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

In August 1990, the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait. Five short months later, a powerful coalition led by the United States would launch Operation Desert Storm, one of the most rapid, decisive, and bloodless victories of all time. In just...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

The Korean War

Allan R. Millett

World History

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

The Korean War was three different conflicts from the perspective of the disparate groups who fought in it. For North and South Korea, the conflict was a civil war, a struggle with no possible compromise between two competing visions...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

The Battle of Antietam: A Turning Point in the Civil War

James M. McPherson

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

Four days after the battle of Antietam, which took place near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, Captain Robert Gould Shaw of the 2nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry wrote to his father: "Every battle makes me wish more and...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

No Way Out: Lord Cornwallis, the Siege of Yorktown, and America’s Victory in the War for Independence

James Kirby Martin

Early on the morning of October 17, 1781, Lieutenant General Charles, Lord Cornwallis, found himself hunkered down in a cave near the southern shoreline of the York River. Above him was the disintegrating hamlet of Yorktown, Virginia,...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

Sylvester Graham and Antebellum Diet Reform

Cindy Lobel

"Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants." So begins Michael Pollan’s 2009 book, In Defense of Food . Pollan has made a career educating Americans about the dangers of our contemporary, industrialized food supply. His book offers a...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

Education Reform in Antebellum America

Barbara Winslow

Economics, Religion and Philosophy

Education reform is often at the heart of all great reform struggles. [1] By the 1820s Americans were experiencing exhilarating as well as unsettling social and economic changes. In the North, the familiar rural and agrarian life was...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

Transcendentalism and Social Reform

Philip F. Gura

Those Americans who have heard of American Transcendentalism associate it with the writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and his friend Henry David Thoreau. Asked to name things about the group they remember, most mention Emerson’s ringing...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

The War against Spain in the Philippines in 1898

Richard Meixsel

Before learning of Commodore George Dewey’s destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on the morning of May 1, 1898, few Americans knew anything about the Philippine Islands. In her Pulitzer Prize–winning In the Days of McKinley ...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

Site Search

90,976 items

History Times: The Colonial Era

History Times: The Industrial Revolution

History Times: A Nation of Immigrants

The Social and Intellectual Legacy of the American Revolution

The Open Door Policy and the Boxer War: The US and China

Anti-Communism in the 1950s

The United States and the Caribbean, 1877–1920

Prohibition and Its Effects

To Understand a Scandal: Watergate beyond Nixon

When Myth and Meaning Overshadow History: Remembering the Alamo

Women and the Progressive Movement

Modern Women Persuading Modern Men: The Nineteenth Amendment and the Movement for Woman Suffrage, 1916–1920

The Zimmermann Telegram and American Entry into World War I

D-Day or Operation Overlord, June 6, 1944

The Battle for Baltimore

George Washington’s French and Indian War

The Vietnam War and the My Lai Massacre

Technology in the Persian Gulf War of 1991

The Korean War

The Battle of Antietam: A Turning Point in the Civil War

No Way Out: Lord Cornwallis, the Siege of Yorktown, and America’s Victory in the War for Independence

Sylvester Graham and Antebellum Diet Reform

Education Reform in Antebellum America

Transcendentalism and Social Reform

The War against Spain in the Philippines in 1898

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