Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

90,986 items

History Now Issue

The Role of China in US History

#42 Spring 2015

History Now Issue

Wartime Memoirs and Letters from the American Revolution to Vietnam

#43 Fall 2015

History Now Issue

Alexander Hamilton in the American Imagination

#44 Winter 2016

History Now Issue

American History in Visual Art

#45 Summer 2016

History Now Issue

African American Soldiers

#46 Fall 2016

History Now Issue

American Women in Leadership

#47 Winter 2017

History Now Issue

Jazz, the Blues, and American Identity

#48 Summer 2017

Essay

"Your Late Lamented Husband": A Letter from Frederick Douglass to Mary Todd Lincoln

David W. Blight

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On March 4, 1865, Frederick Douglass attended President Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration. Standing in the crowd, Douglass heard Lincoln declare slavery the "cause" and emancipation the "result" of the Civil War. Over the crisp...

Essay

Imperial Rivalries

Peter C. Mancall

World History

K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

When Christopher Columbus made his plans to sail westward across the Atlantic, he first set off across Europe to find sponsors. His brother Bartholomew went to the court of the English King Henry VII (who turned him down, much to the...

History Now Essay

Inventing American Diplomacy

R. B. Bernstein

Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1783, the expatriate artist Benjamin West began what became his most memorable painting, "The Peacemakers." West intended to produce a group portrait of the diplomats whose negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Paris of 1783, but...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

History Now Essay

The Spectacles of 1912

Patricia O’Toole

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The presidential election year of 1912 began with one unprecedented spectacle, ended with another, and sandwiched a few more in between. In February, former president Theodore Roosevelt stunned the country by challenging President...

Appears in:

17 | Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era Fall 2008

History Now Essay

The Puritans and Dissent: The Cases of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson

Francis J. Bremer

Religion and Philosophy

Every society constructs what one scholar has called a "perimeter fence," which sets the boundary between actions and beliefs that are acceptable and those that are not. [1] This is as true of the United States in the twentieth...

Appears in:

29 | Religion in the Colonial World Fall 2011

History Now Essay

African American Religious Leadership and the Civil Rights Movement

Clarence Taylor

Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Clarence Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Modern African American History, Religion, and Civil Rights at Baruch College, The City University of New York. His books include The Black Churches of Brooklyn (1994), Knocking at Our Own Door...

Appears in:

8 | The Civil Rights Movement Summer 2006

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

Native American Discoveries of Europe

Daniel K. Richter

Economics, Geography, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Native Americans discovered Europe at the same time Europeans discovered America. As far as we know, no birch bark canoes caught the gulf stream to Glasgow, and no Native American conquistadores planted flags at Florence, but just as...

Appears in:

12 | The Age Of Exploration Summer 2007

History Now Essay

Teaching American History to Muslim Exchange Students

Ted Widmer

Government and Civics

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

Everyone knows that the election of 2004 marked a pivotal turning point for the American people. That point was brought home forcefully by the experience of teaching American history that summer to a group of twenty-one young Muslim...

Appears in:

1 | Elections Fall 2004

History Now Essay

Coming to America: Ellis Island and New York City

Vincent J. Cannato

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

New York City is a kind of archipelago, a Philippines on the Hudson River. Only one borough—the Bronx—is actually attached to the American mainland. There are some forty islands in the city beyond Manhattan, Staten Island, and Long...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

History Now Essay

Why We the People? Citizens as Agents of Constitutional Change

Linda R. Monk

Government and Civics

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

"We the People?" asked Patrick Henry at the Virginia convention to ratify the new Constitution in 1788. "Who authorized them to speak the language of ‘We the People,’ instead of ‘We the States’?" [1] Looking back, we can be grateful...

Appears in:

13 | The Constitution Fall 2007

Essay

The Roaring Twenties

Joshua Zeitz

The 1920s heralded a dramatic break between America’s past and future. Before World War I the country remained culturally and psychologically rooted in the nineteenth century, but in the 1920s America seemed to break its wistful...

History Now Essay

The Impact of Title IX

Barbara Winslow

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

One of the great achievements of the women’s movement was the enactment of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The law states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

Essay

Populism and Agrarian Discontent

Michael Kazin

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Today, the Gilded Age evokes thoughts of “robber baron” industrialists, immigrants toiling long hours in factories for little pay, massive strikes that were often put down by force, and political corruption in both big cities and the...

Essay

Exploration

Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Benjamin Sacks

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

We often speak of America as "unknown," except to its own inhabitants, in the Middle Ages. But so, in a sense, was Europe, which hardly figured on the maps and in the calculations of the immensely richer, more populous, and...

History Now Essay

Immigrant Fiction: Exploring an American Identity

Phillip Lopate

Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Strictly speaking, all American novels (with the exception of those written by Native Americans) are in one way or another immigrant fiction. But we usually think of immigrant fiction more narrowly as the encounter of the foreign-born...

Appears in:

3 | Immigration Spring 2005

History Now Essay

The Seneca Falls Convention: Setting the National Stage for Women’s Suffrage

Judith Wellman

Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On July 19–20, 1848, about 300 people met for two hot days and candlelit evenings in the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, in the first formal women’s rights convention ever held in the United States. Sixty-eight women ...

Appears in:

7 | Women's Suffrage Spring 2006

Essay

Facing the New Millennium

Michael Flamm

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

In 1941, on the eve of Pearl Harbor, Time magazine publisher Henry Luce predicted that the twentieth century would become known as the "American Century." By many measures he was correct. During the next sixty years, the United States...

History Now Essay

Thomas Jefferson and Deism

Peter S. Onuf

Of all the American founders, Thomas Jefferson is most closely associated with deism, the Enlightenment faith in a rational, law-governed world created by a "supreme architect" or cosmic "clockmaker." For many modern Americans, deist...

Appears in:

29 | Religion in the Colonial World Fall 2011

Site Search

90,986 items

The Role of China in US History

Wartime Memoirs and Letters from the American Revolution to Vietnam

Alexander Hamilton in the American Imagination

American History in Visual Art

African American Soldiers

American Women in Leadership

Jazz, the Blues, and American Identity

"Your Late Lamented Husband": A Letter from Frederick Douglass to Mary Todd Lincoln

Imperial Rivalries

Inventing American Diplomacy

The Spectacles of 1912

The Puritans and Dissent: The Cases of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson

African American Religious Leadership and the Civil Rights Movement

Native American Discoveries of Europe

Teaching American History to Muslim Exchange Students

Coming to America: Ellis Island and New York City

Why We the People? Citizens as Agents of Constitutional Change

The Roaring Twenties

The Impact of Title IX

Populism and Agrarian Discontent

Exploration

Immigrant Fiction: Exploring an American Identity

The Seneca Falls Convention: Setting the National Stage for Women’s Suffrage

Facing the New Millennium

Thomas Jefferson and Deism

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