Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

90,986 items

History Now Essay

Abolition and Religion

Robert Abzug

Religion and Philosophy

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

One verse of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," the unofficial anthem of the Northern cause, summarized the Civil War’s idealized meaning: In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that...

Appears in:

5 | Abolition Fall 2005

History Now Essay

San Francisco and the Great Earthquake of 1906

Robert W. Cherny

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

At the beginning of the twentieth century, San Francisco still reigned as the major seaport on the Pacific coast. The city traced its origins to 1776, when a Spanish expedition planted a mission and a military post at the end of the...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

History Now Essay

Sisters of Suffrage: British and American Women Fight for the Vote

Barbara Winslow

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The dominant narrative of the entire women’s suffrage movement begins and ends with the United States and Britain. Hundreds of thousands of women petitioned, canvassed, lobbied, demonstrated, engaged in mass civil disobedience, went...

Appears in:

7 | Women's Suffrage Spring 2006

History Now Essay

Medical Advances in Nineteenth-Century America

Bert Hansen

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

We live in an age when there seems to be a medical breakthrough in the headlines every few days, when new discoveries are immediately—and sometimes prematurely—put into practice. It is easy for us, therefore, to assume that this same...

Appears in:

10 | Nineteenth Century Technology Winter 2006

History Now Essay

Why Immigration Matters

Thomas Kessner

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

It is difficult today to recapture the iconoclasm signaled by Oscar Handlin’s opening words to his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Uprooted more than fifty years ago: "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I...

Appears in:

3 | Immigration Spring 2005

Essay

Postwar Politics and the Cold War

Jeremi Suri

The late summer of 1945 marked the height of American power. The country that had suffered from dust bowls, economic depression, and a devastating attack on its Pacific naval fleet in the last decade-and-a-half emerged as the dominant...

History Now Essay

The History of Women’s Baseball

Kerry Candaele

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

From 1943 to 1954, "America’s pastime" was a game played in skirts. At its peak in 1948, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) fielded ten teams in midwestern towns like Rockford, Illinois (Peaches); South Bend,...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

History Now Essay

Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy

Jeremi Suri

World History

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

Henry Kissinger is one of the most controversial figures to emerge from the Cold War. He participated as a soldier, scholar, and statesman in many of the most significant policy debates of the period. He acted as an intellectual,...

Appears in:

27 | The Cold War Spring 2011

History Now Essay

Getting Ready to Lead a World Economy: Enterprise in Nineteenth-Century America

Joyce Appleby

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

When Jefferson won the presidency in 1801, his victory had an economic impact as great as the political one. The establishment of the new government under the Constitution twelve years earlier had laid the foundation for an integrated...

Appears in:

24 | Shaping the American Economy Summer 2010

Essay

Immigration and Migration

Hasia Diner

Economics, Government and Civics

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

The United States emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century as an industrial powerhouse, producing goods that then circulated around the world. People in distant countries used American-made clothes, shoes, textiles,...

Essay

The Progressive Era to the New Era, 1900-1929

Daniel T. Rodgers

Government and Civics

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

We should not accept social life as it has "trickled down to us," the young journalist Walter Lippmann wrote soon after the twentieth century began. "We have to deal with it deliberately, devise its social organization, . . . educate...

History Now Essay

A New Look at the Great Plains

Elliott West

Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

To most Americans the Great Plains are the Great Flyover, or maybe the Great Drivethrough. Viewed from a window seat the plains seem nearly devoid of interest, something to get across enroute to someplace far worthier to explore or...

Appears in:

9 | The American West Fall 2006

History Now Essay

The Righteous Revolution of Mercy Otis Warren

Ray Raphael

Government and Civics, Literature, Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Seven months after British Regulars marched on Lexington and Concord, three months after King George III declared the colonies in a state of rebellion, and a month after British artillery leveled the town of Falmouth (now Portland,...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

History Now Essay

The Colonial Virginia Frontier and International Native American Diplomacy

William White

Government and Civics

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Telling the story of Native Americans and colonial Virginians is a complex challenge clouded by centuries of mythology. The history of early settlement is dominated by the story of a preteen Pocahontas saving the life of a courageous...

Appears in:

28 | American Indians Summer 2011

History Now Essay

Lockean Liberalism and the American Revolution

Isaac Kramnick

Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The town of Boston took an important step toward rebellion on November 20, 1772, by adopting a declaration of "the Rights of the Colonists" drafted by Sam Adams, the firebrand of the Revolution. Adams summarized these "Natural rights"...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

History Now Essay

Rethinking Huck

Steven Mintz

Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

A classic, Mark Twain quipped, is "a book which people praise and don't read." The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the rare classic that is highly praised and widely read. Following World War II, it became required reading in most...

Appears in:

16 | Books That Changed History Summer 2008

History Now Essay

Born Modern: An Overview of the West

Richard White

Geography, Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The present American West is a creation of history rather than geography. There has never been a single West; American Wests come and go. At various times places now considered as thoroughly eastern as western Pennsylvania, western...

Appears in:

9 | The American West Fall 2006

History Now Essay

The Great Debate: Kennedy, Nixon, and Television in the 1960 Race for the Presidency

Liette Gidlow

Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Imagine the setting. Since soon after the close of World War II, the United States had been engaged in a heated Cold War with the Communist Soviet Union. Within the previous four years, Soviet tanks and troops had crushed a democratic...

Appears in:

1 | Elections Fall 2004

History Now Essay

Unruly Americans in the Revolution

Woody Holton

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Nearly all of the blockbuster biographies of the Founding Fathers—whether the subject is George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, or John Adams—portray the vast majority of ordinary Americans as mere bystanders. Although the authors of...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

Essay

The Sixties

Harvard Sitkoff

Forty years after it ended, the 1960s remains the most consequential and controversial decade of the twentieth century. It would dawn bright with hope and idealism, see the liberal state attain its mightiest reforms and reach, and end...

History Now Essay

Reconstruction and the Battle for Woman Suffrage

Ellen DuBois

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The origins of the American women’s suffrage movement are commonly dated from the public protest meeting held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. At that historic meeting, the right of women to join with men in the privileges and...

Appears in:

7 | Women's Suffrage Spring 2006

Essay

The Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945

David M. Kennedy

Economics, Government and Civics

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

Across the long arc of American history, three moments in particular have disproportionately determined the course of the Republic’s development. Each respectively distilled the experience and defined the historical legacy of a...

History Now Essay

The United States and China during the Cold War

Warren I. Cohen

World History

The Cold War Comes to Asia In the closing years of World War II, American military and diplomatic representatives in China recognized that civil war was likely to erupt between the Nationalist-controlled government headed by Chiang...

Appears in:

27 | The Cold War Spring 2011

History Now Essay

From These Honored Dead: Memorial Day and Veterans Day in American History

Kenneth T. Jackson

Government and Civics

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

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the prop osition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether...

Appears in:

4 | American National Holidays Summer 2005

History Now Essay

The Reconstruction Amendments: Official Documents as Social History

Eric Foner

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On June 13, 1866, Thaddeus Stevens, the Republican floor leader in the House of Representatives and the nation’s most prominent Radical Republican, rose to address his Congressional colleagues on the Fourteenth Amendment to the...

Appears in:

2 | Primary Sources on Slavery Winter 2004

Site Search

90,986 items

Abolition and Religion

San Francisco and the Great Earthquake of 1906

Sisters of Suffrage: British and American Women Fight for the Vote

Medical Advances in Nineteenth-Century America

Why Immigration Matters

Postwar Politics and the Cold War

The History of Women’s Baseball

Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy

Getting Ready to Lead a World Economy: Enterprise in Nineteenth-Century America

Immigration and Migration

The Progressive Era to the New Era, 1900-1929

A New Look at the Great Plains

The Righteous Revolution of Mercy Otis Warren

The Colonial Virginia Frontier and International Native American Diplomacy

Lockean Liberalism and the American Revolution

Rethinking Huck

Born Modern: An Overview of the West

The Great Debate: Kennedy, Nixon, and Television in the 1960 Race for the Presidency

Unruly Americans in the Revolution

The Sixties

Reconstruction and the Battle for Woman Suffrage

The Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945

The United States and China during the Cold War

From These Honored Dead: Memorial Day and Veterans Day in American History

The Reconstruction Amendments: Official Documents as Social History

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