Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

90,945 items

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Japanese internment, 1942

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Responding to fears of Japanese spies within the United States, President Roosevelt signed an order authorizing the forced relocation and confinement of more than 110,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans living in the West....

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Official photograph from the "Golden Spike" Ceremony, 1869

Economics, Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

This iconic photograph records the celebration marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad lines at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869, when Leland Stanford, co-founder of the Central Pacific Railroad,...

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Photograph of a "Hooverville," 1936

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

"Hoovervilles" were temporary communities that America’s homeless created to provide shelter for themselves and their families during the Great Depression. They were so named as an insult to President Herbert Hoover, who seemed to be...

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Photograph of an abandoned farm in the Dust Bowl, 1938

Art, Economics, Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

When a severe drought in the early 1930s left the crops of the Great Plains stunted, the relentless winds of the plains picked up the soil and brewed up horrific, roiling storms that gave this time its name: the Dust Bowl. Thousands...

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San Francisco's Chinatown, 1880

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Workingmen’s Party of California pamphlet, which is representative of widespread anti-immigration sentiment, attacks President Ulysses S. Grant and calls San Francisco’s Chinatown "rampant with disease." On May 8, 1882, President...

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William T. Sherman on the western railroads, 1878

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

After Ulysses S. Grant’s election as president, William Tecumseh Sherman, known for leading the "March to the Sea" in the closing months of the Civil War, was appointed commanding general of the United States Army. Headquartered in St...

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Andrew Jackson to the Cherokee Tribe, 1835

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Elected president in 1828, Andrew Jackson supported the removal of American Indians from their homelands, arguing that the American Indians’ survival depended on separation from whites. In this 1835 circular to the Cherokee people,...

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"Jefferson is in every view less dangerous than Burr": Hamilton on the election of 1800

Government and Civics

The presidential election of 1800 had resulted in a tie between the two Democratic Republicans, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The founders had not foreseen the rise of political parties and the effects that development would have...

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The Battles of Lexington and Concord, 1775

By April 1775, reconciliation between England and the thirteen colonies had failed. Two months earlier, Parliament had declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion, and on April 14 General Thomas Gage received secret orders...

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Secotan, an Algonquian village, ca. 1585

Art

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

In the 1570s and 1580s, John White served as an artist and mapmaker to several expeditions around the Carolinas. White made numerous watercolor sketches depicting the Algonquian people and stunning American landscapes. This engraving...

Site Search

90,945 items

Japanese internment, 1942

Official photograph from the "Golden Spike" Ceremony, 1869

Photograph of a "Hooverville," 1936

Photograph of an abandoned farm in the Dust Bowl, 1938

San Francisco's Chinatown, 1880

William T. Sherman on the western railroads, 1878

Andrew Jackson to the Cherokee Tribe, 1835

"Jefferson is in every view less dangerous than Burr": Hamilton on the election of 1800

The Battles of Lexington and Concord, 1775

Secotan, an Algonquian village, ca. 1585

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