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Spotlight on: Primary Source

The Supreme Court upholds national prohibition, 1920

Economics, Government and Civics

After more than a century of activism, the temperance movement achieved its signal victory with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1919. The amendment abolished "the manufacture, sale, or...

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Civil War condolence letter for General Paul Semmes, 1863

By 1863, thousands of Northern and Southern women had volunteered in hospitals to help care for sick and wounded soldiers. In cities and towns near battlefields, wounded soldiers were often placed in private homes and other buildings...

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The origins of FDR’s New Deal, 1932

Economics, Government and Civics

When the nation fell into the Great Depression following the stock market crash of 1929, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was serving as New York’s governor and was responsible for shaping the state’s response to the crisis. The origins of...

Lesson Plan

The Boston Massacre (Grades 4–6)

Art, Government and Civics, World History

4, 5, 6

View the engraving The Bloody Massacre in King Street in the Gilder Lehrman Collection by clicking here . Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units...

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Lowell Mill Girls and the factory system, 1840

Economics

Lowell, Massachusetts, named in honor of Francis Cabot Lowell, was founded in the early 1820s as a planned town for the manufacture of textiles. It introduced a new system of integrated manufacturing to the United States and...

Lesson Plan

The French and Indian War

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...

Lesson Plan

The National Bank Debate

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Objective This lesson is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These resources were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...

Lesson Plan

The Preamble to the US Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the Declaration of Independence

Government and Civics

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

Lesson Plan

The Evolution of the US Constitution: The Preambles to the Articles of Confederation and the US Constitution

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Objective This lesson plan is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These resources were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Remember the Maine, 1898

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

On February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine exploded in Havana’s harbor in Cuba, killing nearly two-thirds of her crew. The tragedy occurred after years of escalating tensions between the United States and Spain, and the “yellow...

Lesson Plan

Founding Fathers: Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison

Government and Civics

4, 5, 6

Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based units. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance....

Lesson Plan

Survival in the American Wilderness: Fiction v. Nonfiction

7, 8

Lesson Plan

Rural America: The Westward Movement

Geography

7, 8

Lesson Plan

Hubert Humphrey’s Speech to the 1948 Democratic National Convention

Government and Civics

11, 12, 13+

Unit Introduction As the United States moved into the post-WWII world, it faced struggles over diversity and race relations. Soldiers returning from Europe recognized the disparities between races in the United States and, by the late...

Lesson Plan

The Monroe Doctrine

Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...

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"Bleeding Kansas" and the Pottawatomie Massacre, 1856

In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act overturned the Missouri Compromise, which stated that slavery would not be allowed north of latitude 36°30′. Instead, settlers would use the principle of popular sovereignty and vote to determine...

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The Whiskey Rebellion, 1794

Economics, Government and Civics

In 1791, the federal government imposed a tax on distilled spirits to pay off the nation’s debts from the American Revolution. The tax, which was payable only in cash, was particularly hard on small frontier farmers, who bartered and...

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A plea to defend the Alamo, 1836

Government and Civics

A decade of conflict between the Mexican government and US settlers in Texas culminated in 1836 with the siege of the Alamo and the Texas Declaration of Independence. On February 23, 1836, Lieutenant Colonel William Travis, Jim Bowie,...

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A report from Spanish California, 1776

Foreign Languages, Government and Civics

Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, military commander of Alta California, wrote this letter from Mission San Gabriel. Rivera y Moncada was instrumental in the development of missions in California and was in a sometimes-contentious...

Lesson Plan

The National Game. Three "Outs" And One "Run"

Overview A pro-Lincoln satire, deposited for copyright weeks before the 1860 presidential election. The contest is portrayed as a baseball game in which Lincoln has defeated (left to right) John Bell, Stephen A. Douglas, and John C....

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Receipt for land purchased from the Six Nations, 1769

Government and Civics

This document records that the representatives of the Six Nations, who signed using totems to designate individuals and tribes, received $10,000 as payment from the Penns for land the tribes had ceded in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in...

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Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1863

Government and Civics

In 1621, settlers in Massachusetts celebrated what has come to be regarded as the first thanksgiving in the New World. On October 3, 1789, George Washington issued a proclamation creating the first Thanksgiving Day designated by the...

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"Reelect Roosevelt—Friend of Labor," 1936

Economics, Government and Civics

This Democratic Party campaign poster from 1936 outlines some of the agencies and regulations Franklin Roosevelt put in place to try to solve the most urgent problems of the Great Depression. While it reminds laborers of how they have...

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John Adams describes George Washington’s ten talents, 1807

Eight years after George Washington’s death, John Adams penned this letter to Benjamin Rush explaining why George Washington was considered a hero by the American people. He wrote it on November 11, 1807, in response to a letter from...

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The Haymarket Affair, 1886

Economics, Government and Civics

The Haymarket Affair is considered a watershed moment for American labor history, at a time when fears about the loyalties and activities of immigrants, anarchists, and laborers became linked in the minds of many Americans. On May 3,...

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Phillis Wheatley’s poem on tyranny and slavery, 1772

Government and Civics, Literature, Religion and Philosophy

Born in Africa, Phillis Wheatley was captured and sold into slavery as a child. She was purchased by John Wheatley of Boston in 1761. The Wheatleys soon recognized Phillis’s intelligence and taught her to read and write. She became...

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Slave auction catalog from Louisiana, 1855

On March 13 and 14, 1855, the firm of J. A. Beard & May placed on the auction block 178 enslaved men, women, and children at the Banks Arcade in New Orleans, Louisiana. They were part of the estate of William M. Lambeth, who had...

Lesson Plan

The End of the Vietnam War: Conscience, Resistance, and Reconciliation

Lesson Plan

The Transcontinental Railroad in Images and Poetry

Art, Literature, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

4, 5, 6

Unit Objectives Students will analyze a variety of primary sources related to the completion of the transcontinental railroad. investigate celebratory images and a poem to discover some of the key outcomes that arose from the ability...

Lesson Plan

Railroads: The "Engine" to Promote National Unity and Economic Growth

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

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Objectives Students will examine, explain, and evaluate a variety of literary and visual primary sources that describe and depict the development and impact of railroads on sectional relationships, national unity, and economic growth...

Lesson Plan

All Aboard: Making Connections with the Transcontinental Railroad

5, 6, 7, 8

LESSON 1 Objectives Students will Read and understand primary source writings from two key documents that encouraged settlers to go west and that established congressional support of what would eventually become the transcontinental...

Lesson Plan

The Transcontinental Railroad: Interpreting Images

Art

10, 11, 12

Objectives Students will be able to apply the distinction between inferring (inference) and implying (implication). analyze primary source illustrations, including paintings, political cartoons, and promotional posters. Essential...

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Patriotic Postal Covers: "Lincoln & Davis in 5 Rounds," 1861

Art

Patriotic postal covers are an important part of the material culture of the Civil War era. People often collected these covers in special keepsake albums. Such decorative envelopes were used as advertisements and to promote various...

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Conscientious objectors: Madison pardons Quakers, 1816

Government and Civics

In 1816, seven Quakers in Baltimore, Maryland, petitioned President James Madison for pardons after refusing to serve in the militia or pay the exemption fee. Secretary of State James Monroe requested additional information on the men...

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On the emigrant trail, 1862

Geography

Samuel Russell, his mother, and his sisters emigrated to the Mormon settlement at Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1861. The next spring, Russell joined a “down-and-back” wagon train to escort new pioneers to the settlement. These caravans...

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Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, 1936

World History

On August 14, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke at length on the state of international affairs in an address delivered at Chautauqua, New York. Roosevelt’s speech focused on maintaining peace in the face of increasing...

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Literacy and the immigration of "undesirables," 1903

Government and Civics, World History

During the Progressive era, tens of millions of immigrants came to the United States from Europe to fulfill their American dream. During this period most came from southern and eastern Europe, particularly from Italy, Russia, and the...

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Buying Frederick Douglass’s freedom, 1846

Economics

After he had escaped from slavery in 1838, Frederick Douglass became a well-known orator and abolitionist. He wrote an autobiography in 1845, but because he was a runaway slave, its publication increased the chances that he would be...

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A political cartoon of Grant and Lee, 1864

Art, Government and Civics

During the first three years of the Civil War, a series of Union generals led the Army of the Potomac against Confederate General Robert E. Lee with little success. In March 1864, Abraham Lincoln appointed General Ulysses S. Grant...

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Preventing labor discrimination during World War II, 1942

Economics, Government and Civics

In early 1942, as men of working age enlisted in the military and war production accelerated, US industries experienced a labor shortage. President Roosevelt established the War Manpower Commission "to assure the most effective...

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Politics and the Texas Revolution, 1836

Government and Civics

Texas’s fight for independence from Mexico was an uphill battle from the very beginning. Texians were outnumbered and outmatched by the much more powerful Mexican military, and the province was plagued by quarrels within its own...

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Poem on a Civil War death: "Only a Private Killed," 1861

Literature

Approximately 3.5 million men served in the Union and Confederate military during the Civil War. Recent scholarship indicates that at least 750,000 men died. Lewis Mitchell of the 1st Minnesota Volunteers was one of those men. On...

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FDR urges NAACP support before WWII, 1940

On June 14, 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Arthur B. Spingarn, president of the NAACP, to praise the NAACP’s fight for "increasing participation by Negroes in the benefits and responsibilities of the American democracy."...

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William Cullen Bryant opposes the protective tariff, 1876

Economics, Government and Civics

During the Civil War, the United States needed to raise funds urgently. It did so by raising the tariff, which taxed goods imported from other countries. In the days before the national income tax, the United States depended on the...

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William H. Taft recalls dispute with Theodore Roosevelt, 1922

Government and Civics

President Theodore Roosevelt mentored and groomed William Howard Taft to be his successor in the White House. However, once Taft was elected in 1908, he based his administration on a more business-centric and limited-government form...

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Calling out the militia after Lexington and Concord, 1775

On the night of April 18, 1775, 700 British soldiers began to march toward Concord, Massachusetts, to seize and destroy arms the American patriots had stored there. Warned by Paul Revere and William Dawes, minutemen confronted and...

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World War I poems: “In Flanders Fields” and “The Answer,” 1918

Literature, World History

Ella Osborn’s 1918 diary provides insight into the experiences of an American nurse serving in France at the end of World War I. In addition to her notes about the men under her care and events in France, Osborn jotted down two...

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Civilian defense on the home front, 1942

Art, Government and Civics

In the early days of World War II, air raids and other attacks on populated areas in Europe generated fears that similar attacks could happen in the United States. On May 20, 1941, more than six months before the United States entered...

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Nominating an African American for vice president, 1880

Government and Civics

Born a slave in 1841, Blanche Kelso Bruce was the first African American to be elected to a full term in the US Senate. During his term as a senator from Mississippi (1875–1881), he advocated the rights of African Americans and other...

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The service of Medal of Honor recipient Dr. Mary Walker, 1864

Government and Civics

A graduate of Syracuse Medical College, Mary Walker served as a doctor during the American Civil War and was the only female acting assistant surgeon in the Union Army. In April 1864, Walker was captured by the Confederates in...

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