39 items
The Right to Vote: Part 1 The Early Republic through the Civil War
Who could vote in the founding and Jacksonian eras? Scroll through to view the exhibition (above). Recorded readings of select components in the exhibition...
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and author of Kissinger: A Biography, traces Benjamin Franklin’s life from runaway apprentice to Founding Father, exploring the breadth of his passions and accomplishments as writer,...
The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope
Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of the American Studies Program at Columbia University, Andrew Delbanco examines the evolution of the American Dream--the idea that anyone may rise above his or her...
The Social and Intellectual Legacy of the American Revolution
"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...
The Battle of Horseshoe Bend and the end of the Creek War, 1814
On May 12, 1814, Tennessee settler Isaac Stephens wrote to his uncle Henry Mackey in Virginia about the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. In that battle on March 27, 1814, US Army and Tennessee militia troops under General Andrew...
Kate Masur - "Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction"
Order Until Justice Be Done at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham - "From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans"
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Order From Slavery to Freedom at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate...
Alan Taylor - "American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850"
Alan Taylor is the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Order American Republics at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link...
Eric Foner, Kathleen DuVal, and Lisa McGirr - "Give Me Liberty! An American History"
Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University. Kathleen DuVal is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lisa McGirr is a Charles Warren Professor of American...
Dayton Duncan & Ken Burns - "Blood Memory: The Tragic Decline and Improbable Resurrection of the American Buffalo"
Dayton Duncan is an award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker as well as the author of fourteen books. Ken Burns has been making documentary films for almost fifty years. Order Blood Memory at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We...
The Declaration of Independence in Global Perspective
No American document has had a greater global impact than the Declaration of Independence. It has been fundamental to American history longer than any other text because it was the first to use the name "the United States of America":...
"Contagious Liberty": Women in the Revolutionary Age
Background The American Revolution, a byproduct of events both on the North American continent and abroad, unleashed a movement that focused on egalitarianism in ways that had never been seen before. Even John Adams commented on these...
The Post-Revolutionary Generation
Joyce Appleby, Professor Emerita, University of California, Los Angeles, explores how the men and women born after the American Revolution experienced and developed the theoretical ideas of liberty and independence put in place by...
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Joseph J. Ellis, Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, discusses his Pulitzer Prize–winning book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, explains the emergence of the men who led the Revolutionary War and created...
The Declaration of Independence and the Long Struggle for Equality in America: An Introduction
Whatever else the Declaration of Independence encompassed—a proclamation of political sovereignty, an indictment against the King of England, an appeal for allies—its assertion that “all men are created equal” shines as the polestar...
Washington Encourages a Prospective Immigrant: The Economic Potential of the States in 1796
During his second presidential term, George Washington enjoyed a lively correspondence with Sir John Sinclair, member of Parliament and leader of Britain’s scientific agriculture movement, on matters of mutual interest to the two...
What Does Liberty Look Like?
" We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ." Declaration of...
Black Writers of the Founding Era: A Conversation with James Basker
Black Writers of the Founding Era: A Conversation with James Basker Recorded at Roosevelt House, Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, April 17, 2024.
This discussion of the new Library of America anthology Black Writers of the...
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