121 items
Between battles, marches, and military exercises, Civil War soldiers spent their free time in camp playing music, writing and reading letters, and, for those with the skill, sketching scenes from the day. This unknown soldier’s...
"Harlem's Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills"
Born to parents who were both former slaves, Florence Mills knew at an early age that she loved to sing and that her sweet, bird-like voice, resonated with those who heard her. Performing catapulted her all the way to the stages of...
Inside the Vault: Jewish American Soldiers & Jewish Refugees after World War II
In the wake of World War II, American servicemen helped Jewish refugees come to the United States. Join us as we learn more about the servicemen’s work through primary sources. Who were these people? What are their stories? On...
The American Revolution: The Boston Massacre, “Yankee Doodle,” and the Declaration of Independence, 1770-1776
Click here to download this four-lesson unit.
Inside the Vault: A 1925 Study Guide for Eighth-Grade Graduation in Iowa
Are you smarter than a (1925) eighth grader? In the 1920s, when most students did not go to high school, the eighth-grade state examinations marked the end of their formal education. Sam C. Stephenson published review books to help...
Pilgrims, the Plymouth Colony, and Thanksgiving, 1608-1621
Click here to download this five-lesson unit.
The Supreme Court and Religious Freedom
A. E. Dick Howard, the White Burkett Miller Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Virginia School of Law, presents a short history of the Constitution and discusses the Supreme Court’s role in the ongoing debate...
Europeans and the New World, 1400–1530
Brian DeLay, associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses how the backwater of western Europe emerged from the devastation of the fourteenth century to generate the power, wealth, knowledge,...
Monuments and Memorials: The South in American History
Edward L. Ayers speaks about the idea of memory and its relationship to American history.
Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend
James I. Robertson, Alumni Distinguished Professor in history at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, re-examines, in Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend, the life and the aura of Thomas "Stonewall"...
The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity
Jill Lepore, Professor of Early American History at Harvard University, draws on scholarship from her book, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity, to trace how the meanings attached to this brutally...
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 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...
In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692
Mary Beth Norton, Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University, examines the Salem witchcraft crisis from a seventeenth-century perspective, drawing not only on court records, but also on correspondence and...
Gold, Gospel, and Glory: Motivations for European Exploration and Colonization of the Americas
Professor John Fea of Messiah College discusses the European motivations--gold, gospel, and glory--for exploration in the Americas, taking Europeans from the Crusades to the Spanish conquest and the exploitation of resources in the...
Lincoln’s Religion
Professor Richard Carwadine examines Lincoln's religious beliefs as America's crisis deepened, and looks at the role that the President's religious sentiments played in mobilizing support for the war among Union citizens. Richard...
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...
Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock ’n’ Roll
Marc Dolan, an English and American Studies scholar at John Jay College, City University of New York (CUNY), discusses his new book, Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock 'n' Roll (W.W. Norton, 2012).
...
The Story of America: Essays on Origins
Historian Jill Lepore (David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard and a staff writer at the New Yorker ) discusses her 2012 book, The Story of America: Essays on Origins (Princeton University Press).
...
Exchanges of Culture and Conflict in the Southwest
Professor DeLay looks at changes in thought, technology, and outlook that prompted early exploration, and Spain’s late entry into colonial pursuits.
Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America since 1940
Yale University historian Jonathan Holloway discusses his 2013 work, Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America since 1940, with James Basker, President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Professor...
Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America
Lafayette College historian Donald Miller discusses his new book, Supreme City: How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America, in an interview with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
...
Inside the Vault: British Troops Landing in Boston Harbor
Explore just one of the fascinating items from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History collection!
The Doctrine of Discovery, 1493
The Papal Bull "Inter Caetera," issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, played a central role in the Spanish conquest of the New World. The document supported Spain’s strategy to ensure its exclusive right to the lands...
Cotton Mather’s account of the Salem witch trials, 1693
Most Americans’ knowledge of the seventeenth century comes from heavily mythologized events: the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, Pocahontas purportedly saving Captain John Smith from execution in early Virginia, and the Salem witch...
Columbus reports on his first voyage, 1493
On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Spain to find an all-water route to Asia. On October 12, more than two months later, Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas that he called San Salvador; the natives called it Guanahani....
Bartolomé de Las Casas debates the subjugation of the Indians, 1550
This tract, a summary of a debate concerning the subjugation of Indians, contains the arguments of Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, and Juan Gines Sepulveda, an influential Spanish philosopher, concerning the...
George Washington on attending church, 1762
In 1762, Virginia planter and future president George Washington, just thirty years old, had reason for optimism. He had inherited Mount Vernon a decade earlier, and it had prospered under his management; plus he had married Martha...
De Soto's discovery of the Mississippi, 1541
In 1539, Hernando de Soto led the first major European expedition into the interior of the southeastern North America, an area then known as La Florida. De Soto landed near Tampa Bay, Florida, with more than 600 men, and hoped to find...
Landing of Henrick Hudson, 1609
In 1609, Henry Hudson was chosen by the Dutch East India Company to search for a passage to Asia. In September of that year, Hudson landed on the shores of the river that would be named for him and claimed the lands along it for the...
Stephen Austin's contract to bring settlers to Texas, 1825
In order to settle Texas in the 1820s, the Mexican government allowed speculators, called empresarios, to acquire large tracts of land if they promised to bring in settlers to populate the region and make it profitable. Moses and...
Anti-corporate cartoons, ca. 1900
These cartoons illustrate the growing hostility toward the practices of the big businesses that fueled the industrial development of the United States. In "The Protectors of Our Industries" (1883), railroad magnates Jay Gould and...
Civilian Conservation Corps poster, 1938
The Civilian Conservation Corps directly addressed two of the most pressing problems during the Depression: male youth unemployment and environmental degradation. The CCC, based on a military model of everyday life, put thousands of...
Photograph of an abandoned farm in the Dust Bowl, 1938
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...
Secotan, an Algonquian village, ca. 1585
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...
William Penn on the "Well-Governing of My Family," 1751
Quaker school teacher Josiah Forster first published this broadside in 1751, thirty years after the death of its author, William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania. The treatise, Christian Discipline: Or Certain Good and...
Abstinence pledge card, 1842
Mathew Theobald, a Catholic priest in Dublin, Ireland, founded the Cork Total Abstinence Society on April 10, 1838. About sixty followers joined Theobald in swearing off alcohol completely and signed his abstinence pledge book....
Birth of a Nation, 1915
This "Advice Sheet" flyer was distributed with D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation to theaters when the film was released in 1915. Significantly, the distributors are adamant that "NEGROES MUST NOT BE ADMITTED . . . under any...
Showing results 51 - 100