299 items
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...
Founding Fathers: Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison
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....
America in Song
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...
Hubert Humphrey’s Speech to the 1948 Democratic National Convention
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...
The Monroe Doctrine
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...
The Whiskey Rebellion, 1794
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...
A plea to defend the Alamo, 1836
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,...
A report from Spanish California, 1776
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...
Receipt for land purchased from the Six Nations, 1769
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...
Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1863
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...
"Reelect Roosevelt—Friend of Labor," 1936
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...
The Haymarket Affair, 1886
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,...
Phillis Wheatley’s poem on tyranny and slavery, 1772
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...
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...
The Transcontinental Railroad in Images and Poetry
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...
Railroads: The "Engine" to Promote National Unity and Economic Growth
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...
Conscientious objectors: Madison pardons Quakers, 1816
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...
Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, 1936
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...
Literacy and the immigration of "undesirables," 1903
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...
Buying Frederick Douglass’s freedom, 1846
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...
A political cartoon of Grant and Lee, 1864
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...
Preventing labor discrimination during World War II, 1942
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...
Politics and the Texas Revolution, 1836
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...
William Cullen Bryant opposes the protective tariff, 1876
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...
William H. Taft recalls dispute with Theodore Roosevelt, 1922
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...
Civilian defense on the home front, 1942
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...
Nominating an African American for vice president, 1880
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...
The service of Medal of Honor recipient Dr. Mary Walker, 1864
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...
The struggle for married women’s rights, circa 1880s
In the early nineteenth century, married women in the US were legally subordinate to their husbands. Wives could not own their own property, keep their own wages, or enter into contracts. Beginning in 1839, states slowly began to...
Verses on Norwegian emigration to America, 1853
Between 1836 and 1865, approximately 55,000 Norwegians sailed to the United States. [1] Like most immigrants, they sought opportunities that didn’t exist at home—religious freedom, economic security, land ownership, and educational...
An African American soldier’s pay warrant, 1780
During the American Revolution, Sharp Liberty, an African American soldier, served in the Connecticut Line of the Continental Army. Before the war, he had been enslaved in Wallingford, Connecticut. In 1777, he enlisted in the army,...
Lyndon B. Johnson proclaims a national day of mourning for JFK, 1963
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald. The next day, the newly sworn-in Lyndon B. Johnson issued his first presidential proclamation. In a statement that was broadcast...
Environmentalism, Love Canal, and Lois Gibbs, 1953-1997
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Campaigning against Franklin Roosevelt’s third term, 1940
Franklin Roosevelt’s run in 1940 for a third consecutive term as president was unprecedented. George Washington established a two-term tradition when he declined to run for a third term in 1796, and until 1940, no other president...
A British view of rebellious Boston, 1774
In the years leading up to the American Revolution, both the British and the colonists used broadsides to influence public opinion. This broadside, “The Bostonian’s Paying the Excise-man, or Tarring & Feathering,” printed in...
A World War II poster: "Starve the Squander Bug," 1943
Before he became world-renowned as Dr. Seuss for his children’s books and illustrations, Theodor Geisel worked for the US government during World War II designing posters such as this one, encouraging patriotism and investment. The...
The Civil Rights Movement: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X
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A soldier on the battle for the Philippines, 1945
Witnessing the brutality of war and atrocities against civilians could overwhelm the most fair-minded of men. Sidney Diamond, an officer in the 82nd Chemical Battalion, wrote loving, humorous, and hopeful letters to his fiancée almost...
Abraham Lincoln's last letter to his wife, 1865
This letter, written as the Union captured the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, demonstrates Lincoln’s active, hands-on commitment as commander in chief of the armed forces as well as his devotion to his family. It reads...
"The President is murdered," 1865
At 10:13 p.m. on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC, President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln, unconscious and bleeding, was rushed...
Understanding President Washington through His First Inaugural and Farewell Addresses
Lesson Overview In this lesson, students will read and analyze excerpts from two of George Washington’s most important addresses. The first is the speech he gave to Congress on the day of his first inauguration in 1789; the second is...
How Hamilton Solved the Economic Problems Facing the United States
Lesson Overview In this lesson students will develop an understanding of the economic challenges facing the newly independent United States. Those challenges included the lack of a national currency, the national government’s...
A Civil War soldier’s satirical take on the news, 1863
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...
The Map Proves It, ca. 1919
Supporters of women’s rights used maps such as the one shown here to demonstrate where women were allowed to vote, when they won that right, and which elections they could vote in. The source of this map is unknown. Originally printed...
Voting restrictions for African Americans, 1944
In 1944 a group of southern editors and writers documented cases of voter suppression in southern states. They took this step because, in the presidential election of 1944, only 28 percent of potential voters in the South participated...
Thomas Rowe and Joshua Hooper: Sedition charges, 1815
Even though the Sedition Act of 1798 had expired in 1801, individuals could still be charged with sedition. On January 20, 1815, Thomas Rowe and Joshua Hooper, publishers of the Massachusetts newspaper The Yankee , printed an article...
The Sedition Act, 1798
On August 14, 1798, the Columbian Centinel , a Boston newspaper aligned with the Federalist Party, printed this copy of the Sedition Act. It was the last in a series of legislation known as the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by the...
Pilgrims, the Plymouth Colony, and Thanksgiving, 1608-1621
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