640 items
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...
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...
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...
Inside the Vault: Pearl Harbor
Originally broadcast on December 3, 2020, this session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection explores Gilder Lehrman Collection materials relating to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7,...
Chris Brown - "Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism"
Order Moral Capital at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
C. Patrick Burrowes - "Liberia & the Quest for Freedom"
Carl Patrick Burrows is a leading Liberian historian. He has served as vice president for academic affairs at Cuttington University and the Carter G. Woodson Distinguished Professor at Marshall University. Order Liberia & the...
Ronald C. White - "On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain"
Ronald C. White Jr. is an American historian, bestselling author, and lecturer. Order On Great Fields at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for...
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.
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Elizabeth Varon- "Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South"
Elizabeth R. Varon is the Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia. Order Longstreet at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link...
Generations in Captivity: Slavery in America
Ira Berlin, Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Maryland, describes how the complex interplay of regional and generational factors shaped the development of slavery in the antebellum United States.
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Runaway slave ad, 1860
Runaway slave ads were a reality in America as long as slavery existed. Appearing as broadsides and in newspapers, such ads offered monetary rewards from slaveholders for the capture and return of escaped slaves. On May 9, 1860, Enoch...
Inside the Vault: Benjamin Franklin
On February 2, 2023, our curators discussed Benjamin Franklin’s copy of the US Constitution and Jean-Antoine Houdon’s bust of Franklin. They were joined by Liz Covart (Founding Director, Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios) and...
Henry Knox on the British invasion of New York, 1776
When twenty-six-year-old Henry Knox, the Continental Army’s artillery commander, penned this letter to his wife, Lucy, on July 8, 1776, patriot morale was at a low point. The summer of 1776 was a particularly hard time as word of...
Pioneering New Methods to Expand Voting, 1865–1920
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> Access this essay as a PDF , including key vocabulary terms and discussion questions, or read the text of the essay below. A new chapter in voting rights began when the Civil War ended in 1865....
Martha Jones - "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All"
Order Vanguard at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
Peter Cozzens - "Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation"
Peter Cozzens is a retired US foreign service officer and winner of the 2017 Gilder Lehrman Prize in Military History. Order Tecumseh and the Prophet at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every...
Guided Readings: Impact of the Revolution on Women and African Americans
Reading 1 I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If...
Why Documents Matter: An Interactive Digital Edition
Welcome to Why Documents Matter: An Interactive Digital Edition —a selection of primary sources from the Gilder Lehrman Collection curated and annotated for K–12 classrooms (print edition available here ). Scroll through the entire...
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...
Symbols of the 1920s: New York City Skyscrapers in Photographs and Paintings
Overview The roaring 1920s was an era of dramatic change. Among the most enduring manifestations of this change was the rise of the big city. The centrality of urban growth to the social, political, and economic changes of the 1920s...
Richard J. M. Blackett - "Samuel Ringgold Ward: A Life of Struggle"
Richard J. M. Blackett is Andrew Jackson Professor of History, Emeritus, at Vanderbilt University. Order Samuel Ringgold Ward at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link...
Carte de la Louisiane et du cours du Mississipi, 1718
This map of “la Louisiane” was published by French geographer Guillaume de l’Isle. It is the first detailed map of the Gulf Coast region and the Mississippi River, as well as the first printed map to show Texas (identified as “Mission...
John Philip Sousa critiques modern music, 1930
John Philip Sousa (1854–1932), an American composer of classical music, served as the director of the United States Marine Band from 1880 to 1892. During Sousa’s time as leader of "The President’s Own," as the band was called, he...
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...
Harriet Beecher Stowe sends Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, 1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 inspired her to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin . The novel, first serialized in newspapers and then published in 1852 as a two-volume work, enjoyed tremendous success in...
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,...
D-Day correspondence between a soldier and his wife, 1944
On June 6, 1944, as Allied forces numbering approximately 160,000 troops landed along fifty miles of coastline in Normandy, France, Moe Weiner, a native of Brooklyn, was serving in the US Army Quartermaster Corps in England. He did...
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...
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,...
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.
"America the Beautiful," 1893
In a brief essay that appeared ca. 1925, poet Katharine Lee Bates described her inspiration for writing "America the Beautiful," the poem that would evolve into one of the nation’s best-loved patriotic songs, during a trip to Pike’s...
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