Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

1,584 items

Essay

The Failure of Compromise

Bruce Levine

Government and Civics

K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In the spring of 1861, the United States of America split into two hostile countries—the United States and the new Confederate States of America. The two opposing heads of state agreed about what was causing the rupture—the long...

Essay

Colonization and Settlement, 1585–1763

John Demos

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy, World History

8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

American colonial history belongs to what scholars call the early modern period. As such, it is part of a bridge between markedly different eras in the history of the western world. On its far side lies the long stretch we call the...

Essay

Washington Encourages a Prospective Immigrant: The Economic Potential of the States in 1796

Mary-Jo Kline and Theodore J. Crackel

Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

Essay

Jim Crow and the Great Migration

Jonathan Holloway

In September 1895, Booker T. Washington, the head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, stepped to the podium at the Atlanta Cotton States Exposition and implored white employers to "cast down your bucket where you are" and hire...

Essay

The Road to Revolution

T. H. Breen

Government and Civics, World History

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

The Peace of Paris (February 10, 1763) marked a glorious moment in the history of the British Empire. France surrendered Canada, ending more than a century of warfare on the northern frontier. At the time, no one seriously thought...

Essay

Creating a New Government

Gordon S. Wood

Government and Civics

When on July 4, 1776, Americans declared independence from the monarchy of Great Britain, they were faced with the formidable task of creating new republican governments. Their immediate focus was not on any central authority but on...

Essay

The Gilded Age

T. Jackson Lears

When I was a college student in the late 1960s, the most popular US history courses were the ones that covered the Gilded Age. They promised to illuminate the origins of urgent contemporary problems. Their canvas was broad and filled...

Essay

The New Deal

Thomas Kessner

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s protean presidency from 1933 to 1945 (the longest term of leadership in this nation’s history) has provoked many debates about the man and his policies. For some he is the brilliant tactician who wrestled...

Essay

Religion and Eighteenth-Century Revivalism

Jon Butler

Religion and Philosophy

Revivals and revivalists seem endemic to the broad sweep of American history—Billy Graham’s 1957 "crusade" appearance at New York City’s Yankee Stadium; Aimee Semple McPherson’s theatrical preaching and healing at her Angeles Temple...

Essay

The Politics of Reform

Julie Des Jardins

At the turn of the twentieth century there was a resurging impulse toward social and political reform. In some ways it continued tendencies already apparent since the industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century, in which...

Site Search

1,584 items

The Failure of Compromise

Colonization and Settlement, 1585–1763

Washington Encourages a Prospective Immigrant: The Economic Potential of the States in 1796

Jim Crow and the Great Migration

The Road to Revolution

Creating a New Government

The Gilded Age

The New Deal

Religion and Eighteenth-Century Revivalism

The Politics of Reform

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