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2024 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize Recipients Announced

March 1, 2024 — The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History announced today that Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant , co-authors of Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era (Oxford University Press), are...

Essay

"To give all a chance": Lincoln, Abolition, and Economic Freedom

Lewis E. Lehrman

Government and Civics

To read carefully the Lincoln economic parable of the ant (reprinted here) suggests a lost truth about our sixteenth president: during most of Abraham Lincoln’s political career he focused not on anti-slavery but on economic policy....

History Now Essay

Fighting for Democracy in World War I—Overseas and Over Here

Maurice Jackson

Maurice Jackson is Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University. He is the author of Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (2009), and the co-editor of...

Appears in:

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

46 | African American Soldiers Fall 2016

History Now Essay

Anti-Slavery before the Revolutionary War

Sylvia R. Frey

Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Anti-slavery is almost as old as slavery itself. Indeed it could easily be argued that the first enslaved person who jumped overboard or led an on-ship rebellion on the Middle Passage launched the anti-slavery movement. The modern...

Appears in:

5 | Abolition Fall 2005

Collection Item

The fifteenth amendment celebrated May 19th 1870

1870

Beard, James Carter, 1837-1913

One print entitled The fifteenth amendment celebrated May 19th 1870, dated 1870. Copyright entered by Thomas Kelly. From an original by James Beard. Lithograph in color with much iconography relating to passage of the Reconstruction amendments and...

GLC10030

History Now Essay

From the Editor

Carol Berkin

Personal visits to cemeteries and burial grounds evoke both emotions and memories. But these final resting places are also windows into our national history. The heroes buried at Arlington tell us the story of our nation’s wars while...

Appears in:

62 | The Honored Dead: African American Cemeteries, Graveyards, and Burial Grounds Spring 2022

History Now Essay

From the Editor

Carol Berkin

The Declaration of Independence continues to be a central focus of attention both in our historical literature and in the defining of our national identity. In this issue of History Now , five distinguished scholars examine the impact...

Appears in:

67 | The Influence of the Declaration of Independence on the Civil War and Reconstruction Era Summer 2023

History Now Essay

Historical Archaeology, Kingsley Plantation, and the Construction of Past Time

James M. Davidson

Archaeology is the study of the past—people and everything they were, their public acts and private hopes—or at least it is an earnest attempt to “construct” this past through a meticulous examination of material objects, the greater...

Appears in:

49 | Excavating American History Fall 2017

Classroom Resources

Abraham Lincoln Highlights

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, founded in 1994 promotes the knowledge and understanding of American history through educational programs and resources. Drawing on the 80,000 documents in the Gilder Lehrman...

History Now Essay

"Revered By All": The Declaration of Independence in the Reconstruction Era

Douglas R. Egerton

Government and Civics

Although it was the speech that redefined the conflict and effectively changed the meaning of the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address is often misunderstood today when it is not simply ignored, at least in American...

Appears in:

67 | The Influence of the Declaration of Independence on the Civil War and Reconstruction Era Summer 2023