News Inside the Vault: A Susan B. Anthony Autograph Read about the journey for equal rights for women in Women’s Suffrage: History Now 7 (Spring 2006) .
News "Thanksgiving: Another Serving" from Jill Lepore Harvard professor and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore describes how, within a single generation, relations between the settlers and the Wampanoags declined from the fabled First Thanksgiving to a devastating war. Lepore notes: ...
News Inside the Vault: JFK Assassination Ticker Tape Read a transcript of the Dow Jones News Service ticker tape and read about the power of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in Great Inaugural Addresses: History Now 36 (Summer 2013) .
News Inside the Vault: The Gettysburg Address Read about the Gettysburg Address or watch the lecture "The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln through His Words" by Professor Ronald C. White of the University of California, Los Angeles.
News Booker T. Washington Dines with Theodore Roosevelt, Americans Outraged In October of 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House. As the founder of the Tuskegee Institute and a respected leader of the African American community , Washington was an important...
News Articles of Confederation: On This Day, November 17 A day after appointing a committee to write the Declaration of Independence, the Second Continental Congress named another committee to write the Articles of Confederation . The members worked from June 1776 until November 17, 1777,...
News NPS to Establish Manhattan Project Park What was once the biggest secret in America is being commemorated in public—building the bomb. The National Park Service and the Department of Energy announced last week the establishment of three national historic parks at Manhattan...
News The Uprising of the 20,000: On This Day, November 23 In 1909 a young immigrant woman made a speech in Yiddish that galvanzied a meeting of garment workers into what became a massive, and ultimately successful, strike. Twenty thousand workers followed Clara Lemlich into the streets of...
News Happy Birthday, Mark Twain: On This Day, November 30 Mark Twain famously said that he had come in with Halley’s Comet in 1835 and expected to go out with it on its return journey. Indeed, Twain did die in 1910 as the comet was making its return pass. In the intervening years Twain...
News Thanksgiving as a National Holiday Read an excerpt from Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863 or learn more about the history of Thanksgiving as a national holiday .
News The Fifteenth Amendment and Voting Rights for African Americans As we approach the end of November, a month filled with elections and gratitude, let’s take a look back at the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted voting rights to African Americans, and explore a print that celebrates its ratification...
News Rosa Parks Refuses to Move: On This Day, December 1 On December 1, 1955, after a long day of work as a seamstress, Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and took a seat. Parks, a black woman, took a seat in the first row of seats in the rear "colored...
News John Brown Executed: On This Day, December 2 On December 2, 1859, John Brown went to the gallows for his failed raid on the arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown was a polarizing figure. In the image to the left , based on an incident reported in the New York Tribune that...
News An African American Protests the Fugitive Slave Law: On This Day, December 4 The Compromise of 1850 included the controversial Fugitive Slave Law that allowed for the seizure of alleged runaway slaves without due process and prohibited any obstruction to their recovery. Escaped slaves living in the North...
News Inside the Vault: The Calhoun School Cyanotype Album With its staff of white and African American teachers, the Calhoun School was not the norm in the Jim Crow South. Read a letter written by Frederick Douglass on Jim Crow practices in education and other professions.
News Happy New Year from the Gilder Lehrman Institute This hand-drawn card comes from Horatio Loomis Wait’s papers in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Wait, from New York and Chicago, served in the US Navy from July 1862 through July 1870. His letters home often included sketches of mid...
News Celebrate the Student Essay! As the best-books-of-the-year lists proliferate, it’s time to remind ourselves to nurture young writers. Here at the Gilder Lehrman Institute we have a great way for history teachers to highlight their students’ achievements. It’s the...
News Attack on Pearl Harbor: On This Day, December 7 Shortly before 8 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack against US armed forces in Hawaii. The Japanese targeted the Army, Navy, and Marine airfields before bombing the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The...
News Learn to Make a Gigapixel for Image Analysis Have you ever wanted to really dive deep into an image from history? Get in close to that little figure in the corner? Read the cartoon captions without a magnifying glass? The Gigapixel tool from StoryMapJS will help you do just that...
News Inside the Vault: John Adams Describes the "Ten Talents" of George Washington Read a transcript of the "Ten Talents" of George Washington letter written by John Adams.
News The Amendment That Transformed the Nation: On This Day, December 18 One hundred and fifty years ago today, the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment was proclaimed by Secretary of State William Seward. Abraham Lincoln had fought to get the amendment passed by the Senate and the House, but he did...
News Sherman’s Christmas Present: On This Day, December 22 On December 22, 1864, Union General William T. Sherman sent a message to President Lincoln from Georgia, saying, "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of...
News Inside the Vault: Slave Tags Read about the Facts of the Slave Trade and Slavery and the Material Culture of Slave Resistance .
News Inside the Vault: George Washington Crossing the Delaware Read an excerpt of the Orders to March on Trenton and watch a video on Washington’s Crossing .
News Inside the Vault: Davie Jeems Stands Up to the KKK Read an excerpt of the letter to Davie Jeems .
News Holiday Dinner with the Nuclear Family As the winter holidays draw close and Americans everywhere travel to celebrate with their loved ones, it is important to remember how one should act when having dinner with family. The 1950 Encyclopedia Britannica film A Date with...
News Discover Two New Gilder Lehrman Self-Paced Courses The Gilder Lehrman Institute is excited to announce the addition of two new self-paced courses, Emancipation and The Kennedy Presidency , to our Self-Paced Course Series . This series offers graduate-level courses in American history...
News The Lewis and Clark Expedition View a full-screen version of The Lewis and Clark Exhibition . Learn more about the Louisiana Purchase in Elliott West’s essay " America the Newcomer: Claiming the Louisiana Purchase " and a printed copy of the map Meriwether Lewis...
News Congratulations to George Washington Prize Recipient Lin-Manuel Miranda! On Monday, December 14 , Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator and star of Broadway’s hit musical Hamilton, received the George Washington Prize. Miranda became the first playwright to win the literary award in an exciting ceremony that...
News Soldier Spotlight: Diary of a Sailor on the Eve of Pearl Harbor Thomas Barwiss Hagstoz Askin Jr. joined the US Navy in March 1938 at the age of 17. His diary, entitled "Memorys and Incidents of My Last 60 (?) Days in the United States Navy," begins on August 14, 1941, when he was stationed on...
News The Night After Christmas The phrase "’Twas the night before Christmas," from Clement Moore’s "A Visit from St. Nicholas" is familiar to most of us, but less familiar is the poem, "The Night after Christmas," written by Dr. Robert Archer. Archer, born in 1794...
News The Emancipation Proclamation: On This Day, January 1 As the nation approached the third year of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are...
News Bert the Turtle Ducks and Covers Today’s school children are familiar with fire drills, earthquake drills, tornado drills, and even tsunami drills. Filing out-doors to athletic fields or hiding under desks from imaginary natural disaster debris is expected, scheduled...
News Henry Ford Introduces the Minimum Wage: On This Day, January 5 On January 5, 1914, automaker Henry Ford made history by instituting a $5-a-day wage. The move made national news. Five dollars a day constituted double the industry norm—and double the pay of most of Ford’s own employees. At the same...
News Common Sense Published: On This Day, January 10 Did you know that the most popular written work in American history was published before America was an actual nation of its own? On January 10, 1776, six months before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the...
News Happy Birthday, Hamilton: On This Day, January 11 Alexander Hamilton was born on this day, either in 1755 or 1757 (historians debate the year). Explore Hamilton’s life and legacy in this interactive digital exhibit.
News Ulysses S. Grant Raises Funds for the Statue of Liberty The Statue of Liberty has long welcomed newcomers to the United States as a shining beacon of freedom and opportunity in the middle of New York Harbor. Children are taught that the Statue of Liberty was gifted to the United States by...
News How Sideburns Got Their Name Either you love ’em or you hate ’em. Everyone has an opinion on sideburns, and few fashion choices provoke quite so much controversy. Yet sideburns have a rich history that can be appreciated by supporters and detractors alike....
News Inside the Vault: George Wallace on Segregation, 1964 Read an excerpt of the letter written by George Wallace and explore the online exhibition Freedom Riders , detailing the struggle for civil rights when Wallace was governor.
News Martin Luther King Day This weekend, our country celebrates the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister and activist who became one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout his life, which was cut too short by his tragic...
News Inside the Vault: Long Journey of Civil Rights Read an essay about the abolitionist Grimke sisters and the essay " The Civil Rights Movement: Major Events and Legacies " to explore the long struggle for civil rights.
News Happy National Handwriting Day! Did you have a good National Handwriting Day? What? You didn’t know that penmanship-appreciators across the nation celebrate January 23 as National Handwriting Day? The rising popularity of typewriters and word processors in the 20th...
News Inside the Vault: 19th-Century Photography Read about photography in the 19th century , explore select images from the American Civil War , and create your own Civil War-era portrait .
News Progressive Era Reform Movements at a Glance Are you teaching the Progressive Era this spring? Use the infographic below to provide your students an overview of the reform movements that make the Progressive Era stand out as a time of massive social, political, and economic...
News Frederick Douglass from Slavery to Freeedom As part of a Google Cultural Institute initiative on African American history, the Gilder Lehrman Institute created six digital exhibits featuring Gilder Lehrman’s rich materials relating to African American history. In celebration of...
News African Americans in the US Military: From the Revolution to the World Wars Despite unfair compensation, segregation , and even legal bars on military service, African Americans have served in every conflict in United States history . Take a peek at the next digital exhibition in Gilder Lehrman’s Black...
News Gilder Lehrman Featured on Google Doodle We are thrilled to contribute to today’s Google Doodle honoring Frederick Douglass. Today is the first day of Black History Month, and the approximate date of Frederick Douglass’s 198th birthday. Gilder Lehrman contributed to today’s...
News Congratulations to Ada Ferrer, Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize Ada Ferrer, profess o r of history and Latin American and Caribbean studies at New York University, was awarded the Frederick Douglass Book Prize Thursday night in a ceremony at the Y ale Club in New York City. The award, which...