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News

Colin Calloway Receives the 2019 George Washington Prize

Colin Calloway, winner of the $50,000 George Washington Prize for his 2018 book The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation, was honored by George Washington’s Mount...

News

Spring 2020 Registration Now Open for the Pace–Gilder Lehrman MA in American History Program

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Pace University are pleased to announce that registration for the Spring 2020 courses is now open for the online Master of Arts in American History for K–12 teachers affiliated with...

News

Spring 2020 Online Courses: Meet the Professors for Historiography

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Pace University are pleased to announce that registration for the Spring 2020 courses is now open for the online Master of Arts in American History for K–12 teachers affiliated with...

History Now Issue

Examining Reconstruction

#55 Fall 2019

Video

"Stony the Road": A Book Talk

History Now Essay

Reconstruction and the Remaking of the Constitution

Eric Foner

Government and Civics

Reprinted by permission of Eric Foner from the preface to his book The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution (Norton, 2019) The Civil War and the Reconstruction period that followed form the...

Appears in:

55 | Examining Reconstruction Fall 2019

History Now Essay

Reconstructing the West and North

Richard White

Economics, Government and Civics

In 1865 the Radicals of the Republican Party regarded the Northern victory in the Civil War as a “golden moment” to remake the Republic. The Republicans controlled Congress, the Supreme Court, and, so they thought until Andrew Johnson...

Appears in:

55 | Examining Reconstruction Fall 2019

News

Study the Origins of the Civil War with James Oakes, Distinguished Professor of History, CUNY Graduate Center

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Pace University are pleased to announce that registration for Spring 2020 courses is now open for the online Master of Arts in American History Program for K–12 teachers affiliated...

About page

Yale and the Gilder Lehrman Institute Announce 2019 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner

New Haven, Conn.— Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition announces the winner of the 21st annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize. The 2019 winner of the prize is Amy Murrell Taylor...

History Now Essay

Frederick Douglass and the Dawn of Reconstruction

Douglas R. Egerton

Government and Civics

Historians today debate precisely when Reconstruction began, yet in many ways that is a very old discussion. At the time, its goals and focus were disputed, and even what to call the federal policy for the collapsing Confederacy was...

Appears in:

55 | Examining Reconstruction Fall 2019

Program/Event

Professional Development | World War I Centennial Workshop Series

To commemorate the centennial of World War I, we are pleased to offer free professional development sessions in forty cities across the country. These sessions will focus on different aspects of the war and how to effectively bring...

Lesson Plan

After World War II: The Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crimes Trials

Government and Civics

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Click here to download this lesson.

Lesson Plan

Women Win the Right to Vote

11, 12

Click here to download this two-lesson unit.

Program/Event

November Affiliate School Offer Lesson Plans

Click the images below to access the lesson plans offered to Affiliate School teachers this month. Teaching With Documents:Colonial America to Reconstruction:A Selection of Unitsfor Elementary School American Symbols:The Flag, the...

History Now Essay

Citizenship in the Reconstruction South

Susanna Lee

Economics, Government and Civics

Slaveholders created a system of race, gender, and class inequality in the pre-Civil War South. They justified slavery by arguing that enslaved people could not take care of themselves and needed masters to look after them. White...

Appears in:

55 | Examining Reconstruction Fall 2019

News

2020 Teacher Seminars, Spotlight on the Teacher Seminar Summit at Gettysburg

Registration for the 2020 Gilder Lehrman Teacher Seminars is now open! New this year is the Teacher Seminar Summit at Gettysburg College, July 19–22, 2020. During this inaugural Summit the Institute will offer twelve concurrent...

History Now Essay

The Rise (and Fall) of the First Ku Klux Klan

Elaine S. Frantz

Some of the historical details in this essay could be disturbing for younger readers. In 1866, a group of defeated Confederate veterans created the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee. The group consisted of the local newspaper editor,...

Appears in:

55 | Examining Reconstruction Fall 2019

History Now Essay

Editor’s Log

Carol Berkin

If the Civil War preserved the Union, then Reconstruction grappled with what that Union was to look like in the future. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, passed in the years immediately after...

Appears in:

55 | Examining Reconstruction Fall 2019

Lesson Plan

The Decision to Escalate in Vietnam

8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Click here to download this three-lesson unit.

News

Study the American West with Elliott West, Distinguished Professor of History, University of Arkansas

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Pace University are pleased to announce that registration for Spring 2020 courses is now open for the online Master of Arts in American History Program for K–12 teachers affiliated...

News

Study Women in the American Revolution with Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor American Colonial and Revolutionary History, Baruch College, CUNY

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Pace University are pleased to announce that registration for Spring 2020 courses is now open for the online Master of Arts in American History Program for K–12 teachers affiliated...

News

Study American Immigration History with Madeline Hsu, Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Pace University are pleased to announce that registration for Spring 2020 courses is now open for the online Master of Arts in American History Program for K–12 teachers affiliated...

News

Spotlight on the 3-Day Regional Teacher Seminars in 2020

In its 25th year of offering dynamic, content-rich Teacher Seminars led by the top scholars in the country, the Gilder Lehrman Institute announces that, in addition to 6-Day Teacher Seminars and the inaugural Teacher Seminar Summit, 3...

News

Amy Murrell Taylor Wins 2019 Frederick Douglass Book Prize and Gives Interview on NPR

Amy Murrell Taylor, Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, is the winner of the 2019 Frederick Douglass Book Prize for Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps (University of North Carolina...

News

Spotlight on the 6-Day Teacher Seminars in 2020

Registration for the 2020 Gilder Lehrman Teacher Seminars is now open! In its 25th year of offering dynamic, content-rich Teacher Seminars led by the top scholars in the country, the Gilder Lehrman Institute announces that, in...