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History Now Essay

Women and the Home Front: New Civil War Scholarship

Catherine Clinton

Art, Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In the 1960s the image of Scarlett O’Hara standing before a Technicolor-drenched panorama from Gone With the Wind (1939) was still firmly planted within the imagination of the American public as a symbol of women on the Civil War home...

Appears in:

26 | New Interpretations of the Civil War Winter 2010

Essay

The Age of Jackson

Ted Widmer

The Age of Jackson has never been easy to define. Broader than his presidency (1829–1837), and narrower than his life (1767–1845), it roughly describes the third, fourth, and fifth decades of the nineteenth century. While some...

History Now Essay

Jamestown and the Founding of English America

James Horn

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Shortly before Christmas 1606, three small ships left London’s Blackwall docks to establish a settlement on Chesapeake Bay, in North America. The largest of the ships, the heavily armed, 120-ton merchantman Susan Constant , carried...

Appears in:

12 | The Age Of Exploration Summer 2007

History Now Essay

The Invention of the Fourth of July

David Waldstreicher

Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Fourth of July, or Independence Day, as it has come to be known, is perhaps the most and the least American of holidays. It is the most American because it marks the beginning of the nation, because it rapidly became an occasion...

Appears in:

4 | American National Holidays Summer 2005

History Now Essay

The Impact of Horse Culture

Elliott West

Economics, Geography

For all the calamities that came in the long run, European contact at first offered American Indian peoples many opportunities and advantages. Old World technologies provided a range of trade goods that brought vast improvements to...

Appears in:

28 | American Indians Summer 2011

History Now Essay

Allies for Emancipation? Black Abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln

Manisha Sinha

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Abraham Lincoln was not an original advocate of abolition. In fact we know that his journey to what he called "the central act of my administration, and the great event of the nineteenth century" was a relatively slow, though...

Appears in:

18 | Abraham Lincoln in His Time and Ours Winter 2008

History Now Essay

The Supreme Court Then and Now

A. E. Dick Howard

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The framers of the United States Constitution made clear that the document was to be regarded as fundamental law. Article VI states that the Constitution and those laws "which shall be made in pursuance thereof" (as well as treaties)...

Appears in:

15 | The Supreme Court Spring 2008

History Now Essay

Iberian Roots of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1640

David Wheat

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In its broadest sense, African American history predates the history of the United States, colonial or otherwise; by the time the English colony of Virginia was founded in 1607, Africans and people of African descent had already been...

Appears in:

25 | Three Worlds Meet Fall 2010

History Now Essay

Navigating the Age of Exploration

Ted Widmer

Geography, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Two thousand and seven seems a worthy year to reappraise the Age of Exploration, and not merely because a season of anniversaries is upon us. Of course, Jamestown’s 400th was widely publicized, thanks to a number of new books and...

Appears in:

12 | The Age Of Exploration Summer 2007

History Now Essay

The Antifederalists: The Other Founders of the American Constitutional Tradition?

Saul Cornell

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Great Debate The publication of the Constitution in September 1787 inaugurated one of the most vigorous political campaigns in American history. In the process of arguing over the merits of the new plan of government, Americans...

Appears in:

13 | The Constitution Fall 2007

Essay

Admiration and Ambivalence: Frederick Douglass and John Brown

David W. Blight

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

John Brown did not make it easy for people to love him—until he died on the gallows. Frederick Douglass, from his first meeting with Brown in 1847, through a testy but important relationship in the late 1850s, had long viewed the...

History Now Essay

Different Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement

Anthony J. Badger

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1984 Jimmy Carter reflected on growing up in the segregated South. He recalled that as a young child, he, like many white children, had had an African American child as his closest friend. The two children spent all their play time...

Appears in:

8 | The Civil Rights Movement Summer 2006

History Now Essay

Women and the Early Industrial Revolution in the United States

Thomas Dublin

Economics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The industrial revolution that transformed western Europe and the United States during the course of the nineteenth century had its origins in the introduction of power-driven machinery in the English and Scottish textile industries...

Appears in:

10 | Nineteenth Century Technology Winter 2006

Essay

Empire Building

Robert W. Cherny

Economics, Geography

The years between the end of the Civil War, in 1865, and the end of the century witnessed rapid and far-reaching change in the economic and social life of the United States. During those years, the nation was transformed from rural...

History Now Essay

The Indian Removal Act

Elliott West

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In the early nineteenth century, as European empires and the fledgling United States jockeyed for position in the West, true power was still in the hands of Native peoples. They far outnumbered whites and controlled resources and...

Appears in:

22 | Andrew Jackson and His World Winter 2009

Essay

World War II

Kenneth T. Jackson

World War II was the central event of the twentieth century. It involved all six major continents, all three of the great oceans on the planet, scores of countries, and billions of people. It caused 57 million deaths and unimaginable...

Essay

History Times: The Colonial Era

Gilder Lehrman Institute

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

2, 3, 4, 5

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean Imagine saying goodbye to family, friends, and familiar places to take a dangerous voyage across thousands of miles of ocean in a small wooden ship. Your destination: a strange and often hostile land. Yet,...

Essay

History Times: The Industrial Revolution

Gilder Lehrman Institute

K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

A Changing Nation The second half of the nineteenth century can be described as a time of innovation, invention, and rapid growth—a period known as the "Industrial Revolution." Many inventions from this period never caught on or have...

Essay

History Times: A Nation of Immigrants

Gilder Lehrman Institute

Economics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Coming to the Land of Opportunity Throughout American history, millions of people around the world have left their homelands for a chance to start a new life in this country—and they continue to come here to this day. People who come...

Essay

The Social and Intellectual Legacy of the American Revolution

Gary B. Nash

Government and Civics

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

"We can see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used. We are now really another people, and cannot again go back to ignorance and prejudice. The mind once enlightened cannot...

Essay

The Open Door Policy and the Boxer War: The US and China

Warren I. Cohen

By 1899, the United States had become a world power. It was not only the world’s greatest industrial nation, but in the war with Spain it had demonstrated a willingness to use its power militarily. It had acquired possessions near and...

Essay

Anti-Communism in the 1950s

Wendy Wall

In 1950, fewer than 50,000 Americans out of a total US population of 150 million were members of the Communist Party. Yet in the late 1940s and early 1950s, American fears of internal communist subversion reached a nearly hysterical...

Essay

The United States and the Caribbean, 1877–1920

Jason Colby

Between 1877 and 1920, the United States’ relationship with the Caribbean region underwent a profound change, which was closely tied to the transformation of the United States to an industrial and imperial power. Although the Civil...

Essay

Prohibition and Its Effects

Lisa Andersen

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

The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in January 1919 and enacted in January 1920, outlawed the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors." This amendment was the culmination of decades of effort...

Essay

To Understand a Scandal: Watergate beyond Nixon

David Sarias

Government and Civics

In the early hours of June 17, 1972, police officers arrested five men suspected of breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC’s Watergate office building. This building would lend its...

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