Site Search

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

Read a transcript of the "Ten Talents" of George Washington letter written by John Adams.

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...

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...

Read about the Facts of the Slave Trade and Slavery and the Material Culture of Slave Resistance .

Read an excerpt of the Orders to March on Trenton and watch a video on Washington’s Crossing .

Read an excerpt of the letter to Davie Jeems .

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...