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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...

History Now Essay

When Myth and Meaning Overshadow History: Remembering the Alamo

Linda K. Salvucci

Rare are the students who enter US classrooms without some preconceived notions regarding the Alamo. Thanks to more than a dozen films produced at regular intervals over the last century, to Walt Disney’s television series for baby...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

Women and the Progressive Movement

Miriam Cohen

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

At the end of the nineteenth century, American politicians, journalists, professionals, and volunteers mobilized on behalf of reforms meant to deal with a variety of social problems associated with industrialization. Woman activists,...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

Modern Women Persuading Modern Men: The Nineteenth Amendment and the Movement for Woman Suffrage, 1916–1920

Jonathan Soffer

Government and Civics

Today we take women’s suffrage for granted, but many activists of the nineteenth century, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, struggled their whole lives for the vote, and did not live to see it. As a presidential...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

The Zimmermann Telegram and American Entry into World War I

Michael S. Neiberg

World History

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The fact that the telegram before him bore Arthur Zimmermann’s name made its contents that much harder for Walter Hines Page to believe. Page was the American ambassador to Great Britain and on a cold London morning in late February...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

D-Day or Operation Overlord, June 6, 1944

Antony Beevor

World History

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

As dawn broke on June 6, 1944, the Allied invasion fleet became visible crossing the choppy waters of the English Channel to France. None of those who took part in D-Day, whether soldier, sailor, or airman, would ever forget the sight...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

The Battle for Baltimore

Alan Taylor

Bitter over the American declaration of war in 1812, when the British Empire had faced the emperor Napoleon at the peak of his power, the British sought payback in 1814. The war erupted over American anger at the British for seizing...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

George Washington’s French and Indian War

Theodore J. Crackel

World History

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

By the 1580s the French were ahead of the British in reaching into the interior of North America. They had established trading companies there, and their ships regularly brought furs back to France. Early in the seventeenth century...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

The Vietnam War and the My Lai Massacre

George Herring

The murder of more than 400 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai and My Khe by US soldiers on March 16, 1968, stands as one of the darkest days in the nation’s military history. It left an indelible stain on America’s record in Vietnam, the...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

Technology in the Persian Gulf War of 1991

Robert Citino

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

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

In August 1990, the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait. Five short months later, a powerful coalition led by the United States would launch Operation Desert Storm, one of the most rapid, decisive, and bloodless victories of all time. In just...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

The Korean War

Allan R. Millett

World History

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

The Korean War was three different conflicts from the perspective of the disparate groups who fought in it. For North and South Korea, the conflict was a civil war, a struggle with no possible compromise between two competing visions...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

The Battle of Antietam: A Turning Point in the Civil War

James M. McPherson

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

Four days after the battle of Antietam, which took place near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, Captain Robert Gould Shaw of the 2nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry wrote to his father: "Every battle makes me wish more and...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

No Way Out: Lord Cornwallis, the Siege of Yorktown, and America’s Victory in the War for Independence

James Kirby Martin

Early on the morning of October 17, 1781, Lieutenant General Charles, Lord Cornwallis, found himself hunkered down in a cave near the southern shoreline of the York River. Above him was the disintegrating hamlet of Yorktown, Virginia,...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

Sylvester Graham and Antebellum Diet Reform

Cindy Lobel

"Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants." So begins Michael Pollan’s 2009 book, In Defense of Food . Pollan has made a career educating Americans about the dangers of our contemporary, industrialized food supply. His book offers a...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

Education Reform in Antebellum America

Barbara Winslow

Economics, Religion and Philosophy

Education reform is often at the heart of all great reform struggles. [1] By the 1820s Americans were experiencing exhilarating as well as unsettling social and economic changes. In the North, the familiar rural and agrarian life was...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

Transcendentalism and Social Reform

Philip F. Gura

Those Americans who have heard of American Transcendentalism associate it with the writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and his friend Henry David Thoreau. Asked to name things about the group they remember, most mention Emerson’s ringing...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

History Now Essay

The War against Spain in the Philippines in 1898

Richard Meixsel

Before learning of Commodore George Dewey’s destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on the morning of May 1, 1898, few Americans knew anything about the Philippine Islands. In her Pulitzer Prize–winning In the Days of McKinley ...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

Essay

The Discovery of the Americas and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Ira Berlin

In the middle of the fifteenth century, Europe, Africa, and the Americas came together, creating—among other things—a new economy. At the center of that economy was the plantation, an enterprise dedicated to the production of exotic...

History Now Essay

The Material Culture of Slave Resistance

Douglas R. Egerton

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Artifacts tell stories. Sometimes the tales are unclear or even contradictory, and sometimes artifacts—not unlike a dishonest diarist—can even lead the unwary historian astray. But the material culture of enslaved Americans, from...

Appears in:

2 | Primary Sources on Slavery Winter 2004

History Now Essay

"People Get Ready": Music and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s

Brian Ward

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Few sights or sounds conjure up the passion and purposefulness of the Southern Civil Rights Movement as powerfully as the freedom songs that provided a stirring musical accompaniment to the campaign for racial justice and equality in...

Appears in:

8 | The Civil Rights Movement Summer 2006

Essay

September 11, 2001

the National September 11 Memorial & Museum

Government and Civics, World History

K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

"9/11" has emerged as shorthand for the four coordinated terrorist attacks on the United States that took place on September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists from the Islamist extremist group al Qaeda hijacked four...

History Now Essay

The Scarlet Letter and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s America

Brenda Wineapple

Literature

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Nathaniel Hawthorne is the strange American author who has never been out of fashion; since his death in 1864, his stories and novels have resisted the tides of taste, canon reformation, and critical vicissitude. Herman Melville had...

Appears in:

16 | Books That Changed History Summer 2008

Essay

Mary Elizabeth Lease: Populist Reformer

Kelly A. Woestman

Blaming Wall Street for the nation’s economic woes is not a new idea in American history. Over a century ago, Mary Elizabeth Lease, the best-known orator of the Populist era, asserted, "Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a...

History Now Essay

African Forced Migration to Colonial America

Ira Berlin

African American life in the United States has been framed by migrations, forced and free. A forced migration from Africa—the transatlantic slave trade—carried black people to the Americas. A second forced migration—the internal slave...

Appears in:

3 | Immigration Spring 2005

History Now Essay

Suggested Resources for George Washington and the French and Indian War from the Archivist

Mary-Jo Kline

For additional information on the broader Seven Years’ War, of which the French and Indian campaigns were only a part, use this recent one-volume study: Baugh, Daniel A. The Global Seven Years War, 1754–1763: Britain and France in a...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

Suggested Resources on the Civil War and the Battle of Antietam from the Archivist

Mary-Jo Kline

Prof. McPherson is the author of Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), the authoritative study of the battle and its aftermath. You and your students may also want to look at some of...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

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