Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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History Now Essay

Inventing a Past: Molly Brant’s Life in Leadership

James Taylor Carson

How do you write the history of someone for whom no image exists? Who surfaces intermittently in scraps of words found across hundreds of pages of archival documents? Whose singularity is so often glossed and aggregated as “Indian”?...

Appears in:

59 | American Indians in Leadership Winter 2021

History Now Essay

Nancy Ward, Cherokee Beloved Woman

Theda Perdue

In 1755 a Cherokee woman named Nanye’hi accompanied a war party, which included her husband Kingfisher. At Taliwa in what today is north Georgia, the Cherokees engaged the enemy Creek Indians in battle. Nanye’hi crouched behind a log...

Appears in:

59 | American Indians in Leadership Winter 2021

History Now Essay

Ely S. Parker (Donehogawa): Civil War Hero, Ethnologist, Political Leader

Bruce E. Johansen

After 1800, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, like most Native American tribes, faced a long struggle against destruction of their land bases, cultures, and livelihoods. These struggles also spawned revival movements, one of...

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59 | American Indians in Leadership Winter 2021

History Now Essay

Sitting Bull: Last of the Great Chiefs

Robert M. Utley

Sitting Bull was the last of the great Indian chiefs to surrender his free way of life and settle on a government reservation. He belonged to the Hunkpapa tribe of the Lakota Sioux. The Lakotas numbered seven tribes, loosely...

Appears in:

59 | American Indians in Leadership Winter 2021

History Now Essay

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša) and the National Council of American Indians: Leading the Way for Indigenous Self-Representation

Michael P. Taylor

Born on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in 1876, the same year as the Battle of Greasy Grass (known more commonly in US history as the Battle of Little Big Horn), Gertrude Simmons Bonnin grew up amidst a US-national culture of systemic...

Appears in:

59 | American Indians in Leadership Winter 2021

History Now Essay

"Show Them What an Indian Can Do": The Example of Jim Thorpe

Joseph Bruchac

Although the twentieth century produced many great athletes, there is no one who stood out more than Jim Thorpe. That is not just my opinion. When Jim Thorpe won two gold medals at the 1912 Olympic Games, the king of Sweden said to...

Appears in:

59 | American Indians in Leadership Winter 2021

History Now Essay

From the Editor

Carol Berkin

To most Americans, the names of Squanto, Sacagawea, Geronimo, and Sitting Bull are relatively familiar—although how they are described usually depends on their relationship to the White culture of their day. Their individual histories...

Appears in:

59 | American Indians in Leadership Winter 2021

Video: Inside The Vault

Inside the Vault: Primary Sources about Enslaved People

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

While conducting research for the film Twelve Years a Slave , director Steve McQueen and his team came to the Gilder Lehrman Collection to view original primary sources. In this session, Antuan Raimone from Hamilton and Corey...

History Now Essay

Indigenous Americans in World War II: The Navajo Code Talkers

Laura Tohe

In the summer of 1983, my son and I visited my father, Benson Tohe. He and other Navajo Code Talkers had recently been honored in Washington, DC, with a parade and given a medal for their service in World War II. That was the first...

Appears in:

59 | American Indians in Leadership Winter 2021

News

Submit Your Hamilton Education Program Online Videos for Spring 2021!

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is pleased to announce that the national competition and lottery are now open for spring 2021 submissions for the Hamilton Education Program Online. EduHam Online is an easily adaptable, fully online...

Program/Event

Who Will Tell Your Story? Get Creative with EduHam

Have you seen other students’ performance pieces from the Hamilton Education Program and wondered, “How do I do that?” In this class, we will look at primary source documents on the Hamilton Education Program website and find their...

News

Celebrate Black History Month with Inside the Vault

This February Inside the Vault , the online program that highlights unique primary sources from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, celebrates Black History Month with explorations of major Black writers and orators of the eighteenth and...

News

Announcing the 2021 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize Finalists

The Lincoln Prize has been awarded annually since 1990 to a work that enhances the general public’s understanding of the Civil War era. Prize winners have included Doris Kearns Goodwin (2006), Eric Foner (2011), and David Blight (2002...

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Announcing the 2021 Lincoln Prize Finalists

Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History have announced the finalists for the 2021 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. They are • Alice Baumgartner , South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to...

News

K-8 Educators Offered Unique NEH Summer Institute Program on The Making of America

The Making of America: Colonial Era to Reconstruction is a virtual, weeklong 2021 NEH Summer Institute that offers K–8 educators the opportunity to explore the people, ideas, and events that made America into a cultural, social, and...

News

Book Breaks in February Explore Slavery, Desegregation, and Self-Determination

Since the summer of 2020, Gilder Lehrman Book Breaks has featured the most exciting history scholars in America discussing their books live with host William Roka followed by a Q&A with home audiences. This February, the books...

Video: Read Along

"Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop: The Sanitation Strike of 1968"

This historical fiction picture book presents the story of nine-year-old Lorraine Jackson, who in 1968 witnessed the Memphis sanitation strike—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final stand for justice before his assassination—when her...

News

Free Workshop Series & Symposium in Partnership with the Council on Foreign Relations

In partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), we are pleased to offer four free digital professional development sessions and a symposium in spring 2021. On MARCH 6 the first workshop on American...

News

Register Now for Spring History School

Building on the success of our summer and fall Gilder Lehrman History School , we are pleased to offer free courses this spring for elementary, middle, and high school students. History School provides engaging live interactive...

Video: Inside The Vault

Inside the Vault: The Lives and Works of Phillis Wheatley and Elizabeth Keckley

Literature

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

On the February 4, 2021 session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection , our curators talk with English Language Arts educator Jeanette Providence and Hamilton cast member Krystal Mackie about the lives...

Collection Item

Autograph letter signed

n.d.

Unknown

Letters to cousin

GLC03135.13.082

History Now Essay

Yellow Fever 1793

Richard Brookhiser

Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

Late in August 1793 Philadelphia was struck by a strange and virulent disease. Patients developed aches, chills, and fever, vomited black bile, and turned yellow. Some recovered, but many died. The yellow fever, as it was called, had...

Appears in:

58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020

History Now Essay

The Influenza of 1918 and the Coronavirus of 2020: Some Parallels and Differences

John M. Barry

Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

Sometime prior to late January 1918, a virus jumped species from birds to humans, probably after passing through another mammal. It spawned a lethal pandemic. Sometime prior to late December 2019, a virus jumped species from bats to...

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58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020

History Now Essay

Invisible Threats and the Politics of Disaster: Three Mile Island and Covid-19

Natasha Zaretsky

Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

An invisible, potentially deadly threat. Elected officials saying one thing, and public health experts saying another. A citizenry hungry for information and guidance. A cultural divide between those who are afraid of the threat and...

Appears in:

58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020

History Now Issue

Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters

#58 Fall 2020

History Now Essay

History in the Making: COVIDCalls and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Scott Gabriel Knowles and Bucky Stanton

Disasters are now a permanent feature of American life—no longer confined to predictable seasons or geographies—in the era of hyperglobalization and its related climate change, a disaster in one part of the world affects all of us....

Appears in:

58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020

News

Get to Know Sergio de Alba, 2020 National History Teacher of the Year

Sergio de Alba, a teacher at R. M. Miano Elementary School in Los Baños, California, was named the 2020 National History Teacher of the Year and will be honored in a recorded ceremony on October 7, 2020. Register here for A Tribute to...

History Now Essay

Excerpt from Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, "Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, in the Year 1793" (1794), with an introduction by James G. Basker

Absalom Jones and Richard Allen

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58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020

History Now Essay

The Importance of Studying Disasters: Ideas and Advice for the Classroom

Liz Skilton

I was sitting in Algebra when I heard the news that an incident had occurred in New York City. My history teacher, Mr. Turner, appeared suddenly at the door—interrupting the Pythagorean theorem lesson—to say that something was...

Appears in:

58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020

History Now Essay

From the Editor

Carol Berkin

A disaster often reveals as much about the society wrestling with it as it does about its origins and its physical effects. If scientists focus on the source of the danger—a virus, bacteria, climatic shifts, or disease-carrying...

Appears in:

58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Black Volunteers in the Nation’s First Epidemic, 1793

The new republic was only four years old, its capital recently established in Philadelphia, when the country suffered its first catastrophic epidemic. Yellow fever broke out in August 1793 and ravaged the city for three months, only...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The Map Proves It, ca. 1919

Government and Civics

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

Supporters of women’s rights used maps such as the one shown here to demonstrate where women were allowed to vote, when they won that right, and which elections they could vote in. The source of this map is unknown. Originally printed...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

An appeal for suffrage support, 1871

Government and Civics

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

The National Woman Suffrage and Educational Committee was formed in the spring of 1871. The Washington DC-based committee pledged to act as the “centre of all action upon Congress and the country.” The group was also dedicated to the...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Voting restrictions for African Americans, 1944

Government and Civics

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

In 1944 a group of southern editors and writers documented cases of voter suppression in southern states. They took this step because, in the presidential election of 1944, only 28 percent of potential voters in the South participated...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Thomas Rowe and Joshua Hooper: Sedition charges, 1815

Government and Civics

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

Even though the Sedition Act of 1798 had expired in 1801, individuals could still be charged with sedition. On January 20, 1815, Thomas Rowe and Joshua Hooper, publishers of the Massachusetts newspaper The Yankee , printed an article...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The Sedition Act, 1798

Government and Civics

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

On August 14, 1798, the Columbian Centinel , a Boston newspaper aligned with the Federalist Party, printed this copy of the Sedition Act. It was the last in a series of legislation known as the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by the...

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John C. McManus Wins the Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize

Winner of the Seventh Annual Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History Announced Award Program Available Online Thursday, November 5, 2020 New York, NY, September 30, 2020 – The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History announced...

News

Watch Luis Miranda Interviewed by Gilder Lehrman Student Advisory Council Members

Lesson Plan

The Soldier's Experience: Letters from Four American Wars

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Click to download this four-lesson unit.

Interactive

Immigration: An American Story

Program/Event

Affiliate School Program | Affiliate School History Scholarships

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is pleased to partner with Gettysburg College and Marist College to offer scholarships of $5,000 or more each year for up to four years exclusively for Gilder Lehrman Affiliate School students. Click the...

Collection Landing Page

Colonization & Settlement, 1493–1763

Reference Guides: Colonization & Settlement, 1493–1763 Beginning with a 1493 Latin printing of Columbus’s letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Collection contains more than 4000 colonial-era documents that chronicle...

Collection Landing Page

American Revolution, 1763-1783

American Revolution, 1763-1783 The Gilder Lehrman Collection contains materials written by over 2,000 individuals who fought in and lived through the American Revolution. These firsthand accounts were written by leaders, soldiers, and...

Collection Landing Page

The New Nation, 1784-1800

The New Nation, 1784–1800 These materials address the creation of the US Constitution from the failure of the Articles of Confederation through the controversial election of 1800 in both official records and personal correspondence....

Collection Landing Page

Expansion & Reform, 1800-1860

Expansion & Reform, 1800-1860 The conflict over slavery, the growth of federal power, and the territorial expansion of the United States figure prominently in the Collection. Thousands of letters, documents, broadsides, and...

Collection Landing Page

The Civil War, 1861-1865

The Civil War, 1861-1865 Letters and documents recount the secession crisis and the American Civil War through general orders, orderly books, recruitment broadsides, maps, photographs, newspapers, and the journals, official dispatches...

Collection Landing Page

Post-Civil War America, 1865-1900

Post-Civil War America, 1865-1900 A variety of materials demonstrates the rise and fall of civil rights for African Americans during the latter half of the nineteenth century, including constitutional amendments, sharecropper...

Collection Landing Page

Twentieth Century

Twentieth Century A select group of materials highlights the major events of the twentieth century including World War I, World War II, women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Cold War. Selected searches in the Collection...

News

The Gilder Lehrman Institute Book Shop Is Open

The Gilder Lehrman Institute Book Shop is the history lovers’ online book store. In addition to general new and notable history titles, the Book Shop offers books featured on Gilder Lehrman Institute’s popular Book Breaks , Inside the...

Collection Item

Autograph letter signed

9 May 1864

Stevens, George T. (fl. 1864)

George T Stevens to his Sister Frances with the grave news that her husband George Davenport has been killed

Describes her husbands death stating that he was shot in the back of the head and died shortly after. Says that he could not go to him but sent a chaplain to bury him and have his grave marked. Hopes that God will be her strength.

GLC03523.09.02