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Spotlight on: Primary Source

Poem on a Civil War death: "Only a Private Killed," 1861

Literature

Approximately 3.5 million men served in the Union and Confederate military during the Civil War. Recent scholarship indicates that at least 750,000 men died. Lewis Mitchell of the 1st Minnesota Volunteers was one of those men. On...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

FDR urges NAACP support before WWII, 1940

On June 14, 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Arthur B. Spingarn, president of the NAACP, to praise the NAACP’s fight for "increasing participation by Negroes in the benefits and responsibilities of the American democracy."...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

William Cullen Bryant opposes the protective tariff, 1876

Economics, Government and Civics

During the Civil War, the United States needed to raise funds urgently. It did so by raising the tariff, which taxed goods imported from other countries. In the days before the national income tax, the United States depended on the...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

William H. Taft recalls dispute with Theodore Roosevelt, 1922

Government and Civics

President Theodore Roosevelt mentored and groomed William Howard Taft to be his successor in the White House. However, once Taft was elected in 1908, he based his administration on a more business-centric and limited-government form...

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Calling out the militia after Lexington and Concord, 1775

On the night of April 18, 1775, 700 British soldiers began to march toward Concord, Massachusetts, to seize and destroy arms the American patriots had stored there. Warned by Paul Revere and William Dawes, minutemen confronted and...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

World War I poems: “In Flanders Fields” and “The Answer,” 1918

Literature, World History

Ella Osborn’s 1918 diary provides insight into the experiences of an American nurse serving in France at the end of World War I. In addition to her notes about the men under her care and events in France, Osborn jotted down two...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Civilian defense on the home front, 1942

Art, Government and Civics

In the early days of World War II, air raids and other attacks on populated areas in Europe generated fears that similar attacks could happen in the United States. On May 20, 1941, more than six months before the United States entered...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Nominating an African American for vice president, 1880

Government and Civics

Born a slave in 1841, Blanche Kelso Bruce was the first African American to be elected to a full term in the US Senate. During his term as a senator from Mississippi (1875–1881), he advocated the rights of African Americans and other...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The service of Medal of Honor recipient Dr. Mary Walker, 1864

Government and Civics

A graduate of Syracuse Medical College, Mary Walker served as a doctor during the American Civil War and was the only female acting assistant surgeon in the Union Army. In April 1864, Walker was captured by the Confederates in...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The Battle of Horseshoe Bend and the end of the Creek War, 1814

On May 12, 1814, Tennessee settler Isaac Stephens wrote to his uncle Henry Mackey in Virginia about the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. In that battle on March 27, 1814, US Army and Tennessee militia troops under General Andrew...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Recalling the Schoolchildren’s Blizzard of 1888, ca. 1930s

From November 1887 through January 1888, ice storms, frigid temperatures, and a December snowfall measuring up to 40 inches battered the Midwest. The morning of January 12 dawned with unseasonably mild temperatures and lulled many...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Benedict Arnold’s 1780 treason and the execution of John Andre recalled, 1823

During the American Revolution, the discovery of General Benedict Arnold’s plot to surrender West Point to the British was a deeply shocking revelation. In a memoir written some forty years after the war, William North, an aide-de...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Racism in the North: Frederick Douglass on "a vulgar and senseless prejudice," 1870

In 1870 Thomas Burnett Pugh, an ardent abolitionist prior to the Civil War, invited Frederick Douglass to participate in the "Star Course" lecture series he had organized at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. However, Douglass ...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The Brotherton Indians of New Jersey, 1780

During the French and Indian War, the Lenni-Lenape (or Delaware) Indians of New Jersey were among the tribes that signed the Treaty of Easton of 1758. The tribes agreed not to support the French in the colonial conflict and to leave...

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The struggle for married women’s rights, circa 1880s

Government and Civics

In the early nineteenth century, married women in the US were legally subordinate to their husbands. Wives could not own their own property, keep their own wages, or enter into contracts. Beginning in 1839, states slowly began to...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Verses on Norwegian emigration to America, 1853

Foreign Languages, Literature, World History

Between 1836 and 1865, approximately 55,000 Norwegians sailed to the United States. [1] Like most immigrants, they sought opportunities that didn’t exist at home—religious freedom, economic security, land ownership, and educational...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Energy conservation during WWII, 1943

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

World War II had a profound impact on life in the United States although no battles took place on the American mainland. Americans were asked to ration, recycle, and conserve materials that were essential to the war effort. This...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

An African American soldier’s pay warrant, 1780

Economics

During the American Revolution, Sharp Liberty, an African American soldier, served in the Connecticut Line of the Continental Army. Before the war, he had been enslaved in Wallingford, Connecticut. In 1777, he enlisted in the army,...

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Lyndon B. Johnson proclaims a national day of mourning for JFK, 1963

Government and Civics

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald. The next day, the newly sworn-in Lyndon B. Johnson issued his first presidential proclamation. In a statement that was broadcast...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Reports on the yellow fever epidemic, 1793

Between August 1 and November 9, 1793, approximately 11,000 people contracted yellow fever in the US capital of Philadelphia. Of that number, 5,000 people, 10 percent of the city’s population, died. The disease gets its name from the...

Lesson Plan

Environmentalism, Love Canal, and Lois Gibbs, 1953-1997

Economics, Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12

Click here to download this four-lesson unit

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Campaigning against Franklin Roosevelt’s third term, 1940

Government and Civics

Franklin Roosevelt’s run in 1940 for a third consecutive term as president was unprecedented. George Washington established a two-term tradition when he declined to run for a third term in 1796, and until 1940, no other president...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

An eyewitness account of the Great Chicago Fire, 1871

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 killed nearly 300 people, left 100,000 homeless, destroyed over $190 million worth of property, and leveled the entire central business district of the city. The fire broke out just after 9 p.m. on...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Temperance movement cartoon: The Drunkard’s Progress, 1826

Art

Numerous reform movements to improve society sprang up in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. The temperance movement attracted reformers who identified excessive drinking as the principal cause of domestic...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

A British view of rebellious Boston, 1774

Art, Government and Civics, World History

In the years leading up to the American Revolution, both the British and the colonists used broadsides to influence public opinion. This broadside, “The Bostonian’s Paying the Excise-man, or Tarring & Feathering,” printed in...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Frederick Douglass’s tribute to Abraham Lincoln, 1880

Literature

Despite initial differences, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln forged a relationship over the course of the Civil War based on a shared vision. Fifteen years after Lincoln’s death, Douglass described him as "one of the noblest...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

A World War II poster: "Starve the Squander Bug," 1943

Art, Government and Civics, World History

2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Before he became world-renowned as Dr. Seuss for his children’s books and illustrations, Theodor Geisel worked for the US government during World War II designing posters such as this one, encouraging patriotism and investment. The...

Lesson Plan

The Civil Rights Movement: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X

Government and Civics

Click to download this three-lesson unit.

Spotlight on: Primary Source

A soldier on the battle for the Philippines, 1945

Geography

Witnessing the brutality of war and atrocities against civilians could overwhelm the most fair-minded of men. Sidney Diamond, an officer in the 82nd Chemical Battalion, wrote loving, humorous, and hopeful letters to his fiancée almost...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Abraham Lincoln's last letter to his wife, 1865

Government and Civics

This letter, written as the Union captured the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, demonstrates Lincoln’s active, hands-on commitment as commander in chief of the armed forces as well as his devotion to his family. It reads...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The women’s rights movement after the Civil War, 1866

The fight for women’s rights that had begun in earnest with the convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, diminished in the 1850s and 1860s as reformers focused on the abolition of slavery and the Civil War, but the movement did...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

"The President is murdered," 1865

At 10:13 p.m. on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC, President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln, unconscious and bleeding, was rushed...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Dinner with the nuclear family, 1950

Art

The threat of invasion and subversion in the Cold War era led Americans to seek consensus and conformity, in politics and in culture. The rise of consumer culture in the same period, driven by an economic boom, a population surge, and...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

D-Day correspondence between a soldier and his wife, 1944

On June 6, 1944, as Allied forces numbering approximately 160,000 troops landed along fifty miles of coastline in Normandy, France, Moe Weiner, a native of Brooklyn, was serving in the US Army Quartermaster Corps in England. He did...

Lesson Plan

Understanding President Washington through His First Inaugural and Farewell Addresses

Government and Civics

Lesson Overview In this lesson, students will read and analyze excerpts from two of George Washington’s most important addresses. The first is the speech he gave to Congress on the day of his first inauguration in 1789; the second is...

Lesson Plan

Opposing Viewpoints on the Ratification of the US Constitution

Lesson Overview Students will develop a rich understanding of the arguments in favor of and in opposition to the ratification of the US Constitution. They will examine and analyze key excerpts from "Federalist No. 51," George Mason’s...

Lesson Plan

How Hamilton Solved the Economic Problems Facing the United States

Economics, Government and Civics

5, 6, 7, 8

Lesson Overview In this lesson students will develop an understanding of the economic challenges facing the newly independent United States. Those challenges included the lack of a national currency, the national government’s...

Lesson Plan

Hamilton v. Burr: The Story behind the Duel

Lesson Overview Students will develop an understanding of the tensions in the relationship between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr prior to their famous duel in 1804. They will read and analyze key excerpts from primary source...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The Middle Passage, 1749

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

Historians estimate that approximately 472,000 Africans were kidnapped and brought to the North American mainland between 1619 and 1860. Of these, nearly 18 percent died during the transatlantic voyage from Africa to the New World....

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The Fort Pillow Massacre, 1864

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

"Among the stories of the stormy days of the Republic, few will longer be remembered than the heroic defense and almost utter annihilation of the garrison of Fort Pillow." —Mack J. Leaming, April 1893 On April 12, 1864, fifteen...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Nat Turner’s Rebellion, 1831

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

In the early hours of August 22, 1831, a slave named Nat Turner led more than fifty followers in a bloody revolt in Southampton, Virginia, killing nearly 60 white people, mostly women and children. The local authorities stopped the...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, 1775

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

In April 1775, John Murray, the Earl of Dunmore and Virginia’s royal governor, threatened to free slaves and reduce the capital, Williamsburg, to ashes if the colonists rebelled against British authority. In the months that followed,...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Slave Patrol Contract, 1856

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

In the 1800s, particularly after Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, the legislatures of slave states passed increasingly strict laws governing the activities of enslaved and free African Americans and the interactions between whites and...

Classroom Resources

Infographic: Life in Colonial America: Climate, Commerce, and Culture

Geography, Government and Civics

K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Click here to learn more about the New England Colonies. Click here to learn more about the Middle Colonies. Click here to learn more about the Southern Colonies.

P&E Home

Programs & Events

The Gilder Lehrman Institute promotes the study and love of American history through a wide array of programs and exhibitions for teachers, students, historians, and the general public. From weeklong seminars and other professional...

P&E Home

Programs & Events

The Institute promotes and celebrates accomplishments in American history education and scholarship at every level. Deepen your understanding and appreciation of American history by participating in a program or joining the Institute...

Collection Landing Page

Visit The Collection

Visit the Collection Field Trips A field trip to the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History gives students the unique opportunity to learn history from real documents, up close with no display cases! This exciting experience...

Collection Landing Page

Visit the Collection

Collection Programs Inside the Vault Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection is a zoom presentation of documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Join our curators and learn the fascinating stories behind...

Collection Landing Page

Spotlight on Primary Sources

Spotlights on Primary Sources Each of the Spotlights from our Collection provides explanatory text, a transcript, and an image of the featured document. Questions for classroom discussion are available to K–12 teachers. Below are some...

Collection Item

Photograph signed

1865 ca.

Brady, Mathew B., 1823-1896

[Carte de visite of John A. Logan]

GLC02136.29

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