Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

1,623 items

History Now Essay

Anti-Slavery before the Revolutionary War

Sylvia R. Frey

Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Anti-slavery is almost as old as slavery itself. Indeed it could easily be argued that the first enslaved person who jumped overboard or led an on-ship rebellion on the Middle Passage launched the anti-slavery movement. The modern...

Appears in:

5 | Abolition Fall 2005

About page

2019 Fall Newsletter

A Message from President Jim Basker Dear Teachers, Supporters, and Friends of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, I am pleased to join you for the 2019–2020 school year with our fall Newsletter, which will now come to you four times a year...

Lesson Plan

The Big Bang! The Birth of Rock and Roll

Art, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

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

Overview In the early 1950s, a new form of music exploded onto the scene, exciting a growing teenage audience while startling many others who preferred the music of Bing Crosby and Patti Page. Popularized by disc jockey Alan Freed in...

History Now Essay

Andrew Jackson’s Shifting Legacy

Daniel Feller

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Of all presidential reputations, Andrew Jackson’s is perhaps the most difficult to summarize or explain. Most Americans recognize his name, though most probably know him (in the words of a famous song) as the general who "fought the...

Appears in:

22 | Andrew Jackson and His World Winter 2009

History Now Essay

The League of the Iroquois

Matthew Dennis

Government and Civics

No Native people affected the course of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American history more than the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, of present-day upstate New York. Historians have been attempting to explain how and why ever since,...

Appears in:

28 | American Indians Summer 2011

History Now Essay

First Ladies’ Contributions to Political Issues and the National Welfare

Betty Boyd Caroli

Government and Civics

The US Constitution assigns no duties or responsibilities to the president’s spouse. Every woman had to define for herself the role she wanted to play. From the blank slate that Martha Washington encountered in 1789, the job gradually...

Appears in:

35 | America’s First Ladies Spring 2013

History Now Essay

Women’s Leadership in the American Revolution

Rosemarie Zagarri

What did it mean for women to exercise "leadership" in the American Revolution? Before that conflict, the question itself would probably have baffled most American women and men. Living within a staunchly patriarchal society, they...

Appears in:

47 | American Women in Leadership Winter 2017

News

Talking of Souls and Scholarship with the Co-Winners of the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize

The following appeared first on Medium.com on February 26, 2019, published by the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Tiya Miles are the co-winners of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize for 2018. The Douglass Prize was...

History Now Essay

Why We the People? Citizens as Agents of Constitutional Change

Linda R. Monk

Government and Civics

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

"We the People?" asked Patrick Henry at the Virginia convention to ratify the new Constitution in 1788. "Who authorized them to speak the language of ‘We the People,’ instead of ‘We the States’?" [1] Looking back, we can be grateful...

Appears in:

13 | The Constitution Fall 2007

Essay

The Age of Jefferson and Madison

Peter S. Onuf

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both played important roles in the era of the American Revolution. Jefferson was the lead author of the Declaration of Independence that launched the American experiment in republican government;...

Site Search

1,623 items

Anti-Slavery before the Revolutionary War

2019 Fall Newsletter

The Big Bang! The Birth of Rock and Roll

Andrew Jackson’s Shifting Legacy

The League of the Iroquois

First Ladies’ Contributions to Political Issues and the National Welfare

Women’s Leadership in the American Revolution

Talking of Souls and Scholarship with the Co-Winners of the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize

Why We the People? Citizens as Agents of Constitutional Change

The Age of Jefferson and Madison

Stay up to date, and subscribe to our quarterly newsletter.