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History Now Essay

From The Editor

Carol Berkin

Modern headlines often carry news of scandals, crimes, corruption, and violence. When historians study this darker side of life, they hope to use the events as windows on a particular era, shedding light on its cultural and religious...

Appears in:

20 | High Crimes and Misdemeanors Summer 2009

News

Scholar’s Blog - Aaron Sheehan-Dean

December 17, 1862: Lincoln’s Cabinet Crisis Less than a week after the disastrous Union defeat at Fredericksburg, Virginia, on December 13, 1862, Abraham Lincoln confronted one of the most serious political crises he faced during the...

Lesson Plan

Rural America: The Westward Movement

Geography

7, 8

Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: Toward Revolution

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Reading 1 For fire and water are not more heterogeneous than the different colonies in North America. Nothing can exceed the jealousy and emulation which they possess in regard to each other. . . . In short . . . were they left to...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Reporting on the Spanish Influenza, 1918

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

These newspaper articles illustrate the impact on American society of Spanish Influenza (H1N1), which first appeared in the United States in March 1918. [1] There were periodic, minor outbreaks for six months, but in September a...

Lesson Plan

JFK’s Inaugural Address

Government and Civics

4, 5, 6

Unit Objective This lesson on President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core–based units. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original...

History Now Essay

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Maya Lin

Art

Reprinted by permission of Maya Lin from her book Boundaries (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). It’s taken me years to be able to discuss the making of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial , partly because I needed to move past it and...

Appears in:

45 | American History in Visual Art Summer 2016

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

History Now Essay

Alexander Hamilton, The Man Who Made America Prosperous

Richard Brookhiser

Economics

When George Washington, newly elected president, picked the members of his administration in 1789 he tapped thirty-two-year-old Alexander Hamilton to be the first treasury secretary. Hamilton had been a colonel on Washington’s staff...

Appears in:

44 | Alexander Hamilton in the American Imagination Winter 2016

History Now Essay

Alexander Hamilton on the $10 Bill: How He Got There and Why It Matters

Brian Phillips Murphy

Economics

2015 was a big year for Alexander Hamilton. Nearly two hundred eleven years after the nation’s first treasury secretary was shot and killed in a duel with then-Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr, an Off Broadway play...

Appears in:

44 | Alexander Hamilton in the American Imagination Winter 2016

News

Colin Calloway Receives the 2019 George Washington Prize

Colin Calloway, winner of the $50,000 George Washington Prize for his 2018 book The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation, was honored by George Washington’s Mount...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Columbus reports on his first voyage, 1493

Geography, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Spain to find an all-water route to Asia. On October 12, more than two months later, Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas that he called San Salvador; the natives called it Guanahani....

History Now Essay

From The Editor

Carol Berkin

Americans love their sports. Many of us watch the year flow by, not from month to month, but from baseball to soccer to basketball to football season—until spring training rolls around and the cycle begins once more. Over our morning...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

History Now Essay

From the Editor

Carol Berkin

Some of the most powerful political statements in American history appear in the inaugural addresses of our presidents. In crises and in moments of social and cultural change, in wartime and peace, the president we have elected speaks...

Appears in:

36 | Great Inaugural Addresses Summer 2013

Spotlight on: Primary Source

A secret agreement between pirate hunters, 1696

World History

Maritime trade and exploration in the colonial era created an environment ripe for piracy. One of the most famous pirates in history, Captain William Kidd, was commissioned by William III of England in 1695 as a privateer to hunt and...

History Now Essay

From The Editor

Carol Berkin

The name Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt conjures up many images: from hunter to teddy bear, from trust-buster to champion of capitalism, from Republican president to Bull Moose challenger. T.R. remains controversial, contradictory, and...

Appears in:

17 | Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era Fall 2008

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Rules for discharging disabled veterans, 1919

Government and Civics

When World War I ended in 1918 more than 4.6 million men returned to the United States from war. The American people and the US government were unprepared to reintegrate and care for the men who returned with physical injuries and...

Lesson Plan

The Great Awakening

Religion and Philosophy

5, 6, 7, 8

Historical Background The most important religious development in colonial America was the introduction of religious revivals known as the Great Awakening. Religious revivals first appeared in England, Scotland, and Germany, and...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Condolence letter from General MacArthur, 1950

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

In 1950, with Soviet support, North Korea invaded South Korea. The ensuing war lasted until 1953, with the United Nations and the United States entering the conflict soon after it began. For the United States, participation in the...

History Now Essay

Lincoln’s "Flat Failure": The Gettysburg Myth Revisited

Harold Holzer

A century and a half ago, Abraham Lincoln brought forth at Gettysburg a speech universally remembered as one of the greatest ever written, a gem not only of American political oratory, but of American literature. Tributes have been...

Appears in:

37 | Gettysburg: Insights and Perspectives Fall 2013

History Now Essay

Women and Wagoners: Camp Followers in the American War for Independence

Holly A. Mayer

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

An old tune called "The Girl I Left Behind Me" tells of a lovelorn soldier yearning to return home to his waiting fair maid. Although there is a good chance that this song was fifed during the Revolutionary War, the earliest...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

History Now Essay

Alice Paul, Suffrage Militant

Barbara Winslow

Government and Civics

Alice Stokes Paul (1885−1977) was one of the leading feminists of the early twentieth century, a person who brought the women’s suffrage movement into the national spotlight. Passage of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment or the Nineteenth...

Appears in:

51 | The Evolution of Voting Rights Summer 2018

Program/Event

Hamilton Cast Read Alongs

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is excited to extend Hamilton Cast Read Alongs. A program that features Hamilton cast members reading award-winning children’s books followed by a discussion of the history behind the story led by Gilder...

News

Civil War–era sketches by David Stauffer

When the Civil War broke out, David McNeely Stauffer (1845–1913) was only sixteen years old. While attending Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania from September 1861 through June 1863, he served brief, emergency enlistments...

History Now Essay

"No Event Could Have Filled Me with Greater Anxieties": George Washington and the First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

Phillip Hamilton

Government and Civics

George Washington’s fame rests not upon his words but upon his deeds. Therefore, his First Inaugural Address is sometimes overlooked. This is unfortunate because the words he delivered on Thursday, April 30, 1789, not only launched...

Appears in:

36 | Great Inaugural Addresses Summer 2013

History Now Essay

Remembering the Alamo

Char Miller

Geography, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Just hours before John F. Kennedy was to deliver one of the most important speeches of the 1960 presidential campaign in Houston, Texas, the Massachusetts Democrat stood in front of the Alamo. Here, before some 30,000 San Antonians,...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

History Now Essay

Clarksdale: Myth, Music, and Mercy in the Mississippi Delta

Shelley Ritter

While the term the blues means many different things to many different people, it’s undeniable that everyone gets them at one point or another. As the late vocalist Johnny Taylor sang, "People got money, still got problems/ Go to the...

Appears in:

48 | Jazz, the Blues, and American Identity Summer 2017

Lesson Plan

Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plan

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Essential Question To what degree was Abraham Lincoln successful in achieving his goals? Background The Civil War was perhaps the most momentous event that the United States endured in its history. Author and historian Shelby Foote...

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

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: Reflections on the Great Depression and the New Deal

Economics, Government and Civics

Reading 1 I want to tell you about an experience we had in Philadelphia when our private funds were exhausted and before public funds become available. . . . One woman said she borrowed 50 cents from a friend and bought stale bread...

Lesson Plan

Conflict and Captivity in the Colonies

Literature

6, 7, 8

Background The early seventeenth century was punctuated by a series of small wars between Native Americans and colonists. Many colonists were captured and taken prisoner, but two women, whose ordeals were published as books, stand out...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

George W. Bush on the 9/11 attacks, 2001

President George W. Bush delivered this address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, little more than a week after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The nation was reeling. New York City below Canal Street was still...

Lesson Plan

Survival in the American Wilderness: Fiction v. Nonfiction

7, 8

Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based units. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance....

Spotlight on: Primary Source

American Indians' service in World War I, 1920

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

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

More than 11,000 American Indians served with the American forces during World War I. Nearly 5,000 Native men enlisted and approximately 6,500 were drafted—despite the fact that almost half of American Indians were not citizens and...

Lesson Plan

The French and Indian War

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Thomas Jefferson's opposition to the Federalists, 1810

Government and Civics

The Federalist Party evolved from the core of Federalists, like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, who wrote and defended the US Constitution in 1787–1788. The political party advocated a strong central government and supported...

History Now Essay

From The Editor

Carol Berkin

As Americans anxiously watch the stock market’s daily fluctuations, the rising unemployment rate, housing foreclosures and the scandals that have rocked the financial world, the fear of another Great Depression hovers in our minds....

Appears in:

19 | The Great Depression Spring 2009

Spotlight on: Primary Source

President Ford’s statement on pardoning Richard Nixon, 1974

In this speech before the Congressional Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, of October 17, 1974, President Gerald Ford explains his decision to pardon former President Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. Nixon had...

Lesson Plan

America’s First Ladies on Twentieth-Century Issues

Unit Overview Over the course of three to four lessons the students will analyze five primary source documents. These documents are the abridged transcripts of speeches by five of our country’s first ladies: Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty...

History Now Essay

The New Deal, Then and Now

Alan Brinkley

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

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Well before Barack Obama’s election in 2008, the New Deal was emerging as an instructive model for those trying to understand, and address, what is now known as the "worst financial crisis since the 1930s." But is the New Deal in fact...

Appears in:

19 | The Great Depression Spring 2009

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Albert Einstein on the McCarthy hearings and the Fifth Amendment, 1953

Government and Civics

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

During the "McCarthy hearings" of the 1950s, the government investigated American society and industry in an attempt to root out communist sympathizers. Among those investigated were scientists and scholars, who were called upon to...

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Herbert Hoover's Inaugural Address, 1929

Government and Civics

In November 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover was elected president over the Democratic nominee Al Smith. Hoover had served in the Harding and Coolidge administrations and won the nomination after Coolidge declined to run for a third...

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Ronald Reagan on the unrest on college campuses, 1967

In his 1966 campaign for California governor, Republican Ronald Reagan promised to "to clean up the mess at Berkeley." Reagan was referring to the unrest prevalent not just at the University of California, Berkeley, but on college...

Lesson Plan

Every Four Years: Introducing Presidential Elections

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8

Lesson Overview The students will examine, explain, and evaluate Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution for specific information concerning the eligibility requirements and election process for the office of President of the...

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

American Indians

Elliott West

Economics, World History

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

If history is the story of what people have done, then American history began thousands of years ago, and by far most of it is that of Indian peoples and their ancestors before Europeans arrived. Historians, however, disagree over...

News

Study Women in the American Revolution with Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor American Colonial and Revolutionary History, Baruch College, CUNY

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Pace University are pleased to announce that registration for Spring 2020 courses is now open for the online Master of Arts in American History Program for K–12 teachers affiliated...

Essay

The New Deal

Thomas Kessner

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s protean presidency from 1933 to 1945 (the longest term of leadership in this nation’s history) has provoked many debates about the man and his policies. For some he is the brilliant tactician who wrestled...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

George Washington’s reluctance to become president, 1789

Government and Civics

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

From 1787 to 1789, as the Constitution was submitted for ratification by the states, most Americans assumed that George Washington would be the first president. In this April 1789 letter to General Henry Knox, his friend from the...

Lesson Plan

Evaluating Lyndon B. Johnson’s Character and Efforts during the Civil Rights Era

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Background Information In 1969 Thomas Baker conducted an interview with Roy Wilkins, executive directory of the NAACP, based on Wilkins’s experiences with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. This abridged version of the...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

President Reagan’s First Inaugural Address, 1981

Ronald Reagan’s election to the White House came at a time of great economic and international turmoil for the United States. His first inaugural address on January 20, 1981, highlights many major issues of the day, including rising...

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: Jacksonian Democracy

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Reading 1: The aristocracy of our country . . . continually contrive to change their party name. It was first Tory, then Federalist, then no party . . . then National Republican, now Whig. . . . But by whatever name they reorganize...

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: The Atomic Bomb

Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

9, 10, 11, 12

Reading 1 Nuclear bombs cannot possible remain a "secret weapon" at the exclusive disposal of this country for more than a few years. The scientific facts on which their construction is based are well known to scientists of other...

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Carte de la Louisiane et du cours du Mississipi, 1718

Geography, World History

This map of “la Louisiane” was published by French geographer Guillaume de l’Isle. It is the first detailed map of the Gulf Coast region and the Mississippi River, as well as the first printed map to show Texas (identified as “Mission...

About page

2020 New Year Newsletter - redirect

Dear Teachers, Supporters, and Friends of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, I greet you at the end of a very successful 2019, looking forward to more in 2020. We have reached more than 24,000 Affiliate Schools in all fifty states and in...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

John Winthrop describes life in Boston, 1634

Between 1629 and 1640, 20,000 Puritans left England for America to escape religious persecution. They hoped to establish a church free from worldly corruption founded on voluntary agreement among congregants. This covenant theory...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, 1936

World History

On August 14, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke at length on the state of international affairs in an address delivered at Chautauqua, New York. Roosevelt’s speech focused on maintaining peace in the face of increasing...

History Now Essay

From the Editor

Carol Berkin

In this issue, HISTORY NOW looks at the efforts by women across two centuries to gain the right to vote and to enjoy equal opportunities within American society. The women’s rights movement, like the struggle by African Americans to...

Appears in:

7 | Women's Suffrage Spring 2006

History Now Essay

How Women Legislate

Sue Thomas

An enduring question about women in politics is whether they operate differently from men. If so, do these differences affect government policies and procedures, especially those that flow from local, state, and national legislatures?...

Appears in:

47 | American Women in Leadership Winter 2017

History Now Essay

Adella Hunt Logan: Suffragist and Educator

Adele Logan Alexander

My new book, Princess of the Hither Isles , traces the life of my paternal grandmother, Adella Hunt Logan, who’s intrigued me for as long as I can remember. During my childhood, she felt like a major presence in my life. Not only was...

Appears in:

54 | African American Women in Leadership Summer 2019

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

Essay

America the Newcomer: Claiming the Louisiana Purchase

Elliott West

Geography

The Lewis and Clark expedition is rightly considered one of the great American stories. In May of 1804 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set off by keelboat up the Missouri River with thirty-one men, the "Corps of Discovery," on an...

Lesson Plan

Farewell to Manzanar: Japanese Internment Camps During World War II

Government and Civics, Literature, World History

6, 7, 8

Background In 1886, after the arrival of Commodore Perry, the Japanese government lifted its ban on emigration and allowed its citizens to move to other countries. In the years after that, however, the United States made it more...

History Now Essay

Constance Baker Motley: A Trailblazer in the Legal Profession

Gary L. Ford, Jr.

Government and Civics

Gary L. Ford Jr. , an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College, City University of New York, is the author of Constance Baker Motley: One Woman’s Fight for Civil Rights and Equal Justice under Law (2017) and a co...

Appears in:

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

Lesson Plan

Thomas Jefferson, Renaissance Man

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

Background Thomas Jefferson has often been called a “Renaissance man,” someone who is talented in many areas. The term is often used to describe the Italian painter Leonardo Da Vinci, who not only painted the Mona Lisa , but who also...

History Now Essay

Race and the Good War: An Oral History Interview with Calvin D. Cosby, World War II Veteran

Cecelia Hartsell

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Calvin D. Cosby was born in 1918, in Knoxville, Tennessee, which was my hometown as well. I first knew Calvin Cosby as the husband of my beloved second-grade teacher, Mrs. Ima Bradford Cosby. Mr. and Mrs. Cosby and their daughter...

Appears in:

43 | Wartime Memoirs and Letters from the American Revolution to Vietnam Fall 2015

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

From The Editor

Carol Berkin

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into the global conflict known as World War II. The impact of this war was felt by civilians as well as soldiers, as the nation transformed itself...

Appears in:

14 | World War II Winter 2007

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 ...

News

A Civil War soldier’s letters: "Save them if it cost the farm"

George Tillotson from Greene, New York, enlisted with the 89th New York Infantry in November of 1861. This ambrotype (photograph made on glass) and a series of letters from the summer of 1862 remind us that soldiers and their families...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Jefferson on British aggression, 1815

4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In this letter in defense of American nationalism, Thomas Jefferson denounced the blustering of certain members of the British House of Lords who blamed the War of 1812 on US aggression. Jefferson’s letter followed a report from James...

News

The Gardiner Foundation Awards a Major Two-Year Grant to the Institute

Grant Will Fund Diverse Gilder Lehrman Institute Programs The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has been awarded a $500,000 grant over two years from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation to support schools and teachers...

News

Half a Century after The Feminine Mystique

Today is the anniversary of the publication of the groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan in 1963. Debunking the idea of the feminine mystique which glorified the role of women as homemakers as a myth, which has "...

News

Fall 2020 Registration Now Open for the Pace–Gilder Lehrman MA in American History Program

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Pace University are pleased to announce that registration for the Fall 2020 courses is now open for the online Master of Arts in American History for K–12 teachers affiliated with...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Indenture agreement, 1742

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

Colonial Americans engaged in many forms of unfree labor, with great numbers of youths moving away from their families to become servants or apprentices. The terms of their service were spelled out in contracts called indentures,...

About page

2020 Winter Newsletter

History Now Essay

"If Ever Two Were One": Anne Bradstreet's "To My Dear and Loving Husband"

Charlotte Gordon

Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Anne Bradstreet is famous for being the first American poet. But she did not think of herself as either "first" or "American." She did not even think of herself as a poet. We would call her a Puritan, a term adopted by their enemies...

Appears in:

39 | American Poets, American History Spring 2014

News

Elbridge Gerry and the Original Gerrymander

Elbridge Gerry —signer of the Declaration of Independence, member of the Constitutional Convention ( follow the links to documents by and about Gerry in the Gilder Lehrman Collection ), congressman , diplomat , governor, and vice...

History Now Essay

Making a Film about Alexander Hamilton

Muffie Meyer

A few years ago, my colleagues and I made a documentary, Alexander Hamilton , for the Public Television series American Experience . When it was completed, we did a lot of screenings, interviews, and Q&As for all kinds of...

Appears in:

44 | Alexander Hamilton in the American Imagination Winter 2016

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: The Post-World War I Red Scare

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The end of World War I was accompanied by a panic over political radicalism. Fear of bombs, Communism, and labor unrest produced a “Red Scare.” In Hammond, Indiana, a jury took two minutes to acquit the killer of an immigrant who had...

About page

S. Andrew Banks

Andrew Banks is the co-founder of Boston-based ABRY Partners, a leading private equity firm focused on the media and communications industry, where he served as chairman from 1989 to 2012. Prior to founding ABRY, Banks was a partner...

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...

History Now Essay

From the Editor

Our Summer 2017 issue looks at the two great musical traditions that come out of the African American culture of the South: jazz and the blues. These uniquely American genres are known throughout the world and, although they began...

Appears in:

48 | Jazz, the Blues, and American Identity Summer 2017

About page

Edward L. Ayers

Edward Ayers is university professor of the humanities and president emeritus at the University of Richmond as well as former Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. He has received the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes for...

History Now Essay

Women and the Great Depression

Susan Ware

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1933 Eleanor Roosevelt’s It’s Up to the Women exhorted American women to help pull the country through its current economic crisis, the gravest it had ever faced: "The women know that life must go on and that the needs of life must...

Appears in:

19 | The Great Depression Spring 2009

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

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Lucy Knox on the home front during the Revolutionary War, 1777

Like many others before and after her, Lucy Knox performed a continuous juggling act as a busy wife and mother. Born into an aristocratic family, she had the advantage of a good education. At the age of seventeen she was disowned by...

News

Ulysses S. Grant at West Point, 1839

The Gilder Lehrman Collection includes a letter and a painting by Ulysses S. Grant when he was a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. These unique items reveal Grant as the equivalent of a modern-day...

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...

News

Author Colin Calloway Wins 2019 George Washington Prize

Author and historian Colin Calloway has won the coveted George Washington Prize, including an award of $50,000, for his new book, The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The Civil War and early submarine warfare, 1863

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

Civil War combat foreshadowed modern warfare with the introduction of the machine gun, repeater rifles, and trench warfare, and the use of trains to quickly move troops. However, one of the most celebrated tactical innovations of the...

Lesson Plan

The Battle over the Bank: Hamilton v. Jefferson

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8

Background After months of battling and compromises, the US Constitution was finally sent to Congress by the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787. Through the ratification process and the first decade under the new...

History Now Essay

Creating Opportunity: My Fight for Social Justice and Advice for Young Women Today

Harriet Karr-McDonald

Government and Civics

I never expected to be a leader. It’s hard to imagine now, but I grew up during a time when there were few opportunities for women in the workplace, other than being a man’s secretary. Unlike most of my peers, I was extremely...

Appears in:

47 | American Women in Leadership Winter 2017

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

Lesson Plan

Founding Fathers: Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison

Government and Civics

4, 5, 6

News

The General Slocum Fire: On This Day, June 15

Today marks 112 years since the sinking of the General Slocum , the worst maritime disaster in New York City history. The General Slocum , named after a Civil War general, Henry Warner Slocum, was built in 1891. On June 15, 1904, St....

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: The First National Census

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics

6, 7, 8

Early in August 1790, David Howe, an assistant federal marshal, began the difficult task of counting all the people who lived in Hancock County, Maine. One of 650 federal census takers, charged with making "a...perfect enumeration.....

News

Get to Know the 2017 History Scholars: Jacob Bruggeman

Jacob Bruggeman is a 2017 Gilder Lehrman History Scholar . These 15 exceptional college students were in New York City, June 4 – 9, learning from eminent historians and exploring New York City through a historical lens. Here Jacob...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Secotan, an Algonquian village, ca. 1585

Art

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In the 1570s and 1580s, John White served as an artist and mapmaker to several expeditions around the Carolinas. White made numerous watercolor sketches depicting the Algonquian people and stunning American landscapes. This engraving...

News

Learn about the Institute's Work with a Civil Rights Leader and NYC Students

In September 2018, the Gilder Lehrman Institute discovered that the creator of a document at the center of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama, was now living in New York. We brought the Reverend C. Herbert Oliver to the...

News

Students at Affiliate School Stuyvesant High School Win First Place in National History Day Contest

On Thursday, June 13, National History Day (NHD) presented the awards for the national finals of the 2019 National History Day Contest. More than half a million students entered the competition last year, and 3,000 of them advanced...

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