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Lesson Plan

The National Bank Debate

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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

Lesson Plan

The Preamble to the US Constitution, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the Declaration of Independence

Government and Civics

K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 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...

Lesson Plan

The Evolution of the US Constitution: The Preambles to the Articles of Confederation and the US Constitution

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Remember the Maine, 1898

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

On February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine exploded in Havana’s harbor in Cuba, killing nearly two-thirds of her crew. The tragedy occurred after years of escalating tensions between the United States and Spain, and the “yellow...

Lesson Plan

Founding Fathers: Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison

Government and Civics

4, 5, 6

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....

Lesson Plan

Survival in the American Wilderness: Fiction v. Nonfiction

7, 8

Lesson Plan

Rural America: The Westward Movement

Geography

7, 8

Lesson Plan

Hubert Humphrey’s Speech to the 1948 Democratic National Convention

Government and Civics

11, 12, 13+

Unit Introduction As the United States moved into the post-WWII world, it faced struggles over diversity and race relations. Soldiers returning from Europe recognized the disparities between races in the United States and, by the late...

Lesson Plan

The Monroe Doctrine

Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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

Spotlight on: Primary Source

"Bleeding Kansas" and the Pottawatomie Massacre, 1856

In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act overturned the Missouri Compromise, which stated that slavery would not be allowed north of latitude 36°30′. Instead, settlers would use the principle of popular sovereignty and vote to determine...

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The Whiskey Rebellion, 1794

Economics, Government and Civics

In 1791, the federal government imposed a tax on distilled spirits to pay off the nation’s debts from the American Revolution. The tax, which was payable only in cash, was particularly hard on small frontier farmers, who bartered and...

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A plea to defend the Alamo, 1836

Government and Civics

A decade of conflict between the Mexican government and US settlers in Texas culminated in 1836 with the siege of the Alamo and the Texas Declaration of Independence. On February 23, 1836, Lieutenant Colonel William Travis, Jim Bowie,...

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A report from Spanish California, 1776

Foreign Languages, Government and Civics

Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, military commander of Alta California, wrote this letter from Mission San Gabriel. Rivera y Moncada was instrumental in the development of missions in California and was in a sometimes-contentious...

Lesson Plan

The National Game. Three "Outs" And One "Run"

Overview A pro-Lincoln satire, deposited for copyright weeks before the 1860 presidential election. The contest is portrayed as a baseball game in which Lincoln has defeated (left to right) John Bell, Stephen A. Douglas, and John C....

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Receipt for land purchased from the Six Nations, 1769

Government and Civics

This document records that the representatives of the Six Nations, who signed using totems to designate individuals and tribes, received $10,000 as payment from the Penns for land the tribes had ceded in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in...

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Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1863

Government and Civics

In 1621, settlers in Massachusetts celebrated what has come to be regarded as the first thanksgiving in the New World. On October 3, 1789, George Washington issued a proclamation creating the first Thanksgiving Day designated by the...

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"Reelect Roosevelt—Friend of Labor," 1936

Economics, Government and Civics

This Democratic Party campaign poster from 1936 outlines some of the agencies and regulations Franklin Roosevelt put in place to try to solve the most urgent problems of the Great Depression. While it reminds laborers of how they have...

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John Adams describes George Washington’s ten talents, 1807

Eight years after George Washington’s death, John Adams penned this letter to Benjamin Rush explaining why George Washington was considered a hero by the American people. He wrote it on November 11, 1807, in response to a letter from...

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The Haymarket Affair, 1886

Economics, Government and Civics

The Haymarket Affair is considered a watershed moment for American labor history, at a time when fears about the loyalties and activities of immigrants, anarchists, and laborers became linked in the minds of many Americans. On May 3,...

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Phillis Wheatley’s poem on tyranny and slavery, 1772

Government and Civics, Literature, Religion and Philosophy

Born in Africa, Phillis Wheatley was captured and sold into slavery as a child. She was purchased by John Wheatley of Boston in 1761. The Wheatleys soon recognized Phillis’s intelligence and taught her to read and write. She became...

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Slave auction catalog from Louisiana, 1855

On March 13 and 14, 1855, the firm of J. A. Beard & May placed on the auction block 178 enslaved men, women, and children at the Banks Arcade in New Orleans, Louisiana. They were part of the estate of William M. Lambeth, who had...

Lesson Plan

The End of the Vietnam War: Conscience, Resistance, and Reconciliation

Lesson Plan

The Transcontinental Railroad in Images and Poetry

Art, Literature, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

4, 5, 6

Unit Objectives Students will analyze a variety of primary sources related to the completion of the transcontinental railroad. investigate celebratory images and a poem to discover some of the key outcomes that arose from the ability...

Lesson Plan

Railroads: The "Engine" to Promote National Unity and Economic Growth

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

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Objectives Students will examine, explain, and evaluate a variety of literary and visual primary sources that describe and depict the development and impact of railroads on sectional relationships, national unity, and economic growth...

Lesson Plan

All Aboard: Making Connections with the Transcontinental Railroad

5, 6, 7, 8

LESSON 1 Objectives Students will Read and understand primary source writings from two key documents that encouraged settlers to go west and that established congressional support of what would eventually become the transcontinental...

Lesson Plan

The Transcontinental Railroad: Interpreting Images

Art

10, 11, 12

Objectives Students will be able to apply the distinction between inferring (inference) and implying (implication). analyze primary source illustrations, including paintings, political cartoons, and promotional posters. Essential...

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Patriotic Postal Covers: "Lincoln & Davis in 5 Rounds," 1861

Art

Patriotic postal covers are an important part of the material culture of the Civil War era. People often collected these covers in special keepsake albums. Such decorative envelopes were used as advertisements and to promote various...

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Conscientious objectors: Madison pardons Quakers, 1816

Government and Civics

In 1816, seven Quakers in Baltimore, Maryland, petitioned President James Madison for pardons after refusing to serve in the militia or pay the exemption fee. Secretary of State James Monroe requested additional information on the men...

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On the emigrant trail, 1862

Geography

Samuel Russell, his mother, and his sisters emigrated to the Mormon settlement at Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1861. The next spring, Russell joined a “down-and-back” wagon train to escort new pioneers to the settlement. These caravans...

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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...

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Literacy and the immigration of "undesirables," 1903

Government and Civics, World History

During the Progressive era, tens of millions of immigrants came to the United States from Europe to fulfill their American dream. During this period most came from southern and eastern Europe, particularly from Italy, Russia, and the...

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Buying Frederick Douglass’s freedom, 1846

Economics

After he had escaped from slavery in 1838, Frederick Douglass became a well-known orator and abolitionist. He wrote an autobiography in 1845, but because he was a runaway slave, its publication increased the chances that he would be...

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A political cartoon of Grant and Lee, 1864

Art, Government and Civics

During the first three years of the Civil War, a series of Union generals led the Army of the Potomac against Confederate General Robert E. Lee with little success. In March 1864, Abraham Lincoln appointed General Ulysses S. Grant...

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Preventing labor discrimination during World War II, 1942

Economics, Government and Civics

In early 1942, as men of working age enlisted in the military and war production accelerated, US industries experienced a labor shortage. President Roosevelt established the War Manpower Commission "to assure the most effective...

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Politics and the Texas Revolution, 1836

Government and Civics

Texas’s fight for independence from Mexico was an uphill battle from the very beginning. Texians were outnumbered and outmatched by the much more powerful Mexican military, and the province was plagued by quarrels within its own...

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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...

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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."...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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.

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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...

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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...

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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...

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...

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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....

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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...

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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,...

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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...

Essay

The Civil Rights Movement

Taylor Branch

The word "movement" often designates a cultural shift of less import than the American Revolution, Great Depression, and other capitalized dramas in history. To be sure, some popular movements have gained broader recognition in the...

History Now Essay

Perils of the Ocean in the Early Modern Era

Robert C. Ritchie

Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

A traveler considering an ocean voyage around 1600 had much to contemplate. Voyage by voyage, explorers and colonists alike needed knowledge about the seas and lands in the Atlantic world. Unfortunately, information was never shared...

Appears in:

25 | Three Worlds Meet Fall 2010

History Now Essay

Women of the West

Virginia Scharff

Geography, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Women are like water to Western history. Both have flowed through the terrain we have come to call the West, long before the inhabitants conceived of themselves as part of an expanding United States. Both have been represented as...

Appears in:

9 | The American West Fall 2006

Essay

The New Nation, 1783–1815

Alan Taylor

Government and Civics

The leaders of the American Revolution made three great gambles. First, they sought independence from the powerful British Empire, becoming the first colonies in the Americas to revolt and seek independence from their mother empire....

History Now Essay

FDR and Hitler: A Study in Contrasts

David M. Kennedy

Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Great Depression and World War II were events in world history, but they touched different countries in sometimes dramatically different ways. To paraphrase Tolstoy, many peoples suffered, but every unhappy people was unhappy in...

Appears in:

14 | World War II Winter 2007

History Now Essay

The Marshall and Taney Courts: Continuities and Changes

R. B. Bernstein

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Though the first holders of the job thought it more a burden than a position of honor or power, the office of chief justice of the United States has a pivotal role in the American constitutional system, thanks mainly to John Marshall ...

Appears in:

15 | The Supreme Court Spring 2008

History Now Essay

Indian Removal

Theda Perdue

Geography, Government and Civics

In 1828 pressure was building among white Americans for the relocation of American Indians from the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River. A student at a mission school in the Cherokee Nation, which lay within...

Appears in:

28 | American Indians Summer 2011

Essay

The Human Toll of the Great Depression

Steven Mintz

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

After more than half a century, images of the Great Depression remain firmly etched in the American psyche—breadlines, soup kitchens, tin-can shanties and tar paper shacks known as "Hoovervilles," penniless men and women selling...

Essay

Lincoln

Allen C. Guelzo

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

No one seemed less well-cast for the role of reformer, in an age of reform, than Abraham Lincoln. To begin with, he was a stranger, emotionally and intellectually, to evangelical Christianity, the great engine of reform in the...

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 Civil Rights Movement: Major Events and Legacies

James T. Patterson

Art, Government and Civics, Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

From the earliest years of European settlement in North America, whites enslaved and oppressed black people. Although the Civil War finally brought about the abolition of slavery, a harsh system of white supremacy persisted thereafter...

Appears in:

8 | The Civil Rights Movement Summer 2006

History Now Essay

The World War II Home Front

Allan M. Winkler

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

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

World War II had a profound impact on the United States. Although no battles occurred on the American mainland, the war affected all phases of American life. It required unprecedented efforts to coordinate strategy and tactics with...

Appears in:

14 | World War II Winter 2007

Essay

The Thirteen Colonies

Francis J. Bremer

Government and Civics

The thirteen colonies that joined together to become the United States of America were but a part of the first British Empire. They were the product of a broad and dramatic expansion of England that began with the establishment of ...

History Now Essay

Ordinary Americans and the Constitution

Gary B. Nash

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Constitution is so honored today, at home and abroad, that it may seem irreverent to suggest that for a great many ordinary Americans, it was not what they wished as a capstone of their revolutionary experience. This is not to say...

Appears in:

13 | The Constitution Fall 2007

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

Essay

Early Settlements

James Horn

"I marvel not a little," Richard Hakluyt the younger wrote in 1582, "that since the first discovery of America (which is now full fourscore and ten years) after so great conquest and plantings of the Spaniards and Portuguese there,...

History Now Essay

England on the Eve of Colonization

Paul E. J. Hammer

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

When James VI of Scotland and his entourage began his journey south to take up the crown of England in April of 1603, it looked as if the ancient enmity between the two realms had finally been swept away. With England’s aristocratic...

Appears in:

25 | Three Worlds Meet Fall 2010

History Now Essay

The Jungle and the Progressive Era

Robert W. Cherny

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The publication of Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle produced an immediate and powerful effect on Americans and on federal policy, but Sinclair had hoped to achieve a very different result. At the time he began working on the...

Appears in:

16 | Books That Changed History Summer 2008

Essay

The Road to War

Chandra M. Manning

Economics, Government and Civics

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

‘A house divided against itself can not stand’ I believe this government can not endure permanently, half slave, and half free . . . I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it...

History Now Essay

John Brown: Villain or Hero?

Steven Mintz

Economics, Literature, Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12

In 1856, three years before his celebrated raid on Harpers Ferry, John Brown, with four of his sons and three others, dragged five unarmed men and boys from their homes along Kansas’s Pottawatomie Creek and hacked and dismembered...

Appears in:

5 | Abolition Fall 2005

History Now Essay

The US Banking System: Origin, Development, and Regulation

Richard Sylla

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Banks are among the oldest businesses in American history—the Bank of New York, for example, was founded in 1784, and as the recently renamed Bank of New York Mellon it had its 225th anniversary in 2009. The banking system is one of...

Appears in:

24 | Shaping the American Economy Summer 2010

History Now Essay

Cahokia: A Pre-Columbian American City

Timothy R. Pauketat

Almost a thousand years ago, American Indians built a city along the Mississippi River in the middle of North America. Located opposite modern-day St. Louis, Missouri, this city is called Cahokia by archaeologists, and it was as large...

Appears in:

28 | American Indians Summer 2011

History Now Essay

Amateurism and Jim Thorpe at the Fifth Olympiad

Kate Buford

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

Thorpe’s deception and subsequent confession deals amateur sport in America the hardest blow it has ever had to take and disarranges the scheme of amateur athletics the world over. New York Times , January 28, 1913 The early years of...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

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