Site Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

57,617 items

Essay

The Origins of Slavery

Ira Berlin

Geography, World History

5, 6, 7, 8

African American life in the United States has been framed by migrations, forced and free. A forced migration from Africa—the transatlantic slave trade—carried black people to the Americas. A second forced migration—the internal slave...

News

The Origins of Veterans Day

This year, in conjunction with the WWI and America project and the upcoming 100-year anniversary of America’s entry in WWI, we look at the origins of Veterans Day as a day to commemorate veterans of the Great War. On November 11, 1919...

Lesson Plan

Origins of the Teddy Bear

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Overview The term "teddy bear," used to describe a stuffed toy bear, originated in 1902 during Theodore Roosevelt's presidency. By examining the political cartoons of Clifford K. Berryman, students will learn that the teddy bear is a...

History Now Essay

The Origins of the Transcontinental Railroad

Richard White

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

The completion in 1869 of the first transcontinental railroad—the Pacific Railway, as the combination of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific was called—created two of the most iconic symbols in American history. The first is a...

Appears in:

38 | The Joining of the Rails: The Transcontinental Railroad Winter 2014

Video

Origins of the Civil Rights Movement

Government and Civics

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

Video

The Origins of the Cold War

Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Cold War was more than the product of post-World War II tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union argues John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University. Rather, it was the product of...

Video

Tracing the Origins of Chinese Exclusion

Government and Civics

Video

The Origins of the Vietnam War

Government and Civics, World History

Video

The Story of America: Essays on Origins

Government and Civics, Literature, Religion and Philosophy

Historian Jill Lepore (David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard and a staff writer at the New Yorker ) discusses her 2012 book, The Story of America: Essays on Origins (Princeton University Press). ...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The origins of FDR’s New Deal, 1932

Economics, Government and Civics

When the nation fell into the Great Depression following the stock market crash of 1929, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was serving as New York’s governor and was responsible for shaping the state’s response to the crisis. The origins of...

History Now Essay

The Origins and Legacy of the Pennsylvania Quakers

Barry Levy

Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

Enthusiastic religious conviction among rustic Quakers contributed much to what seems civilized and refined about American culture and society. Although the movement later attracted intellectual and genteel members, Quakerism began as...

Appears in:

29 | Religion in the Colonial World Fall 2011

GLC06477

Collection Item

Views of slavery

circa 1830-1840

Abolitionist broadside with six images depicting kidnapping, torture, auction, and labor of enslaved people. With Channing quotation, "Our laws know no higher crime than that of reducing a man to slavery. To steal or to buy an African on his own...

GLC06477

Collection Item

Slavery.

1860

Baker, James Loring, fl. 1860

Printed by John A. Norton. Claims that Anglo Saxon and African races can only coexist "in their present relative condition, but in no other way." Calls for free labor to gradually and permanently overtake slavery, but does not advocate slavery's...

GLC00267.210

Lesson Plan

The Origins of US Cold War Fears, 1946–1961

World History

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

About This Lesson Plan Unit > Over the course of the two lessons, the students will analyze and assess primary source documents, including speeches, government documents, and images from 1946 to...

Essay

Slavery and Anti-Slavery

David Brion Davis

Abolitionism emerged in America as part of a massive fusion of reform movements related to religious revivals and dedicated to the goal of creating a righteous society capable of fulfilling America’s high ideals. [1] In part, the...

History Now Essay

Expelling the Poor: The Antebellum Origins of American Deportation Policy

Hidetaka Hirota

Dehumanizing insults to foreigners, aggressive enforcement of immigration law by overzealous officials, and tragic family separation routinely appear in immigration-related news in the United States today. At the center of the present...

Appears in:

52 | The History of US Immigration Laws Fall 2018

GLC07596

Collection Item

A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery

1817

Torrey, Jesse, fl. 1817

Engraved frontispiece and 5 additional plates.

GLC07596

Collection Item

Document signed

[Slavery]

18 March 1799

Negro woman "Jane" seeks a writ of "Homine Replegiando" (asking the Court to return to freedom) against Edward Worrall.

GLC08356

GLC01543.02

Collection Item

Autograph manuscript

The death of slavery

circa 1866

Bryant, William Cullen, 1794-1878

Bryant's poem, transmitted to the editor of Atlantic Monthly with a letter written 5 June 1866 (GLC 1543.01).

GLC01543.02

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: Origins of the Cold War: The Containment Policy

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Reading 1 Soviet power...bears within itself the seeds of its own decay, and the sprouting of these seeds is well advanced...[If] anything were ever to disrupt the unity and efficacy of the Party as a political instrument, Soviet...

Video

The Origins of the French Revolution: American Influence, Domestic Discontent

World History

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

Collection Item

The Unconstitutionality of Slavery

1849

Spooner, Lysander, fl. 1865

JB00409

Collection Item

The Results of Slavery

1863

Cochin, Augustin, fl. 1863

JB00420

Collection Item

The Barbarism of Slavery

4 June 1860

Sumner, Charles, 1811-1874

JB00062

Collection Item

The Christian doctrine of slavery.

1857

Armstrong, George Dodd, 1813-1899

Published in New York by Charles Scribner. Justification of slavery based on the principles and history of Christianity.

GLC00267.078