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On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first Southern state to secede from the Union. Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 set the wheels of secession in motion. Many Southerners were convinced that the new president...

Passed by Congress in September 1789, the Bill of Rights was officially ratified on December 15, 1791, when Virginia became the tenth state (out of fourteen) to approve ten of the twelve proposed amendments. These ten amendments to...

The deadline for the WWI and America Project is January 13, 2017, in just three weeks! Public, academic, and community college libraries have the opportunity to join institutions across the country in commemorating the 100th...

On December 29, 1777, badly in need of more supplies and troops, George Washington wrote to the New Hampshire legislature pleading for assistance. He describes the desperate state of the 9,000 Continental Army troops camped for the...

On January 4, 1865, the New York Stock Exchange opened for business in its first permanent headquarters on Broad Street. The Exchange had formally existed since 1792, but had operated out of a series of packed Wall Street coffee...

The SAT US History Exam is only two weeks away, on January 21! Forty percent of the exam will focus on the momentous events and changes of the twentieth century. Prepare by reviewing the prewar , postwar , and present-day eras, or...

Alexander Hamilton was born on January 11—in 1755 or 1757—in Nevis, a small island in the Caribbean. Hamilton left an immense legacy as the first secretary of the treasury and architect of the American financial system. But what of...

In 1622, colonist Sebastian Brandt wrote a letter to a merchant in London , seeking supplies and assistance. Brandt had arrived in Jamestown intending to scour the land for precious minerals such as gold, silver, and copper. But he...

Today we commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s immense contributions to civil rights and social justice. One of the most enduring images of the civil rights movement is Dr. King delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March...

Middle and high school students with a passion for the Civil War can flex their writing and research skills by submitting an entry to the Civil War Essay Contest . Students have the opportunity to explore a Civil War topic of their...

President John F. Kennedy was inaugurated on January 20, 1961. Elected in the midst of the Cold War , Kennedy focused his inaugural address on international politics and America’s place in the world. Kennedy appealed to both American...

On January 24, 1801, President John Adams responded to two abolitionists who had sent him an anti-slavery pamphlet by Quaker reformer Warner Mifflin (1745–1798). Adams writes that he is personally against slavery, noting that "never...

African Americans have served in every conflict in United States history, beginning with the American Revolution. However, it was not until the Civil War, and the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, that free African American...

National Freedom Day commemorates the date on which President Abraham Lincoln signed a congressional resolution proposing a Thirteenth Amendment—February 1, 1865. The amendment, ratified by the states on December 6 of that year,...

Aaron Burr was born in Newark, New Jersey, on February 6, 1756. In many ways his career paralleled that of his rival Alexander Hamilton. They both served in the Continental Army, became lawyers and practiced in Albany and New York...

During the Civil War, Creed A. Lay, serving in the 40th Regiment, Illinois Volunteers, sent this elaborately cut letter to his wife Sarah. Lay filled in the hearts with short, amusing rhymes about love and friendship, commonly written...

On Tuesday, January 31, Jeff Forret, Professor of History, Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas, received the 2016 Frederick Douglass Book Prize for Slave Against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South , in a ceremony at the Yale...

A president’s inaugural address often reflects the contemporary political, social, and economic climate of the nation. For President’s Day, explore eight presidential inaugural speeches, from George Washington to Barack Obama. How do...

On Wednesday, February 22, 1,900 Chicago public school students packed The PrivateBank Theatre for the Hamilton Education Program’s first Chicago student matinee! Thirty schools participated in the inaugural matinee. Twenty-six...

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...

On March 22, 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act to help pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years’ War. The act required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various forms...

Each year, ten Gilder Lehrman Fellowships are awarded to outstanding scholars of American history to conduct research at archives in New York City. In 2009, City College professor Hidetaka Hirota, then a doctoral candidate at Boston...

On March 27, the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the New-York Historical Society partnered to recognize the work of Peter Cozzens, whose book The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West received the...

In celebration of National Poetry Month, we’ll be highlighting some of the intriguing, eloquent, and historically significant poems in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. These poems shed a personal light on momentous events in American...

In the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, Virginia, on October 21, 1861, the 1st Minnesota Volunteers had just one casualty: a man named Lewis Mitchell. Mitchell was “only a private,” one of the approximately 750,000 casualties in the Civil War....