Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

3,891 items

Essay

The Development of the West

Ned Blackhawk

In the summer of 1876, two dramatically different places captured the American nation’s attention. As the summer began, fairgoers in Philadelphia teemed into the Centennial Exhibition held to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary...

History Now Essay

Her Hat Was in the Ring: How Thousands of Women Were Elected to Political Office before 1920

Wendy E. Chmielewski

Government and Civics

In 1866, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the well-known leader of the woman’s rights movement, declared her intention to run for Congress, from Brooklyn, New York. Stanton was probably the first woman to campaign for a federal office. It...

Appears in:

47 | American Women in Leadership Winter 2017

History Now Essay

Ralph W. Kirkham: A Christian Soldier in the US-Mexican War

Amy S. Greenberg

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

North of Mexico’s border, most Americans know the 1846 conflict that established that boundary (if they know it at all) as the training ground for Civil War heroes. Generals Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, and...

Appears in:

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

History Now Essay

The Lion of All Occasions: The Great Black Abolitionist Frederick Douglass

Manisha Sinha

On February 24, 1844, the Liberator printed an admiring report on Frederick Douglass’s “masterly and impressive” speech in Concord, New Hampshire. The fugitive slave was the master of his audience. Douglass, the writer fantasized, was...

Appears in:

50 | Frederick Douglass at 200 Winter 2018

Collection Item

Autograph letter signed

February 17, 1863

Ward, Edward K., 1837-1864

to his sister

Ward writes that he's heard from a member of his company, Dave Poston, who was wounded in Perryville. Also writes that he has gotten fatter and has never enjoyed better health. He reports that federal troops are constantly getting secesh families...

GLC02232.14