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1864/07/16

Jeffery, Richard W., fl. 1855-1899

to Aaron Jeffery

Richard apologizes for the delay in answering Aaron's last letter noting that the break in the mails kept him from getting a letter dated 29 June until 15 July. Richard hopes that the family is safe now that Grant's campaign against Richmond has...

GLC01896.069

Collection Item

Autograph letter signed

1865/01/14

Archer, Edward R., fl. 1830-1917

to his father

Archer announces that the "Hawk" has been sold at public auction for a little more than ten thousand pounds, leaving a balance of more than five thousand pounds outstanding to cover travel costs. A ship built for a "particular" purpose [blockade...

GLC01896.072

Collection Item

Autograph note signed

1863 ca.

Averell, William W., 1832-1900

to General

GLC06581.04.02

Collection Item

Autograph note signed

1863 ca.

Averell, William W., 1832-1900

to T.D Porter

GLC06581.04.03

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...

Classroom Resources

Study Aid: National Expansion

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

National Expansion Free States Slave States Connecticut Delaware Massachusetts Georgia New Hampshire Maryland New Jersey North Carolina New York South Carolina Pennsylvania Virginia Rhode Island Kentucky (1792) Vermont (1791)...

Lesson Plan

Native American Policy

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Background: Two conflicting policies have governed this country’s treatment of Native Americans—assimilation and removal. As the United States expanded, it became necessary to issue formal policy statements and make treaties with...

Lesson Plan

First Day of Integration at Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas

Government and Civics

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

Sources Students Entering School Building , National Park Service Book: Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock (1962), or online at Civil Rights Teaching Background Information On the first day of integration at Central High...

Lesson Plan

A Lesson on Détente

World History

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

Materials "Memorandums of Conversation," National Security Archive, George Washington University Notes and Excerpts from Nixon’s Meeting with Mao, February 1972 , National Security Archive, George Washington University "Nixon and...

Lesson Plan

Making a Covenant with Death: Slavery in the Constitutional Structure

Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

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

Materials US Constitution , Our Documents Finkelman, Paul. Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson . New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2001. Essential Question Why did the Founders find it necessary to provide...

Lesson Plan

The Treaty of Tordesillas: Resolving "a Certain Controversy" over Land in the Americas

Foreign Languages, Geography, World History

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

Background Imperial rivalries have often been resolved through war; however, the Treaty of Tordesillas is an important example of a rivalry that was resolved without hostilities through the demarcation of areas of influence by the...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Lincoln on abolition in England and the United States, 1858

Government and Civics

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

Though Lincoln spoke frequently during the 1858 Illinois Senate race against Stephen Douglas—a campaign that propelled Lincoln to the political forefront and helped shape him into a presidential candidate—very few Lincoln manuscripts...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Slavery in the New York State census, 1800

Government and Civics

While numbers do not explain the everyday realities of slavery in the eighteenth century, they do provide a sense of the pervasiveness of the peculiar institution even in a northern state like New York. This broadside provides figures...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

A Founding Father on the Missouri Compromise, 1819

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

In 1819 a courageous group of Northern congressmen and senators opened debate on the most divisive of antebellum political issues—slavery. Since the Quaker petitions of 1790, Congress had been silent on slavery. That silence was...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Frederick Douglass on Jim Crow, 1887

Government and Civics

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

Frederick Douglass tirelessly labored to end slavery but true equality remained out of reach. Despite the successful passage of several Constitutional amendments and federal laws after the Civil War, unwritten rules and Jim Crow laws...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

"The whole land is full of blood," 1851

"The whole land is full of blood." These ominous words were uttered by James W. C. Pennington, a former slave and noted abolitionist, in the wake of Thomas Sims’s infamous trial. Sims had escaped from slavery in Georgia before being...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

African American soldiers at the Battle of Fort Wagner, 1863

On July 18, 1863, on Morris Island near Charleston, South Carolina, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a Union regiment of free African American men, began their assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold. After the...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

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...

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

Video

The Hemingses of Monticello

Government and Civics

Video

A Voyage Long and Strange

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Award-winning author Tony Horwitz discusses the research and writing process for his book A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America (2008). ...

Video

Nature, Culture, and Native Americans

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

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Daniel Wildcat is a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma and Director of the American Indian Studies Program at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. He discusses the importance of distinguishing between...

Video

1866: The Birth of Civil Rights

Government and Civics

Video

The Significance of the American Revolution

Government and Civics

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

Video

Runaway Slaves

Video

Lincoln and Ireland

Government and Civics

Video

The End of the Cold War

Government and Civics

Video

World Power, Imperialism, and the Spanish American War

World History

Video

The US, the Middle East, and the Cold War

Geography, World History

Video

Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America

Video

The Men of Company E: Confronting Freedom after the Civil War

Government and Civics

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

Video

Dred and Harriet Scott: A Family Story of Slavery and Freedom

Government and Civics

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

Video

War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars

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

Andrew Carroll, founder of the Legacy Project, recounts his search for letters from America’s wars and reads excerpts from several.

Video

Slavery and the Constitution

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Historian James Oliver Horton briefly examines the protections for slavery embedded in the US Constitution.

Interactive

The Dred Scott Decision and Its Bitter Legacy

Government and Civics

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

Interactive

Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation

Government and Civics

K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Interactive

World War I and America

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

Spotlight on: Primary Source

A map of the Louisiana Territory, 1806

Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

6, 7, 8

The 1803 Louisiana Purchase from France during Thomas Jefferson’s first term as president more than doubled the size of the United States. Jefferson’s next step was to learn all about this new territory of the United States. He chose...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

FDR on racial discrimination, 1942

Government and Civics

On June 25, 1941, almost six months before the United States’ entry into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law Executive Order 8802, prohibiting racial discrimination by government defense contractors. The...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Spain authorizes Coronado's conquest in the Southwest, 1540

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

This letter, written on behalf of the king of Spain by Francisco Garcia de Loaysa, the president of the Council of the Indies, acknowledges Francisco Coronado’s report of the famous Niza expedition of the previous year and authorizes...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The "House Divided" Speech, ca. 1857–1858

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

By 1850, the extension of slavery into the new territories won through the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848 provided a testing ground for competing visions of America. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 and the Kansas...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

A View of Savannah, Georgia, 1734

World History

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

The colony of Georgia was founded in 1732 by James Oglethorpe, a British Member of Parliament. Oglethorpe planned Savannah as a place where the poor could come to make a better life. An attempt to produce a "classless society," this...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The Fifteenth Amendment, 1870

Government and Civics

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments gave constitutional status to emancipation’s promise. The Fifteenth Amendment provided suffrage for black men, declaring that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

President Ford’s remarks in Japan, 1974

In November 1974, Gerald Ford became the first sitting American president to visit Japan—the trip was also Ford’s first abroad since replacing Nixon in August of that year. He used the trip to reinforce US-Japanese relations, and in...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Go West ... and Grow Up with the Country

Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1854 Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor, gave Josiah B. Grinnell a famous piece of advice. "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country," said Greeley. Grinnell took Greeley's advice, moved west, and later founded...

Lesson Plan

"The Spirit of Empire": America Debates Imperialism

World History

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Click here to download this two-lesson unit. This unit was created in partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations .

Lesson Plan

America's Role in the World: World War I to World War II

World History

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Click here to download this two-lesson unit. This unit was created in partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations .

Lesson Plan

The Origins of US Cold War Fears, 1946–1961

World History

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Click here to download this two-lesson unit. This unit was created in partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations .

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