16,497 items
Today the Gilder Lehrman Institute, along with the many whose life and work were impacted by his business and philanthropic genius, mourns the death of Julian Robertson. Julian Robertson founded the hedge fund Tiger Management, and is...
Announcing the Winners of the Second Annual Ham4Progress Award for Educational Advancement
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Hamilton are delighted to announce the winners of the second annual Ham4Progress Award for Educational Advancement, a cash award supporting college-bound high school students from...
Announcing the Fall 2022 Issue of History Now: New Light on the Declaration and Its Signers
Published four times a year, History Now , the online journal of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, offers the latest in historical scholarship to K−12 teachers, students, and general readers. Each issue is organized around a major topic...
Inside the Vault: “Pathological liar”: Harry Truman and the rise of Joseph McCarthy in 1950
In February 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy accused more than 200 staff at the Department of State of being members of the Communist Party. How did President Harry Truman respond to the attack on his administration? On December 7, 2023...
Letter from Christopher Columbus on Returning from His First Voyage to the Americas, 1493
Click here to download this five-lesson unit.
Catching Up on Affiliate Schools with Education Department Coordinator Daniel Pecoraro
The Education Department: Daniel Pecoraro Daniel Pecoraro is an education program coordinator at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Affiliate School Program, a...
“A Vote-less People Is a Hopeless People”: Lessons from Selma
The black freedom struggle, commonly referred to as the civil rights movement, is undoubtedly one of the greatest social movements in the history of the world. After more than two centuries of bondage followed by another century of...
The Archaeological Excavation of the Stadt Huys Block in Lower Manhattan
The first large-scale archaeological excavation in New York City took place in the Wall Street district in 1979–1980. The project came about when the developers of the office building that became the headquarters of Goldman Sachs had...
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The Civil War, 1861-1865
The Civil War, 1861-1865 Letters and documents recount the secession crisis and the American Civil War through general orders, orderly books, recruitment broadsides, maps, photographs, newspapers, and the journals, official dispatches...
Gilder Lehrman Collection Advice for Home Care of Family Photographs and Documents
Summer 2019 Marketing and Communications intern Olivia Luntz recently interviewed archivists and curators at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to create a Gilder Lehrman Institute piece on Medium about preserving family...
2019 National History Teacher of the Year Alysha Butler in the News
The Gilder Lehrman Institute announced on September 10 that Alysha Butler, a history teacher at McKinley Technological High School in Washington, DC, has been named the 2019 National History Teacher of the Year. Since then, she has...
Jane Hong - "Opening the Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion"
Order Opening the Gates to Asia at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
Beth Bailey - "An Army Afire: How the U.S. Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era"
Beth Bailey is a Foundation Distinguished Professor in the Department of History at The University of Kansas and the founding director of the Center for Military, War, and Society Studies. Order An Army Afire at the Gilder Lehrman...
Richard J. M. Blackett - "Samuel Ringgold Ward: A Life of Struggle"
Richard J. M. Blackett is Andrew Jackson Professor of History, Emeritus, at Vanderbilt University. Order Samuel Ringgold Ward at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link...
Why Documents Matter: An Interactive Digital Edition
Welcome to Why Documents Matter: An Interactive Digital Edition —a selection of primary sources from the Gilder Lehrman Collection curated and annotated for K–12 classrooms (print edition available here ). Scroll through the entire...
Guided Readings: Federalists and Jeffersonians
Reading 1 Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. —Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia ...
From The Editor
Welcome to the sixth issue of HISTORY NOW. I am pleased to announce that HISTORY NOW was recently selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities for inclusion on EDSITEment ( http://edsitement.neh.gov ) as one of the best...
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Invitation to the 22nd Frederick Douglass Book Prize Ceremony on February 23
The 22nd annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize ceremony takes place online this Tuesday, February 23, 2021, at 7:00 p.m. ET. It is hosted jointly by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale...
David McCullough
David McCullough (1933–2022) was widely acclaimed as a “master of the art of narrative history” and “a matchless writer.” He was twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize and twice winner of the National Book Award, and received the...
What Our 2020 History Teachers of the Year Are Doing Now
On Wednesday, October 6 at 8 p.m. ET, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., will present the 2021 National History Teacher of the Year Award to Nataliya Braginsky in a special virtual ceremony . The ceremony also features most of this...
Harry S. Truman responds to McCarthy, 1950
In February 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy alleged in a speech in West Virginia that more than 200 staff members at the Department of State were known to be members of the Communist Party. During Harry Truman’s press conference on...
National Prohibition Act Passed: On This Day, October 28
On October 28, 1919, the National Prohibition Act—also known as the Volstead Act—was passed by Congress, overriding President Woodrow Wilson’s veto. On January 16, 1920, Americans would have to put down their drinks and shutter the...
Half a Century after The Feminine Mystique
Today is the anniversary of the publication of the groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan in 1963. Debunking the idea of the feminine mystique which glorified the role of women as homemakers as a myth, which has "...
JFK on the containment of Communism, 1952
In August 1952, as he was campaigning for the US Senate, John F. Kennedy addressed the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Federation of Labor. This manuscript is a draft of the speech Kennedy delivered before the influential labor...
Black Lives in the Founding Era News, Week 12: A Black Patriot's Pay Warrant
The Gilder Lehrman Institute initiative “ Black Lives in the Founding Era ” restores to view the lives and works of a wide array of African Americans in the period 1760 to 1800, drawing on our archive of historical documents and our...
"The Storyteller's Candle / La velita de los cuentos"
This is the story of librarian Pura Belpré, told through the eyes of two young children who are introduced to the library and its treasures just before Christmas. Lulu Delacre's lovely illustrations evoke New York City at the time of...
Scholarly Fellowships | Current Fellows
Caroline “C.C.” Borzilleri PhD Candidate in History, The George Washington University “The Personal and Professional Lives of Early American Women Printers” Elizabeth Noble Goodenough Lecturer, Arts and Ideas in the Humanities Program...
Alamo Simulation
Overview Through a simulation, in which Canadians try to seize the state of Maine, students will gain an understanding of the circumstances surrounding the Battle of the Alamo, February 23–March 6, 1836, between approximately 200...
A Second Declaration of Independence: The 1848 Declaration of Sentiments
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal. [1] Upon casual reading, this phrase should sound familiar. Yet unlike what appeared in our nation’s 1776 Declaration of Independence, the 1848...
2022 State History Teachers of the Year Announced
The Gilder Lehrman Institute is proud to announce the 2022 State History Teachers of the Year. Since 2004, 960 exemplary American history teachers from elementary, middle, and high schools in all fifty states, Department of Defense...
2021 State History Teachers of the Year Announced
The Gilder Lehrman Institute is proud to announce the 2021 State History Teachers of the Year. Since 2004, 855 exemplary American history teachers from elementary, middle, and high schools in all fifty states, Department of Defense...
What Events Led to Lincoln’s Assassination?
Overview Fourth-grade students often associate Abraham Lincoln with three things: He wore a tall hat, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and he was assassinated. The murder of Lincoln, whom most historians consider one of the...
From the Editor
If the Civil War is the most significant event of our national history, the Battle of Gettysburg is surely its most memorable moment. For this issue of History Now, we asked our contributors to provide novel perspectives and new...
In Their Own Words: Brooklyn East Collegiate Students Explore the Civil Rights Era at the Collection
On January 18, 2019, eight students from Brooklyn East Collegiate, a Gilder Lehrman Affiliate School, visited the Gilder Lehrman Collection with their teacher to augment their civil rights knowledge and prepare for their spring break...
Sing Along with the Lincoln Campaign Songster and Other Election Songbooks
There are currently fifty-seven items from the Gilder Lehrman Collection on loan at the Gettysburg National Military Park for an exhibition about American democracy. Among these items are three presidential candidate songbooks from...
Teacher Meghan Thomas’s Gilder Lehrman Experience
Meghan Thomas is the 2016 Illinois History Teacher of the Year and teaches at Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center in Chicago, Illinois. Last February, she and her students took part in the Hamilton Education Program. Here, she...
Big News: Gilder Lehrman Partners with Hamilton on Broadway
The Gilder Lehrman Institute is delighted to announce a partnership between the New York City Department of Education and the Broadway musical Hamilton . With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, 20,000 NYC public high school...
Hamilton at the White House
Yesterday, the cast of Hamilton were welcomed to the White House by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for a day of events that honored the musical’s groundbreaking qualities and showcased its ability to inspire...
Charles Guiteau's reasons for assassinating President Garfield, 1882
Charles Julius Guiteau employed the unusual medium of poetry to plead his innocence while on trial for assassinating President James Garfield. Guiteau’s odd behavior in court made him a media sensation, and the Gilded Age press...
The United Nations and the international community, 1967
In this 1967 letter, Dr. Israel Goldstein, a prominent American rabbi and Zionist, comments on the United Nations as a peacekeeping organization. After World War II, Goldstein, with other rabbis, had lobbied members of the newly...
The Gilder Lehrman Institute Hosts David Blight Book Talk at Pace University
On Friday, October 19, the Gilder Lehrman Institute and Pace University hosted a book talk and signing with Professor David Blight, award-winning historian and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance...
Truman and His Doctrine: Revolutionary, Unprecedented, and Bipartisan
In February 1947, the British government privately told the United States that it would no longer be able to guarantee the security and independence of Greece and Turkey. President Harry S. Truman had known this time would come and...
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Labor Day: From Protest to Picnics
In the 1880s a surge in growth of the American labor movement led to the creation of two workers’ holidays, Labor Day and May Day. May Day soon spread abroad, as European unions and socialist groups adopted it as an occasion to...
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Exploration
We often speak of America as "unknown," except to its own inhabitants, in the Middle Ages. But so, in a sense, was Europe, which hardly figured on the maps and in the calculations of the immensely richer, more populous, and...
Dinner with the nuclear family, 1950
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...
Rosa Parks Refuses to Move: On This Day, December 1
On December 1, 1955, after a long day of work as a seamstress, Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and took a seat. Parks, a black woman, took a seat in the first row of seats in the rear "colored...
Students at Affiliate School Stuyvesant High School Win First Place in National History Day Contest
On Thursday, June 13, National History Day (NHD) presented the awards for the national finals of the 2019 National History Day Contest. More than half a million students entered the competition last year, and 3,000 of them advanced...
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