58,176 items
As part of our initiative to expand our twentieth-century holdings, the Gilder Lehrman Institute recently acquired a set of anti-communist trading cards from the 1950s. These cards are a dramatic example of the type of propaganda used...
The Haymarket Riot
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...
World War I
War swept across Europe in the summer of 1914, igniting a global struggle that would eventually take nine million lives. World War I pitted the Allies (initially composed of Britain, France, Belgium, Serbia, and Russia, and eventually...
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...
Stephen Austin's contract to bring settlers to Texas, 1825
In order to settle Texas in the 1820s, the Mexican government allowed speculators, called empresarios, to acquire large tracts of land if they promised to bring in settlers to populate the region and make it profitable. Moses and...
Richard Gilder History Prize
The Gilder Lehrman Institute is pleased to sponsor the Richard Gilder History Prize. This prize serves as an opportunity for Affiliate School teachers to honor a promising and passionate history student in their school. The Richard...
Women's Long Journey for the Vote
The earliest and most famous expression of the discontent American women felt over their station in life was voiced by Abigail Adams in March 1776 when she urged her husband, the future president John Adams, to “Remember the Ladies, ...
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Joseph DiMenna
Joseph DiMenna is managing director of Zweig-DiMenna Associates, which is a global investment management firm. He has been the portfolio manager there since he co-founded Zweig-DiMenna Partners with Martin Zweig in 1984. Zweig-DiMenna...
Scholar’s Blog - Brooks D. Simpson
MAY 22, 1863: GRANT LAYS SIEGE TO VICKSBURG It had been a long and difficult winter for Ulysses S. Grant. For months his army had struggled in the bayous and swamps around Vicksburg, Mississippi, looking for some way to attack the...
Summer 2019 Teacher Seminars, Weeks and 4 and 5
Held at colleges and historic sites across the US and abroad, Gilder Lehrman Teacher Seminars offer teachers daily programs with leading historians, visits to local historic sites, and hands-on work with primary sources. Teachers...
New World War II acquisition: Pearl Harbor patriotic poster from 1942
Following the Japanese bombardment of the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan and Germany and immediately mobilized the country for war. "Remember Dec. 7th!" is a...
Guided Readings: Urban Political Machines
Reading 1 An army led by a council seldom conquers: It must have a commander-in-chief who settles disputes, decides in emergencies, inspires fear or attachment. The head of the Ring is such a commander. He dispenses places, rewards...
Re-envision Women's History with Professors Carol Berkin and Catherine Clinton
Professors Carol Berkin and Catherine Clinton have revolutionized the field of American women’s history in their academic careers. Berkin struggled against a generation that believed incorrectly that there were no primary sources to...
The Health Care Debate in 1951
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History recently acquired a letter from President Harry Truman to Dr. Channing Frothingham of Boston. In this letter, written in 1951, the President thanked Channing for his support of Truman’s...
Civil War Essay Contest Winners 2015
High School Division Click on the title to view a pdf of a winning essay. First Prize Anjelica Matcho, Bridgewater Raritan High School, Bridgewater, New Jersey "Dethroning King Cotton: The Failed Diplomacy of the Confederacy" Second...
The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...
Why Black men fought in World War I, 1919
During World War I, approximately 370,000 black men in the US military served in segregated regiments and were often relegated to support duties such as digging trenches, transporting supplies, cleaning latrines, and burying the dead....
Henry Ford Introduces the Minimum Wage: On This Day, January 5
On January 5, 1914, automaker Henry Ford made history by instituting a $5-a-day wage. The move made national news. Five dollars a day constituted double the industry norm—and double the pay of most of Ford’s own employees. At the same...
Indigenous Americans in World War II: The Navajo Code Talkers
In the summer of 1983, my son and I visited my father, Benson Tohe. He and other Navajo Code Talkers had recently been honored in Washington, DC, with a parade and given a medal for their service in World War II. That was the first...
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Understanding the Burr-Hamilton Duel
Without a doubt, the duel between former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Vice President Aaron Burr is the most famous duel in American history. On July 11, 1804, the two political rivals met on a dueling ground in...
Historical Context: Mexican Americans and the Great Depression
In February 1930 in San Antonio, Texas, 5000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans gathered at the city’s railroad station to depart the United States for settlement in Mexico. In August, a special train carried another 2000 to central...
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...
Annette Gordon-Reed
Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University and a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She was formerly the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for...
Introduction to Imperialism
Overview Students will be introduced to the concept of imperialism, and specifically the three justifications US foreign policy leaders used to justify US Imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century. Warm Up Define Imperialism....
A patriot’s letter to his loyalist father, 1778
In February 1778, Timothy Pickering Jr. received word from Massachusetts that his father was dying. An adjutant general in George Washington’s Continental Army, Pickering wrote his father this moving letter of farewell on February 23,...
J. Edgar Hoover on campus unrest, 1970
In September 1970, J. Edgar Hoover composed an open letter to American students detailing his view on civil unrest at the nation’s colleges and universities and warning against the elements he believed responsible. Hoover opened with...
World War II Letters about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw ghetto uprising began on April 19, 1943 w hen the Nazis tried to transport the remaining ghetto population to forced-labor centers and concentration camps. By May 16, 1943, the Germans had killed more than 7,000 Jews and...
Religion and Literacy in Colonial New England
Historical Background Puritans believed that reading the Bible was important to achieving salvation and, therefore, teaching children to read was a priority in their colonial centers. The New England Primer , first published in Boston...
Arguments for educating women, 1735
On May 19, 1735, John Peter Zenger republished this essay in the New-York Weekly Journal. Originally printed in the Guardian , a British periodical, the two-page essay supports the education of women “of Quality or Fortune.” The...
Kevin Cline on GLI History School's "US Constitution: Looking Backward from 2021 to 1787"
Kevin Cline, who taught the Summer 2020 History School course “The United States, 1492–1865,” returns to History School this spring with “ The US Constitution: Looking Backward from 2021 to 1787 .” This course focuses on key aspects...
A Black Soldier’s Civil War Diary
Written by Stephanie Townrow and Mary Kate Kwasnik. William Woodlin enlisted in the United States Colored Infantry 8th Regiment in October 1863 and kept a journal during his service. Woodlin’s entries describe camp life, his service...
Scholar’s Blog - Aaron Sheehan-Dean
April 30, 1863: Hooker Reaches Chancellorsville The bloody Union defeat at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December 1862 and the aborted "Mud March" along the Rappahannock River the following month demoralized the Army of the Potomac and...
Dwight D. Eisenhower's Domestic Leadership
Essential Questions What constitutes great presidential leadership? How did Eisenhower demonstrate great leadership through his support of the Federal-Aid Highway Act (1956) and his warning about the growth of the Military-Industrial...
The Supreme Court upholds national prohibition, 1920
After more than a century of activism, the temperance movement achieved its signal victory with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1919. The amendment abolished "the manufacture, sale, or...
Singing for Freedom
Background In the early 1960s, Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation, with most non-white families living well below the poverty line. Although African Americans made up nearly half of the state's population, few were...
The Monroe Doctrine
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...
"America the Beautiful," 1893
In a brief essay that appeared ca. 1925, poet Katharine Lee Bates described her inspiration for writing "America the Beautiful," the poem that would evolve into one of the nation’s best-loved patriotic songs, during a trip to Pike’s...
The Gilder Lehrman Institute Hosts Henry Louis Gates, Jr., at Pace University
On Friday, May 31, 2019, the Gilder Lehrman Institute and Pace University hosted a book talk and screening with Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for...
Nonviolent Direct Action at Southern Lunch Counters
Background On February 1, 1960, four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, North Carolina, walked into a Woolworth’s store and quietly sat down at the lunch counter. This seemingly...
Scholar’s Blog - Brooks D. Simpson
MARCH 9, 1864—ULYSSES S. GRANT IS COMMISSIONED AS LIEUTENANT-GENERAL On March 8, 1864, Ulysses S. Grant and his eldest son, Fred, arrived at Washington, DC. It was the general’s first visit to Washington since 1852, when he had been a...
Scholar’s Blog - Brooks D. Simpson
MARCH 9, 1864—ULYSSES S. GRANT IS COMMISSIONED AS LIEUTENANT-GENERAL On March 8, 1864, Ulysses S. Grant and his eldest son, Fred, arrived at Washington, DC. It was the general’s first visit to Washington since 1852, when he had been a...
NPS to Establish Manhattan Project Park
What was once the biggest secret in America is being commemorated in public—building the bomb. The National Park Service and the Department of Energy announced last week the establishment of three national historic parks at Manhattan...
Sir Francis Drake’s attack on St. Augustine, 1586
Five years after leading the first English circumnavigation of the globe in 1577–1580, Sir Francis Drake led a raid against Spanish settlements in the Caribbean including Santiago, Santo Domingo, and Cartagena, as well as St....
Temperance movement cartoon: The Drunkard’s Progress, 1826
Numerous reform movements to improve society sprang up in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. The temperance movement attracted reformers who identified excessive drinking as the principal cause of domestic...
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...
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...
EduHam at Home Announced in a Washington Post Feature Article
The Washington Post announced the EduHam at Home program on April 21, 2020, with a feature article by theater critic Peter Marks. Along with exploring the development of EduHam itself, the article highlights Gilder Lehrman Institute...
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