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History Now Essay

The Pueblo Revolt

Edward Countryman

Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

In 1680 the people known collectively as "Pueblos" rebelled against their Spanish overlords in the American Southwest. Spaniards had dominated them, their lives, their land, and their souls for eight decades. The Spanish had...

Appears in:

28 | American Indians Summer 2011

History Now Essay

When Myth and Meaning Overshadow History: Remembering the Alamo

Linda K. Salvucci

Rare are the students who enter US classrooms without some preconceived notions regarding the Alamo. Thanks to more than a dozen films produced at regular intervals over the last century, to Walt Disney’s television series for baby...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

The Colonial Virginia Frontier and International Native American Diplomacy

William White

Government and Civics

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

Telling the story of Native Americans and colonial Virginians is a complex challenge clouded by centuries of mythology. The history of early settlement is dominated by the story of a preteen Pocahontas saving the life of a courageous...

Appears in:

28 | American Indians Summer 2011

History Now Essay

From Citizen to Enemy: The Tragedy of Japanese Internment

Julie Des Jardins

Government and Civics, World History

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

Although World War II is covered in most school curricula, the story of American citizens who were stripped of their civil liberties here, on American soil, during that war is often omitted. Yet what happened to first-generation...

Appears in:

14 | World War II Winter 2007

History Now Essay

The Columbian Exchange

Alfred W. Crosby

Economics, Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

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

Millions of years ago, continental drift carried the Old World and New Worlds apart, splitting North and South America from Eurasia and Africa. That separation lasted so long that it fostered divergent evolution; for instance, the...

Appears in:

12 | The Age Of Exploration Summer 2007

Essay

The Open Door Policy and the Boxer War: The US and China

Warren I. Cohen

By 1899, the United States had become a world power. It was not only the world’s greatest industrial nation, but in the war with Spain it had demonstrated a willingness to use its power militarily. It had acquired possessions near and...

Essay

"Half slave, half free": Lincoln and the "House Divided"

Gabor S. Boritt

Government and Civics

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all proclaim, "a house divided against itself can not stand." [1] Living in a Bible-reading country, most nineteenth-century Americans knew that metaphor by heart—words that also made good common...

About page

Announcing the 2022 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Finalists

New Haven, CT, July 26, 2022 — Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition today has announced the finalists for the twenty-fourth annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize, one of the most...

Essay

The Roaring Twenties

Joshua Zeitz

The 1920s heralded a dramatic break between America’s past and future. Before World War I the country remained culturally and psychologically rooted in the nineteenth century, but in the 1920s America seemed to break its wistful...

Essay

The Age of Reagan

Gil Troy

The Reagan Revolution of the 1980s sought to change Americans’ attitudes toward their country, their government, and the world, as the United States emerged from the 1970s. Ronald Reagan entered the White House in January 1981...

History Now Essay

The Challenges and Opportunities for Black Women Entrepreneurs in the Global Arena

Andrea E. Smith-Hunter

Economics

The statistics on Black women-owned businesses in the United States are very impressive. A report from JP Morgan indicated that “the number of businesses owned by Black women grew 50% from 2014 to 2019, representing the highest growth...

Appears in:

72 | Black Entrepreneurship in America Fall 2024

History Now Essay

The Slave Narratives: A Genre and a Source

David W. Blight

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The autobiographies of ex-slaves in America are the foundation of an African American literary tradition, as well as unique glimpses into the souls of slaves themselves. The roughly sixty-five to seventy slave narratives published in...

Appears in:

2 | Primary Sources on Slavery Winter 2004

History Now Essay

Bridging the Caribbean: Puerto Rican Roots in Nineteenth-Century America

Virginia Sánchez Korrol

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In recent years, the media has tended to portray US Latinos of Hispanic Caribbean ancestry as new immigrants, but this characterization ignores the long connections between these immigrants and the United States. And because Puerto...

Appears in:

3 | Immigration Spring 2005

History Now Essay

The US and Spanish American Revolutions

Jay Sexton

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics, World History

If one says "American Revolution" in the United States today, it is assumed that what is being referred to is the North American liberation struggles against the British Empire in the late eighteenth century. But the British North...

Appears in:

34 | The Revolutionary Age Winter 2012

History Now Essay

Cold War, Warm Hearth

Elaine Tyler May

In the summer of 1959, a young couple married and spent their honeymoon in a fallout shelter. Life magazine featured the "sheltered honeymoon" with a photograph of the duo smiling on their lawn, surrounded by dozens of canned goods...

Appears in:

27 | The Cold War Spring 2011

About page

Our Partners

Established in 1892, the American Jewish History Society provides access to more than thirty million documents and 50,000 books, photographs, art, and artifacts that reflect the history of the Jewish presence in the United States from...

History Now Essay

The Will to Be Free: On the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam

Thuy Vo Dang

Government and Civics, World History

In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote that “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” [1] His letter addressed his fellow clergymen amidst the...

Appears in:

61 | The Declaration of Independence and the Origins of Self-Determination in the Modern World Fall 2021

Essay

The Americas to 1620

Christopher L. Miller

Geography, World History

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

At the end of the first millennium, most people in the Eastern Hemisphere had a firm sense of how the world was arranged, who occupied it, and how they had come to be where they were. Various sacred texts as well as long-standing folk...

History Now Essay

Perils of the Ocean in the Early Modern Era

Robert C. Ritchie

Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

A traveler considering an ocean voyage around 1600 had much to contemplate. Voyage by voyage, explorers and colonists alike needed knowledge about the seas and lands in the Atlantic world. Unfortunately, information was never shared...

Appears in:

25 | Three Worlds Meet Fall 2010

History Now Essay

Indian Removal

Theda Perdue

Geography, Government and Civics

In 1828 pressure was building among white Americans for the relocation of American Indians from the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River. A student at a mission school in the Cherokee Nation, which lay within...

Appears in:

28 | American Indians Summer 2011

History Now Essay

"The Politics of the Future Are Social Politics": Progressivism in International Perspective

Thomas Bender

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The American Progressive movement was not simply a response to the domestic conditions produced by industrialization and urbanization. Instead, it was part of a global response to these developments during an era of unregulated...

Appears in:

17 | Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era Fall 2008

History Now Essay

Women and the Early Industrial Revolution in the United States

Thomas Dublin

Economics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The industrial revolution that transformed western Europe and the United States during the course of the nineteenth century had its origins in the introduction of power-driven machinery in the English and Scottish textile industries...

Appears in:

10 | Nineteenth Century Technology Winter 2006

History Now Essay

The First Generation: America’s Women Voters, 1776–1807

Marcela Micucci

Most histories of women gaining the right to vote in the United States begin in July of 1848, when hundreds of activists gathered in Seneca Falls to hold the first women’s rights convention and sign the Declaration of Sentiments. The...

Appears in:

56 | The Nineteenth Amendment and Beyond Spring 2020

History Now Essay

Citizenship in the Reconstruction South

Susanna Lee

Economics, Government and Civics

Slaveholders created a system of race, gender, and class inequality in the pre-Civil War South. They justified slavery by arguing that enslaved people could not take care of themselves and needed masters to look after them. White...

Appears in:

55 | Examining Reconstruction Fall 2019

History Now Essay

The Repeal of Asian Exclusion

Jane Hong

Government and Civics, World History

The United States excluded Chinese people beginning in the late nineteenth century and expanded its ban to all Asians in the 1917 and 1924 Immigration Acts. In addition to creating a national origins quota system best known for...

Appears in:

65 | Asian American Immigration and US Policy Winter 2022

History Now Essay

Spain’s Black Militias in the American Revolution

Jane Landers

In 1775, Virginia’s governor, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, issued a proclamation offering liberty to all enslaved Blacks who would join Great Britain’s military forces and defeat the rebellious Americans fighting for their...

Appears in:

68 | The Role of Spain in the American Revolution Fall 2023

History Now Essay

Labor Day: From Protest to Picnics

Joshua B. Freeman

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...

Appears in:

4 | American National Holidays Summer 2005

History Now Essay

Jamestown and the Founding of English America

James Horn

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Shortly before Christmas 1606, three small ships left London’s Blackwall docks to establish a settlement on Chesapeake Bay, in North America. The largest of the ships, the heavily armed, 120-ton merchantman Susan Constant , carried...

Appears in:

12 | The Age Of Exploration Summer 2007

History Now Essay

The Spectacles of 1912

Patricia O’Toole

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The presidential election year of 1912 began with one unprecedented spectacle, ended with another, and sandwiched a few more in between. In February, former president Theodore Roosevelt stunned the country by challenging President...

Appears in:

17 | Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era Fall 2008

History Now Essay

Abolition and Religion

Robert Abzug

Religion and Philosophy

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

One verse of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," the unofficial anthem of the Northern cause, summarized the Civil War’s idealized meaning: In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that...

Appears in:

5 | Abolition Fall 2005

Essay

Immigration and Migration

Hasia Diner

Economics, Government and Civics

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

The United States emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century as an industrial powerhouse, producing goods that then circulated around the world. People in distant countries used American-made clothes, shoes, textiles,...

Classroom Resources

Abraham Lincoln Highlights

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, founded in 1994 promotes the knowledge and understanding of American history through educational programs and resources. Drawing on the 80,000 documents in the Gilder Lehrman...

History Now Essay

The Escape of Black Women during the American Revolution

Karen Cook Bell

In 1961, Morgan State University historian Dr. Benjamin Quarles published the now classic study The Negro in the American Revolution , which became the definitive account of the role African Americans played in the War for...

Appears in:

63 | The Declaration of Independence and the Long Struggle for Equality in America Summer 2022

History Now Essay

The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority

Madeline Y. Hsu

Government and Civics, World History

The United States harvested a bumper crop of good immigrants in 1955. About 1,000 highly educated Chinese gained citizenship, including acclaimed scientists, professionals, and entrepreneurs such as the architect I. M. Pei, the...

Appears in:

65 | Asian American Immigration and US Policy Winter 2022

History Now Essay

James Madison and the Constitution

Jack Rakove

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

James Madison had just turned twenty-five when he took up his first public office as a delegate to the Virginia provincial convention that endorsed American independence and then adopted a new constitution and an accompanying...

Appears in:

13 | The Constitution Fall 2007

Essay

The American Civil War

Gary W. Gallagher

6, 7, 8, 9

The Civil War marked a defining moment in United States history. Long simmering sectional tensions reached a critical stage in 1860–1861 when eleven slaveholding states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. Political...

History Now Essay

The Form and Function of the Supreme Court

Charles Anthony Smith

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The Supreme Court often stands at the center of the storm of politics. High profile cases over individual liberties, federal or state power, or even presidential elections can dominate the news and attention of the public. The close...

Appears in:

15 | The Supreme Court Spring 2008

History Now Essay

Iberian Roots of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1640

David Wheat

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In its broadest sense, African American history predates the history of the United States, colonial or otherwise; by the time the English colony of Virginia was founded in 1607, Africans and people of African descent had already been...

Appears in:

25 | Three Worlds Meet Fall 2010

History Now Essay

The Vietnam War and the My Lai Massacre

George Herring

The murder of more than 400 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai and My Khe by US soldiers on March 16, 1968, stands as one of the darkest days in the nation’s military history. It left an indelible stain on America’s record in Vietnam, the...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

Essay

World War I

Jennifer D. Keene

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

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

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...

History Now Essay

Anti-Slavery before the Revolutionary War

Sylvia R. Frey

Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Anti-slavery is almost as old as slavery itself. Indeed it could easily be argued that the first enslaved person who jumped overboard or led an on-ship rebellion on the Middle Passage launched the anti-slavery movement. The modern...

Appears in:

5 | Abolition Fall 2005

About page

2019 Fall Newsletter

A Message from President Jim Basker Dear Teachers, Supporters, and Friends of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, I am pleased to join you for the 2019–2020 school year with our fall Newsletter, which will now come to you four times a year...

Lesson Plan

The Big Bang! The Birth of Rock and Roll

Art, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

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

Overview In the early 1950s, a new form of music exploded onto the scene, exciting a growing teenage audience while startling many others who preferred the music of Bing Crosby and Patti Page. Popularized by disc jockey Alan Freed in...

History Now Essay

Andrew Jackson’s Shifting Legacy

Daniel Feller

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Of all presidential reputations, Andrew Jackson’s is perhaps the most difficult to summarize or explain. Most Americans recognize his name, though most probably know him (in the words of a famous song) as the general who "fought the...

Appears in:

22 | Andrew Jackson and His World Winter 2009

History Now Essay

The League of the Iroquois

Matthew Dennis

Government and Civics

No Native people affected the course of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American history more than the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, of present-day upstate New York. Historians have been attempting to explain how and why ever since,...

Appears in:

28 | American Indians Summer 2011

History Now Essay

First Ladies’ Contributions to Political Issues and the National Welfare

Betty Boyd Caroli

Government and Civics

The US Constitution assigns no duties or responsibilities to the president’s spouse. Every woman had to define for herself the role she wanted to play. From the blank slate that Martha Washington encountered in 1789, the job gradually...

Appears in:

35 | America’s First Ladies Spring 2013

History Now Essay

Women’s Leadership in the American Revolution

Rosemarie Zagarri

What did it mean for women to exercise "leadership" in the American Revolution? Before that conflict, the question itself would probably have baffled most American women and men. Living within a staunchly patriarchal society, they...

Appears in:

47 | American Women in Leadership Winter 2017

News

Talking of Souls and Scholarship with the Co-Winners of the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Prize

The following appeared first on Medium.com on February 26, 2019, published by the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Tiya Miles are the co-winners of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize for 2018. The Douglass Prize was...

History Now Essay

Why We the People? Citizens as Agents of Constitutional Change

Linda R. Monk

Government and Civics

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

"We the People?" asked Patrick Henry at the Virginia convention to ratify the new Constitution in 1788. "Who authorized them to speak the language of ‘We the People,’ instead of ‘We the States’?" [1] Looking back, we can be grateful...

Appears in:

13 | The Constitution Fall 2007

Essay

The Age of Jefferson and Madison

Peter S. Onuf

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both played important roles in the era of the American Revolution. Jefferson was the lead author of the Declaration of Independence that launched the American experiment in republican government;...

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