Search

Read a transcript of the Dow Jones News Service ticker tape and read about the power of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in Great Inaugural Addresses: History Now 36 (Summer 2013) .

Read about the Gettysburg Address or watch the lecture "The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln through His Words" by Professor Ronald C. White of the University of California, Los Angeles.

In October of 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House. As the founder of the Tuskegee Institute and a respected leader of the African American community , Washington was an important...

A day after appointing a committee to write the Declaration of Independence, the Second Continental Congress named another committee to write the Articles of Confederation . The members worked from June 1776 until November 17, 1777,...

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...

In 1909 a young immigrant woman made a speech in Yiddish that galvanzied a meeting of garment workers into what became a massive, and ultimately successful, strike. Twenty thousand workers followed Clara Lemlich into the streets of...

Mark Twain famously said that he had come in with Halley’s Comet in 1835 and expected to go out with it on its return journey. Indeed, Twain did die in 1910 as the comet was making its return pass. In the intervening years Twain...

Read an excerpt from Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863 or learn more about the history of Thanksgiving as a national holiday .

As we approach the end of November, a month filled with elections and gratitude, let’s take a look back at the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted voting rights to African Americans, and explore a print that celebrates its ratification...

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...

On December 2, 1859, John Brown went to the gallows for his failed raid on the arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown was a polarizing figure. In the image to the left , based on an incident reported in the New York Tribune that...

The Compromise of 1850 included the controversial Fugitive Slave Law that allowed for the seizure of alleged runaway slaves without due process and prohibited any obstruction to their recovery. Escaped slaves living in the North...

With its staff of white and African American teachers, the Calhoun School was not the norm in the Jim Crow South. Read a letter written by Frederick Douglass on Jim Crow practices in education and other professions.

This hand-drawn card comes from Horatio Loomis Wait’s papers in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Wait, from New York and Chicago, served in the US Navy from July 1862 through July 1870. His letters home often included sketches of mid...

As the best-books-of-the-year lists proliferate, it’s time to remind ourselves to nurture young writers. Here at the Gilder Lehrman Institute we have a great way for history teachers to highlight their students’ achievements. It’s the...

Shortly before 8 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack against US armed forces in Hawaii. The Japanese targeted the Army, Navy, and Marine airfields before bombing the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The...

Have you ever wanted to really dive deep into an image from history? Get in close to that little figure in the corner? Read the cartoon captions without a magnifying glass? The Gigapixel tool from StoryMapJS will help you do just that...

Read a transcript of the "Ten Talents" of George Washington letter written by John Adams.

One hundred and fifty years ago today, the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment was proclaimed by Secretary of State William Seward. Abraham Lincoln had fought to get the amendment passed by the Senate and the House, but he did...

On December 22, 1864, Union General William T. Sherman sent a message to President Lincoln from Georgia, saying, "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of...

Read about the Facts of the Slave Trade and Slavery and the Material Culture of Slave Resistance .

Read an excerpt of the Orders to March on Trenton and watch a video on Washington’s Crossing .

Read an excerpt of the letter to Davie Jeems .

As the winter holidays draw close and Americans everywhere travel to celebrate with their loved ones, it is important to remember how one should act when having dinner with family. The 1950 Encyclopedia Britannica film A Date with...

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is excited to announce the addition of two new self-paced courses, Emancipation and The Kennedy Presidency , to our Self-Paced Course Series . This series offers graduate-level courses in American history...

View a full-screen version of The Lewis and Clark Exhibition . Learn more about the Louisiana Purchase in Elliott West’s essay " America the Newcomer: Claiming the Louisiana Purchase " and a printed copy of the map Meriwether Lewis...

On Monday, December 14 , Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator and star of Broadway’s hit musical Hamilton, received the George Washington Prize. Miranda became the first playwright to win the literary award in an exciting ceremony that...

Thomas Barwiss Hagstoz Askin Jr. joined the US Navy in March 1938 at the age of 17. His diary, entitled "Memorys and Incidents of My Last 60 (?) Days in the United States Navy," begins on August 14, 1941, when he was stationed on...

The phrase "’Twas the night before Christmas," from Clement Moore’s "A Visit from St. Nicholas" is familiar to most of us, but less familiar is the poem, "The Night after Christmas," written by Dr. Robert Archer. Archer, born in 1794...

As the nation approached the third year of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are...

Today’s school children are familiar with fire drills, earthquake drills, tornado drills, and even tsunami drills. Filing out-doors to athletic fields or hiding under desks from imaginary natural disaster debris is expected, scheduled...

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...

Did you know that the most popular written work in American history was published before America was an actual nation of its own? On January 10, 1776, six months before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the...

Alexander Hamilton was born on this day, either in 1755 or 1757 (historians debate the year). Explore Hamilton’s life and legacy in this interactive digital exhibit.

The Statue of Liberty has long welcomed newcomers to the United States as a shining beacon of freedom and opportunity in the middle of New York Harbor. Children are taught that the Statue of Liberty was gifted to the United States by...

Either you love ’em or you hate ’em. Everyone has an opinion on sideburns, and few fashion choices provoke quite so much controversy. Yet sideburns have a rich history that can be appreciated by supporters and detractors alike....

Read an excerpt of the letter written by George Wallace and explore the online exhibition Freedom Riders , detailing the struggle for civil rights when Wallace was governor.

This weekend, our country celebrates the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister and activist who became one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout his life, which was cut too short by his tragic...

Read an essay about the abolitionist Grimke sisters and the essay " The Civil Rights Movement: Major Events and Legacies " to explore the long struggle for civil rights.

Did you have a good National Handwriting Day? What? You didn’t know that penmanship-appreciators across the nation celebrate January 23 as National Handwriting Day? The rising popularity of typewriters and word processors in the 20th...

Read about photography in the 19th century , explore select images from the American Civil War , and create your own Civil War-era portrait .

Are you teaching the Progressive Era this spring? Use the infographic below to provide your students an overview of the reform movements that make the Progressive Era stand out as a time of massive social, political, and economic...

As part of a Google Cultural Institute initiative on African American history, the Gilder Lehrman Institute created six digital exhibits featuring Gilder Lehrman’s rich materials relating to African American history. In celebration of...

Despite unfair compensation, segregation , and even legal bars on military service, African Americans have served in every conflict in United States history . Take a peek at the next digital exhibition in Gilder Lehrman’s Black...

We are thrilled to contribute to today’s Google Doodle honoring Frederick Douglass. Today is the first day of Black History Month, and the approximate date of Frederick Douglass’s 198th birthday. Gilder Lehrman contributed to today’s...

Ada Ferrer, profess o r of history and Latin American and Caribbean studies at New York University, was awarded the Frederick Douglass Book Prize Thursday night in a ceremony at the Y ale Club in New York City. The award, which...

The movement to end slavery has existed in various forms throughout American history, but the abolitionist movement slowly gained ground as a political force in our country through the mid-nineteenth century. Take a peek at the next...

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...