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History Now Issue

The Role of China in US History

#42 Spring 2015

History Now Issue

Wartime Memoirs and Letters from the American Revolution to Vietnam

#43 Fall 2015

History Now Issue

Alexander Hamilton in the American Imagination

#44 Winter 2016

History Now Issue

American History in Visual Art

#45 Summer 2016

History Now Issue

African American Soldiers

#46 Fall 2016

History Now Issue

American Women in Leadership

#47 Winter 2017

History Now Issue

Jazz, the Blues, and American Identity

#48 Summer 2017

Essay

"Your Late Lamented Husband": A Letter from Frederick Douglass to Mary Todd Lincoln

David W. Blight

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On March 4, 1865, Frederick Douglass attended President Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration. Standing in the crowd, Douglass heard Lincoln declare slavery the "cause" and emancipation the "result" of the Civil War. Over the crisp...

Essay

Imperial Rivalries

Peter C. Mancall

World History

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

When Christopher Columbus made his plans to sail westward across the Atlantic, he first set off across Europe to find sponsors. His brother Bartholomew went to the court of the English King Henry VII (who turned him down, much to the...

History Now Essay

Inventing American Diplomacy

R. B. Bernstein

Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1783, the expatriate artist Benjamin West began what became his most memorable painting, "The Peacemakers." West intended to produce a group portrait of the diplomats whose negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Paris of 1783, but...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

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

The Puritans and Dissent: The Cases of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson

Francis J. Bremer

Religion and Philosophy

Every society constructs what one scholar has called a "perimeter fence," which sets the boundary between actions and beliefs that are acceptable and those that are not. [1] This is as true of the United States in the twentieth...

Appears in:

29 | Religion in the Colonial World Fall 2011

History Now Essay

African American Religious Leadership and the Civil Rights Movement

Clarence Taylor

Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Clarence Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Modern African American History, Religion, and Civil Rights at Baruch College, The City University of New York. His books include The Black Churches of Brooklyn (1994), Knocking at Our Own Door...

Appears in:

8 | The Civil Rights Movement Summer 2006

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

Native American Discoveries of Europe

Daniel K. Richter

Economics, Geography, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Native Americans discovered Europe at the same time Europeans discovered America. As far as we know, no birch bark canoes caught the gulf stream to Glasgow, and no Native American conquistadores planted flags at Florence, but just as...

Appears in:

12 | The Age Of Exploration Summer 2007

History Now Essay

Teaching American History to Muslim Exchange Students

Ted Widmer

Government and Civics

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

Everyone knows that the election of 2004 marked a pivotal turning point for the American people. That point was brought home forcefully by the experience of teaching American history that summer to a group of twenty-one young Muslim...

Appears in:

1 | Elections Fall 2004

History Now Essay

Coming to America: Ellis Island and New York City

Vincent J. Cannato

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

New York City is a kind of archipelago, a Philippines on the Hudson River. Only one borough—the Bronx—is actually attached to the American mainland. There are some forty islands in the city beyond Manhattan, Staten Island, and Long...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

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 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...

History Now Essay

The Impact of Title IX

Barbara Winslow

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

One of the great achievements of the women’s movement was the enactment of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The law states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

Essay

Populism and Agrarian Discontent

Michael Kazin

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Today, the Gilded Age evokes thoughts of “robber baron” industrialists, immigrants toiling long hours in factories for little pay, massive strikes that were often put down by force, and political corruption in both big cities and the...

Essay

Exploration

Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Benjamin Sacks

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

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...

History Now Essay

Immigrant Fiction: Exploring an American Identity

Phillip Lopate

Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Strictly speaking, all American novels (with the exception of those written by Native Americans) are in one way or another immigrant fiction. But we usually think of immigrant fiction more narrowly as the encounter of the foreign-born...

Appears in:

3 | Immigration Spring 2005

History Now Essay

The Seneca Falls Convention: Setting the National Stage for Women’s Suffrage

Judith Wellman

Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On July 19–20, 1848, about 300 people met for two hot days and candlelit evenings in the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, in the first formal women’s rights convention ever held in the United States. Sixty-eight women ...

Appears in:

7 | Women's Suffrage Spring 2006

Essay

Facing the New Millennium

Michael Flamm

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

In 1941, on the eve of Pearl Harbor, Time magazine publisher Henry Luce predicted that the twentieth century would become known as the "American Century." By many measures he was correct. During the next sixty years, the United States...

History Now Essay

Thomas Jefferson and Deism

Peter S. Onuf

Of all the American founders, Thomas Jefferson is most closely associated with deism, the Enlightenment faith in a rational, law-governed world created by a "supreme architect" or cosmic "clockmaker." For many modern Americans, deist...

Appears in:

29 | Religion in the Colonial World Fall 2011

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

History Now Essay

San Francisco and the Great Earthquake of 1906

Robert W. Cherny

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

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

At the beginning of the twentieth century, San Francisco still reigned as the major seaport on the Pacific coast. The city traced its origins to 1776, when a Spanish expedition planted a mission and a military post at the end of the...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

History Now Essay

Sisters of Suffrage: British and American Women Fight for the Vote

Barbara Winslow

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The dominant narrative of the entire women’s suffrage movement begins and ends with the United States and Britain. Hundreds of thousands of women petitioned, canvassed, lobbied, demonstrated, engaged in mass civil disobedience, went...

Appears in:

7 | Women's Suffrage Spring 2006

History Now Essay

Medical Advances in Nineteenth-Century America

Bert Hansen

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

We live in an age when there seems to be a medical breakthrough in the headlines every few days, when new discoveries are immediately—and sometimes prematurely—put into practice. It is easy for us, therefore, to assume that this same...

Appears in:

10 | Nineteenth Century Technology Winter 2006

History Now Essay

Why Immigration Matters

Thomas Kessner

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

It is difficult today to recapture the iconoclasm signaled by Oscar Handlin’s opening words to his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Uprooted more than fifty years ago: "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I...

Appears in:

3 | Immigration Spring 2005

Essay

Postwar Politics and the Cold War

Jeremi Suri

The late summer of 1945 marked the height of American power. The country that had suffered from dust bowls, economic depression, and a devastating attack on its Pacific naval fleet in the last decade-and-a-half emerged as the dominant...

History Now Essay

The History of Women’s Baseball

Kerry Candaele

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

From 1943 to 1954, "America’s pastime" was a game played in skirts. At its peak in 1948, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) fielded ten teams in midwestern towns like Rockford, Illinois (Peaches); South Bend,...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

History Now Essay

Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy

Jeremi Suri

World History

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

Henry Kissinger is one of the most controversial figures to emerge from the Cold War. He participated as a soldier, scholar, and statesman in many of the most significant policy debates of the period. He acted as an intellectual,...

Appears in:

27 | The Cold War Spring 2011

History Now Essay

Getting Ready to Lead a World Economy: Enterprise in Nineteenth-Century America

Joyce Appleby

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

When Jefferson won the presidency in 1801, his victory had an economic impact as great as the political one. The establishment of the new government under the Constitution twelve years earlier had laid the foundation for an integrated...

Appears in:

24 | Shaping the American Economy Summer 2010

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,...

Essay

The Progressive Era to the New Era, 1900-1929

Daniel T. Rodgers

Government and Civics

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

We should not accept social life as it has "trickled down to us," the young journalist Walter Lippmann wrote soon after the twentieth century began. "We have to deal with it deliberately, devise its social organization, . . . educate...

History Now Essay

A New Look at the Great Plains

Elliott West

Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

To most Americans the Great Plains are the Great Flyover, or maybe the Great Drivethrough. Viewed from a window seat the plains seem nearly devoid of interest, something to get across enroute to someplace far worthier to explore or...

Appears in:

9 | The American West Fall 2006

History Now Essay

The Righteous Revolution of Mercy Otis Warren

Ray Raphael

Government and Civics, Literature, Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Seven months after British Regulars marched on Lexington and Concord, three months after King George III declared the colonies in a state of rebellion, and a month after British artillery leveled the town of Falmouth (now Portland,...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

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

Lockean Liberalism and the American Revolution

Isaac Kramnick

Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The town of Boston took an important step toward rebellion on November 20, 1772, by adopting a declaration of "the Rights of the Colonists" drafted by Sam Adams, the firebrand of the Revolution. Adams summarized these "Natural rights"...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

History Now Essay

Rethinking Huck

Steven Mintz

Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

A classic, Mark Twain quipped, is "a book which people praise and don't read." The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the rare classic that is highly praised and widely read. Following World War II, it became required reading in most...

Appears in:

16 | Books That Changed History Summer 2008

History Now Essay

Born Modern: An Overview of the West

Richard White

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

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The present American West is a creation of history rather than geography. There has never been a single West; American Wests come and go. At various times places now considered as thoroughly eastern as western Pennsylvania, western...

Appears in:

9 | The American West Fall 2006

History Now Essay

The Great Debate: Kennedy, Nixon, and Television in the 1960 Race for the Presidency

Liette Gidlow

Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Imagine the setting. Since soon after the close of World War II, the United States had been engaged in a heated Cold War with the Communist Soviet Union. Within the previous four years, Soviet tanks and troops had crushed a democratic...

Appears in:

1 | Elections Fall 2004

History Now Essay

Unruly Americans in the Revolution

Woody Holton

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Nearly all of the blockbuster biographies of the Founding Fathers—whether the subject is George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, or John Adams—portray the vast majority of ordinary Americans as mere bystanders. Although the authors of...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

Essay

The Sixties

Harvard Sitkoff

Forty years after it ended, the 1960s remains the most consequential and controversial decade of the twentieth century. It would dawn bright with hope and idealism, see the liberal state attain its mightiest reforms and reach, and end...

History Now Essay

Reconstruction and the Battle for Woman Suffrage

Ellen DuBois

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The origins of the American women’s suffrage movement are commonly dated from the public protest meeting held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. At that historic meeting, the right of women to join with men in the privileges and...

Appears in:

7 | Women's Suffrage Spring 2006

Essay

The Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945

David M. Kennedy

Economics, Government and Civics

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

Across the long arc of American history, three moments in particular have disproportionately determined the course of the Republic’s development. Each respectively distilled the experience and defined the historical legacy of a...

History Now Essay

The United States and China during the Cold War

Warren I. Cohen

World History

The Cold War Comes to Asia In the closing years of World War II, American military and diplomatic representatives in China recognized that civil war was likely to erupt between the Nationalist-controlled government headed by Chiang...

Appears in:

27 | The Cold War Spring 2011

History Now Essay

From These Honored Dead: Memorial Day and Veterans Day in American History

Kenneth T. Jackson

Government and Civics

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

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the prop osition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether...

Appears in:

4 | American National Holidays Summer 2005

History Now Essay

The Reconstruction Amendments: Official Documents as Social History

Eric Foner

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On June 13, 1866, Thaddeus Stevens, the Republican floor leader in the House of Representatives and the nation’s most prominent Radical Republican, rose to address his Congressional colleagues on the Fourteenth Amendment to the...

Appears in:

2 | Primary Sources on Slavery Winter 2004

Site Search

The Role of China in US History

Wartime Memoirs and Letters from the American Revolution to Vietnam

Alexander Hamilton in the American Imagination

American History in Visual Art

African American Soldiers

American Women in Leadership

Jazz, the Blues, and American Identity

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