Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

53,653 items

Collection Item

Autograph letter signed

1844/02/22

Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845

to Benjamin F. Butler

Thanks Butler, who in 1815 defended Jackson's actions at New Orleans. Says that no matter how the Senate rules he knows the measures he took were necessary and that "I acted in the defence of New Orleans with the purest principles of a patriot."...

GLC05271

Collection Item

Autograph letter signed

1865/11/23

Walbridge, Charles E., 1842-?

to mother

Describes the damage done by union bombardment and subsequent fires. Hopes to dispose of his stock in auction. Wants to be home for Christmas.

GLC04662.114

Collection Item

1960-1968

Various

[Humphrey Campaign Materials and essay, "An Indian In Spite of Myself"] [Decimalized .01- .19]

This collection consists of 19 items primarly concerning the Hubert Humphrey 1968 campaign. There are five newsletters from the 1968 Hubert Humphrey campaign. Six campaign press releases concerning Humphrey's views and promoting him for President...

GLC09565

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: Federalists and Jeffersonians

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

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 ...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Aaron Burr, fugitive and traitor, 1804

On July 11, 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr shot former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. Nine days later he wrote this cryptic letter (partially in cipher) to his son-in-law, Joseph...

History Now Essay

Pop Music and the Spatialization of Race in the 1990s

Mark Anthony Neal

In September 1990, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air debuted on NBC. The show starred Will Smith, also known as the Fresh Prince, of the rap duo DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, portraying a character, "Will Smith," who relocates from a...

Appears in:

32 | The Music and History of Our Times Summer 2012

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

"I, Too": Langston Hughes’s Afro-Whitmanian Affirmation

Steven Tracy

Literature

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

To read the text and hear the poem click here. Whatever we say, whatever we write, whatever we do, we never act alone. Just as John Donne meditated upon the notion that "no man is an island," so, too, in the twentieth century did T.S....

Appears in:

39 | American Poets, American History Spring 2014

Lesson Plan

Pilgrims, the Plymouth Colony, and Thanksgiving, 1608-1621

Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy, World History

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Click here to download this five-lesson unit.

Video

The Emergence of the Frontier, the Expansion of Railroads, and Mining

Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Stephen Austin's contract to bring settlers to Texas, 1825

Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

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...