Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

1,977 items

Program/Event

Professional Development | How Did We Get Here? PD Series

Our How Did We Get Here? professional development series has been designed to provide teachers with ready-made, classroom-friendly resources on topics in American history that are front-and-center in current events. The programs, held...

History Now Essay

Teaching the Revolution

Carol Berkin

Government and Civics

For most Americans, young and old, the history of the American Revolution can be summed up something like this: In 1776, all the colonists rose up in unison to rebel against a tyrannical king and the horrible burden of unfair taxes...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

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

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

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 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

Making (White Male) Democracy: Suffrage Expansion in the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War

Stuart M. Blumin

Government and Civics

There is perhaps no theme more central to our traditional understanding of American history than the expansion of democracy. And in that long story of democratization we habitually regard as our peculiar contribution to the world,...

Appears in:

51 | The Evolution of Voting Rights Summer 2018

History Now Essay

The Dillingham Commission and the “Immigration Question,” 1907−1921

Robert Zeidel

Government and Civics

The Dillingham Commission played a pivotal role in the formation of American immigration policy, notably the establishment of general exclusion as an overarching principle. Created by Congress in 1907 as a compromise between...

Appears in:

52 | The History of US Immigration Laws Fall 2018

History Now Essay

Hometown Societies in the New World: Jewish Landsmanshaftn and Americanization

Daniel Soyer

Religion and Philosophy

Jacob Sholts, a Jewish immigrant from the Russian Empire, wandered dejectedly through the streets of New York in 1904. Sholts, who had fled Russia to avoid military service during the Russo-Japanese War, could not keep a job. He felt...

Appears in:

71 | The Jewish Legacy in American History Summer 2024

History Now Essay

The Proclamation, Reading, and Immediate Reception of the Declaration of Independence

John R. Vile

Government and Civics

The Declaration of Independence, which the Second Continental Congress adopted on July 4, 1776, is America’s birth certificate, and patriots greeted it with joy similar to that surrounding the birth of a child. The Declaration...

Appears in:

69 | The Reception and Impact of the Declaration of Independence, 1776-1826 Winter 2023

Site Search

1,977 items

Professional Development | How Did We Get Here? PD Series

Teaching the Revolution

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

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

Inventing American Diplomacy

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

Making (White Male) Democracy: Suffrage Expansion in the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War

The Dillingham Commission and the “Immigration Question,” 1907−1921

Hometown Societies in the New World: Jewish Landsmanshaftn and Americanization

The Proclamation, Reading, and Immediate Reception of the Declaration of Independence

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