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History Now Essay

Alexander Hamilton, The Man Who Made America Prosperous

Richard Brookhiser

Economics

When George Washington, newly elected president, picked the members of his administration in 1789 he tapped thirty-two-year-old Alexander Hamilton to be the first treasury secretary. Hamilton had been a colonel on Washington’s staff...

Appears in:

44 | Alexander Hamilton in the American Imagination Winter 2016

History Now Essay

Alexander Hamilton on the $10 Bill: How He Got There and Why It Matters

Brian Phillips Murphy

Economics

2015 was a big year for Alexander Hamilton. Nearly two hundred eleven years after the nation’s first treasury secretary was shot and killed in a duel with then-Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr, an Off Broadway play...

Appears in:

44 | Alexander Hamilton in the American Imagination Winter 2016

News

Colin Calloway Receives the 2019 George Washington Prize

Colin Calloway, winner of the $50,000 George Washington Prize for his 2018 book The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation, was honored by George Washington’s Mount...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Columbus reports on his first voyage, 1493

Geography, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Spain to find an all-water route to Asia. On October 12, more than two months later, Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas that he called San Salvador; the natives called it Guanahani....

History Now Essay

From The Editor

Carol Berkin

Americans love their sports. Many of us watch the year flow by, not from month to month, but from baseball to soccer to basketball to football season—until spring training rolls around and the cycle begins once more. Over our morning...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

History Now Essay

From the Editor

Carol Berkin

Some of the most powerful political statements in American history appear in the inaugural addresses of our presidents. In crises and in moments of social and cultural change, in wartime and peace, the president we have elected speaks...

Appears in:

36 | Great Inaugural Addresses Summer 2013

Spotlight on: Primary Source

A secret agreement between pirate hunters, 1696

World History

Maritime trade and exploration in the colonial era created an environment ripe for piracy. One of the most famous pirates in history, Captain William Kidd, was commissioned by William III of England in 1695 as a privateer to hunt and...

History Now Essay

From The Editor

Carol Berkin

The name Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt conjures up many images: from hunter to teddy bear, from trust-buster to champion of capitalism, from Republican president to Bull Moose challenger. T.R. remains controversial, contradictory, and...

Appears in:

17 | Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era Fall 2008

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Rules for discharging disabled veterans, 1919

Government and Civics

When World War I ended in 1918 more than 4.6 million men returned to the United States from war. The American people and the US government were unprepared to reintegrate and care for the men who returned with physical injuries and...

Lesson Plan

The Great Awakening

Religion and Philosophy

5, 6, 7, 8

Historical Background The most important religious development in colonial America was the introduction of religious revivals known as the Great Awakening. Religious revivals first appeared in England, Scotland, and Germany, and...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Condolence letter from General MacArthur, 1950

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

In 1950, with Soviet support, North Korea invaded South Korea. The ensuing war lasted until 1953, with the United Nations and the United States entering the conflict soon after it began. For the United States, participation in the...

History Now Essay

Lincoln’s "Flat Failure": The Gettysburg Myth Revisited

Harold Holzer

A century and a half ago, Abraham Lincoln brought forth at Gettysburg a speech universally remembered as one of the greatest ever written, a gem not only of American political oratory, but of American literature. Tributes have been...

Appears in:

37 | Gettysburg: Insights and Perspectives Fall 2013

History Now Essay

Women and Wagoners: Camp Followers in the American War for Independence

Holly A. Mayer

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

An old tune called "The Girl I Left Behind Me" tells of a lovelorn soldier yearning to return home to his waiting fair maid. Although there is a good chance that this song was fifed during the Revolutionary War, the earliest...

Appears in:

21 | The American Revolution Fall 2009

History Now Essay

Alice Paul, Suffrage Militant

Barbara Winslow

Government and Civics

Alice Stokes Paul (1885−1977) was one of the leading feminists of the early twentieth century, a person who brought the women’s suffrage movement into the national spotlight. Passage of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment or the Nineteenth...

Appears in:

51 | The Evolution of Voting Rights Summer 2018

Program/Event

Hamilton Cast Read Alongs

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is excited to extend Hamilton Cast Read Alongs. A program that features Hamilton cast members reading award-winning children’s books followed by a discussion of the history behind the story led by Gilder...

News

Civil War–era sketches by David Stauffer

When the Civil War broke out, David McNeely Stauffer (1845–1913) was only sixteen years old. While attending Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania from September 1861 through June 1863, he served brief, emergency enlistments...

History Now Essay

"No Event Could Have Filled Me with Greater Anxieties": George Washington and the First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

Phillip Hamilton

Government and Civics

George Washington’s fame rests not upon his words but upon his deeds. Therefore, his First Inaugural Address is sometimes overlooked. This is unfortunate because the words he delivered on Thursday, April 30, 1789, not only launched...

Appears in:

36 | Great Inaugural Addresses Summer 2013

History Now Essay

Remembering the Alamo

Char Miller

Geography, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Just hours before John F. Kennedy was to deliver one of the most important speeches of the 1960 presidential campaign in Houston, Texas, the Massachusetts Democrat stood in front of the Alamo. Here, before some 30,000 San Antonians,...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

History Now Essay

Clarksdale: Myth, Music, and Mercy in the Mississippi Delta

Shelley Ritter

While the term the blues means many different things to many different people, it’s undeniable that everyone gets them at one point or another. As the late vocalist Johnny Taylor sang, "People got money, still got problems/ Go to the...

Appears in:

48 | Jazz, the Blues, and American Identity Summer 2017

Lesson Plan

Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plan

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Essential Question To what degree was Abraham Lincoln successful in achieving his goals? Background The Civil War was perhaps the most momentous event that the United States endured in its history. Author and historian Shelby Foote...

History Now Essay

Inventing a Past: Molly Brant’s Life in Leadership

James Taylor Carson

How do you write the history of someone for whom no image exists? Who surfaces intermittently in scraps of words found across hundreds of pages of archival documents? Whose singularity is so often glossed and aggregated as “Indian”?...

Appears in:

59 | American Indians in Leadership Winter 2021

Guided Readings

Guided Readings: Reflections on the Great Depression and the New Deal

Economics, Government and Civics

Reading 1 I want to tell you about an experience we had in Philadelphia when our private funds were exhausted and before public funds become available. . . . One woman said she borrowed 50 cents from a friend and bought stale bread...

Lesson Plan

Conflict and Captivity in the Colonies

Literature

6, 7, 8

Background The early seventeenth century was punctuated by a series of small wars between Native Americans and colonists. Many colonists were captured and taken prisoner, but two women, whose ordeals were published as books, stand out...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

George W. Bush on the 9/11 attacks, 2001

President George W. Bush delivered this address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, little more than a week after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The nation was reeling. New York City below Canal Street was still...

Lesson Plan

Survival in the American Wilderness: Fiction v. Nonfiction

7, 8

Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based units. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical significance....

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