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Lesson Plan

Farewell to Manzanar: Japanese Internment Camps During World War II

Government and Civics, Literature, World History

6, 7, 8

Background In 1886, after the arrival of Commodore Perry, the Japanese government lifted its ban on emigration and allowed its citizens to move to other countries. In the years after that, however, the United States made it more...

History Now Essay

Constance Baker Motley: A Trailblazer in the Legal Profession

Gary L. Ford, Jr.

Government and Civics

Gary L. Ford Jr. , an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College, City University of New York, is the author of Constance Baker Motley: One Woman’s Fight for Civil Rights and Equal Justice under Law (2017) and a co...

Appears in:

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

Lesson Plan

Thomas Jefferson, Renaissance Man

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

Background Thomas Jefferson has often been called a “Renaissance man,” someone who is talented in many areas. The term is often used to describe the Italian painter Leonardo Da Vinci, who not only painted the Mona Lisa , but who also...

History Now Essay

Race and the Good War: An Oral History Interview with Calvin D. Cosby, World War II Veteran

Cecelia Hartsell

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Calvin D. Cosby was born in 1918, in Knoxville, Tennessee, which was my hometown as well. I first knew Calvin Cosby as the husband of my beloved second-grade teacher, Mrs. Ima Bradford Cosby. Mr. and Mrs. Cosby and their daughter...

Appears in:

43 | Wartime Memoirs and Letters from the American Revolution to Vietnam Fall 2015

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

From The Editor

Carol Berkin

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into the global conflict known as World War II. The impact of this war was felt by civilians as well as soldiers, as the nation transformed itself...

Appears in:

14 | World War II Winter 2007

News

A Civil War soldier’s letters: "Save them if it cost the farm"

George Tillotson from Greene, New York, enlisted with the 89th New York Infantry in November of 1861. This ambrotype (photograph made on glass) and a series of letters from the summer of 1862 remind us that soldiers and their families...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Racism in the North: Frederick Douglass on "a vulgar and senseless prejudice," 1870

In 1870 Thomas Burnett Pugh, an ardent abolitionist prior to the Civil War, invited Frederick Douglass to participate in the "Star Course" lecture series he had organized at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. However, Douglass ...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Jefferson on British aggression, 1815

4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In this letter in defense of American nationalism, Thomas Jefferson denounced the blustering of certain members of the British House of Lords who blamed the War of 1812 on US aggression. Jefferson’s letter followed a report from James...

News

The Gardiner Foundation Awards a Major Two-Year Grant to the Institute

Grant Will Fund Diverse Gilder Lehrman Institute Programs The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has been awarded a $500,000 grant over two years from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation to support schools and teachers...

News

Half a Century after The Feminine Mystique

Today is the anniversary of the publication of the groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan in 1963. Debunking the idea of the feminine mystique which glorified the role of women as homemakers as a myth, which has "...

News

Fall 2020 Registration Now Open for the Pace–Gilder Lehrman MA in American History Program

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Pace University are pleased to announce that registration for the Fall 2020 courses is now open for the online Master of Arts in American History for K–12 teachers affiliated with...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Indenture agreement, 1742

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

Colonial Americans engaged in many forms of unfree labor, with great numbers of youths moving away from their families to become servants or apprentices. The terms of their service were spelled out in contracts called indentures,...

About page

2020 Winter Newsletter

Dear Teachers, Supporters, and Friends of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, I greet you at the end of a very successful 2019, looking forward to more in 2020. We have reached more than 24,000 Affiliate Schools in all fifty states and in...

History Now Essay

"If Ever Two Were One": Anne Bradstreet's "To My Dear and Loving Husband"

Charlotte Gordon

Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Anne Bradstreet is famous for being the first American poet. But she did not think of herself as either "first" or "American." She did not even think of herself as a poet. We would call her a Puritan, a term adopted by their enemies...

Appears in:

39 | American Poets, American History Spring 2014

News

Elbridge Gerry and the Original Gerrymander

Elbridge Gerry —signer of the Declaration of Independence, member of the Constitutional Convention ( follow the links to documents by and about Gerry in the Gilder Lehrman Collection ), congressman , diplomat , governor, and vice...

History Now Essay

Making a Film about Alexander Hamilton

Muffie Meyer

A few years ago, my colleagues and I made a documentary, Alexander Hamilton , for the Public Television series American Experience . When it was completed, we did a lot of screenings, interviews, and Q&As for all kinds of...

Appears in:

44 | Alexander Hamilton in the American Imagination Winter 2016

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: The Post-World War I Red Scare

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The end of World War I was accompanied by a panic over political radicalism. Fear of bombs, Communism, and labor unrest produced a “Red Scare.” In Hammond, Indiana, a jury took two minutes to acquit the killer of an immigrant who had...

About page

S. Andrew Banks

Andrew Banks is the co-founder of Boston-based ABRY Partners, a leading private equity firm focused on the media and communications industry, where he served as chairman from 1989 to 2012. Prior to founding ABRY, Banks was a partner...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

The Sedition Act, 1798

Government and Civics

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

On August 14, 1798, the Columbian Centinel , a Boston newspaper aligned with the Federalist Party, printed this copy of the Sedition Act. It was the last in a series of legislation known as the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by the...

History Now Essay

From the Editor

Our Summer 2017 issue looks at the two great musical traditions that come out of the African American culture of the South: jazz and the blues. These uniquely American genres are known throughout the world and, although they began...

Appears in:

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

History Now Essay

Women and the Great Depression

Susan Ware

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1933 Eleanor Roosevelt’s It’s Up to the Women exhorted American women to help pull the country through its current economic crisis, the gravest it had ever faced: "The women know that life must go on and that the needs of life must...

Appears in:

19 | The Great Depression Spring 2009

History Now Essay

Modern Women Persuading Modern Men: The Nineteenth Amendment and the Movement for Woman Suffrage, 1916–1920

Jonathan Soffer

Government and Civics

Today we take women’s suffrage for granted, but many activists of the nineteenth century, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, struggled their whole lives for the vote, and did not live to see it. As a presidential...

Appears in:

30 | American Reform Movements Winter 2012

About page

Edward L. Ayers

Edward Ayers is university professor of the humanities and president emeritus at the University of Richmond as well as former Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. He has received the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes for...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Lucy Knox on the home front during the Revolutionary War, 1777

Like many others before and after her, Lucy Knox performed a continuous juggling act as a busy wife and mother. Born into an aristocratic family, she had the advantage of a good education. At the age of seventeen she was disowned by...

News

Ulysses S. Grant at West Point, 1839

The Gilder Lehrman Collection includes a letter and a painting by Ulysses S. Grant when he was a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. These unique items reveal Grant as the equivalent of a modern-day...

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