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News

Catching Up on Affiliate Schools with Education Department Coordinator Daniel Pecoraro

The Education Department: Daniel Pecoraro Daniel Pecoraro is an education program coordinator at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Affiliate School Program, a...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

On the emigrant trail, 1862

Geography

Samuel Russell, his mother, and his sisters emigrated to the Mormon settlement at Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1861. The next spring, Russell joined a “down-and-back” wagon train to escort new pioneers to the settlement. These caravans...

Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Immigration Policy in World War II

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt suspended naturalization proceedings for Italian, German, and Japanese immigrants, required them to register, restricted their mobility, and prohibited them from owning...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advice to high school students, 1922

Government and Civics

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

In 1922, Sharpless Dobson Green, a teacher at Senior High School in Trenton, New Jersey, wrote to influential people around the world to get their advice for his students. In his request, he explained his project: There are about 400...

About page

Open Positions at the Gilder Lehrman Institute

Internship Program Read more about our Internship Program . Development and Donor Communications Manager The Organization The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (GLI) is the nation’s leading American history organization...

News

Study the Fight for Women’s Rights with Professor Catherine Clinton

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Pace University are pleased to announce that registration for Fall 2020 courses is open for the online Master of Arts in American History Program. We highlight here one of the five...

Lesson Plan

Immigration in the Gilded Age: Using Photographs as Primary Sources

Geography, Government and Civics

6, 7, 8

Aim / Essential Question How successful were photographs in demonstrating the conditions of immigrants during the Gilded Age? Background The latter portion of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century witnessed the start...

News

Women in the Civil War: Vivandieres

Vivandieres, sometimes known as cantinieres, were women who followed the army to provide support for the troops. Ideally, a vivandiere would have been a young woman—the daughter of an officer or wife of a non-commissioned officer—who...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

George Washington would have supported the New Deal, 1934

During his first term, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to deflect opposition to the New Deal. Speaking at Gettysburg on Memorial Day, 1934, Roosevelt invoked the memory of George Washington by comparing his federal agenda with...

History Now Essay

First Ladies’ Contributions to Political Issues and the National Welfare

Betty Boyd Caroli

Government and Civics

The US Constitution assigns no duties or responsibilities to the president’s spouse. Every woman had to define for herself the role she wanted to play. From the blank slate that Martha Washington encountered in 1789, the job gradually...

Appears in:

35 | America’s First Ladies Spring 2013

Collection Landing Page

The Civil War, 1861-1865

The Civil War, 1861-1865 Letters and documents recount the secession crisis and the American Civil War through general orders, orderly books, recruitment broadsides, maps, photographs, newspapers, and the journals, official dispatches...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Suffragists invoke Lincoln, 1910

Government and Civics

In 1910 Washington State voted to approve full woman suffrage, a vote that was influenced by publications and posters such as this one. This poster, declaring that "Lincoln said women should vote," invoked the words of Abraham Lincoln...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Anti-Communist Trading Cards, 1951

Government and Civics

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

On June 25, 1950, war broke out on the Korean peninsula when the Soviet-backed Communist forces in North Korea invaded the recently founded democratic republic of South Korea. Following a unanimous UN resolution condemning the...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

A Ku Klux Klan threat, 1868

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

This page contains language that may be offensive or inappropriate for some viewers. Reconstruction politics was a catalyst for widespread racism and hatred that freed people experienced throughout the South. The Ku Klux Klan, founded...

Lesson Plan

How We Elect a President: The Electoral College (Grades 10–12)

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Objective This lesson on the Electoral College is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These resources were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original...

News

The H. L. Hunley Sinks the USS Housatonic

On the night of February 17, 1864, during the Civil War, the Confederacy made naval history off Charleston, South Carolina. The H. L. Hunley became the first submarine to sink an enemy ship, the USS Housatonic , in combat. Captain...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Herbert Hoover on the Great Depression and New Deal, 1931–1933

Foreign Languages

The stock market crashed on Thursday, October 24, 1929, less than eight months into Herbert Hoover’s presidency. Most experts, including Hoover, thought the crash was part of a passing recession. By July 1931, when the President wrote...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Charles Sumner on Reconstruction and the South, 1866

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

By 1865 there were sharp differences of opinion about the rights of freedmen and the governance of the defeated Southern states among political leaders in Congress and the Executive Branch in Washington, DC. Conflict among Republicans...

Program/Event

Grant-Funded Programs

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is currently engaged in two national, library-based programs made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. World War I and America World War I and America marks the 100th...

Program/Event

Teaching Literacy through History

Teaching Literacy through History™ (TLTH) is an interdisciplinary professional development program that uses primary sources to improve K–12 education. TLTH workshops are beneficial for elementary, middle, and high school teachers who...

About page

Mary Caslin Ross

Mary Caslin Ross has spent her career in philanthropy, serving the less fortunate and needy by designing solutions in her public policy and foundation executive positions. She lives in Santa Fe with her husband, Alex, and is a...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inauguration, 1933

Economics, Government and Civics, Literature

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, the nation was reeling from the Great Depression and was dissatisfied with the previous administration’s reluctance to fight it. Roosevelt declared that...

News

Kennedy, Nixon, and Eisenhower Write to Jackie Robinson about Civil Rights

Jackie Robinson and the Presidents The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has acquired a fascinating collection of correspondence from Presidents Nixon, Eisenhower, and Kennedy to baseball legend and prominent civil rights...

News

Teacher Meghan Thomas’s Gilder Lehrman Experience

Meghan Thomas is the 2016 Illinois History Teacher of the Year and teaches at Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center in Chicago, Illinois. Last February, she and her students took part in the Hamilton Education Program. Here, she...

News

D-Day: On This Day, June 6

Seventy-two years ago today Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, opening a second front. The secrecy surrounding "Operation Overlord" is legendary. In a letter from the Gilder Lehrman Collection written on June 6, 1944,...

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