History Now
Current Issue: “The Declaration of Independence and the Long Struggle for Equality in America,” History Now 63 (Summer 2022)
Since 2004, more than two dozen essays related to the Declaration of Independence have been published in various issues of History Now, the online journal of the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Selected essays are available here, to provide historical perspective on the Declaration and its legacy for teachers, students, and general readers.
To read these essays, subscribe to History Now (free for Affiliate School teachers and their students).
- “The Declaration of Independence and the Origins of Self-Determination in the Modern World” (History Now 61, Fall 2021)
- “The Declaration of Independence in Global Perspective” by David Armitage
- “Thomas Jefferson and Deism” by Peter S. Onuf (History Now 29, “Religion in the Colonial World,” Fall 2011)
- “Revolutionary Philadelphia” by Ray Raphael (History Now 11, “American Cities,” Spring 2007)
- “Lockean Liberalism and the American Revolution” by Isaac Kramnick (History Now 21, “The American Revolution,” Fall 2009)
- “African Americans in the Revolutionary War” by Michael Lee Lanning (History Now 46, “African American Soldiers,” Fall 2016)
- “Unruly Americans in the Revolution” by Woody Holton (History Now 21, “The American Revolution,” Fall 2009)
- “Teaching the Revolution” by Carol Berkin (History Now 21, “The American Revolution,” Fall 2009)
- “The Indians’ War of Independence” by Colin G. Calloway (History Now 21, “The American Revolution,” Fall 2009)
- “Two Revolutions in the Atlantic World: Connections between the American Revolution and the Haitian Revolution” by Laurent Dubois (History Now 34, “The Revolutionary Age,” Winter 2012)
- “The US and Spanish American Revolutions” by Jay Sexton (History Now 34, “The Revolutionary Age,” Winter 2012)
- “Advice (Not Taken) for the French Revolution from America” by Susan Dunn (History Now 34, “The Revolutionary Age,” Winter 2012)
Books
Why Documents Matter: American Originals and the Historical Imagination features documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, ranging from a letter written by a Jamestown colonist in 1622 to the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009. These documents include handwritten letters by leading figures such as George Washington and Frederick Douglass as well as by everyday people who lived through momentous times. They can be the focus of language arts and literacy education as well as history and civics courses. But they are also of interest to the general reader because they not only serve as historical evidence, they also deepen and humanize our sense of history. Purchase your copy here.
Slavery and Abolition in the Founding Era: Black and White Voices (GLI, 2021)
Slavery and Abolition in the Founding Era: Black and White Voices brings together long-forgotten writings from this period, including twenty-five texts in different genres by more than nineteen different writers, spanning the forty-five-year period from the 1770s to the end of the War of 1812. The writings show that opposition to slavery was surprisingly widespread. Purchase your copy here.
Posters
Paul Revere’s engraving of British troops in Boston Harbor, 1768
Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, 1770
“The Voice of the Liberty Bell, 1776–1926”