77 items
Teddy Roosevelt campaigns for a third term, 1912
In February 1912, former president Theodore Roosevelt stunned the country by challenging President William Howard Taft for the Republican nomination. The move was not only a rejection of his friend Taft, it also violated an unwritten...
Theodore Roosevelt supports women’s suffrage, 1912
In this letter written in July 1912, during his campaign for a thrid term as president, Theodore Roosevelt informs the state and county chairmen of the Progressive Party of his plan to support women’s suffrage. The document shows the...
Inside the Vault: Twentieth-Century Voting Rights
On August 3, 2023, our curators were joined by Dr. Barbara Perry, Gerald L. Baliles Professor and director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, to discuss materials related to twentieth-century...
Inside the Vault: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt
On May 5, 2022, our curators discussed documents written by President Theodore Roosevelt. Joined by his great-grandson Tweed Roosevelt, we learned more about Roosevelt and his legacy. This session of Inside the Vault was sponsored by...
Inside the Vault: David Blight Discusses Frederick Douglass Documents
On February 3, 2022, our curators were joined by Dr. David Blight to discuss his favorite Frederick Douglass documents in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Click here to download the slides from the presentation. Featured Documents...
National Security, Isolationism, and the Coming of World War II
Unit Overview The two decades following the end of "The Great War" witnessed significant changes in American economic, social, and cultural life. The affluence and optimism of the 1920s were tempered by memories of the war and an...
The Supreme Court upholds national prohibition, 1920
After more than a century of activism, the temperance movement achieved its signal victory with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1919. The amendment abolished "the manufacture, sale, or...
Literacy and the immigration of "undesirables," 1903
During the Progressive era, tens of millions of immigrants came to the United States from Europe to fulfill their American dream. During this period most came from southern and eastern Europe, particularly from Italy, Russia, and the...
William H. Taft recalls dispute with Theodore Roosevelt, 1922
President Theodore Roosevelt mentored and groomed William Howard Taft to be his successor in the White House. However, once Taft was elected in 1908, he based his administration on a more business-centric and limited-government form...
Nominating an African American for vice president, 1880
Born a slave in 1841, Blanche Kelso Bruce was the first African American to be elected to a full term in the US Senate. During his term as a senator from Mississippi (1875–1881), he advocated the rights of African Americans and other...
African American Voting Rights
African American Voting Rights from The Gilder Lehrman Institute on Vimeo .
Inside the Vault: The Emancipation Proclamation & FDR’s Advice to Students
The Gilder Lehrman curators were joined by Hamilton ’s Tyler Belo on September 3, 2020, in this session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection where they celebrated the start of the school year with three...
The Map Proves It, ca. 1919
Supporters of women’s rights used maps such as the one shown here to demonstrate where women were allowed to vote, when they won that right, and which elections they could vote in. The source of this map is unknown. Originally printed...
Reporting on the Spanish Influenza, 1918
These newspaper articles illustrate the impact on American society of Spanish Influenza (H1N1), which first appeared in the United States in March 1918. [1] There were periodic, minor outbreaks for six months, but in September a...
Selling World War I: "Buy Liberty Bonds!" 1917-1919
When the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, it needed funds to support the war effort. The Civil War had demonstrated that simply printing more currency would lead to inflation and economic trouble. During World War...
Rules for discharging disabled veterans, 1919
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...
Inside the Vault: Food Purity, Prohibition, and the 1884 Election
On March 2, 2023, our curators were joined by Lisa M. F. Andersen, Director of Academic Strategy at the Gilder Lehrman Institute, to discuss an 1884 pamphlet accusing presidential candidate Grover Cleveland of favoring “adulterated”...
Pioneering New Methods to Expand Voting, 1865–1920
Paragraphs
> Access this essay as a PDF , including key vocabulary terms and discussion questions, or read the text of the essay below. A new chapter in voting rights began when the Civil War ended in 1865....
Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920
Glenda Gilmore is Assistant Professor of American History at Yale University. Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 records political and social change in North Carolina from the...
Calvin Coolidge and Economic Growth
Amity Shlaes, chair of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation and author of Coolidge (2013), discusses Calvin Coolidge and his economic policies during a seminar for history teachers in Wichita, Kansas.
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The Lion’s Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in Peace and War
Edward J. Renehan Jr. examines Theodore Roosevelt’s view of war and how this affected his children, based on his book The Lion’s Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in Peace and War.
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Emma Goldman on the restriction of civil liberties, 1919
Emma Goldman was born to a Jewish family in Kovno, Russia (present-day Lithuania). In 1885, at the age of sixteen, she emigrated to the United States, becoming a well-known author and lecturer promoting anarchism, workers’ rights,...
The Right to Vote, Part 2: Reconstruction and the Jim Crow Era
The Right to Vote: Part 2 Reconstruction and the Jim Crow Era
How did access to the vote evolve during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras? Scroll through to view the exhibition (above). Recorded readings of select...
The Right to Vote, Part 3: Women's Suffrage
The Right to Vote: Part 3 Women's Suffrage
What was the path to the Nineteenth Amendment? Scroll through to view the exhibition (above). Recorded readings of select components in the exhibition are available by clicking ...
Witnessing History: The Pardon of Homer Plessy
In conjunction with our panel, Witnessing History: The Pardon of Homer Plessy (presented in partnership with the Office of the Governor of Louisiana), the Gilder Lehrman Institute has compiled this list of resources on the Plessy v....
Guided Readings: The Rise of the City
Reading 1 To-day, what is a tenement? . . . When last arraigned before the bar of public justice: “It is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, when...
Guided Readings: Progressive Reform and the Trusts
Reading 1 The dull, purblind folly of the very rich men; their greed and arrogance . . . and the corruption in business and politics, have tended to produce a very unhealthy condition of excitement and irritation in the popular mind,...
Guided Readings: The Changing Status of Women
Reading 1 Man is or should be woman’s protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. . . .The paramount destiny and...
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