Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

467 items

History Now Essay

"All Should Have an Equal Chance": Abraham Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence

Jonathan W. White

In many ways, the Gettysburg Address reflects the culmination of Abraham Lincoln’s lifelong admiration for the principles of the Declaration of Independence. As a young man in 1838, Lincoln responded to the wave of mob violence...

Appears in:

67 | The Influence of the Declaration of Independence on the Civil War and Reconstruction Era Summer 2023

History Now Essay

"Courage to Face the Unknown": The World War II Service and Legacy of Celina Baez Sotomayor

Elizabeth R. Escobedo

During the 1940s hundreds of thousands of American women left their hometowns to serve in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), a US Army unit created in World War II to enable women to serve in noncombat positions and “free a man to fight.” ...

Appears in:

70 | World War II: Portraits of Service Spring 2024

History Now Essay

"Dear Girl, how much I love you": The Revolutionary War Letters of Henry and Lucy Knox

Phillip Hamilton

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Letters between soldiers and spouses are often powerful and moving documents. Given the intensity, danger, and uncertainty of armed conflict as well as the significant changes wrought by most wars, such correspondence reveals what...

Appears in:

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

History Now Essay

"Dear Miss Cole": World War I Letters of American Servicemen

Phillip Papas

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

"Received your package," Pvt. George Van Pelt of Company I, 165th Infantry wrote in May 1918 from the frontlines in France to Annie E. Cole, a grammar school teacher and principal on Staten Island, New York, and to her students. "I...

Appears in:

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

History Now Essay

"Ditched, Stalled and Stranded": Dorothea Lange and the Great Depression

Carol Quirke

Art

During the Great Depression, a top commercial portraitist took to San Francisco’s streets to experiment with representing the social devastation surrounding her. Her photos showed men sleeping on sidewalks and in parks like bundles of...

Appears in:

45 | American History in Visual Art Summer 2016

History Now Essay

"Fun, Fun Rock ’n’ Roll High School"

Glenn C. Altschuler and Robert O. Summers

Art, Government and Civics

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

With his tongue halfway in his cheek, Ambrose Bierce defined history as "an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools." Well, we’ve come a long...

Appears in:

32 | The Music and History of Our Times Summer 2012

History Now Essay

"I, Too": Langston Hughes’s Afro-Whitmanian Affirmation

Steven Tracy

Literature

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

To read the text and hear the poem click here. Whatever we say, whatever we write, whatever we do, we never act alone. Just as John Donne meditated upon the notion that "no man is an island," so, too, in the twentieth century did T.S....

Appears in:

39 | American Poets, American History Spring 2014

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

History Now Essay

"Nature’s Nation": The Hudson River School and American Landscape Painting, 1825–1876

Linda Ferber

Art

Introduction The late nineteenth-century critic who first referred to a "Hudson River School" intended the nickname to be dismissive, describing artists whose style was old fashioned and whose American subjects were provincial. The...

Appears in:

45 | American History in Visual Art Summer 2016

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

"One of those monstrosities of nature": The Galveston Storm of 1900

Elizabeth Hayes Turner

Geography, Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

Dawn brought "mother of pearl" skies to Galveston, Texas, that Saturday morning of September 8, 1900. The city of 38,000, perched on an island just off the mainland, had an elevation of no more than nine feet. With no sea wall to...

Appears in:

40 | Disasters in Modern American History Fall 2014

History Now Essay

"People Get Ready": Music and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s

Brian Ward

Government and Civics

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

Few sights or sounds conjure up the passion and purposefulness of the Southern Civil Rights Movement as powerfully as the freedom songs that provided a stirring musical accompaniment to the campaign for racial justice and equality in...

Appears in:

8 | The Civil Rights Movement Summer 2006

History Now Essay

"Prince of Darkness": Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire

Shane White

Jeremiah G. Hamilton was a Black man whose very existence flies in the face of our understanding of the way things were in nineteenth-century New York. He made his fortune as a broker. Although a pioneer, far from being some novice...

Appears in:

72 | Black Entrepreneurship in America Fall 2024

History Now Essay

"Revered By All": The Declaration of Independence in the Reconstruction Era

Douglas R. Egerton

Government and Civics

Although it was the speech that redefined the conflict and effectively changed the meaning of the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address is often misunderstood today when it is not simply ignored, at least in American...

Appears in:

67 | The Influence of the Declaration of Independence on the Civil War and Reconstruction Era Summer 2023

History Now Essay

"Show Them What an Indian Can Do": The Example of Jim Thorpe

Joseph Bruchac

Although the twentieth century produced many great athletes, there is no one who stood out more than Jim Thorpe. That is not just my opinion. When Jim Thorpe won two gold medals at the 1912 Olympic Games, the king of Sweden said to...

Appears in:

59 | American Indians in Leadership Winter 2021

History Now Essay

"The Authentic Voice of Today": Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton

Elizabeth L. Wollman

Art

"The show is the first Broadway musical in some time to have the authentic voice of today rather than the day before yesterday." The comment above could easily have been written about Hamilton , but it was written long before Hamilton...

Appears in:

44 | Alexander Hamilton in the American Imagination Winter 2016

History Now Essay

"The Brave Men, Living and Dead": Common Soldiers at the Battle of Gettysburg

Robert Bonner

Midway through his remarks at the Gettysburg National Soldiers’ Cemetery on November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln confided that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." This remarkable (and remarkably off-target)...

Appears in:

37 | Gettysburg: Insights and Perspectives Fall 2013

History Now Essay

"The Chinese Question"—Unresolved and Ongoing for Americans

John Kuo Wei Tchen

Government and Civics

In 1882, the United States Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act—the nation’s first race-based immigration law that was not effectively repealed until 1965–1968. The act exempted Chinese merchants, diplomats, scholars, and...

Appears in:

42 | The Role of China in US History Spring 2015

History Now Essay

"The New Colossus": Emma Lazarus and the Immigrant Experience

Julie Des Jardins

Literature

To read the text and hear the poem click here. Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the...

Appears in:

39 | American Poets, American History Spring 2014

History Now Essay

"The Politics of the Future Are Social Politics": Progressivism in International Perspective

Thomas Bender

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The American Progressive movement was not simply a response to the domestic conditions produced by industrialization and urbanization. Instead, it was part of a global response to these developments during an era of unregulated...

Appears in:

17 | Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era Fall 2008

History Now Essay

"The Seed Time of a Great Harvest": Douglass Recalls Fellow Abolitionists

Quandra Prettyman

Quandra Prettyman , senior associate in the English and Africana Studies departments at Barnard College, was one of the first Black faculty members at the college. She taught the first courses in African American literature there in...

Appears in:

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

"The Strange Spell That Dwells in Dead Men’s Eyes": The Civil War, by Brady

Harold Holzer

Art

"[T]he dead of the battle-field come up to us very rarely, even in dreams." So admitted the New York Times just a month after it had reported the grisly slaughter of 3,650 Union and Confederate troops at the Battle of Antietam. On a...

Appears in:

45 | American History in Visual Art Summer 2016

History Now Essay

"What We Leave the Earth": The African Burial Ground in New York City

David Mills

Literature

In October 2021, the African Burial Ground National Monument commemorated the thirtieth anniversary of the New York City slave cemetery’s rediscovery by the General Services Administration (GSA). In 1991, the GSA started construction...

Appears in:

62 | The Honored Dead: African American Cemeteries, Graveyards, and Burial Grounds Spring 2022

History Now Essay

“A Vote-less People Is a Hopeless People”: Lessons from Selma

Robert A. Pratt

The black freedom struggle, commonly referred to as the civil rights movement, is undoubtedly one of the greatest social movements in the history of the world. After more than two centuries of bondage followed by another century of...

Appears in:

51 | The Evolution of Voting Rights Summer 2018

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

“In the Name of America’s Future”: The Fraught Passage of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act

Maddalena Marinari

Government and Civics

Senator Patrick McCarran (D−NV) was seething after Congress renewed the 1948 Displaced Persons Act in 1950. Incensed, McCarran wrote to his daughter: “I met the enemy and he took me on the DP bill. It’s tough to beat a million or more...

Appears in:

52 | The History of US Immigration Laws Fall 2018

Site Search

467 items

"All Should Have an Equal Chance": Abraham Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence

"Courage to Face the Unknown": The World War II Service and Legacy of Celina Baez Sotomayor

"Dear Girl, how much I love you": The Revolutionary War Letters of Henry and Lucy Knox

"Dear Miss Cole": World War I Letters of American Servicemen

"Ditched, Stalled and Stranded": Dorothea Lange and the Great Depression

"Fun, Fun Rock ’n’ Roll High School"

"I, Too": Langston Hughes’s Afro-Whitmanian Affirmation

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

"Nature’s Nation": The Hudson River School and American Landscape Painting, 1825–1876

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

"One of those monstrosities of nature": The Galveston Storm of 1900

"People Get Ready": Music and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s

"Prince of Darkness": Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire

"Revered By All": The Declaration of Independence in the Reconstruction Era

"Show Them What an Indian Can Do": The Example of Jim Thorpe

"The Authentic Voice of Today": Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton

"The Brave Men, Living and Dead": Common Soldiers at the Battle of Gettysburg

"The Chinese Question"—Unresolved and Ongoing for Americans

"The New Colossus": Emma Lazarus and the Immigrant Experience

"The Politics of the Future Are Social Politics": Progressivism in International Perspective

"The Seed Time of a Great Harvest": Douglass Recalls Fellow Abolitionists

"The Strange Spell That Dwells in Dead Men’s Eyes": The Civil War, by Brady

"What We Leave the Earth": The African Burial Ground in New York City

“A Vote-less People Is a Hopeless People”: Lessons from Selma

“In the Name of America’s Future”: The Fraught Passage of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act

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