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Guided Readings: Slavery and Abolition

World History

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

Sid Lapidus Collection: Liberty and the American Revolution Introduction The campaign to end slavery was a prolonged struggle. In England and in America in the eighteenth century, some authors such as Daniel Defoe and Samuel Johnson in England depicted slavery as ugly and immoral. In the 1750s, Quaker groups in the colonies began taking public positions against slavery, yet they remained a minority as few colonists spoke out against slavery on religious grounds. In 1776 most White Americans either accepted slavery or actually enslaved people, while others participated in the...
Classroom Resources

Statistics: Agriculture in America

Economics, Geography, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Farm Production Year Number of Farms* Bales of Cotton* Bushels of Corn* Bushels of Wheat* Price Index 1860=100 1860 2 3.8 839 173 100 1870 2.7 4.4 760 254 140 1880 4 6.6 1,706 502 100 1890 4.6 8.7 2,125 449 90 1900 5.7 10.1 2,662 599 90 Source: US Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Decennial Census of the United States, 1900 . Volume V, Agriculture, Part 1 (Washington DC: United States Census Office, 1902), plate 12 * In millions Questions for Discussion What happened to farm production after the Civil War? What happened to farm prices? Growth of Farm Tenancy: Percentage of Farms...
Classroom Resources

Guided Readings: Imperialism and the Spanish-American War

Economics, Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12

Reading 1 Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. . . . The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. . . . The frontier promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American people. . . . The legislation which most developed the powers of the national government, and played the largest part in its activity, was conditioned on the frontier. . . . The pioneer needed the goods of the coast, and so the grand series of internal improvement and railroad legislation began,...
Classroom Resources

Guided Readings: Secession and the Civil War

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Reading 1 The leaders and oracles of the most powerful party in the United States have denounced us as tyrants and unprincipled heathens through the whole civilized world. They have preached it from their pulpits. They have declared it in the halls of Congress and in their newspapers. In their school-houses they have taught their children (who are to rule this Government in the next generation) to look upon the slaveholder as the especial disciple of the devil himself. . . . They have established Abolition Societies among them for the purpose of raising funds—if other states...
Classroom Resources

Witnessing History: The Pardon of Homer Plessy: Recommended Resources

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. Ferguson case, the history of discrimination, and the fight for civil rights in the United States. You can watch a recording of this program (originally held on March 16, 2022) below: For some of these links, you may need to be a subscriber on our site. To log in or start the subscription process, please click here . If you are a K–12 educator who...
Classroom Resources

Abraham Lincoln Highlights

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, founded in 1994 promotes the knowledge and understanding of American history through educational programs and resources. Drawing on the 80,000 documents in the Gilder Lehrman Collection and an extensive network of eminent historians, the Institute provides teachers, students, and the general public with direct access to unique primary source materials. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the HISTORY® Channel invite you to watch Abraham Lincoln , then explore Lincoln’s world through primary sources. The items...
Classroom Resources

Guided Readings: Sectional Conflict

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Reading 1 I do not . . . hesitate to avow before this House and the country, and in the presence of the living God, that if by your legislation you seek to drive us from the territories of California and New Mexico, purchased by the common blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery in this District, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon half the States of this Confederacy, I am for disunion . —Representative Robert Toombs of Georgia, December 13, 1849, Congressional Globe , 31st Cong., 1st Sess. 28 (1849) Reading 2 With the ever watchful eye...
Classroom Resources

Study Aid: Reconstruction Amendments

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12

Thirteenth Amendment Prohibited slavery in the United States Fourteenth Amendment Defined national citizenship Reduced state representation in Congress proportional to number of disfranchised voters Denied former Confederates the right to hold public office Fifteenth Amendment Prohibited denial of vote on grounds of race, color, or previous servitude White Democrats Regain Control of Southern Legislatures 1869 Virginia 1870 North Carolina 1871 Georgia 1873 Texas 1874 Alabama Arkansas 1875 Mississippi 1877 Florida Louisiana South Carolina
Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Mexican Americans and the Great Depression

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In February 1930 in San Antonio, Texas, 5000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans gathered at the city’s railroad station to depart the United States for settlement in Mexico. In August, a special train carried another 2000 to central Mexico. Most Americans are familiar with the forced relocation in 1942 of 112,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast to internment camps. Far fewer are aware that during the Great Depression, the Federal Bureau of Immigration (after 1933, the Immigration and Naturalization Service) and local authorities rounded up Mexican immigrants and naturalized...
Classroom Resources

Cultural Encounters: Teaching Exploration and Encounter to Students

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

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

Some 40,000 years from now, give or take a few millennia, someone, somewhere in the universe may find and listen to the Golden Record, NASA’s attempt to describe Earth and its peoples to anyone out there who might be interested. There are actually two copies of the Golden Record, each on its own spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 , which were launched out into the cosmos in 1977, one year after the Bicentennial of the United States and almost five centuries after the first sustained encounters between the peoples of the Americas and the peoples of Europe. It is interesting...
Classroom Resources

Questions for Discussion: The Roots of the Revolution

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12

Was colonial America a democratic society? Were the colonists justified in resisting British policies after the French and Indian War (1754–1763)? Were the origins of the American Revolution primarily economic or ideological? Were the colonists’ responses to the Stamp Act (1765) justified? How did the Stamp Act Congress pave the road for American independence? Is violence a sound strategy to bring about significant political and social change? (Case studies to help examine this question could include: the Stamp Act riots [1765], the Boston Massacre [1770], the Boston Tea Party ...
Classroom Resources

Historical Context: American Slavery in Comparative Perspective

Economics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Of the 10 to 16 million Africans who survived the voyage to the New World, over one-third landed in Brazil and between 60 and 70 percent ended up in Brazil or the sugar colonies of the Caribbean. Only 6 percent arrived in what is now the United States. Yet by 1860, approximately two thirds of all New World slaves lived in the American South. For a long time it was widely assumed that southern slavery was harsher and crueler than slavery in Latin America, where the Catholic church insisted that slaves had a right to marry, to seek relief from a cruel master, and to purchase...
Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Birth of a Nation

Art, Geography, Government and Civics, Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1915, fifty years after the end of the Civil War, D.W. Griffith released his epic film Birth of a Nation . The greatest blockbuster of the silent era, Birth of a Nation was seen by an estimated 200 million Americans by 1946. Based on a novel by a Baptist preacher named Thomas Dixon, the film painted Reconstruction, the period following the Civil War, as a time when vengeful former enslaved people, opportunistic White scalawags, and corrupt Yankee carpetbaggers plundered and oppressed the former Confederacy until respectable White southerners rose up and restored order. A ...
Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Black Soldiers in the Civil War

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

By early 1863, voluntary enlistments in the Union army had fallen so sharply that the federal government instituted an unpopular military draft and decided to enroll black, as well as white, troops. Indeed, it seems likely that it was the availability of large numbers of African American soldiers that allowed President Lincoln to resist demands for a negotiated peace that might have including the retention of slavery in the United States. Altogether, 186,000 black soldiers served in the Union Army and another 29,000 served in the Navy, accounting for nearly 10 percent of all...
Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Go West ... and Grow Up with the Country

Geography

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1854 Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor, gave Josiah B. Grinnell a famous piece of advice. "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country," said Greeley. Grinnell took Greeley's advice, moved west, and later founded Grinnell, Iowa. Before 1830 Iowa was Indian land, occupied by the Sauk, Fox, Missouri, Pottowatomi, and other Indian tribes. The defeat of the Sauk and Fox Indians in the Black Hawk War in 1832 opened the first strip of Iowa to settlement. By 1840 Iowa's population of settlers had risen to 40,000. Because no government land office was established in...
Classroom Resources

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 items that might be used for sabotage, such as cameras and shortwave radios. The curfews on Italian immigrants were lifted in October 1942, on Columbus Day. Approximately 600,000 Italian aliens lived in the United States in 1940. About 1,600 Italian citizens were interned, and about 10,000 Italian-Americans were forced to move from their houses in...
Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Life on the Trail

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Each spring, pioneers gathered at Independence and St. Joseph, Missouri, and Council Bluffs, Iowa, to begin a 2,000 mile journey westward. For many families, the great spur for emigration was economic: the financial depression of the late 1830s, accompanied by floods and epidemics in the Mississippi Valley. Said one woman: "We had nothing to lose, and we might gain a fortune." Between 1841 and 1867, more than 350,000 trekked along the overland trails. Most pioneers traveled in family units. At first, pioneers tried to maintain the rigid sexual division of labor that...
Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Movies and Migration

Art

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

Many of our most memorable images of the past come from movies. Films set in the past provide a vivid record of history: of the "look," the clothing, the atmosphere, and the mood of past eras. Nevertheless, movies remain a controversial source of historical evidence. Because moviemakers are not held to the same standards as historians, historical films often contain inaccuracies and anachronisms. Further, films frequently blur the line between fact and fiction and avoid complex ideas that cannot be presented visually. Of course, no one goes to a movie expecting a history lesson...
Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Post-World War I Labor Tensions

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The years following the end of World War I were a period of deep social tensions, aggrevated by high wartime inflation. Food prices more than doubled between 1915 and 1920; clothing costs more than tripled. A steel strike that began in Chicago in 1919 became much more than a simple dispute between labor and management. The Steel Strike of 1919 became the focal point for profound social anxieties, especially fears of Bolshevism. Organized labor had grown in strength during the course of the war. Many unions won recognition and the 12-hour workday was abolished. An 8-hour days...
Classroom Resources

Historical Context: Slavery in a Capitalist World

Economics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Why were the South's political leaders so worried about whether slavery would be permitted in the West when geography and climate made it unlikely that slavery would ever prosper in the area? The answer lies in the South's growing awareness of its minority status in the Union, of the elimination of slavery in many other areas of the Western Hemisphere, and of the decline of slavery in the upper South. During the first half of the nineteenth century, slave labor was becoming an exception in the world. During the early years of the 19th century, Spain's newly independent New...
Classroom Resources

Historical Context: The Breakdown of the Party System

Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

As late as 1850, the two-party system seemed healthy. Democrats and Whigs drew strength in all parts of the country. Then, in the early 1850s, the two-party system began to disintegrate in response to massive foreign immigration. By 1856 the Whig party had collapsed and been replaced by a new sectional party, the Republicans. Between 1846 and 1855, more than three million foreigners arrived in America. In cities such as Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, and St. Louis immigrants actually outnumbered native-born citizens. Opponents of immigration capitalized on working-class fear of...

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