10. Images of the Founding Era
Explore a gallery of images and broadsides related to the Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary Era.
117 Search items found
13. What's New
“The Declaration at 250” is a multi-year project. These pages will be updated with new resources periodically. Check back here to find out what the Gilder Lehman Insitute of American History has planned. Coming Soon April 2022: A new publication, Black Historians on the Record, with essays related to democracy and liberty across the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Highlights include “Race and the American Constitution: A Struggle toward National Ideals” by James Oliver Horton “African Americans and the Making of Liberia” by Claude A. Clegg “Avoiding the Trap of Whitewashing…
9. Recommended Reading
The Gilder Lehrman Institute recommends the books listed here, which represent the very best in recent scholarship on the origins, impact, and legacy of the Declaration of Independence. Visit the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Norton, Mary Beth. Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Maier, Pauline. American…
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 below highlight some…
Breaking from Great Britain, 1776
Sid Lapidus Collection: Liberty and the American RevolutionBy 1776, Thomas Paine had become the most influential writer defending the break from Great Britain. Born in England, Paine arrived in the colonies in 1774, at age 34. His pamphlet Common Sense was published January 1776 and sold more than 150,000 copies. Paine summarized the case for separating from Great Britain, attacking hereditary privilege, and his direct argument and plain language resonated with ordinary people. This excerpt from Paine’s The American Crisis is the first of a series of articles printed in the Pennsylvania…
Cultural Encounters: Teaching Exploration and Encounter to Students
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 that the Golden…
Differences between Federalists and Antifederalists
The differences between the Federalists and the Antifederalists are vast and at times complex. Federalists’ beliefs could be better described as nationalist. The Federalists were instrumental in 1787 in shaping the new US Constitution, which strengthened the national government at the expense, according to the Antifederalists, of the states and the people. The Antifederalists opposed the ratification of the US Constitution, but they never organized efficiently across all thirteen states, and so had to fight the ratification at every state convention. Their great success was in forcing the…
Guided Readings: African Americans after Slavery
Reading 1 All freedmen . . . over the age of eighteen years, found on the second Monday in January, 1866, or thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawfully assembling themselves together, either in the day or night time, and all white persons so assembling with freedmen . . . shall be deemed vagrants, and on conviction thereof shall be fined in the sum of not exceeding in the crease of a freedman . . . fifty dollars, and a white man two hundred dollars, and imprisoned at the discretion of the court. . . . And in case of any freedman . . . shall fail for five days after…
Guided Readings: American Foreign Policy in the 1970s
Reading 1 Why are we in South Vietnam? We are there because we have a promise to keep. Since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Vietnam. . . . We have made a national pledge to help South Vietnam defend its independence. And I intend to keep our promise. . . . We are also there to strengthen world order. Around the globe, from Berlin to Thailand, are people whose well-being rests, in part, on the belief that they can count on us if they are attacked. To leave Vietnam to its fate would shake the confidence of all these people in the value of American…
Guided Readings: Antebellum Social Reform
Reading 1: “The elementary schools throughout the state are irresponsible institutions, established by individuals, from mere motives of private speculation or gain, who are sometimes destitute of character, and frequently, of the requisite attainments and abilities. From the circumstance of the schools being the absolute property of individuals, no supervision or effectual control can be exercised over them; hence, ignorance, inattention, and even immorality prevail to a lamentable extent among their teachers.” “Report of the Joint Committees of the City and County of Philadelphia, appointed…
Showing results 1 - 10