146 items
The Civil War marked a defining moment in United States history. Long simmering sectional tensions reached a critical stage in 1860–1861 when eleven slaveholding states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. Political...
Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877
In 1877, soon after retiring as president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, embarked with his wife on a two-year tour of the world. At almost every location, he was greeted as a hero. In England, the son of the Duke of...
Historical Context: Black Soldiers in the Civil War
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...
A Civil War soldier’s satirical take on the news, 1863
Between battles, marches, and military exercises, Civil War soldiers spent their free time in camp playing music, writing and reading letters, and, for those with the skill, sketching scenes from the day. This unknown soldier’s...
John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights
Fay Yarbrough - "Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country"
Fay Yarbrough is a professor of history at Rice University. Order Choctaw Confederates at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our...
Gary Gallagher - "The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis"
Gary Gallagher is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War Emeritus at the University of Virginia. Order The Enduring Civil War at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from...
"The Merits of This Fearful Conflict": Douglass on the Causes of the Civil War
In the spring of 1871, Frederick Douglass was worried. Six years after Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Grant was now President of the United States, the Union of northern and southern states was...
Bruce Levine - "Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice"
Order Thaddeus Stevens at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
Alice Baumgartner - "South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War"
Alice Baumgartner is an assistant professor of history at the University of Southern California. Order South to Freedom at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided....
Frank J. Cirillo - "The Abolitionist Civil War: Immediatists and the Struggle to Transform the Union"
Frank J. Cirillo is a historian of slavery and antislavery in the nineteenth-century United States. Order The Abolitionist Civil War at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the...
Jeremi Suri - "Civil War by Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy"
Jeremi Suri is the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a professor in the Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Order Civil War by Other Means...
Thavolia Glymph - "The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation"
Order The Women's Fight at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
Ed Ayers - "The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America"
Order The Thin Light of Freedom at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
Eric Foner - "The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Made the Constitution"
Eric Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University. Order The Second Founding at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank...
Clayton Butler - "True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South during the Civil War and Reconstruction"
Clayton Butler earned his PhD in History from the University of Virginia in 2020 and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Nau Center for Civil War History. Order True Blue at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an...
African American Voting Rights
African American Voting Rights from The Gilder Lehrman Institute on Vimeo .
Jacqueline Jones - "No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era"
Jacqueline Jones is the Ellen C. Temple Professor of Women’s History Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin and a past president of the American Historical Association. Order No Right to an Honest Living at the Gilder Lehrman...
The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope
Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of the American Studies Program at Columbia University, Andrew Delbanco examines the evolution of the American Dream--the idea that anyone may rise above his or her...
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
Columbia University historian Eric Foner discusses his most recent work, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery , with James G. Basker, president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Professor Foner was...
Lincoln speech on slavery and the American Dream, 1858
Through the 1830s and 1840s, Abraham Lincoln’s primary political focus was on economic issues. However, the escalating debate over slavery in the 1850s, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act in particular, compelled Lincoln to change his...
African American soldiers at the Battle of Fort Wagner, 1863
On July 18, 1863, on Morris Island near Charleston, South Carolina, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a Union regiment of free African American men, began their assault on Fort Wagner, a Confederate stronghold. After the...
Travels Through Time: The Impact of Supreme Court Decisions on the Struggle for African American Equality
Overview After the Civil War, African Americans were under attack as they struggled for equal rights in America. Laws were put in place during Reconstruction to assure Freedmen basic civil rights. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and...
Lucas Morel - "Lincoln and the American Founding"
Lucas E. Morel is the John K. Boardman, Jr. Professor of Politics and head of the Politics Department at Washington and Lee University. Order Lincoln and the American Founding at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate...
Kate Masur - "Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction"
Order Until Justice Be Done at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
Paul Ortiz - "An African American and Latinx History of the United States"
Paul Ortiz is an associate professor of history and the director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida. Order An African American and Latinx History of the United States at the Gilder Lehrman Book...
Brandon Byrd - "The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti"
Order The Black Republic at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
Amanda Bellows - "American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination"
Order American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
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Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham - "From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans"
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Order From Slavery to Freedom at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate...
R. Isabela Morales - "Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom"
R. Isabela Morales is a historian who currently serves as the editor of the Princeton & Slavery Project at Princeton University. Order Happy Dreams of Liberty at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission...
Eric Foner, Kathleen DuVal, and Lisa McGirr - "Give Me Liberty! An American History"
Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University. Kathleen DuVal is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lisa McGirr is a Charles Warren Professor of American...
Jonathan W. White - "A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House"
Jonathan W. White is professor of American studies at Christopher Newport University. Order A House Built By Slaves at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided....
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