21 items
Andrew Carroll, founder of the Legacy Project, recounts his search for letters from America’s wars and reads excerpts from several.
Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War
Thomas G. Andrews, an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder, discusses his Bancroft Prize–winning book, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War, and the interconnection between railroads, coal,...
Historical Context: American Slavery and Abolition through Hollywood
Throughout the twentieth century, many influential Hollywood films, such as Birth of a Nation , Gone with the Wind , Glory , and Amistad , have helped shape the way Americans have thought about slavery and its legacy. Birth of a...
Differing Views of Pilgrims and American Indians in Seventeenth-Century New England
Background Wampanoags Much of what is known about early Wampanoag history comes from archaeological evidence, the Wampanoag oral tradition (much of which has been lost), and documents created by seventeenth-century English colonists....
The Failure of Compromise
In the spring of 1861, the United States of America split into two hostile countries—the United States and the new Confederate States of America. The two opposing heads of state agreed about what was causing the rupture—the long...
Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln
In this short clip, historian David Blight discusses the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
Singing for Freedom
Background In the early 1960s, Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation, with most non-white families living well below the poverty line. Although African Americans made up nearly half of the state's population, few were...
Don’t Buy a Ford Ever Again, ca. 1960
New Orleans in 1960 was sharply divided over the practice of segregation. The schools were ordered to desegregate, which angered many white people. Members of the Citizens’ Council of Greater New Orleans believed that large companies...
The Pony Express: The Fastest Delivery of a Message across America
Background The inauguration of a new service, the Pony Express, on April 3, 1860, promised the fastest communication ever from the Missouri River to California. How long did a Pony Express message take to go from its starting point in...
National Expansion and Reform, 1815–1860
A good way to understand the men and women who created America’s reform tradition and carried it across the Mississippi in the years before the Civil War is to look at the political heritage their parents and grandparents left to them...
Celebrating Labor Day
Essential Question To what extent have the conditions of American workers improved over the past 100 years? Background After the Civil War, the United States witnessed an accelerating movement of people westward, a rapidly increasing...
Guided Readings: Using Primary and Secondary Sources: Slavery in the Founding Era
Primary and secondary sources can provide different kinds of information about the past. In the context of slavery, Phillis Wheatley is considered the most important figure of the eighteenth century. Two accounts of her experience...
A perspective on the San Francisco earthquake, 1906
At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a great earthquake broke loose, with an epicenter near San Francisco. Violent shocks punctuated the shaking, which lasted some 45 to 60 seconds. The earthquake was felt from southern Oregon to south of...
The Transcontinental Railroad in Images and Poetry
Unit Objectives Students will analyze a variety of primary sources related to the completion of the transcontinental railroad. investigate celebratory images and a poem to discover some of the key outcomes that arose from the ability...
Norwegian Immigration in the Nineteenth Century
Background For most Norwegians in the nineteenth century, America remained a remote and exotic place until the first immigrants began to write home. These "American letters," which traveled from the immigrants back to former neighbors...
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871: A Story of Human Tragedy and Triumph
Background Ask anyone what the greatest disaster in Chicago was and probably no one will say, "The Great Iroquois Theatre Fire of December 30, 1903." Six hundred three souls perished in that fire. They probably won’t say, "The sinking...
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