50 items
Today, the Gilded Age evokes thoughts of “robber baron” industrialists, immigrants toiling long hours in factories for little pay, massive strikes that were often put down by force, and political corruption in both big cities and the...
Immigration and Migration
The United States emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century as an industrial powerhouse, producing goods that then circulated around the world. People in distant countries used American-made clothes, shoes, textiles,...
The Progressive Era to the New Era, 1900-1929
We should not accept social life as it has "trickled down to us," the young journalist Walter Lippmann wrote soon after the twentieth century began. "We have to deal with it deliberately, devise its social organization, . . . educate...
The Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945
Across the long arc of American history, three moments in particular have disproportionately determined the course of the Republic’s development. Each respectively distilled the experience and defined the historical legacy of a...
World War I
War swept across Europe in the summer of 1914, igniting a global struggle that would eventually take nine million lives. World War I pitted the Allies (initially composed of Britain, France, Belgium, Serbia, and Russia, and eventually...
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...
The Human Toll of the Great Depression
After more than half a century, images of the Great Depression remain firmly etched in the American psyche—breadlines, soup kitchens, tin-can shanties and tar paper shacks known as "Hoovervilles," penniless men and women selling...
Lincoln
No one seemed less well-cast for the role of reformer, in an age of reform, than Abraham Lincoln. To begin with, he was a stranger, emotionally and intellectually, to evangelical Christianity, the great engine of reform in the...
The Road to War
‘A house divided against itself can not stand’ I believe this government can not endure permanently, half slave, and half free . . . I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it...
Washington Encourages a Prospective Immigrant: The Economic Potential of the States in 1796
During his second presidential term, George Washington enjoyed a lively correspondence with Sir John Sinclair, member of Parliament and leader of Britain’s scientific agriculture movement, on matters of mutual interest to the two...
The Rise of Industrial America, 1877-1900
When in 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner entitled their co-authored novel The Gilded Age , they gave the late nineteenth century its popular name. The term reflected the combination of outward wealth and dazzle with inner...
American Indians
If history is the story of what people have done, then American history began thousands of years ago, and by far most of it is that of Indian peoples and their ancestors before Europeans arrived. Historians, however, disagree over...
Prohibition and Its Effects
The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in January 1919 and enacted in January 1920, outlawed the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors." This amendment was the culmination of decades of effort...
Revolutionary in America
The image is so clear in our minds, seen first in elementary school and reinforced countless times since: a few dozen gentlemen with powdered wigs and period suits (coats, waistcoats, and knee-length breeches) gathered in a large...
Guided Readings: Jacksonian Democracy
Reading 1: The aristocracy of our country . . . continually contrive to change their party name. It was first Tory, then Federalist, then no party . . . then National Republican, now Whig. . . . But by whatever name they reorganize...
Guided Readings: Political Battles of the Jacksonian Era: The Bank War
Reading 1: It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or...
Guided Readings: Political Battles of the Jacksonian Era: Nullification
Reading 1: And, sir, let it be remembered that a revenue system, grossly and palpably unequal in itself--a system which, under the most favorable modification, would levy the entire amount of the federal taxes from one-fifth part of...
Guided Readings: Origins of the Cold War: The Containment Policy
Reading 1 Soviet power...bears within itself the seeds of its own decay, and the sprouting of these seeds is well advanced...[If] anything were ever to disrupt the unity and efficacy of the Party as a political instrument, Soviet...
Guided Readings: Origins of the Cold War and Soviet-American Confrontation
Reading 1 From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague,...
Guided Readings: The Korean War
Reading 1 In Korea the Government forces, which were armed to prevent border raids and to preserve internal security, were attacked by invading forces from North Korea. . . . The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that...
Guided Readings: Anti-Communism at Home
Reading 1 Sec. 2: (a) It shall be unlawful for any person— (1) to knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United...
Guided Readings: Urban Political Machines
Reading 1 An army led by a council seldom conquers: It must have a commander-in-chief who settles disputes, decides in emergencies, inspires fear or attachment. The head of the Ring is such a commander. He dispenses places, rewards...
Guided Readings: The Rise of the City
Reading 1 To-day, what is a tenement? . . . When last arraigned before the bar of public justice: “It is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, when...
Guided Readings: Progressive Reform and the Trusts
Reading 1 The dull, purblind folly of the very rich men; their greed and arrogance . . . and the corruption in business and politics, have tended to produce a very unhealthy condition of excitement and irritation in the popular mind,...
Guided Readings: World War I
Reading 1 The United States must be neutral in fact, as well as in name, during these days that are to try men’s souls. We must be impartial in thought, as well as action, must put a curb upon our sentiments, as well as upon every...
Guided Readings: Sectional Conflict
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...
Guided Readings: Secession and the Civil War
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...
Guided Readings: The Farmers' Revolt
Reading 1 For our business interests, we desire to bring producers and consumers, farmers and manufacturers into the most direct and friendly relations possible. Hence we must dispense with a surplus of middlemen, not that we are...
Guided Readings: Responses to Industrialism
Reading 1 It is idle to talk of a peaceful strike. None such has ever occurred. All combinations to interfere with perfect freedom in the proper management and control of one's lawful business, to dictate the terms upon which such...
Guided Readings: The Gospel of Wealth
Reading 1 Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; entrusted for...
Guided Readings: Toward Revolution
Reading 1 For fire and water are not more heterogeneous than the different colonies in North America. Nothing can exceed the jealousy and emulation which they possess in regard to each other. . . . In short . . . were they left to...
Guided Readings: Imperialism and the Spanish-American War
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...
Guided Readings: Manifest Destiny
Reading 1: Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. John L. O'Sullivan, 1845 Reading 2: Texas has been absorbed into the Union as the...
George Pullman: His Impact on the Railroad Industry, Labor, and American Life in the Nineteenth Century
Background George Mortimer Pullman was an influential industrialist of the nineteenth century and the founder of the Pullman Palace Car Company. His innovations brought comfort and luxury to railroad travel in the 1800s with the...
Beyond Rosie the Riveter: Women's Contributions During World War II
Overview Although often understated, the social, economic, and political contributions of American women have all had profound effects on the course of this nation. For evidence of this, one needs to look no further than the many...
Theodore Roosevelt and the Trusts
Background Thick dark smoke billowing out of smokestacks several stories high proliferated across city skylines, heralding America's rise to world prominence and industrial supremacy. After the Civil War, Americans embraced the smog...
The Erie Canal and the Rise of the Market Economy
Objectives Students will examine primary documents and secondary sources to analyze effects of technology on economic growth in the first half of the nineteenth century. Students will be able to identify the major economic trends of...
New Amsterdam: The Center of the Dutch Settlement
Teaching with Russell Shorto’s book Island at the Center of the World Objectives Students will examine primary documents and secondary sources to analyze the effects of the Dutch West India Company settlement in North America....
The Great Depression and The New Deal
Essential Questions What should be the role of government in solving a national crisis? How effective were the responses of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration to the problems of the Great Depression? Objectives Write a Document...
The Cold War Across Time (1945–1990): A Jigsaw with Expert Groups
Objective To discover the impact the Cold War had on multiple aspects of life, both in the United States and around the world, by exploring changes over time. Overview of Jigsaw Process Expert Groups will create four timelines...
How to Analyze Primary Source Documents / F.D.R. & The Great Depression
Essential Question How effective was President Franklin Roosevelt in communicating with the American public during this time of crisis? Objectives Understand the importance of thinking critically about historical events. Be able to...
The New Deal: Legislation & Policies
Historical Background When the stock market crashed in October of 1929, American citizens faced economic challenges unlike anything previously experienced in U.S. history. By the time Franklin Delano Roosevelt became President in 1933...
Rise of the Populists and William Jennings Bryan
Historical Background As the United States evolved into an industrial powerhouse in the decades following the Civil War, the growing strength of the railroads and the banks particularly, coupled with the impact of mechanization on...
Ronald Reagan on Reducing the Size of Government
Essential Questions How can the powers of government be divided to best run our nation in this modern era? What role should the federal government play in shaping our economy? Document Ronald Reagan’s State of the Union Message,...
Mass Production, Suburbia & Conformity in the 1950s
Essential Question How did conformity apply as a value to the living choices of Americans during the 1950’s? Materials Postwar Society Data and Questions (PDF) Little Boxes , written by Malvina Reynolds (1962) (Lyrics) Two Photos &...
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address
View this item in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize...
President Dwight Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation, 1961
Click here to download this four-lesson unit.
The National Bank Debate
Objective This lesson is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These resources were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...
Railroads: The "Engine" to Promote National Unity and Economic Growth
Objectives Students will examine, explain, and evaluate a variety of literary and visual primary sources that describe and depict the development and impact of railroads on sectional relationships, national unity, and economic growth...
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