159 items
Exchanges of Culture and Conflict in the Southwest
Professor DeLay looks at changes in thought, technology, and outlook that prompted early exploration, and Spain’s late entry into colonial pursuits.
Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin
Historian Jill Lepore of Harvard University discusses her book, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, with James G. Basker, president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute.
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A Teacher’s Tour of Ford’s Theatre
Historian Matthew Pinsker (Dickinson College) leads a tour of Ford’s Theatre campus, including the main building, the Petersen House, and the Center for Education and Leadership, to explore how history teachers can use the site’s...
Roundtable discussion on American Antislavery Writings
On December 2, 2014, four scholars joined Gilder Lehrman president and Barnard College professor James G. Basker for a roundtable discussion on American antislavery writings. The panel included Elizabeth Alexander (Yale), Christopher...
The Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War II in the American West
The Great Depression and World War II, far and away the worst economic calamity and the costliest foreign war in American history, profoundly affected every part of the United States. Changes in the West were especially obvious. From...
America the Newcomer: Claiming the Louisiana Purchase
The Lewis and Clark expedition is rightly considered one of the great American stories. In May of 1804 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set off by keelboat up the Missouri River with thirty-one men, the "Corps of Discovery," on an...
The Development of the West
In the summer of 1876, two dramatically different places captured the American nation’s attention. As the summer began, fairgoers in Philadelphia teemed into the Centennial Exhibition held to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary...
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...
The Civil War and Reconstruction in the American West
The histories of the Civil War and of the emerging West were tangled together from their beginnings. Although the war was fought mostly in the East, the events that set it off were born of the expansion of the 1840s, and in turn the...
The Declaration of Independence in Global Perspective
No American document has had a greater global impact than the Declaration of Independence. It has been fundamental to American history longer than any other text because it was the first to use the name "the United States of America":...
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...
Guided Readings: Indian Policy
Reading 1 One [infantry] battalion...left Fort Lyon [Colorado] on the night of the 28th of November, 1864; about daybreak on the morning of the 29th of November we came in sight of the camp of friendly [Cheyenne and Arapaho] Indians.....
Guided Readings: Indian Removal
Reading 1 Toward the aborigines of this country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people. Humanity...
Historical Context: "Birth of a Nation"
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...
Letter from Christopher Columbus on Returning from His First Voyage to the Americas, 1493
Click here to download this five-lesson unit.
The Mexican-American War: Arguments for and against Going to War
Click here to download this three-lesson unit.
The History of Federal, State, and Tribal Powers, 1788–2020
Click here to download this five-lesson unit.
John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961
On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the thirty-fifth President of the United States. His short, fourteen-minute inaugural address is best remembered for a single line: "My fellow Americans: ask not what your country...
Phillis Wheatley’s poem on tyranny and slavery, 1772
Born in Africa, Phillis Wheatley was captured and sold into slavery as a child. She was purchased by John Wheatley of Boston in 1761. The Wheatleys soon recognized Phillis’s intelligence and taught her to read and write. She became...
History U | American Indian History Introduction
American Indian History Introduction Watch Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone), Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, introduce his History U course "American Indian History: Recasting the Narrative"
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World War I poems: “In Flanders Fields” and “The Answer,” 1918
Ella Osborn’s 1918 diary provides insight into the experiences of an American nurse serving in France at the end of World War I. In addition to her notes about the men under her care and events in France, Osborn jotted down two...
Jeffrey Rosen - "The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America"
Jeffrey Rosen is a legal scholar who serves as the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center and a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School. Order The Pursuit of Happiness at the Gilder Lehrman Book...
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