405 items
The Revolutionary War divided families. In 1774, eighteen-year-old Lucy Flucker married twenty-four-year-old Henry Knox. Lucy’s parents were powerful, wealthy Tories, and they were not happy with the match. Henry Knox was the son of...
“Columbia’s Noblest Sons”: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, 1865
Abraham Lincoln’s death on April 14, 1865, stunned the nation. He was the first US president to be assassinated and the third to die in office. As Americans mourned, they also began to see him as a martyr and the savior of the Union....
James Shapiro - "Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future"
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Carol Berkin - "Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence"
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Martha Jones - "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All"
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Catherine Clinton - "Stepdaughters of History: Southern Women and the American Civil War"
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Elaine Weiss - "The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote"
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Victoria Phillips - "Martha Graham's Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy"
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Ilisa Barbas and Molly Rogers - "To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes"
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Thavolia Glymph - "The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation"
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Catherine Kerrison - "Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America"
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Martha Saxton - "The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington"
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Carolyn Eastman - "The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States' First Forgotten Celebrity"
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Tamika Nunley - "At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C."
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Anna Malaika Tubbs - "The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation"
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Jessica Marie Johnson - "Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World"
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Carol Berkin - "Wondrous Beauty: The Life and Adventures of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte"
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Louis Menand - "The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War"
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Sally Hemings
Exploring extraordinary Black lives of the Founding Era, such as that of Sally Hemings, can transform our understanding of American history. Born in Virginia in 1773, Sally Hemings was an enslaved woman in the household of Thomas...
Melanie Kirkpatrick - "Lady Editor: Sarah Josepha Hale and the Making of the Modern American Woman"
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Jim Downs - "Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine"
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Alaina E. Roberts - "I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land"
Alaina E. Roberts is an assistant professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. Order I’ve Been Here All the While at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link...
Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross - "A Black Women's History of the United States"
Daina Ramey Berry is the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Kali Nicole Gross is the National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of African American Studies at Emory...
Woody Holton - "Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution"
Woody Holton is the McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. Order Liberty Is Sweet at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank...
Jeanne Theoharis - "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks"
Jeanne Theoharis is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College. Order The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the...
Keisha N. Blain - "Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America"
Keisha N. Blain is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Class of 2022 Carnegie Fellow, Full Professor Africana Studies and History at Brown University, and columnist for MSNBC. Order Until I Am Free at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an...
Mary Sarah Bilder - "Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution"
Mary Sarah Bilder is Founders Professor of Law at Boston College Law School. Order Female Genius at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for...
Brenda Stevenson - "What Is Slavery?"
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Theodore Roosevelt supports women’s suffrage, 1912
In this letter written in July 1912, during his campaign for a thrid term as president, Theodore Roosevelt informs the state and county chairmen of the Progressive Party of his plan to support women’s suffrage. The document shows the...
The Declaration of Independence and the Long Struggle for Equality in America: An Introduction
Whatever else the Declaration of Independence encompassed—a proclamation of political sovereignty, an indictment against the King of England, an appeal for allies—its assertion that “all men are created equal” shines as the polestar...
What Does Liberty Look Like?
" We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ." Declaration of...
Susan Schulten - "A History of America in 100 Maps"
Susan Schulten is a professor of history at the University of Denver. Order A History of America in 100 Maps at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you...
Dorothy Wickenden - "The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights"
Dorothy Wickenden is the executive editor of The New Yorker . Order The Agitators 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, 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...
Barbara Perry - "Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady of the New Frontier"
Barbara Perry is the Gerald L. Baliles Professor and director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia. Order Jacqueline Kennedy at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase...
Richard White - "Who Killed Jane Stanford?: A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University"
Richard White is Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, Emeritus at Stanford University. Order Who Killed Jane Stanford at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link...
Carrie Gibson - "El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America"
Carrie Gibson is a historian (University of Cambridge) and journalist. Order El Norte at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our...
Steven A. Steinbach and Maeva Marcus - "With Liberty and Justice for All? The Constitution in the Classroom"
Steven A. Steinbach teaches US history and government at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC and Maeva Marcus is a professor of law at George Washington University. Order With Liberty and Justice for All? at the Gilder...
Why Documents Matter: An Interactive Digital Edition
Welcome to Why Documents Matter: An Interactive Digital Edition —a selection of primary sources from the Gilder Lehrman Collection curated and annotated for K–12 classrooms (print edition available here ). Scroll through the entire...
"Grandfather's Journey"
When he was a young man, Allen Say’s grandfather left his home in Japan to explore the world. He began his journey by crossing the Pacific Ocean on a steamship, then wandered the deserts, farmlands, and cities of North America. Allen...
"Paper Son: The Inspiring Story of Tyrus Wong, Immigrant and Artist"
Before he became an artist named Tyrus Wong, he was a boy named Wong Geng Yeo. He traveled across a vast ocean from China to America with only a suitcase and a few papers. Not papers for drawing–which he loved to do–but immigration...
"Barbed Wire Baseball: How One Man Brought Hope to the Japanese Internment Camps of WWII"
As a boy, Kenichi “Zeni” Zenimura dreams of playing professional baseball, but everyone tells him he is too small. Yet he grows up to be a successful player, playing with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig! When the Japanese attack Pearl...
John Wood Sweet- "The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America"
John Wood Sweet, a historian of early America, is the former director of the University of North Carolina’s interdisciplinary Program in Sexuality Studies. Order The Sewing Girl’s Tale at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an...
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