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View this infographic as a downloadable PDF. If you would like to learn more about Industrialization, view " Industrialization: American Labor " and " Industrialization: Changing Living Standards ."
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Historical Context: The Survival of the US Constitution
The United States has the oldest written national framework of government in the world. At the end of the twentieth century, there were about 159 other national constitutions in the world, and 101 had been adopted since 1970. While...
Historical Context: The Human Meaning of Migration
For more than two centuries novelists and autobiographers have explored the human meaning of migration. In hundreds of stories, novels, and autobiographies, these writers have examined what it means to be uprooted, voluntarily or...
Two versions of the Preamble to the Constitution, 1787
On May 25, 1787, the fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention began meeting in a room, no bigger than a large schoolroom, in Philadelphia’s State House. They posted sentries at the doors and windows to keep their "secrets...
The Battles of Lexington and Concord, 1775
By April 1775, reconciliation between England and the thirteen colonies had failed. Two months earlier, Parliament had declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion, and on April 14 General Thomas Gage received secret orders...
Indian Wars: The Battle of Washita, 1868
The Battle of Washita on November 27, 1868, pitted US Army troops commanded by General George Custer against the Southern Cheyenne. An excerpt from Custer’s report on a return to the battlefield ten days later is presented here. The...
A political cartoon of Grant and Lee, 1864
During the first three years of the Civil War, a series of Union generals led the Army of the Potomac against Confederate General Robert E. Lee with little success. In March 1864, Abraham Lincoln appointed General Ulysses S. Grant...
Inside the Vault: The Election of 1800
Originally broadcast on July 10, 2020, this session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection explores Alexander Hamilton’s letter to Representative Harrison Otis voicing his support for Thomas Jefferson over...
Literacy and the immigration of "undesirables," 1903
During the Progressive era, tens of millions of immigrants came to the United States from Europe to fulfill their American dream. During this period most came from southern and eastern Europe, particularly from Italy, Russia, and the...
Lincoln on the execution of a slave trader, 1862
This stunning document, a refusal of clemency for a convicted slave trader, stands out among the papers of Abraham Lincoln, a man renowned for his mercy and willingness to pardon. In November 1861, Nathaniel Gordon was convicted of...
Historical Context: The Breakdown of the Party System
As late as 1850, the two-party system seemed healthy. Democrats and Whigs drew strength in all parts of the country. Then, in the early 1850s, the two-party system began to disintegrate in response to massive foreign immigration. By...
Hamilton’s Report on the Subject of Manufactures, 1791
When George Washington became president in 1789, he appointed Alexander Hamilton as his secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton’s vision for the economic foundation of the United States included three main programs: 1) the federal...
National History Teacher of the Year Award
Since 2004, the Gilder Lehrman Institute has presented awards to the best history teachers in the United States. Together with our partners Preserve America and HISTORY, we award 53 winners from US states and territories and one...
The Sanctity of the Law: Lincoln’s Legal Career
Before he became president, Abraham Lincoln supported himself and his family as an attorney. For nearly a quarter of a century, he was a country lawyer, who frequently traveled for up to six months a year through Illinois’s 8th...
Our Constitution: The Bill of Rights (Grades 4–6)
View the Constitution in our collection by clicking here and here . For a resource on the variations between a draft and the final version of the Constitution click here . For additional resources click here . Unit Objective This...
The death of enslaved Africans on a voyage, 1725
Slavery in English America underwent profound changes during the first two centuries of settlement. During the early seventeenth century, some Black laborers were enslaved; others, however, were treated like White indentured servants...
The Haitian Revolution: A New Vision of Freedom in the Atlantic World
Duke University historian Laurent Dubois discusses slavery, culture, and ideology in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which upon the triumph of its revolution in 1804 became the nation of Haiti—the first and only nation...
Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, 1770
By the beginning of 1770, there were 4,000 British soldiers in Boston, a city with 15,000 inhabitants, and tensions were running high. On the evening of March 5, crowds of day laborers, apprentices, and merchant sailors began to pelt...
Our Constitution: The Bill of Rights (Grades 7–9)
View the Constitution in the Gilder Lehrman Collection by clicking here and here . For a resource on the variations between a draft and the final version of the Constitution of the United State, click here . Unit Objective These...
Common Man and Contradictions: A Mock Trial of Andrew Jackson
Overview The election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 marked a change in American politics. For the first time a presidential candidate had been elected from west of the Appalachian Mountains, marking an end to the streak held by wealthy...
Abraham Lincoln and the Passage of the Thirteenth Amendment
"Those who knew Mr. Lincoln best," wrote Illinois Congressman Isaac Arnold, "knew that he looked, confidently, to the ultimate extinction of slavery" and used "every means which his prudent and scrupulous mind recognized as right and...
The surrender of Robert E. Lee, 1865
Left with no route of escape after the fall of Petersburg, Virginia, on April 2, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee was faced with a difficult choice: keep fighting in an increasingly hopeless war or surrender to Ulysses S. Grant...
Guided Readings: The Changing Status of Women
Reading 1 Man is or should be woman’s protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. . . .The paramount destiny and...
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...
De Soto's discovery of the Mississippi, 1541
In 1539, Hernando de Soto led the first major European expedition into the interior of the southeastern North America, an area then known as La Florida. De Soto landed near Tampa Bay, Florida, with more than 600 men, and hoped to find...
The First Inaugural Address of George Washington
Unit Objectives This lesson on the First Inaugural Address of George Washington is part of the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s series of Common Core–based units. These units were written to enable students to understand, summarize, and...
The massacre of American Indian allies, 1818
On April 23, 1818, Captain Obed Wright of the Georgia militia ordered an attack on a Chehaw village, which resulted in the slaughter of several American Indians. In a letter written a week after the attack, Brigadier General Thomas...
JFK on the containment of Communism, 1952
In August 1952, as he was campaigning for the US Senate, John F. Kennedy addressed the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Federation of Labor. This manuscript is a draft of the speech Kennedy delivered before the influential labor...
A bond for the manumission of a slave, 1757
In 1757, New York tavern keeper Eve Scurlock freed five slaves in her will, citing their fidelity, service, and good behavior. Among them was a woman named Ann, to whom Scurlock also willed money, clothing, and household items. Though...
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...
The state of the English colonies, 1755
The French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years’ War, was primarily fought along the frontier between New France and the British colonies in North America from 1754 to 1763. This newspaper article, printed in the Maryland...
The Brotherton Indians of New Jersey, 1780
During the French and Indian War, the Lenni-Lenape (or Delaware) Indians of New Jersey were among the tribes that signed the Treaty of Easton of 1758. The tribes agreed not to support the French in the colonial conflict and to leave...
The assassination of John F. Kennedy, 1963
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas. This Dow Jones News Service ticker tape tells the story of that day as it happened. The fifteen sheets span the entire day of the...
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
Brooklyn College historian Jeanne Theoharis discusses the life of Rosa Parks with Gilder Lehrman president James G. Basker. Professor Theoharis's 2013 biography of Parks is the first academic study of the activist's life, and noted...
The Role of Women in the 1950s
Essential Question What roles were women expected to play during the 1950s? Materials Questions for The Feminine Mystique (PDF) Four Photos of Women , ProQuest K–12 "Housewife or Career Woman: The Changing Roles of Women in WWII and...
"Eliza: The Story of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton"
This is a beautiful and informative biography featuring extensive back matter–including information about America’s revolution, the historical relevance of letter writing, and a timeline–and exquisite, thoroughly researched art that...
Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln
An eminent Lincoln scholar, Douglas Wilson is the director emeritus of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. In Honor’s Voice, Professor Wilson draws on testimonies and recollections by Abraham Lincoln’s...
Opposing Viewpoints on the Ratification of the US Constitution
Lesson Overview Students will develop a rich understanding of the arguments in favor of and in opposition to the ratification of the US Constitution. They will examine and analyze key excerpts from "Federalist No. 51," George Mason’s...
The Articles of Capitulation: Document in a Minute
Gilder Lehrman curator Beth Huffer takes a close look at the articles of capitulation negotiated by Generals Cornwallis and Washington at Yorktown in 1781.
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