91 items
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President Dwight Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation, 1961
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The US Government and Indigenous Peoples before the Trail of Tears, 1770-1839
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Understanding Lincoln: First Inaugural Address (1861)
Watch this close reading of a document by Abraham Lincoln, with Dickinson College historian Matthew Pinsker.
The Gettysburg Address: Identifying Text, Context, and Subtext
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...
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...
Japanese announcement of the attack at Pearl Harbor, 1941
In January 1941, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto began developing a plan to attack the American base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. For eleven months, the Japanese continued to refine their plans while at the same time working diplomatically to...
Inside the Vault: Pearl Harbor
Originally broadcast on December 3, 2020, this session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection explores Gilder Lehrman Collection materials relating to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7,...
War, Immigration Policies, and Dissent: Landmark Moments in Latina/o History
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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...
The American Civil War
The Civil War marked a defining moment in United States history. Long simmering sectional tensions reached a critical stage in 1860–1861 when eleven slaveholding states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. Political...
June 25, 1876: An Interpretation of an Historical Event
Essential Question How should events from the Indian Wars be commemorated by the federal government? Background The Battle of Little Bighorn was one in a series of conflicts that occurred during the American attempt to remove native...
The Boston Massacre (Grades 4–6)
View the engraving The Bloody Massacre in King Street in the Gilder Lehrman Collection by clicking here . Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units...
Inside the Vault: D-Day in maps and letters from soldiers and families
On June 2, 2022, our curators discussed D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. They were joined by Professor Michael Neiberg, Chair of War Studies at the US Army War College, who gave an overview of the battle and...
Inside the Vault: Mary Katherine Goddard
On March 3, 2022, our curators were joined by Dr. Martha J. King to discuss Mary Katherine Goddard. Goddard was a newspaper publisher and printer, producing one of the first copies of the Declaration of Independence, and served as...
Inside the Vault: David Blight Discusses Frederick Douglass Documents
On February 3, 2022, our curators were joined by Dr. David Blight to discuss his favorite Frederick Douglass documents in the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Click here to download the slides from the presentation. Featured Documents...
Inside the Vault: Washington's Crossing of the Delaware River
On January 6, 2022, our curators were joined by Dr. Phillip Hamilton to learn about George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River on December 25–26, 1776, and the Battle of Trenton. We discussed Washington’s orders to his troops...
Inside the Vault: Fight the Red Menace
On the December 2, 2021, session of Inside the Vault , Professor Victoria Phillips discussed selected trading cards from the Fight the Red Menace: Children’s Crusade against Communism series . In 1951, the Bowman Bubblegum Company...
Inside the Vault: Treason in the American Revolution: Benedict Arnold and John André
In September 1780, the discovery of General Benedict Arnold’s plot to surrender West Point to the British was a deeply shocking revelation. Arnold, whose name is now synonymous with the word “traitor,” was once a well-respected...
Inside the Vault: Massachusetts 54th
On July 18, 1863, the Massachusetts 54th Volunteer Infantry led an assault against Battery Wagner on Morris Island, South Carolina. The battle demonstrated the bravery and fierce determination of African American soldiers even though...
Inside the Vault: Civil War Diaries of William Woodlin, 8th USCT, & Cyrena Hammond
During the Civil War, 22-year-old William Woodlin, a musician in the 8th United States Colored Troops, and 18-year-old Cyrena Hammond, from Clarendon, New York, kept diaries about their experiences and observations. They recorded the...
Inside the Vault: Abraham Lincoln
Originally broadcast on November 12, 2020, this session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection explores Gilder Lehrman Collection materials relating to the life of Abraham Lincoln, both before and after he...
Inside the Vault: Black Patriots of the American Revolution
Originally broadcast on October 29, 2020, this session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection explores unique documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection that record the service of Black soldiers in the...
Inside the Vault: July Anniversaries
The June 26, 2020 edition of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection explores a rare South Carolina printing of the Declaration of Independence and a soldier’s experience at the Battle of Gettysburg. The...
Inside the Vault: Ulysses S. Grant
Originally broadcast on May 15, 2020, this session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection explores the earliest known letter by Ulysses S. Grant, written when he was a 17-year-old cadet at West Point, and...
Inside the Vault: Two Generals: George Washington and Robert E. Lee
Originally broadcast on April 17, 2020, this session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection explores a letter from George Washington about becoming the first President of the United States in 1789 and...
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...
World War I, African American Soldiers, and America’s War for Democracy
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Who Was John Brown?
"Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic." —Frederick Douglass Background The late 1840s and the 1850s were a turbulent and complex time in American history as the...
American Indians' service in World War I, 1920
More than 11,000 American Indians served with the American forces during World War I. Nearly 5,000 Native men enlisted and approximately 6,500 were drafted—despite the fact that almost half of American Indians were not citizens and...
Diary of World War I nurse Ella Osborn, 1918–1919
At the outbreak of World War I, Ella Jane Osborn was a surgical nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. In January 1918, she volunteered to serve with the American Expeditionary Forces as a member of the Red Cross’s nursing...
The British evacuation of Boston, 1776
On March 25, 1776, only eight days after the British evacuation of Boston, the Continental Congress authorized a medal, “George Washington before Boston,” to commemorate the event. During the war, Congress commissioned eleven medals...
The Gettysburg Address, 1863
On November 19, 1863, four months after the Battle of Gettysburg, a ceremony was held at the site in Pennsylvania to dedicate a cemetery for the Union dead. The battle had been a Union victory, but at great cost—about 23,000 Union...
Japan declares war, 1941
On December 7, 1941, two hours after the Japanese attack on American military installations at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Japan declared war on the United States and Great Britain, marking America’s entry into World War II. The Japanese...
A soldier’s reasons for enlisting, 1942
"Our country is the entire world and mankind our countrymen!!!" In April of 1942, Sidney Diamond, a chemical engineering student at City College in New York, enlisted in the United States Army against the wishes of his friends and...
Surrender of the British General Cornwallis to the Americans, October 19, 1781
These three documents—a map, a manuscript, and a print—tell the story of the surrender of British commander Charles Cornwallis to American General George Washington. In October 1781, the successful siege of Yorktown, Virginia, by...
Jefferson on British aggression, 1815
In this letter in defense of American nationalism, Thomas Jefferson denounced the blustering of certain members of the British House of Lords who blamed the War of 1812 on US aggression. Jefferson’s letter followed a report from James...
Sergeant Francis Fletcher of the 54th Massachusetts on equal pay for Black soldiers, 1864
Francis H. Fletcher, a 22-year-old clerk from Salem, Massachusetts, enlisted as a private in Company A of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment on February 13, 1863. One year after the regiment left Boston with great fanfare,...
The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
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, and analyze original texts of historical...
The Fort Pillow Massacre, 1864
"Among the stories of the stormy days of the Republic, few will longer be remembered than the heroic defense and almost utter annihilation of the garrison of Fort Pillow." —Mack J. Leaming, April 1893 On April 12, 1864, fifteen...
Henry Knox’s Order of March to Trenton, 1776
On Christmas Day in 1776 the American Revolution was on the verge of collapsing. Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American forces had been driven from New York City to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and reduced...
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