187 items
Background The American Revolution, a byproduct of events both on the North American continent and abroad, unleashed a movement that focused on egalitarianism in ways that had never been seen before. Even John Adams commented on these...
"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...
"Ona Judge Outwits the Washingtons"
Soon after American colonists had won independence from Great Britain, Ona Judge was fighting for her own freedom from one of America’s most famous founding fathers, George Washington. George and Martha Washington valued Ona as one...
"You Drop A Petal in the Water, and It Has a Ripple Effect": The Disability Rights Movement, 1950-1990
Click here to download this four-lesson unit.
A British view of rebellious Boston, 1774
In the years leading up to the American Revolution, both the British and the colonists used broadsides to influence public opinion. This broadside, “The Bostonian’s Paying the Excise-man, or Tarring & Feathering,” printed in...
A family torn apart by war, 1777
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...
A patriot’s letter to his loyalist father, 1778
In February 1778, Timothy Pickering Jr. received word from Massachusetts that his father was dying. An adjutant general in George Washington’s Continental Army, Pickering wrote his father this moving letter of farewell on February 23,...
A plan for a new government, 1775
More than a decade before the Constitutional Convention in 1787—and months before the United States declared independence—John Adams wrote a plan for a new form of government for the American colonies. In it Adams described the basic...
A report from Spanish California, 1776
Fernando de Rivera y Moncada, military commander of Alta California, wrote this letter from Mission San Gabriel. Rivera y Moncada was instrumental in the development of missions in California and was in a sometimes-contentious...
A report on the reaction to the Stamp Act, 1765
On March 22, 1765, the British Parliament passed the “Stamp Act” to help pay for British troops stationed in the colonies during the Seven Years’ War. It required the colonists to pay a tax, represented by a stamp, on various papers,...
Akhil Reed Amar - "The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation: 1760-1840"
Akhil Reed Amar is the Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University. Order The Words That Made Us at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided....
Alexander Hamilton, American
Richard Brookhiser, senior editor at National Review , discusses his book, Alexander Hamilton, American . Brookhiser recounts Alexander Hamilton's great successes and tragic failures as Revolutionary, bovernment-shaper, financial...
Alexander Hamilton: Witness to the Founding Era
This series of online exhibitions explores the importance of Alexander Hamilton to the founding of the United States. Each mini-exhibition features locations where Alexander Hamilton made history and documents written by or about him...
Alexander Hamilton’s "gloomy" view of the American Revolution, 1780
By October 1780, in the midst of the American Revolution, Alexander Hamilton was discouraged by the apparent apathy of the American people and the ineffectuality of their elected representatives, as well as by the recent discovery of...
America in Song
Unit Objective This unit is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These units were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...
American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation
James G. Basker (Barnard College, Columbia University) discusses his latest book, American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation (The Library of America, 2012). Basker, who is also the president of the Gilder...
American Scripture: The Making of the Declaration of Independence
Pauline Maier, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), discusses several aspects of her book American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence . She reveals that...
An African American soldier’s pay warrant, 1780
During the American Revolution, Sharp Liberty, an African American soldier, served in the Connecticut Line of the Continental Army. Before the war, he had been enslaved in Wallingford, Connecticut. In 1777, he enlisted in the army,...
Apprenticeship and Indentured Servitude: Contract Labor in the British Colonies
Click here to download this three-lesson unit.
About This Lesson Plan Unit The four lessons in this unit explore a massacre in colonial Pennsylvania in which the Paxton Boys—immigrants from Ulster,...
Benedict Arnold’s 1780 treason and the execution of John Andre recalled, 1823
During the American Revolution, the discovery of General Benedict Arnold’s plot to surrender West Point to the British was a deeply shocking revelation. In a memoir written some forty years after the war, William North, an aide-de...
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and author of Kissinger: A Biography, traces Benjamin Franklin’s life from runaway apprentice to Founding Father, exploring the breadth of his passions and accomplishments as writer,...
Benjamin L. Carp - "The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution"
Benjamin L. Carp is the Daniel M. Lyons Professor of American History at Brooklyn College and also teaches at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Order The Great New York Fire of 1776 at the Gilder Lehrman Book...
Black Writers of the Founding Era: A Conversation with James Basker
Black Writers of the Founding Era: A Conversation with James Basker Recorded at Roosevelt House, Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, April 17, 2024.
This discussion of the new Library of America anthology Black Writers of the...
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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Breaking from Great Britain, 1776
Sid Lapidus Collection: Liberty and the American Revolution By 1776, Thomas Paine had become the most influential writer defending the break from Great Britain. Born in England, Paine arrived in the colonies in 1774, at age 34. His...
Brooke Barbier - "King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father"
Brooke Barbier is a public historian and independent scholar with a doctorate in American history from Boston College. Order King Hancock at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through...
Bruce A. Ragsdale - "Washington and the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery"
Bruce A. Ragsdale has served as the director of the Federal Judicial History Office at the Federal Judicial Center. Order Washington and the Plow at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase...
Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character
Roger Kennedy, former director of the National Park Service, discusses the "fatal twins," Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, whose military, legal, and political careers intersected for nearly thirty years before they came to duel in...
Calling out the militia after Lexington and Concord, 1775
On the night of April 18, 1775, 700 British soldiers began to march toward Concord, Massachusetts, to seize and destroy arms the American patriots had stored there. Warned by Paul Revere and William Dawes, minutemen confronted and...
Carol Berkin - "Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence"
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Caroline Winterer - "American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason"
Caroline Winterer is William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford University. Order American Enlightenments at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through...
Chris Brown - "Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism"
Order Moral Capital at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
Claire Bellerjeau and Tiffany Yecke Brooks - "Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution"
Order Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
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Colin Calloway - "The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation"
Order The Indian World of George Washington at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
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Colonial Pennsylvania and the Paxton Massacre, 1763
Click here to download this four-lesson unit.
About This Lesson Plan Unit The four lessons in this unit explore a massacre in colonial Pennsylvania in which the Paxton Boys—immigrants from Ulster,...
Colonists Divided: A Revolution and a Civil War
Background The Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, the Declaratory Act, the Sugar Act, and the Tea Act were just a few of the many policies Great Britain enacted in the British North American colonies in the eighteenth century. To many...
Cuffee Saunders
Cuffee Saunders Revolutionary War Born into slavery, Cuffee Saunders secured his freedom by serving during the Revolutionary War. Image Source: Benjamin Huntington, Oath certifying Cuffee Saunders's purchase of freedom, 1821, Gilder Lehrman...
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...
David Armitage - "The Declaration of Independence: A Global History"
Order The Declaration of Independence at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
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David Hackett Fischer - "African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals"
David Hackett Fischer is University Professor and Earl Warren Professor of History, Emeritus at Brandeis University. Order African Founders at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase...
David Head - "A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution"
Order A Crisis of Peace at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
David Waldstreicher - "The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet's Journeys through American Slavery and Independence"
David Waldstreicher is a Distinguished Professor of History, American Studies, and Africana Studies at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. Order The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We...
Declaration of Independence, 1776
During the spring of 1776, colonies, localities, and groups of ordinary Americans—including New York mechanics, Pennsylvania militiamen, and South Carolina grand juries—adopted resolutions endorsing independence. These resolutions...
Denver Brunsman - "The Evil Necessity: British Naval Impressment in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World"
Denver Brunsman is an associate professor of history at The George Washington University. Order The Evil Necessity at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided....
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