68 items
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, chair of Afro-American Studies, director of the Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, and author of seminal works on African American literary criticism and...
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":...
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 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...
The Jungle
Overview The United States was transformed in the last decades of the nineteenth century by the industrial revolution. The rapid growth of cities, increase in immigration, expansion of a struggling working class, and concentration of...
The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope
Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of the American Studies Program at Columbia University, Andrew Delbanco examines the evolution of the American Dream--the idea that anyone may rise above his or her...
The Story of America: Essays on Origins
Historian Jill Lepore (David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard and a staff writer at the New Yorker ) discusses her 2012 book, The Story of America: Essays on Origins (Princeton University Press).
...
The Transcontinental Railroad in Images and Poetry
Unit Objectives Students will analyze a variety of primary sources related to the completion of the transcontinental railroad. investigate celebratory images and a poem to discover some of the key outcomes that arose from the ability...
Understanding Slavery via Narratives
James Oliver Horton speaks about slave narratives as an important resource for understanding American history.
Verses on Norwegian emigration to America, 1853
Between 1836 and 1865, approximately 55,000 Norwegians sailed to the United States. [1] Like most immigrants, they sought opportunities that didn’t exist at home—religious freedom, economic security, land ownership, and educational...
War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars
Andrew Carroll, founder of the Legacy Project, recounts his search for letters from America’s wars and reads excerpts from several.
Washington's Farewell Address
View a copy of Washington’s Farewell Address in the Gilder Lehrman Collection by clicking here . For a resource regarding the possibility of Washington staying on for a third term click here . Click here to download this five-lesson...
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...
Showing results 51 - 68