On October 27, 1904, New York City was forever changed. Nine miles of what one day would become 137 miles of subway track were ready for travel.
After months of construction and a few iffy test rides, the IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit) subway line began offering full service at 5 cents a ride. The IRT line ran from City Hall to 145th Street, boasting that it could take customers from "City Hall to Harlem in 15 Minutes."
The mayor of New York City, George B. McClellan, was given the honorary duty of starting the first train as it departed from City Hall station. Although he was supposed
Meryl Streep’s new bio-pic, Suffragette, chronicles the adventuresome lives of the British women’s rights advocate Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters. Tired of waiting for equality, the Pankhurts’ Women’s Social and Political Union favored direct action over lobbying and legislating. Suffragettes (not suffragists) picketed, staged protests, chained themselves to Parliament, and often landed in prison.
The Pankhursts and their militant strategy had an influence on American activist Alice Paul. On October 20, 1917, Alice Paul was arrested for picketing at the White House for the right to vote
Read an excerpt of John R. Chapin's eyewitness account of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
In 1769, Alexander Hamilton, an ambitious young clerk in St. Croix, wrote to a friend that "I . . . would willingly risk my life, tho not my Character, to exalt my station. . . . I wish there was a war." Seven years later, he was a soldier in the American Revolution and soon came to the attention of George Washington. Although Hamilton gained a position of respect as Washington’s aide-de-camp, he never lost his conviction that he could only attain the glory he sought through a field command. Washington finally consented, and Hamilton led the men who successfully stormed Redoubt 10 at the
View the account of the 1793 yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia or read the transcript.
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In October 1948, Jesse LeRoy Brown made history by becoming the first African American naval aviator. Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1926, Brown was inspired to become a pilot by an airshow that he attended at age six. After graduating from high school, Brown attended Ohio State University, the alma mater of his hero, Jesse Owens.
Brown completed his engineering degree in 1947, and then entered naval flight officer training. In October of 1948, Brown received his naval aviator badge. Ensign Brown served in the Korean War and was the first African American pilot killed in combat in the
On October 28, 1919, the National Prohibition Act—also known as the Volstead Act—was passed by Congress, overriding President Woodrow Wilson’s veto. On January 16, 1920, Americans would have to put down their drinks and shutter the saloons. Supplemental to the Eighteenth Amendment, the Volstead Act outlined methods of enforcing prohibition and decided which intoxicating liquors were prohibited and which were excluded from prohibition. Read the explanation of the Supreme Court decision upholding the Volstead Act written by Wayne B. Wheeler, the zealous force behind the Anti-Saloon League.
The
The question of whether the United States has entered a new Gilded Age pops up quite frequently in magazines, op-eds, and newscasts these days. Here, historian Edward O’Donnell, author of Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality, offers his perspective.
Historian Jeffrey Sammons tells the story of the Harlem Rattlers in the Great War. The 369th Regiment—a unit of African American soldiers—fought on two fronts: in the trenches of Europe and for civil rights in the military and at home. More than 350,000 African Americans, trained and deployed in segregated units, served in the US military during World War I, of whom 42,000 saw action in Europe.
Read about Cornwallis' last gambit at the Siege of Yorktown and view more primary sources related to the surrender of Cornwallis.
The Gilder Lehrman Collection contains more than 15,000 letters written by servicemen from the American Revolution through World War II. These personal letters, largely unpublished, capture the experience of the common soldier and his family and friends in detail, and convey the human experience of war in a way that cannot be captured in a textbook.
Private Christian Marion Epperly
This archive includes 128 letters from Christian Epperly to his wife, Mary, and eight letters from Mary to Christian between January 1862 and March 1865.
Private Christian Marion Epperly from Floyd County, Virginia
Read about the report from the Western Sanitary Commission regarding the conditions of freed slaves in the Mississippi valley.
On October 19, champions of American history education gathered at the Yale Club in New York City to celebrate the 2015 Gilder Lehrman National History Teacher of the Year. The award highlights the crucial importance of American history education by honoring teachers from elementary school through high school.
Mary Huffman of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, was honored as the recipient of the 2015 award. In the eleventh year of the program, Mrs. Huffman, who teaches fifth grade at Charles Pinckney Elementary School, joins an illustrious group of exceptional American history teachers.
Robin
On December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights was ratified when Virginia approved ten of the twelve proposed constitutional amendments.
Historian Carol Berkin talks about the genesis of the first ten amendments to the Constitution and the stubborn advocacy of James Madison in insisting certain rights be explicitly laid out in ink and passed into law. What makes your list of top ten amendments?
Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer discusses Abraham Lincoln’s complex relationship with the press and public opinion. Are you a Lincoln enthusiast? Visit "Lincoln Speaks: Words That Transformed a Nation," an online exhibition about Lincoln and his use of language.
On December 17, 1903, the Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved the first successful airplane flight.
Historian David McCullough says one of the most enjoyable things about working on his book The Wright Brothers was becoming acquainted with their talented and vital sister Katherine. Learn more about the Wright family from the National Park Service and the Library of Congress.
In 1918, Ella Osborn, a nurse working in New York City, volunteered to serve in the US Army. She kept a diary from January 1918, days before she sailed from New York, to the day of her return to the US and release from service in April 1919. This rare diary, part of the Gilder Lehrman Collection, lets us peek over the shoulder of a nurse serving in challenging conditions in an Army evacuation hospital, just miles behind the fierce battles between Germany and the Allies.
In her diary, Nurse Osborn never comments about the emotional toll of being close to death and caring for horribly wounded
On December 14, 1780, Alexander Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler, the second daughter of wealthy patriot Philip Schuyler. One of our favorite documents in the Gilder Lehrman Collection is a love letter from Hamilton to Elizabeth, written two months before their wedding.
In this letter, Hamilton expresses his adoration for his future wife, writing, "I have told you, and I told you truly that I love you too much . . . I meet you in every dream . . . I am to be thus monopolized, by a little nut-brown maid like you—and from a statesman and a soldier metamorphosed into a puny lover." This
Can you tie a sailor’s knot? Can you cook a one-pot meal in the woods? Can you, if necessary, splint a sprained wrist? If you answered yes to these questions, and if you’re anything like 2.8 million women and girls, you may have been a Girl Scout. Girl Scouts around the world celebrate October 31 as Founder’s Day, honoring the birth of founder Juliette "Daisy" Gordon Low.
Born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1860, Juliette Gordon Low belonged to a wealthy, southern family. An adventurous yet accident prone child, Gordon Low had permanent hearing loss but refused to be treated as sickly or delicate.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute is delighted to announce a partnership between the New York City Department of Education and the Broadway musical Hamilton. With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, 20,000 NYC public high school students, who would otherwise not have the means or the opportunity to see a Broadway performance, will receive subsidized tickets to attend Hamilton.
The musical Hamilton, written by and starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, has sparked more public interest in the history of America’s founding than any popular project in recent memory. With a diverse cast starring actors of
On this day in 1842, Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd in her sister’s front parlor in Springfield, Illinois. The wedding came after a two-year courtship and engagement. A mysterious break in the engagement came in 1841, which some historians attribute to Lincoln’s clinical depression. The couple reunited the following fall and married soon after, on November 4, 1842.
Lincoln had previously engaged in other courtships, but something bound Mary Todd and Lincoln together.
Although the marriage between Abraham and Mary is widely considered to have been troubled, little is actually known about
These days, Thanksgiving is all about the food—from the classic turkey to delicious pumpkin pie, Americans look forward to overindulging on favorite foods that we associate with the harvest bounty of 17th-century Massachusetts. But did they have these beloved Thanksgiving foods at the first Thanksgiving in 1621? A deeper look reveals that our "traditional" Thanksgiving feast may not be as traditional as we think.
The Pilgrims’ autumn harvest of 1621 was plentiful. Of course, they owed a lot of that success to their Wampanoag neighbors, who had helped them grow crops and taught them how to
Read about historical campaigns in Elections: History Now 1 (Fall 2004) or Electing a President: History Now 33 (Fall 2012).
In 1904, the US took over a massive overseas building project—a ship canal in Panama that would connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This wasn’t a new idea. In his first message to Congress as president in 1869, Ulysses S. Grant had called for the construction of a canal connecting the Pacific and Caribbean.
On November 9, 1906, with the Panama Canal project finally realized and underway, President Theodore Roosevelt became the first US president to make an overseas diplomatic visit while in office when he journeyed to Panama to inspect construction of the canal. In a letter to
