One hundred and fifty years ago today, the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment was proclaimed by Secretary of State William Seward. Abraham Lincoln had fought to get the amendment passed by the Senate and the House, but he did not live to see this "glorious consummation" of his hope to end slavery.
Read more about Abraham Lincoln’s fight to bring about the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.
On December 22, 1864, Union General William T. Sherman sent a message to President Lincoln from Georgia, saying, "I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton."
From November 15 until December 21, Sherman had led his notoriously destructive "March to the Sea" from the captured city of Atlanta to Savannah. Supporters of the Union applauded Sherman’s March, while Southerners were especially horrified by the actions of troops under his command.
Sherman’s March
Read about the Facts of the Slave Trade and Slavery and the Material Culture of Slave Resistance.
Read an excerpt of the Orders to March on Trenton and watch a video on Washington’s Crossing.
Read an excerpt of the letter to Davie Jeems.
As the winter holidays draw close and Americans everywhere travel to celebrate with their loved ones, it is important to remember how one should act when having dinner with family. The 1950 Encyclopedia Britannica film A Date with Your Family offers some helpful advice for interacting with parents and siblings. Created as an educational tool for teenagers, the film reinforces values of conformity and traditional gender roles by focusing on the ideal Cold War–era family. Father works hard at the office to provide for his family while mother keeps a welcoming home. The teenaged brother and
The Gilder Lehrman Institute is excited to announce the addition of two new self-paced courses, Emancipation and The Kennedy Presidency, to our Self-Paced Course Series. This series offers graduate-level courses in American history taught by eminent historians, available to watch or listen to at your own time and pace.
Emancipation explores the social and political history of the emancipation of four million slaves during the Civil War. The course goes beyond the Emancipation Proclamation to discover the long and complex path, from the Revolution to the Civil War, that led to the abolishment
View a full-screen version of The Lewis and Clark Exhibition.
Learn more about the Louisiana Purchase in Elliott West’s essay "America the Newcomer: Claiming the Louisiana Purchase" and a printed copy of the map Meriwether Lewis and William Clark created after returning from the Pacific.
On Monday, December 14, Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator and star of Broadway’s hit musical Hamilton, received the George Washington Prize. Miranda became the first playwright to win the literary award in an exciting ceremony that included remarks from Ron Chernow—author of the Alexander Hamilton biography that inspired the musical—and a song from the show performed by Christopher Jackson, the musical’s very own George Washington, along with Hamilton's Sydney James Harcourt and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
The George Washington Prize was established in 2005 by Washington College, George Washington’s Mount
Thomas Barwiss Hagstoz Askin Jr. joined the US Navy in March 1938 at the age of 17. His diary, entitled "Memorys and Incidents of My Last 60 (?) Days in the United States Navy," begins on August 14, 1941, when he was stationed on board USS Memphis and counting down the days until his enlistment was up on October 13, one day before his 21st birthday.
Unfortunately, Memphis was at sea in October, and Askin was told he would not be sent back home to be discharged. His disappointment is palpable in his diary entry on October 14, 1941: "Twenty-one years old and not much to show for them. am
The phrase "’Twas the night before Christmas," from Clement Moore’s "A Visit from St. Nicholas" is familiar to most of us, but less familiar is the poem, "The Night after Christmas," written by Dr. Robert Archer. Archer, born in 1794 in Norfolk, Virginia, wrote the parody for his granddaughter in 1866. The poem describes the aftermath of the visit from "Old Santa Claus," showing the disastrous effects of overindulgence:
’Twas the night after Xmas, and all through the town,The nurses were running—some up and some down.The Doctor was wanted for a plague on Old Nick —His visit had made all the
As the nation approached the third year of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." Explore the details of this important document.
View a full-screen version of this exhibit.
For more on the Emancipation Proclamation, read Allen Guelzo’s essay, "The Emancipation Proclamation: Bill of Lading or Ticket to Freedom?" and watch Matthew Pinsker’s video, "Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation."
Today’s school children are familiar with fire drills, earthquake drills, tornado drills, and even tsunami drills. Filing out-doors to athletic fields or hiding under desks from imaginary natural disaster debris is expected, scheduled, and routine. Parents and grandparents of these students, however, likely remember duck-and-cover drills.
During the Cold War, nuclear war with the Soviet Union seemed constantly on the horizon. Adults around the United States built fallout shelters and stocked their basements with canned food, water, and safety supplies. Children learned to "duck and cover"
On January 5, 1914, automaker Henry Ford made history by instituting a $5-a-day wage. The move made national news. Five dollars a day constituted double the industry norm—and double the pay of most of Ford’s own employees. At the same time, Ford reduced the working day from nine hours to eight—becoming one of the first companies in America to adopt the 40-hour work week.
Massachusetts set the first statewide minimum wage in 1912 and in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the federal government set a minimum wage of $.25 per hour for eligible workers—then about 20 percent of the American
Did you know that the most popular written work in American history was published before America was an actual nation of its own?
On January 10, 1776, six months before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress, Thomas Paine published his explosive pro-independence pamphlet, Common Sense. The polemical work, which sold one copy for every five people living in the colonies, is famous not only for its revolutionary anti-monarchy message, but for the language with which Paine delivered that message. "I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and
Alexander Hamilton was born on this day, either in 1755 or 1757 (historians debate the year). Explore Hamilton’s life and legacy in this interactive digital exhibit.
The Statue of Liberty has long welcomed newcomers to the United States as a shining beacon of freedom and opportunity in the middle of New York Harbor. Children are taught that the Statue of Liberty was gifted to the United States by the people of France, commemorating the long-lasting alliance between the two nations. Beyond that, however, how much does the average American really know about the Statue of Liberty?
Although the structure was designed and delivered by France, the US agreed to construct a pedestal for the statue. The US officials responsible for raising the necessary $250,000
Either you love ’em or you hate ’em. Everyone has an opinion on sideburns, and few fashion choices provoke quite so much controversy.
Yet sideburns have a rich history that can be appreciated by supporters and detractors alike. Sideburns got their name from Ambrose Burnside, a Union general who sported the distinctive hairstyle. Although Burnside served briefly as the commander of the Army of the Potomac and as the first president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), he is best remembered today for his outstanding sartorial contribution. Burnside did not invent the look, but his facial
Read an excerpt of the letter written by George Wallace and explore the online exhibition Freedom Riders, detailing the struggle for civil rights when Wallace was governor.
This weekend, our country celebrates the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister and activist who became one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout his life, which was cut too short by his tragic assassination in 1968, Dr. King played key roles in many of the important events of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1955, he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a political and social campaign against segregation on public transportation in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1957, he helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an important civil rights
Read an essay about the abolitionist Grimke sisters and the essay "The Civil Rights Movement: Major Events and Legacies" to explore the long struggle for civil rights.
Did you have a good National Handwriting Day? What? You didn’t know that penmanship-appreciators across the nation celebrate January 23 as National Handwriting Day? The rising popularity of typewriters and word processors in the 20th century, and today’s culture of quippy texts and tweets have led many to mourn the decline of penmanship. The Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association (WIMA) instated this little-known holiday in 1977 in the hopes of combating handwriting malaise.
WIMA chose January 23 in honor of the Founding Father with the most iconic—and sizeable—signature, John Hancock.
Read about photography in the 19th century, explore select images from the American Civil War, and create your own Civil War-era portrait.
