82 items
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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 revival of religious fervor, 1744
The Christian History was a revivalist periodical founded by the Boston clergyman Thomas Prince in 1743 to report on the religious revivals sweeping across Europe and the United States. It was the first Christian periodical published...
Abstinence pledge card, 1842
Mathew Theobald, a Catholic priest in Dublin, Ireland, founded the Cork Total Abstinence Society on April 10, 1838. About sixty followers joined Theobald in swearing off alcohol completely and signed his abstinence pledge book....
Ada Ferrer - "Cuba: An American History"
Order Cuba: An American History at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
Alice Baumgartner - "South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War"
Alice Baumgartner is an assistant professor of history at the University of Southern California. Order South to Freedom at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided....
Bartolomé de Las Casas debates the subjugation of the Indians, 1550
This tract, a summary of a debate concerning the subjugation of Indians, contains the arguments of Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, and Juan Gines Sepulveda, an influential Spanish philosopher, concerning the...
Columbus reports on his first voyage, 1493
On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Spain to find an all-water route to Asia. On October 12, more than two months later, Columbus landed on an island in the Bahamas that he called San Salvador; the natives called it Guanahani....
Cotton Mather’s account of the Salem witch trials, 1693
Most Americans’ knowledge of the seventeenth century comes from heavily mythologized events: the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, Pocahontas purportedly saving Captain John Smith from execution in early Virginia, and the Salem witch...
De Soto's discovery of the Mississippi, 1541
In 1539, Hernando de Soto led the first major European expedition into the interior of the southeastern North America, an area then known as La Florida. De Soto landed near Tampa Bay, Florida, with more than 600 men, and hoped to find...
Diego Javier Luis - "The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History"
Diego Javier Luis is an assistant professor of history at Tufts University. Order The First Asians in the Americas at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided....
Empire Building
The years between the end of the Civil War, in 1865, and the end of the century witnessed rapid and far-reaching change in the economic and social life of the United States. During those years, the nation was transformed from rural...
Eric Foner, Kathleen DuVal, and Lisa McGirr - "Give Me Liberty! An American History"
Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University. Kathleen DuVal is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lisa McGirr is a Charles Warren Professor of American...
Europeans and the New World, 1400–1530
Brian DeLay, associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses how the backwater of western Europe emerged from the devastation of the fourteenth century to generate the power, wealth, knowledge,...
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham - "From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans"
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Order From Slavery to Freedom at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate...
Exchanges of Culture and Conflict in the Southwest
Professor DeLay looks at changes in thought, technology, and outlook that prompted early exploration, and Spain’s late entry into colonial pursuits.
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Joseph J. Ellis, Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, discusses his Pulitzer Prize–winning book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, explains the emergence of the men who led the Revolutionary War and created...
George Washington on attending church, 1762
In 1762, Virginia planter and future president George Washington, just thirty years old, had reason for optimism. He had inherited Mount Vernon a decade earlier, and it had prospered under his management; plus he had married Martha...
Gold, Gospel, and Glory: Motivations for European Exploration and Colonization of the Americas
Professor John Fea of Messiah College discusses the European motivations--gold, gospel, and glory--for exploration in the Americas, taking Europeans from the Crusades to the Spanish conquest and the exploitation of resources in the...
Guided Readings: Antebellum Social Reform
Reading 1: “The elementary schools throughout the state are irresponsible institutions, established by individuals, from mere motives of private speculation or gain, who are sometimes destitute of character, and frequently, of the...
Guided Readings: Imperialism and the Spanish-American War
Reading 1 Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. . . . The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. . . . The frontier promoted the...
Guided Readings: Indian Policy
Reading 1 One [infantry] battalion...left Fort Lyon [Colorado] on the night of the 28th of November, 1864; about daybreak on the morning of the 29th of November we came in sight of the camp of friendly [Cheyenne and Arapaho] Indians.....
Guided Readings: Roots of Reform: Religion and Social Reform
From 1801 for years a blessed revival of religion spread through almost the entire inhabited parts of the West. . . . The Presbyterians and Methodists in a great measure united in this work, met together, prayed together, and preached...
Guided Readings: Slavery
Reading 1: The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the...most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.....Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is...
Guided Readings: The Rise of the City
Reading 1 To-day, what is a tenement? . . . When last arraigned before the bar of public justice: “It is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, when...
Historical Context: Mexican Americans and the Great Depression
In February 1930 in San Antonio, Texas, 5000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans gathered at the city’s railroad station to depart the United States for settlement in Mexico. In August, a special train carried another 2000 to central...
History Times: A Nation of Immigrants
Coming to the Land of Opportunity Throughout American history, millions of people around the world have left their homelands for a chance to start a new life in this country—and they continue to come here to this day. People who come...
History Times: The Colonial Era
Crossing the Atlantic Ocean Imagine saying goodbye to family, friends, and familiar places to take a dangerous voyage across thousands of miles of ocean in a small wooden ship. Your destination: a strange and often hostile land. Yet,...
In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692
Mary Beth Norton, Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University, examines the Salem witchcraft crisis from a seventeenth-century perspective, drawing not only on court records, but also on correspondence and...
Infographic: Life in Colonial America: Climate, Commerce, and Culture
Click here to learn more about the New England Colonies. Click here to learn more about the Middle Colonies. Click here to learn more about the Southern Colonies.
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: Jewish American Soldiers & Jewish Refugees after World War II
In the wake of World War II, American servicemen helped Jewish refugees come to the United States. Join us as we learn more about the servicemen’s work through primary sources. Who were these people? What are their stories? On...
Jacqueline Jones - "No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era"
Jacqueline Jones is the Ellen C. Temple Professor of Women’s History Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin and a past president of the American Historical Association. Order No Right to an Honest Living at the Gilder Lehrman...
Jean Pfaelzer- "California, a Slave State"
Jean Pfaelzer is a public historian, commentator, and professor of American studies at the University of Delaware. Order California, a Slave State at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase...
Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority
Essential Questions What impact did "the Moral Majority" have on American culture and politics in the 1980s? What are the differences between primary and secondary sources? Materials Excerpt from Listen America by Jerry Falwell (1980)...
John Demos - "The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World"
Order The Enemy Within at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop. We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
John Winthrop describes life in Boston, 1634
Between 1629 and 1640, 20,000 Puritans left England for America to escape religious persecution. They hoped to establish a church free from worldly corruption founded on voluntary agreement among congregants. This covenant theory...
José Manuel Guerrero Acosta - "Unveiling Memories: Spain and the Hispanic Contribution to US Independence"
José Manuel Guerrero Acosta is the author of more than forty articles and a dozen books and has curated several exhibitions in Spain and the US. Find out more about Unveiling Memories here
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Ken Burns - "Our America: A Photographic History"
Ken Burns, the producer and director of numerous film series, including The Roosevelts: An Intimate History and Country Music , founded his own documentary film company, Florentine Films, in 1976. His landmark film, The Civil War ,...
Lincoln’s Religion
Professor Richard Carwadine examines Lincoln's religious beliefs as America's crisis deepened, and looks at the role that the President's religious sentiments played in mobilizing support for the war among Union citizens. Richard...
Natalia Molina - "A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community"
Natalia Molina is Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Order A Place at the Nayarit at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase...
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