From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"A century and a quarter after it came to a close, Reconstruction remains a pivotal but much misunderstood era of American history. This one-week seminar will examine the history of Reconstruction, understood both as a specific period of the American past, which began during the Civil War, and as a prolonged and difficult process by which Americans sought to reunite the nation and come to terms with the destruction of slavery. In political terms, Reconstruction ended in 1877, when the federal government abandoned the idea of intervening in the South to protect the rights of black citizens. As a historical process it lasted to the turn of the century, until new systems of labor and race relations and a new political order were entrenched in the South. And in debates about racial equality, the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, affirmative action, and the responsibility of the federal government for defining and protecting the rights of citizens, issues central to Reconstruction remain part of our lives today. Reconstruction also offers an opportunity to consider the 'politics of history': how changing interpretations of the past are shaped by the world in which the historian lives and the assumptions he or she brings to the materials of history. During the course of the week, teachers will also annotate one or two documents from the Reconstruction period for classroom use."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"During the 1850s, the United States was a nation of foreboding and hope. An irresolvable conflict between North and South seemed to be approaching, along with periodic hopes that the divide could somehow be bridged and conflict forestalled. At the start of the decade, the nation's eloquent orators were led by John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster; ten years later, a new voice had been added to public discourse: that of Abraham Lincoln. Literary artists—including Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe—addressed the issues of slavery, regional autonomy, and federal power both directly and obliquely in poetry and prose. In this seminar we will explore this ominous yet hopeful era, with the aim of understanding the political and moral issues that drove Americans apart, and how the literature of the period can help us understand why."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"Abraham Lincoln will stand at the center of the seminar, though less as a biographical subject than as a prism for exploring key aspects of his age. The themes and topics to be addressed include slavery and the Old South; the abolitionist impulse and the broadening antislavery movement; party political realignment and the sectional crisis of the 1850s; evangelicalism and politics; the election of 1860, the secession of the Lower South, and the coming of war; wartime leadership, political and military; the Civil War home front; emancipation; the elements of Confederate defeat and Union victory; and the meaning of the war for American nationalism."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"When Americans are asked to rank their presidents, Abraham Lincoln almost always comes out at the top. But why? Sometimes, the reason is that he freed the slaves . . . or that he saved the Union . . . or that he was a great war president . . . or that he was a master of words. All of these are true, but these truths don't get at the man behind these truths. Although Lincoln had next-to-nothing in the way of formal education, he possessed a natural intellectual curiosity, a voracious appetite for reading, and a passion for ideas. He was a lawyer, a politician, a fixer. But he was more than just a lawyer, a politician, or a fixer. Lincoln's curiosity . . . his reading . . . his ideas . . . led him into the vortex of the great clashes of ideas in the nineteenth century about religion, politics, Romanticism, race, and slavery. In this seminar, we will see how Lincoln was shaped by three important issues in his day:

• The clash of religion and the Enlightenment
• The offense of slavery
• The fight for the survival of democracy

This seminar will be an exploration of Lincoln's mind—of the great intellectual problems he faced, of the books he read, of the ideas he defended, and of the kind of democracy he thought was worth saving. And at the end, we will come to know Lincoln, not just as the greatest of presidents, but as a man of great ideas as well."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"This seminar focuses on the era of the American Civil War and especially on the revolutionary transformation of social and political life in that critical period of U.S. history. Using an array of historical documents as well as lectures, discussions and visits to historical sites, seminar members will analyze the way a war of unprecedented scope drove a process of state building and slave emancipation that reconfigured the nation and remade the terms of political membership in it. Starting with the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott case in 1857 and ending with the constitutional amendments of the postwar period, we take up the key events and developments in the Union and the Confederacy, including secession, the destruction of slavery (on plantations and in the law), African American enlistment, and popular politics in the North and South. By focusing throughout on the racial and gender terms of citizenship, the seminar makes clear what changed—and what did not—in American political life, while conveying a sense of the epic drama by which the United States was remade in the vortex of war."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"This seminar explores the rise of Jim Crow in the United States and tracks it forward to its modern post-civil rights manifestations. Seminar participants will work with a range of primary sources to interpret the shifting social, economic, political, psychological, and cultural trauma associated with this set of racial practices. Close attention will be paid to the effects of Jim Crow on both sides of the color line."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:

"The American South plays a central role in American history, from the first permanent English colony through the election of 2008. This course will focus on key episodes when Southern history and the history of the nation intersected at particularly important points: the emergence and spread of slavery, the founding, the Civil War, the creation of segregation, and the civil rights struggle. The course will be taught in Richmond, Virginia, a city rich in museums and historic sites that we will use to explore the subjects addressed in the seminar."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"This seminar examines the era of the American Civil War, with emphasis on its origins, scope, and consequences. Through lectures, class discussion, examination of historical texts, and visits to historic sites, the instructors and participants will examine the central role of slavery, the ways in which military and civilian affairs intersected and influenced one another, the question of what the war left unresolved, and how Americans have remembered the conflict. In many ways, the issues that divided the nation during the Civil War era continue to resonate today. This seminar will seek to make those issues clear, while at the same time providing a sense of the drama and tragedy of this tumultuous period."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"In 1776 Americans began a struggle to create an independent nation. In 1861, they began a struggle to preserve or splinter that nation. This seminar will examine the historical circumstances that led to the American Revolution and the drafting of the Constitution, focusing in part on the unresolved problems and conflicts that contributed to the coming of the Civil War. The history of these two great wars will be told through the stories of individual men and women who lived, and died, in defense of their cause."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"The American Revolution did more than secure independence for thirteen American colonies—it gave antislavery organizing a moral legitimacy it had never had before. In Britain by the early nineteenth century, opposing the slave system could serve as a mark of virtue rather than evidence of eccentricity. The first emancipation schemes depended on efforts to strengthen the role of the imperial state in an era of weakening overseas authority, and the abolitionist movement as a whole derived its power from a profound yearning for moral worth in the aftermath of British defeat and American independence. This course will consider the disparate strands of the British Atlantic world and bring into focus shifting developments in the abolitionist movement."