From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"The Cold War was more than the product of post-World War II tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, argues John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University. Rather, it was the product of events extending all the way back to the 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville predicted that Russia and the United States would become the world's foremost powers. In this lecture, delivered at the Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminar 'The Cold War,' Gaddis examines U.S.-Soviet relations from the nineteenth century through the end of World War II, tracing the myriad causes of the Cold War."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"Has the idea of American exceptionalism hobbled the study of American history? NYU University Professor of the Humanities Thomas Bender argues that it has. A study of American history taking into account world events and viewpoints, he argues, would result in a more contextualized and cosmopolitan discipline, helping historians to better understand what happened in American history and why, but also what it means. Bender traces the study of history from the 'men of letters' historians of the nineteenth century to historians of the Cold War and the present day, explaining how calls for a more worldly American history curriculum have been rebuffed."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"In this lecture, Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, traces Franklin's career from his early days as an apprentice in his brother's Boston print shop to his involvement, at the age of eighty-four, with the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Franklin was an autodidact, self-taught in every field he entered, but the virtue that he most embodied, Isaacson argues, was tolerance. The ultimate self-made man, Franklin's life remains essentially American."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute website:

"On October 16, 1854, from the steps of the courthouse in Peoria, Illinois, an obscure former congressman named Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech arguing that slavery was incompatible with the Founders' vision of America as articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Lewis Lehrman, co-founder of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and author of Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point, explores the origins and the consequences of this important speech."

From the Gilder Lehrman website:

"Columbia University professor Christopher Brown examines the rise of anti-slavery thought during the Revolutionary Era. Focusing on the often contrasting motivations behind the anti-slavery rhetoric of the British and the Americans, Brown pointedly illustrates how the anti-slavery movement was a global phenomenon that emerged from a wide variety of ideologies."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American history website:

"Institute President James G. Basker examines early strains of abolitionism in eighteenth century literature. From John Newton, the slave trader-turned-minister who wrote the anti-slavery hymn 'Amazing Grace,' to black poets Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley, Basker argues that slavery was very much on the minds of eighteenth century writers and readers."

Professor Eric Foner argues that the idea of sending African American slaves to colonize Africa (an idea which Abraham Lincoln at times embraced) was part of the larger idea of emancipation for American slaves, but it did not allow its supporters to consider how freed slaves might become part of American society. It was Lincoln's consideration of this very issue, Foner says, that distinguishes him from other advocates of emancipation.

Columbia University Professor Andrew Delbanco discusses the changing and competing images of Abraham Lincoln throughout American history. Lincoln, Delbanco argues, is a cipher of self-perception for Americans of every era, partly a consequence of his pragmatism and ideological flexibility.