Digital History

Image
Image for Digital History
Annotation

These multimedia resources for teaching American history focus on slavery, ethnic history, private life, technological achievement, and American film. There are more than 600 documents on the history of Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and slavery, from "first encounters" through the Civil War.

A complete U.S. history textbook is presented, along with historical newspaper articles and more than 1,500 annotated links, including 330 links to audio files of historic speeches, and nine links to audio files of historians discussing relevant topics. Ten essays (800 words) address past controversies, such as the Vietnam War, socialism, and the war on poverty. Seven essays present historical background on more recent controversies and essays of more than 10,000 words each address the history of American film and private life in America. Exhibits offer 217 photographs from a freedmen's school in Alabama and seven letters between 18th-century English historian Catharine Macaulay and American historian Mercy Otis Warren.

Film and Video
Official Documents
Paintings and Prints
Personal Accounts
Photographs
Speeches
Native Americans; slavery; social history; mexican americans; supreme court decisions; Vietnam; War on Poverty; history of American film
Using Technology [9-12]
Audio
Images
Text
Video
Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Devel. of the Industrial US, 1870-1900
General
African Americans
American Indians
Ethnicity
Labor
Latinos
Military History
Politics
Reform
Slavery

American Originals Part II

Image
Speech notes, John F. Kennedy, Remarks of June 26, 1963
Annotation

A presentation of more than 25 "of the most treasured documents in the holdings of the National Archives" with 10 contextual essays of up to 300 words in length. Arranged in chronological sections, corresponding to eras suggested by the National Standards for History, this site provides facsimile reproductions of important documents relating to diplomacy, presidents, judicial cases, exploration, war, and social issues. Includes the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolutionary War (1783); receipts from the Lewis and Clark expedition (1803); the judgment in the Supreme Court's Dred Scott Decision (1857); Robert E. Lee's demand for the surrender of John Brown at Harper's Ferry in 1859; the Treaty of 1868 with the Sioux Indians; an 1873 petition to Congress from the National Woman Suffrage Association for the right of women to vote, signed by Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; and a 1940 letter from student Fidel Castro to Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for a ten-dollar bill. Provides links to teaching suggestions for two of the documents. A good site for introducing students to a variety of the forms of documentation accumulated in the collections of the Archives.

Official Documents
Personal Accounts
Political Documents
Post-1865 [9-12]
Images
Text
Colonization & Settlement, 1585-1763
Revolution & New Nation, 1754-1820s
Expansion & Reform, 1801-1861
Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Devel. of the Industrial US, 1870-1900
Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930
Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945
Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s
African Americans
American Indians
International Relations
Legal History
Military History
Politics
Southern States
Western States
Women

Panic of 1873

Question

What was the economic and social impact of the Panic of 1873?

Textbook Excerpt

Textbooks differ in their treatment of the Panic in significant ways. Most tie the depression to the national political controversies surrounding Reconstruction. Too often, textbooks combine the Panic with the political scandals which rocked the Grant administration. While certainly a source of the political crisis facing Republicans in the 1870s, the roots of the Panic run far deeper than merely Grant’s poor political skills.

Source Excerpt

Limited by the amount of gold held in the U.S. Treasury, access to currency and credit contracted sharply, interest rates skyrocketed, and investors were forced to pay off their high stakes gambles (made with cheap paper dollars) with hard-earned gold. Sources bring to light the integral nature of bimetallist theory and its effect on the economy rather than the political climate and scandal that surrounded the Federal Government.

Historian Excerpt

The Panic of 1873 stands as the first global depression brought about by industrial capitalism. It began a regular pattern of boom and bust cycles that distinguish our current economic system and which continue to this day. While the first of many such market “corrections,” the effects of the downturn were severe and, in 1873, unexpected. In 1873 modern economic adjustments were unknown and the ability of national authorities to control the money supply was immature. As a result, the Panic of 1873 led to the longest recorded economic downturn in modern history.

Abstract

Most Americans are familiar with the Great Depression, beginning in 1929, and the economic safety nets established in response to the crisis, such as Social Security and the right to collective bargaining, from 1933 to 1938. Some know of the equally dire economic conditions, starting in 1893, and how this spurred federal progressives like Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson to strengthen public oversight of corporate trusts, child labor, banking, monetary policy, and tariffs. Yet almost no one knows of the profound economic collapse that struck the United States following the Civil War or its equally substantial effect upon the social and political trajectory of the nation. The Panic of 1873 began in Europe, but quickly spread to the United States producing 65 months of depressed economic conditions.

Slavery

Question

What was it like to be a slave in 19th-century America?

Textbook Excerpt

Textbooks treat slavery as primarily an economic institution in which slaves were regarded by their owners as property yet insisted on their own humanity.

Source Excerpt

Taken in its entirety, the letter [from Rachel O’Connor to her sister Mary, January 11, 1836] reveals that hate and cruelty existed alongside love and affection in the slave South.

Historian Excerpt

Historians are less inclined to ask what it was like to be a slave in the abstract than to draw from the historical record to ask what it was like to be a particular enslaved person, say Frederick Douglass or Sally Hemings, to name two of the most famous.

Abstract

Two textbooks for high school students, Appleby et al’s The American Vision (AV) and Boorstin et al’s History of the United States (HUS) offer subtly contrasting answers to this important historical question, but both share a basic narrative voice, characteristic of textbooks, that limits their ability to highlight controversy, explore ambiguity and irony, or raise the problem of how we know what we think we know about slave life. This essay takes a close look at the textbooks’ interpretations of the law of slavery, the relationship between masters and slaves, and their use of primary sources, including the Confessions of Nat Turner.

Civics Online

Image
Painting, "Penn's Treaty with the Indians," Edward Hicks, c.1840-1844
Annotation

This site was designed as a resource for teachers and students of Civics, grades K-12, in Michigan public schools. The site provides access to 118 primary source documents and links to 71 related sites. Of these documents, 22 are speeches, 34 are photographs or paintings, and five are maps. The site is indexed by subject and "core democratic values" as determined by Michigan Curriculum Framework. A section for teachers includes one syllabi each for primary, middle, and high school courses. The syllabi are accompanied by interviews with the teacher who developed the assignments and by a student who participated in the curriculum, as well as by examples of student work. "Adventures in Civics" presents student visitors with a 178-word essay on Elian Gonzalez and an essay assignment for each grade level on what it means to be an American. The site links to six articles and 17 sites about Gonzalez.

Students may use a multimedia library, simultaneously searchable by era, grade-level, and core democratic value. The site also provides a timeline of American history with 163 entries (five to 500-words). The site provides a 1,000-word explanation of core democratic values and links to 41 other government and university sites about American history and civics. This site will probably be most interesting and useful for teachers looking for curriculum ideas.

Maps
Paintings and Prints
Photographs
Speeches
Teaching Tools
Images
Text
Colonization & Settlement, 1585-1763
Revolution & New Nation, 1754-1820s
Expansion & Reform, 1801-1861
Civil War & Reconstruction, 1850-1877
Devel. of the Industrial US, 1870-1900
Emergence of Modern US, 1890-1930
Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945
Postwar US, 1945-Early 1970s
Contemporary US, 1968-Present
African Americans
American Indians
Education
Ideas & Ideologies
Immigration
Latinos
Legal History
Midwestern States
Politics
Women

The Early Conservation Movement

Question

Was it successful for everyone?

Textbook Excerpt

Most begin by describing how industrialization marred the environment and wasted natural resources. They then describe how President Theodore Roosevelt secured new laws that gave the federal government power to curb environmental abuses and manage natural resources.

Source Excerpt

Sources show how conservation laws designed to protect wasteful and damaging uses of natural resources created entirely new categories of crime. They redefine traditional “pioneering” activities such as carving farmland out of the public domain, building log cabins, and hunting animals for food as the crimes of squatting, timber theft, and poaching. They also reveal how conserving Yosemite and the Grand Canyon for public enjoyment carried significant costs for Native Americans who called these places home.

Historian Excerpt

Historians describe the conservation movement as significantly more diverse, both geographically and politically, than textbook accounts suggest. They tend to emphasize the movement’s strong ties to the larger Progressive movement, explore conservation’s national scope, and highlight the work of local grassroots leaders. Historians have also emphasized the significant human costs and unintended environmental consequences of key conservation policies.

Abstract

Textbooks celebrate the conservation movement as an unalloyed success: New forestry laws prevented widespread clear-cutting, erosion, and fires. Game preservation laws protected wildlife from overhunting. Reclamation laws reformed the haphazard use of scarce water resources in the American West, enabling agricultural expansion. Preservation laws protected areas of scenic beauty from privatization and tacky commercial development. Yet historians have depicted the conservation movement much more broadly—and have assessed its legacy more critically. Why?

Abraham Lincoln's Inaugural Journey

Description

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"In the months after his election, Abraham Lincoln famously assembled his 'team of rivals' as the United States disintegrated. In this lecture, Harold Holzer, author of Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861, argues that Lincoln was not the inexperienced country lawyer he has often been described as. He was every bit as shrewd during the 'Great Secession Winter' of 1860 as he was as president. He used silence to his advantage and made a grueling (and sometimes dangerous) railroad journey to his inauguration, during which he reaffirmed the promise he had made during the campaign: to put slavery on the path to extinction."

The Civil War in American Memory

Description

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"Gary Gallagher, John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia, discusses the different Civil War narratives that emerged in the popular consciousness in the century after the war. From the 'Lost Cause' rhetoric of the defeated Confederacy, in which an unapologetic South found honor in defeat, to the 'Emancipation Cause' advanced by the Union, which held that the North went to war in order to liberate slaves, Gallagher explains that these narratives drew both on fact and myth and were critical in the formation of regional and national American identity."

Lincoln Bicentennial: A Teachable Moment (updated February 24)

Date Published
Image
bicentennial poster, Abraham Lincoln
Article Body

The calendar date of President Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday on February 12, 2009, by no means circumscribes the exhibits, events, lectures, reenactments, ceremonies, and other tributes commemorating the significance of his life and his presidency. They continue throughout the year in libraries, schools, museums, towns, and cities.

The Clearinghouse will continue to highlight resources on Lincoln that are helpful in the K–12 classroom: lesson plans, projects, and professional development opportunities of particular interest to educators. Please visit the Clearinghouse Digital Classroom section for information on events and online programs. The Clearinghouse Project Spotlight will also highlight Teaching American History (TAH) grants with modules related to teaching about Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln Bicentennial Commission

The most complete centralized information center is the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, website of the Library of Congress, offering a comprehensive compendium of events, materials, information, and resources surrounding this event the Commission has labeled "a teachable moment." We particularly invite your attention to Resources for Teachers. The Learning About Lincoln section includes lesson plans and other classroom resources, reading lists, podcasts, ideas for community projects, and a calendar of professional development opportunities.

Recent Discoveries

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (added February 24)

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History announced two podcasts by Lincoln historians Catherine Clinton and Andrew Delbanco. Clinton looks at how early tragedy helped prepare Lincoln for crises later in life; Delbanco examines how Americans have perceived Lincoln throughout history. Other resources from Gilder Lehrman are available on the Institute's Lincoln page.

21st Century Abe (added February 16)

On February 12, the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia launched 21st Century Abe. This interactive website is an exploration of history, memory, and popular culture and invites visitors to find their own version of Abraham Lincoln, asking why we in the 21st century "are still obsessed with this 19th-century man?"

The project points out that Abraham Lincoln is prevalent in popular culture and asks what this popular culture has to do with the historical Abraham Lincoln. It's a collaborative venture. Visitors may upload their own images of the "found Abe." There's a portrait in cupcakes, videos, and contemporary artists' paintings and illustrations. You can add your own creation and design a poster to show what Abe means in the modern world. The site blog shares other representations of the "found Lincoln."

Lincoln at 200

Lincoln at 200, a collaborative project from Chicago—the city where Lincoln was nominated for president—combines resources from the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, the Chicago History Museum, and the Newberry Library.

The thoughtfully analytical site includes two web exhibits and a databased archive of 270 prints, images, and artifacts.

Abraham Lincoln and the West, 1809–1860 is a web-only exhibition that takes its organizing structure from Lincoln's 1860 autobiography, written to introduce him to voters. The exhibit looks at America between 1809 and 1860, focusing on changes in transportation, commerce, political alliances, and growing divisions on the question of slavery.

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War is a digital version of a temporary exhibition at Chicago History Museum (October 10, 2009 to April 4, 2010). This exhibit examines the course of Lincoln's ideological and political transformations as president from a moderate Republican opposed to slavery yet willing to accept it to maintain the Union to becoming the author of the Emancipation Proclamation—a document that changed the course of American citizenship and democracy. The exhibit also looks at how time and memory alter the historic perception of Lincoln.

Gilder Lehrman Institute

The Gilder Lehrman Institute publishes a Lincoln page offering highlights of current events about Abraham Lincoln, bibliographies of prize-winning books, links to online exhibitions on Lincoln and the Civil War, and audio podcasts and videos of prominent historians focusing on themes and events in the life of Abraham Lincoln.

Subscribe to Politics