The "New Deal" Franklin Delano Roosevelt had promised the American people began to take shape immediately after his inauguration on March 4, 1933. The multifaceted social, cultural, and fiscal recovery program aimed to reform and reinvigorate national life, and to end the Great Depression. Many New Deal administrators believed that art could be a part of the daily lives of all Americans, not just the elite, and could enrich the lives of all who came in contact with it.

In this presentation, representatives from the National Archives and Records Administration and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum join staff from several Library of Congress divisions to discuss and display a selection of materials from their New Deal holdings.

Jay Winik, author of the Lincoln biography April 1865: The Month That Saved America, looks at how Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee handled Lee's surrender at Appomattox; and considers the possible consequences if the surrender had not gone through or had proceeded poorly.

David Herbert Donald, Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of American Civilization Emeritus at Harvard University, talks about the qualities and experience that made Abraham Lincoln both an exceptional and an unlikely national leader.

Eighth grade American history educator Eric Langhorst talks about several online resources that can be used to teach about Presidential inaugurations and Barack Obama's inauguration in particular.

Eighth grade American history educator Eric Langhorst discusses two books—The Political Cartoons of the Whispering Gallery by the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and The Lines are Drawn: Political Cartoons of the Civil War, edited by Kristen M. Smith—that he uses to give students an understanding that Abraham Lincoln was viewed in many different lights during his own time.

Christy Keeler of Clark County School District, NV, discusses the creation and use of digital stories in history classrooms. She presents an example of digital storytelling, "At Lincoln's Hand"; and looks at how students can use primary sources and research combined with emotive narration, music, and sound effects to craft effective digital stories.

Associate editor and professor of history at Indiana University, John Nieto-Phillips speaks with Professor James Meriwether about his article, "'Worth a Lot of Negro Votes': Black Voters, Africa, and the 1960 Presidential Campaign." When John F. Kennedy telephoned Coretta Scott King to express sympathy for her jailed husband, he had little idea that his two-minute call would move to center stage in the 1960 presidential election. That call, James H. Meriwether argues, has obscured Kennedy's broader efforts to secure the support of black voters while not alienating white voters in the no longer "solid South." Kennedy drew on the growing transnational relationship black Americans had with an ancestral continent undergoing its own freedom struggles, revealing that he was more interested in Africa than in civil rights. Africa, the newest frontier for Kennedy, became a place where he could show his Cold War credentials, find common ground with black American voters, and strengthen his chances to win the presidency.

Idaho State University Political Science Professor David Gray Adler examines what he describes as the great constitutional crisis of the day: the usurpation and abdication of constitutional roles by President and Congress. Building his argument on the concerns of the Framers, Dr. Adler points to the endangerment to liberty posed by the erosion of checks and balances.

Audio and video options are available.

John Lloyd of California State Polytechnic University looks at the transition of the ideological and political conflicts that led to the Civil War and that continued during the war from conflict over the maintenance of the Union to conflict over the existence and continuation of slavery.