Author David McCullough discusses his book John Adams, profiling the life of the second president of the United States. McCullough talks about the relationship between Adams and Thomas Jefferson, and also with his wife Abigail.
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Time Magazine's Christopher John Farley discusses the election of 1800 and the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson's term in office is remembered for a war on terror, and the Louisiana Purchase, and a scandal.
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The Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars are designed to strengthen participants' commitment to high quality history teaching. Public, parochial, independent school teachers, and National Park Service rangers are eligible. These week-long seminars provide intellectual stimulation and a collaborative context for developing practical resources and strategies to take back to the classroom.
This iCue Mini-Documentary describes the great debate that ensued during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia about how states should be represented equally in Congress, since some states had greater populations than others.
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This iCue Mini-Documentary introduces the Framers of the Constitution's decision to hold ratifying conventions for the state governments to approve the new document.
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This iCue Mini-Documentary describes the ratification process for the new Constitution. Once it was written, it needed to be ratified by each of the states. Ratifying conventions were held for delegates to vote on whether or not to adopt the new constitution.
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In this iCue Mini-Documentary describes George Washington's decision to make Alexander Hamilton the Secretary of the Treasury.
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This iCue Mini-Documentary describes how, when Alexander Hamilton became the Secretary of the Treasury, one of the first things he did was to have the treasury assume all state debts accrued from the American Revolution.
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Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin discusses the inaugurations of Presidents George Washington and John Adams, and the significance of those speeches.
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The Declaration of Independence of 1776 announced the entry of the United States onto the world stage and inaugurated a new genre of document that would be used by various groups in the following centuries to herald their arrival among "the Powers of the Earth." This seminar views the American Declaration from three global perspectives: first, by placing 1776 into the context of contemporary international and global connections; second, by examining the legacy of the Declaration in the century after 1776; and third, by analyzing other declarations of independence since 1776 for their debts to—and divergences from—the American model. The result should be an enriched understanding of the importance of the Declaration in world history, as well as a novel account of what was truly revolutionary about the American Revolution.