Gilder Lehrman Institute: Inhuman Bondage: Slavery in the New World

Use the power of primary sources to help young historians understand the conditions Africans endured while being shipped during the slave trade. After reading an excerpt from Eyewitness Accounts of Slavery in the Danish West Indies,...

Lesson using primary source material on European attempts to establish colonies in the New World and why some were successful but most failed.

[Free Registration/Login Required] Ira Berlin delivers a lecture featuring the premise of his book, Generations in Captivity: Slavery in America. From the early establishment of the settlements in the New World slavery made its presence...

An interview with one of the principal archaeologists (Ruth Shady) involved in the dig at Caral, Peru, site of the oldest civilization in South America. The interview is available in English or in Spanish in mp3 format.

[Free Registration/Login Required] Historian Norman Saul addresses a crowd discussing why Russia was interested and supportive of the Civil War in America. Russia was also facing unrest over serfdom similar to the conflict over slavery...

Presenters Jack Rakove and Sandra Day O'Connor discuss the creation of the judicial system in this video. The Founding Fathers collaborated at the Constitutional Convention to ensure that the rights of citizens would be protected by the...

A New Order in Europe calls for a new lesson plan! This third plan in a series of four sequential lessons encourages high schoolers to read primary sources about the development of the New Order and follow up their knowledge with a...

Lesson that examines some of the reasons European efforts to establish colonies in the New World were often met with failure. It focuses on the story of nine Jesuit priests who started a small colony on Chesapeake Bay in the hopes of...

Article and activity in which students explore the distressful conditions of slavery in the South, answer questions based on the reading, and then participate in writing first person slave narratives for class discussion.

After studying the reasons settlers entered the New World, primary learners try to persuade others to enter this new land. Class members present their arguments in a variety of ways including posters, writings, and charts. Richly...