National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Memory: Civil War Memory and American Nostalgia: Influence of Lincoln
An excerpt from Jane Addams' autobiography "Twenty Years at Hull House" that describes how Abraham Lincoln inspired her urban reform efforts.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Wall Street Speech, the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
A "bloody shirt" speech from Robert Ingersoll that emphasizes the virtue of Republican candidates and attacks Democrats as traitors during the Civil War.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Railroad, the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
A speech and an engraving that illustrate how the railroad helped to unite the country after the Civil War.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: America, 1870 1912: Visions of the West
The National Humanities Center presents collections of primary resources compatible with the Common Core State Standards, historical documents, literary texts, and works of art, thematically organized with notes and discussion questions....
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Progress, the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
Eighteen primary sources-historical documents, literary texts, and visual images-that explore the industrial, racial, and technological progress of the late-nineteenth century.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Progress: The Meaning of the Machine: Memory and Machines
A poem by Walt Whitman, "Song of the Exhibition," and the on-line catalog of the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition that celebrate the growth, power, and expansion of the nation.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Progress: The Meaning of the Machine: Brooklyn Bridge
An essay and a poem about the Brooklyn Bridge that celebrate its power and majesty as emblems of industrial America during the late 1800's.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Progress: The Meaning of the Machine: Human Machines
An excerpt from efficiency expert Frederick Winslow Taylor's The Principles of Scientific Management that describes how to make a human work like a machine; painter Thomas Anshutz's The Ironworkers' Noontime that suggests the cost of...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Progress: The Meaning of the Machine: The New Housekeeping
An essay that urges women to bring the principles of scientific management found within industrial America into the home and housework.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Gross Clinic, the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
Thomas Eakins's controversial painting that reflects the skill of professional, scientific practitioners during the late-nineteenth century.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Progress: The Meaning of the Machine: Thomas Edison
A photograph of Edison and an interview of Edison by Theodore Dreiser that displays the inventor's convictions about progress in America.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Wealth, the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
An excerpt from Andrew Carnegie's autobiography that describes his attitude toward wealth and an excerpt from the novel The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that suggests the giddy, unreality of an America caught up in...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Progress: The Meaning of the Machine: Southern Stasis
A survey of the lagging Southern economy of the late-nineteenth century and two speeches, one by a black Southerner and one by a white Southerner, making the case for Northern investment in the region.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The Meaning of the Machine: The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
Two views of late-nineteenth-century American progress: Henry Adams criticizes it in his autobiography, and the Columbian Exposition of 1893 praises it.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: People: Assimilation and the Crucible of the City: The American Metropolis
A photograph of State Street in Chicago and George Bellows' painting of Lower Manhattan, both depicting the vigorous, gritty, energetic urban life in the early-twentieth century.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Coney Island, the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
A Thomas Edison film and an essay about the amusement park experience, a new leisure pastime made possible by urbanization and industrialization.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: People: Assimilation and the Crucible of the City: Street Life in New York
Excerpt from Horatio Alger's well-known novel, "Ragged Dick, Or, Street Life in New York," that describes the values and attitudes needed to make it in the capitalistic, urban America of the late-nineteenth century.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Ellis Island, the Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870 1912
This lesson examines seven Lewis Hine photographs of recently-arrived immigrants at Ellis Island.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: People: Assimilation and the Crucible of the City: How Other Half Lives
Photographs and an excerpt from Jacob Riis's famous tour of the distressing conditions of the tenements in New York City. Includes questions for discussion.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Assimilation and the Crucible of the City: Reading Guide to Yerzierska
Two short stories from Polish immigrant, Anzia Yerzierska, about the challenges of Americanization that immigrants faced in the early-twentieth century. Includes questions for discussion.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Assimilation and the Crucible of the City: Reading Guide: Two Stories
An excerpt from Abraham Cahan's novel, "Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto," and Charles Chesnutt's short story, "The Wife of His Youth," that describe challenges of assimilation into American culture for both European immigrants and...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Lee Chew, "The Biography of a Chinaman"
A story of the rise, the challenges, and the alienation experienced by one Chinese immigrant in America. Questions for discussion included.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: People: Assimilation and the Crucible of the City: Exclusion
This lesson examines government reports that urged restrictions on immigration to America at the turn of the nineteenth century.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: People: Assimilation and the Crucible of the City: Zitkala Sa
A photograph and an autobiographical excerpt about the changes experienced and challenges faced by Native Americans at the turn of the twentieth century.