Historians celebrated these compromises as valiant efforts to save the union, but recently historians have questioned whether they should instead be seen as appeasements of slaveholders.
Seeing America – Theme: Migration and Settlement
There is no memorial to the Mexican-American War in Washington, D.C.—a war in which more than 15,000 American soldiers lost their lives.
The Mexican-American War
The Wyeths have a long history of painting the American story
An American Story
How women contributed to the repairing a country that had been torn apart.
Lilly Martin Spencer, The Home of the ...
Kuniyoshi came to the US as a teen and loved his adopted country, but was considered a possible enemy during WWII.
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Little Joe with Cow
Between 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million immigrants came to America.
George Luks, Street Scene (Hester Street)
Eastman Johnson depicts a family emancipating themselves from slavery at great risk during the Civil War. Compared to abolitionist images of kneeling slaves and historical narratives crediting Abraham Lincoln or the U.S. government with ending slavery, this is a radical image that centers Black agency in emancipation.
APUSH: KC-5.3.I.B
APUSH: KC-5.3.I.B
Teaching guide: Eastman Johnson, A Ride for ...
Signs that guide historical understanding
Native Hosts
Re-examining a founding American myth
The making of an American myth
Between the Seven Years' War and the Revolutionary War, conflict between Indigenous people, American colonists, and British imperial officials intensified as American colonists encroached on Indigenous land. Benjamin West's painting of a popular myth helps to illustrate the changes in this period.
APUSH: KC-2.1.I.C
APUSH: KC-2.1.I.C
Teaching guide
Benjamin West, Penn’s Treaty with the ...
The bandolier bag and the story of forced migration
From quills to beads: the bandolier bag
De Soto led hundreds of soldiers on the first European expedition into what became the United States.
Spanish conquest and U.S. expansion
Was this the first modern photograph? Alfred Stieglitz's The Steerage
The first modern photograph?
Meet the two women behind this iconic 1936 photograph.
Migrant Mother, behind the Icon
Cats, gossip, and laundry — a view of Los Angeles during the Great Depression.
Resilience during the Great Depression
Pioneers and frontiersmen, creating an American mythology amidst the Civil War
Envisioning Manifest Destiny
The dubious justice of the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party
Immigration and the Know-Nothing Party
Not content to merely paint the land, Cole elevated the landscape to approach the status of historical painting.
Settling the American Eden, The Oxbow
Explore how the various people who moved to and within the United States both adapted to and transformed their new environments.
Migration and settlement
Lawrence carefully documents the migration of African Americans from the agricultural South to the industrial North.
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