New-York Historical Society Teen Historians

Battle of Spotsylvania Chapter 17 of Netflix original show House of Cards coincided nicely with our preparations for the upcoming Governor’s Island exhibit, as anti-hero Frank Underwood visited Spotsylvania, Virginia, to commemorate a battle of the Civil War campaign. The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House was the second major battle of the Overland Campaign and…

When it was lost on February 17, 1864, the H. L. Hunley was the first submarine to successfully sink an enemy vessel.  Surprisingly, the Hunley, named after its inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley, would not be raised from its resting spot in 1864 until 2000, nearly a century and a half later. Powered by a hand-cranked…

In 1860, the Democratic nature of the large immigrant community & the City’s mercantile interests were pro-Southern and even pro-slavery. Historian Leslie M. Harris, associate professor of history at Emory University, noted: “From the time of Lincoln’s election in 1860, the Democratic Party had warned New York’s Irish and German residents to prepare for the…

     Having worked at the New-York Historical Society since my sophomore year, I have been asked multiple times in various contexts, why do I love history? There is the standard answer of not repeating mistakes and placing current events in a greater context, but for this blog post I thought I might try and answer this question…

Castle Garden was constructed between 1808 and 1811 to serve as a fort on the tip of Manhattan.  Originally dubbed West Battery, the fort protected New York from possible invasions by European nations and was manned throughout the war of 1812.  However, West Battery and its twenty-eight guns never saw action; its presence alone was…

The answer to this question in short, yes. During the American Civil War many New Yorkers were inclined to allow the Southern States to continue practicing slavery in order to increase total output of the largest American cash crop at the time: cotton. New York was, and has been the epicenter of the U.S.A., and…

March is Woman’s History Month, a whole month dedicated to celebrating the amazing women in history; their accomplishments, their inventions, and their revolutionary attitudes.  Although there are thousands of women who are noteworthy, I’ve selected one woman to represent each era discussed in the forthcoming article. These selected women (I believe) represent and capture the…

Ulysses S. Grant, the famous Union Civil War General and the 18th President of the United States, was born in Ohio to Jesse Grant, a tanner.  He attended the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York and surveyed the western frontier alongside many other young officers who would become military leaders in the…

As far back as I can remember February has been Black History Month. In school we always learnt about Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglas and George Washington Carver and other black figures who left an impact on our society. Invariably one student would ask “Why is there a Black History Month, but no White…