Acclaimed historian Louis Warren, professor of U.S. Western History at the University of California, Davis, explores how Californians remade American ideas of property and power between 1848 and the present in this Avery Lecture.

American History

Golden: How California Made America

Benjamin Madley, associate professor of history at UCLA, discusses the near-annihilation and survival of California's indigenous population under United States rule in this Billington Lecture

An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873

Mary Sarah Bilder, Founders Professor at Boston College Law School, discusses the responses of George Washington and Benjamin Rush to Eliza Harriot O'Connor's remarkable university lectures in 1787 and their implications for female political status under the Constitution. O'Connor was the first American female lecturer and principal of a female academy. This program is a Nevins Lecture.

The Lady and George Washington

John Crichton, proprietor of the Brick Row Book Shop in San Francisco, shares the story of pioneering entrepreneur Anton Roman (1828–1903), who came to California from Bavaria in 1849 to make his fortune in the gold fields, then converted his gold into books and became one of the most important booksellers in the West.

Anton Roman: San Francisco’s Pioneering Bookseller & Publisher

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the 300th Anniversary University Professor of History at Harvard University, shares stories from the remarkable diary of Caroline Crosby. The wife of a Mormon missionary, Crosby reached California with her husband in 1850 en route to a posting in the South Pacific, and later lived among “saints and strangers” in San Jose, San Francisco, and San Bernardino.

A Mormon Diarist in California, 1850–1858

John Mack Faragher, the Howard R. Lamar Professor Emeritus of History and American Studies at Yale University, discusses the spatial pattern of homicide in Southern California in the 19th century. This talk is part of the Billington Lecture series at The Huntington. Recorded Feb. 8, 2017.

“The Theater of Many Deeds of Blood”: The Geography of Violence in Frontier Los Angeles

The Huntington presents a fascinating conversation about the practice of medicine during the U.S. Civil War and its dramatization in the popular PBS series “Mercy Street.” The panel discussion is moderated by Melissa Lo, Dibner Assistant Curator or Science and Technology at The Huntington, and includes curator Olga Tsapina, who oversees The Huntington’s Civil War collections; series executive producers Lisa Wolfinger and David Zabel; and series medical history advisor Shauna Devine. Recorded Jan. 17, 2017.

PBS’s “Mercy Street” and Medical Histories of the Civil War

Woody Holton, professor of American history at the University of South Carolina and the Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellow at The Huntington, offers a preview of research from his forthcoming book. During the last half-century, as social historians revolutionized the study of nearly every facet of America’s founding era, they left one topic—the battlefield—to traditional historians. Until now. This talk is part of the Distinguished Fellow Lecture Series at The Huntington. Recorded Oct. 24, 2016.

The New Battlefield History of the American Revolution

Christopher Brown, professor of history at Columbia University, explores the relationship between two themes in American history that are usually treated separately. Brown discusses the impact the war for American independence had on the economics and politics of the slave trade, and vice versa. This talk is part of the Nevins Lecture series at The Huntington. Recorded Jan. 11, 2017.

The Atlantic Slave Trade and the American Revolution

Karl Jacoby, professor of history at Columbia University, uses the story of the remarkable Gilded Age border crosser William Ellis to discuss the shifting relationship between the United States and Mexico in the late 19th century. This talk is part of the Billington Lecture series at The Huntington. Recorded Sept. 14, 2016.

The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire

Alice Fahs, professor of history at UC Irvine, discusses what we can learn from the attempts by prominent 19th-century American writers such as Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau to form communities that would nurture and sustain their art. This is part of the Distinguished Fellow Lecture Series at The Huntington.

The Creative Life in 19th-Century America

Geoffrey Cowan, president of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, discusses his book "Let the People Rule: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Presidential Primary". Using a trove of newly discovered documents, Cowan offers a glimpse at the raucous and often mean-spirited political machinations of the 1912 campaign, which changed American politics forever by creating the system of primaries by which presidential nominees are selected today.

Let the People Rule

Considered the worst civil engineering failure in the history of California and the state’s second-worst disaster in terms of lives lost, the collapse of the St. Francis Dam ended the storied career of William Mulholland, the man who earlier had masterminded construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. To contextualize Mulholland’s responsibility for the dam’s failure, historians Norris Hundley, Jr. and Donald C. Jackson relied extensively on items in The Huntington’s collections for their book titled "Heavy Ground: William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam Disaster." In addition, roughly a third of the book’s illustrations are drawn from The Huntington’s collection.

The St. Francis Dam Collapse of 1928

Pulitzer Prize-winning historians Elizabeth Fenn and Alan Taylor engage in a scholarly conversation on the contemporary relevance of historical writings on the American past. Why do we need historical perspective on our times? What do history, and the humanities more generally, have to teach us about point of view, context, and the rights and wrongs of our past and our present? These scholars and the audience will explore the answers to these questions. This program, which helps mark the centennial of the Pulitzer Prize, is co-sponsored by The Huntington, the Huntington–USC Institute on California and the West, and California Humanities.

What Good Is History?

Saul Bellow has been called the greatest writer of American prose of the 20th century. Zachary Leader, professor of English literature at the University of Roehampton, explores this claim and tests it. This talk was part of the Ridge Lecture series at the Huntington.

Saul Bellow and American Prose

The Huntington’s early American historical collections are important resources for the study of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods, the drafting of the Constitution, and the Civil War. Among the holdings are hundreds of autograph letters written by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, as well as the manuscript of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. The Huntington can also claim the largest collection of autograph manuscripts of Abraham Lincoln west of Illinois. In conferences, seminars, and lectures, curators and visiting scholars discuss their subjects in depth.

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American History

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