Books
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First
Two Centuries of Slavery in America
Peter Kolchin, American Slavery
Few historical topics have evoked more heated debate than
slavery. Among the central questions that historians have
debated are these:
- Why did slavery come to dominate the economies of
such societies as ancient Greece and Rome, the southern
United States, Brazil, and Britain and France's Caribbean
colonies?
- Why did slavery achieve its greatest strength in
the United States, a society dedicated to freedom
and equality?
- In what ways were slavery and racism connected?
For more than a century, professional historians have
engaged in heated debates over slavery. They have argued
over whether slavery or racism came first; whether the
Constitution was a pro- or anti-slavery document; and
whether slavery was the underlying cause of the American
Civil War.
Click below to learn about two heated historical debates:
What were the origins of slavery?
Was slavery the engine of American economic growth?
Films
Glory
The heroic story of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment,
the first black regiment to fight in the Civil War.
Learn
More
Many influential Hollywood films, from Birth of a
Nation and Gone with the Wind to Glory
and Amistad, have helped shape the way Americans
have thought about slavery.
Web Sites
Recommended Web Site:
Forgotten Heroes of Freedom
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99nov/9911runaway.htm
Despite formidable odds, many enslaved African Americans
ran away from slavery. Leon Litwack, the Morrison Professor
of American History at the University of California at
Berkeley, assesses the frequency of flight from slavery,
the forms that this took, and the motives that precipitated
flight. Subscription only.
Related Web Sites:
Denmark Vesey
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/1861jun/higgin.htm
An 1861 account of Denmark Vesey’s attempted insurrection
by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, published in The Atlantic.
Subscription only.
Also see "Denmark Vesey: Forgotten Hero," subscription only:
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/vesey.htm.
Taking the Train to Freedom
http://www.nps.gov/undergroundrr/contents.htm
This National Park Service site provides a general overview
of the Underground Railroad, with a brief discussion of
slavery and abolitionism, escape routes used by slaves.
African American Women
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/collections/african-american-women.html
The slave letters from the Duke University Library’s
Special Collections provide a rare firsthand glimpse into
the lives of slaves and the relationships they had with
their owners.
Africans in America: Judgment Day
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/title.html
This site, a supplement to the PBS series, covers the
years 1831-1865, and provides primary source documents
and commentary from leading historians dealing with such
topics as the material conditions of slave life, the
impact of slavery on the family, abolition, the Fugitive
Slave Law, Bleeding Kansas, John Brown’s raid on
Harpers Ferry, and wartime emancipation.
Exploring Amistad
http://amistad.mysticseaport.org/
This site contains over 500 primary documents including
court documents, journal entries, and newspaper stories
dealing with the Amistad Affair, which began as a shipboard
revolt off the coast of Cuba and resulted in a protracted
legal battle over slavery and the slave trade.
An Introduction to the Slave Narrative
http://docsouth.unc.edu/
An interpretation of the slave narratives by William L.
Andrews, a leading authority on the subject.
North American Slave Narratives
http://docsouth.unc.edu/
This site include all the narratives of fugitive and former
slaves published in broadsides, pamphlets, or book form
in English up to 1920 and many of the biographies of fugitive
and former slaves published in English before 1920.
Third Person, First Person: Slave Voices
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/slavery/
This site uses documents from the Duke University Library’s
special collections to document the slave trade, slave
labor, the impact of the Revolution on slavery, the nature
of life in the slave community, and slavery’s collapse.
Spartacus Internet Encyclopedia
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/slavery.htm
First person accounts, essays on the slave system, slave
life, key events, and biographies of abolitionists.
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