Inside the Vault: Primary Sources about Enslaved People
by Gilder Lehrman Staff
While conducting research for the film Twelve Years a Slave, director Steve McQueen and his team came to the Gilder Lehrman Collection to view original primary sources. In this session, Antuan Raimone from Hamilton and Corey Winchester, 2020 Illinois History Teacher of the Year, join our curators to discuss these primary source documents and what they can reveal about the lives of enslaved people.
Click here to download the slides from the presentation.
Classroom-ready resources for the documents presented
- Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, 1853
- Spotlight on Primary Source: Slave Auction Catalog from Lousiana, 1855
- Spotlight on Primary Source: Enslaved Children of New Orleans, 1863
- Spotlight on Primary Source: Civil War Sketches of David M. Stauffer, 1864
Use the timestamps below to jump to the documents you want to view
- Enslaved Children of New Orleans: 20:20–26:20
- Cartes-de-visite of emancipated children: 26:20–35:27
- Civil War sketches of David M. Stauffer: 35:27–45:17
- Slave auction catalog from Louisiana: 45:17–1:00:30
- Twelve Years a Slave: 1:00:30–1:15:40
Additional Resources
- Essay by David Blight: Slave Narratives: A Genre and a Source
- Book Breaks, June 28, 2020: Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie Harris discuss their book Sexuality and Slavery
- Lives of the Enslaved Self-Paced Course, taught by Daina Ramey Berry