Lesson Plan Free Black Resistance in the Early Republic, 1813 and 1833 9, 10, 11, 12 Click here to access this lesson plan.
Spotlight on: Primary Source A Founding Father on the Missouri Compromise, 1819 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ In 1819 a courageous group of Northern congressmen and senators opened debate on the most divisive of antebellum political issues—slavery. Since the Quaker petitions of 1790, Congress had been silent on slavery. That silence was...
Essay The Road to War Chandra M. Manning Economics, Government and Civics 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ ‘A house divided against itself can not stand’ I believe this government can not endure permanently, half slave, and half free . . . I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it...
Lesson Plan Woman Abolitionists Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12 Background Women always played a significant role in the struggle against slavery and discrimination. White and black Quaker women and female slaves took a strong moral stand against slavery. As abolitionists, they circulated...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Slave Patrol Contract, 1856 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ In the 1800s, particularly after Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, the legislatures of slave states passed increasingly strict laws governing the activities of enslaved and free African Americans and the interactions between whites and...
Essay Lincoln Allen C. Guelzo 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ No one seemed less well-cast for the role of reformer, in an age of reform, than Abraham Lincoln. To begin with, he was a stranger, emotionally and intellectually, to evangelical Christianity, the great engine of reform in the...
Guided Readings Guided Readings: Sectional Conflict Economics, Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12 Reading 1 I do not . . . hesitate to avow before this House and the country, and in the presence of the living God, that if by your legislation you seek to drive us from the territories of California and New Mexico, purchased by the...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The "House Divided" Speech, ca. 1857–1858 Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ By 1850, the extension of slavery into the new territories won through the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848 provided a testing ground for competing visions of America. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 and the Kansas...
Guided Readings Guided Readings: Religion and Social Reform: Abolitionism 9, 10, 11, 12 Reading 1 Assenting to the “self-evident truth” maintained in the American Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” . . . I shall strenuously contend...
Video The Formation of Slave Culture 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Historian Ira Berlin briefly discusses the evolution of slave culture based on African and American experiences of the enslaved.