Recommended Resources
Slavery and Anti-Slavery
The books, articles, films, and websites in this section will enhance the materials included on our website for this era of American history. Many of the books are by the historians whose essays and lectures you have read and listened to here and offer in-depth studies of the topics that have caught your interest. The websites and other resources open new ways to explore American history and take advantage of new interpretations and new technologies to enhance classroom or at-home learning.
Fradin, Judith Bloom, and Dennis B. Fradin. 5,000 Miles to Freedom: Ellen and William Craft’s Flight from Slavery. Washington: National Geographic Society, 2006.
Swift, David E. Black Prophets of Justice: Activist Clergy before the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
Mensh, Elaine, and Henry Mensh. Black, White, and Huckleberry Finn: Re-imagining the American Dream. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001.
Clinton, Catherine. Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.
Horton, James Oliver. Free People of Color. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.
Rappaport, Doreen. Freedom River. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2000.
Levine, Bruce. Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War. Rev. ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2005; orig. 1992.
Reynolds, David S. Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America. New York: Norton, 2011.
Weatherford, Carole Boston. Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2006.
Blight, David W. Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.
Washington, Margaret. Sojourner Truth’s America. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
Recommended Resources from Other Sub-Eras
Guelzo, Allen C. Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999.
Baym, Nina. American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790–1860. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
Mintz, Steven. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Ayers, Edward L. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859–1863. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003.
Reynolds, David S. John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Delbanco, Andrew. Melville: His World and Work. New York: Knopf, 2005.
Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage, 1976.
Oakes, James. Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Patterson, Marie. Slavery in America: Expanding and Preserving the Union, Primary Source Readers. Huntington Beach, CA: Teacher Created Resources, 1991.
McWillliams, John P., Jr. The American Epic: Transforming a Genre, 1770–1860. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2010.
Gordon-Reed, Annette. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. New York: Norton, 2008.
Boydston, Jean, Mary Kelley, and Anne Margolis. The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women’s Rights and Woman’s Sphere. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
Clinton, Catherine. The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.
Oakes, James. The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.
Delbanco, Andrew. The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Wellman, Judith. The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Woman’s Rights Convention. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
Oakes, James. The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders. New York: Vintage, 1983.
Ginzberg, Lori D. Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States. New Haven: Yale University, 1990.
Bly, Antonio. “Crossing the Lake of Fire: Slave Resistance in the Middle Passage, 1720–1842.” Journal of Negro History 83 (1998): 178–86.