Lesson Plan Frederick Douglass: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? 7, 8, 9, 10 Click to download this five-lesson unit :
Spotlight on: Primary Source "Bleeding Kansas" and the Pottawatomie Massacre, 1856 In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act overturned the Missouri Compromise, which stated that slavery would not be allowed north of latitude 36°30′. Instead, settlers would use the principle of popular sovereignty and vote to determine...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Buying Frederick Douglass’s freedom, 1846 Economics After he had escaped from slavery in 1838, Frederick Douglass became a well-known orator and abolitionist. He wrote an autobiography in 1845, but because he was a runaway slave, its publication increased the chances that he would be...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Racism in the North: Frederick Douglass on "a vulgar and senseless prejudice," 1870 In 1870 Thomas Burnett Pugh, an ardent abolitionist prior to the Civil War, invited Frederick Douglass to participate in the "Star Course" lecture series he had organized at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. However, Douglass ...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Frederick Douglass’s tribute to Abraham Lincoln, 1880 Literature Despite initial differences, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln forged a relationship over the course of the Civil War based on a shared vision. Fifteen years after Lincoln’s death, Douglass described him as "one of the noblest...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The women’s rights movement after the Civil War, 1866 The fight for women’s rights that had begun in earnest with the convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, diminished in the 1850s and 1860s as reformers focused on the abolition of slavery and the Civil War, but the movement did...
Essay "Hidden Practices": Frederick Douglass on Segregation and Black Achievement, 1887 Edward L. Ayers Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Frederick Douglass recalled his feelings when slavery came to an end, after so much work and so many sacrifices. "I felt that I had reached the end of the noblest and best part of my life," he admitted. But Douglass hardly...
Essay Reconstruction Edward L. Ayers In the twelve years after the Civil War—the era of Reconstruction—there were massive changes in American culture, economy, and politics. These were the years of the "Old West," of cowboys, Indians, and buffalo hunts, of cattle drives,...
Essay The Failure of Compromise Bruce Levine Government and Civics K, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ In the spring of 1861, the United States of America split into two hostile countries—the United States and the new Confederate States of America. The two opposing heads of state agreed about what was causing the rupture—the long...
Essay African Americans and Emancipation Manisha Sinha Historians increasingly understand emancipation was not a singular event that simply involved the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. Instead, emancipation is better understood as...