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 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 George Washington on the abolition of slavery, 1786 Economics, Government and Civics 9 Of the nine presidents who were slaveholders, only George Washington freed all his own slaves upon his death. Before the Revolution, Washington, like most White Americans, took slavery for granted. At the time of the Revolution, one...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Harriet Beecher Stowe sends Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, 1852 Literature Harriet Beecher Stowe’s opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 inspired her to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin . The novel, first serialized in newspapers and then published in 1852 as a two-volume work, enjoyed tremendous success in...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Horace Greeley on a woman’s reform newspaper, 1851 In February 1851, suffragist reformer Elizabeth Oakes Smith wrote to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley about her interest in starting a newspaper dedicated to women’s rights issues. Greeley answered with this rather brusque reply...
Lesson Plan Jefferson and Slavery 6, 7, 8 Background Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence invokes the ideals of democracy and freedom. Yet he remains a slaveholder for his entire adult life, and (unlike George Washington) does not free his slaves in his will....
Spotlight on: Primary Source John Brown’s final speech, 1859 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ On Sunday evening, October 16, 1859, radical abolitionist John Brown led a party of twenty-one men into the town of Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with the intention of seizing the federal arsenal there. Encountering no resistance, Brown’s...
Spotlight on: Primary Source John Quincy Adams and the Amistad case, 1841 Government and Civics On July 1, 1839, fifty-three Africans, recently kidnapped into slavery in Sierra Leone and sold at a Havana slave market, revolted on board the schooner Amistad . They killed the captain and other crew and ordered the two Spaniards...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Lincoln on abolition in England and the United States, 1858 Government and Civics 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Though Lincoln spoke frequently during the 1858 Illinois Senate race against Stephen Douglas—a campaign that propelled Lincoln to the political forefront and helped shape him into a presidential candidate—very few Lincoln manuscripts...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Lincoln on the execution of a slave trader, 1862 This stunning document, a refusal of clemency for a convicted slave trader, stands out among the papers of Abraham Lincoln, a man renowned for his mercy and willingness to pardon. In November 1861, Nathaniel Gordon was convicted of...