Interpreting and analyzing written and oral information
Making inferences and drawing conclusions
Vocabulary development
Research
Working collaboratively
Categorizing
One of the great tragedies of American history was the treatment of African-Americans. African slaves arrived with some of the earliest European settlers, and slavery had been a centuries-old institution in America by the 1850s.
Civil War, American
The chief and immediate cause of the war was slavery. Southern states,
including the 11 states that formed the Confederacy, depended on slavery to
support their economy. Southerners used slave labor to produce crops, especially
cotton. Although slavery was illegal in the Northern states, only a small proportion
of Northerners actively opposed it.
—Source: "Civil War, American."
Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000
Background for the teacher:
Sometimes, people will fight to keep someone else from
being treated poorly. Disagreement over slavery was central to the conflict
between the North and the South. The nation was deeply divided.
Note: Slavery was a cruel system. To study slavery means to encounter facts
and/or images some students may find unsettling—including the fact that many people in the South vigorously defended it. Sensitivity to these issues
is recommended throughout this lesson.
The lesson:
Prior to the Civil War, ours was a nation half-slave and half-free. Show your
students a map such as Reynolds
Political Map of the United States, designed to exhibit the comparative
area of the free and slave states, New York and Chicago, 1856.
As students who read the Lewiston
Mill Rules in Lesson
1 will recognize, conditions for workers in the North were often less than
optimal. Pay was low, hours were long, workplaces were dangerous and much was
expected of the workers, who were at the same time looked down upon by almost
anyone in a superior position. Such conditions served as fodder for people who
apologized for or even supported slavery in their arguments against abolition, which were ultimately arguments that defended racism.
Student Activity:
In this lesson, students will argue against slavery using
evidence they gather from archival documents. To help students develop their
argument against slavery, select representative documents from the following
resources to share with students. (Note: Asterisks denote items of special interest.)
You may wish to have students work in groups and use the document
analysis worksheets available through the EDSITEment resource The
Digital Classroom to review these documents. If desired, students can also use the worksheet 19th Century Arguments For and Against Slavery, available in pdf format, or they can use the interactive version. After students have analyzed
the documents, ask them to describe each document and to tell what is revealed
about African Americans' quality of life through the document.
1847
Martin
Robison Delany (1812-1885) (available through a link from the EDSITEment
resource American Memory)
Martin Robison Delany was an editor, author, physician, abolitionist, black
nationalist, colonizationist and army officer. In 1847, Delany joined Frederick
Douglass as co-editor of the newspaper The North
Star. He toured Ohio to gather subscribers and news for the paper.
During the Civil War, Delany was an official recruiter for African-American
military units. In 1865, he was commissioned as a Major in the army, making
him the first African-American field officer of high rank.
1848
An
African-American Newspaper (available through a link from American
Memory)
Frederick Douglass, one of the best known and most articulate free black
spokesmen during the antebellum years, was born a slave circa 1817. After
he ran away, Douglass tirelessly fought for emancipation and full citizenship
for African-Americans. Despite the failure of earlier African-American newspapers,
Douglass founded The North Star in December
1847. The masthead contained the motto, "Right is of no sex, truth is of
no color, God is the Father of us all -- and all are brethren." In 1851,
it merged with the Liberty Party Paper
and soon changed its name to the Frederick Douglass
Paper. A contemporary African-American journalist observed that Douglass's
ability as a newspaper editor and publisher did more for the "freedom and
elevation of his race than all his platform appearances."
Robert
James Harlan (1816-1897) (available through a link from American
Memory)
A businessman, army officer and civil rights leader, Robert James Harlan
accumulated gold worth $90,000 during the California Gold Rush, which he
invested in real estate in Cincinnati. He built the first school in Cincinnati
for African-American children.
A
poster (high-resolution image) revealing the intensity of feelings against
slavery a decade before war: "Union with freemen --No union with slaveholders.
Anti-slavery meetings!" (available from American
Memory)
The
Snowden Family of Clinton, Knox County, Ohio (available through a link
from American Memory)
The Snowdens were an African-American family of musicians who performed
banjo and fiddle tunes and sang popular songs for black and white audiences
throughout rural central Ohio from the 1850s to the early 20th century.
African-Americans in Knox County have long claimed that Daniel D. Emmett
learned the song "Dixie" from the Snowdens.
1851
Certificate
of Permission to Reside in Petersburg, Virginia (available through a
link from American Memory)
This certificate, penned in 1851, indicates that the 42-year-old mulatto
Harriet Bolling was freed by James Bolling in 1842. Freeborn blacks could
stay in Virginia, but emancipated African-Americans were generally required
to leave the state. This certificate states that the court allowed Bolling
"to remain in this Commonwealth and reside in Petersburg."
Proceedings
of the Colored National Convention Held in Rochester (available from
American Memory)
Outraged by the Fugitive Slave Act, African-American leaders became increasingly
impatient with the lack of improvement in political and social conditions
for their race. The national convention movement among free persons of color
provided an independent arena where their interests could be defined and
strategies developed for their improvement. This pamphlet of convention
proceedings addressed the "conflict now going on in our land between liberty
and equality on the one hand and slavery and caste on the other."
Certificate
of Proof of Citizenship for a Free Black Man Serving as a Seaman (available
through a link from American
Memory)
In the event of capture or impressment, sailors needed to have documents
on file to verify that they were citizens of the United States. For this
reason, the government provided seamen's protection certificates for those
who served at sea, including thousands of African-American seamen. This
certificate is for 20-year-old Samuel Fox, who is described as having a
"light African complexion, black woolly hair and brown eyes."
The
Child's Anti-Slavery Book: Containing a Few Words about American Slave
Children
(Search American Memory
by title to find this document. Page 10 is ideal for showing the intended
message of the book.)
Slave
Trade and background
information (available through a link from American
Memory)
This image depicts the miserable, cramped conditions of 510 Africans on
board the Wildfire, who, while being
smuggled into the United States in 1860, were captured by an anti-slaving
vessel. The slaves were taken to Key West, Florida, and from there were
sent to Liberia where the United States regularly repatriated "recaptured"
Africans after 1808.
Assessment:
To culminate this unit, ask students to demonstrate their
knowledge of the institution of slavery, as well as what they learned
about conditions for free workers in the North in the years before the Civil
War. Have the students share specific information gleaned from the table of
resources above that they find especially interesting or fascinating.
Extending the Lesson:
Not all African Americans were enslaved in the years
before the Civil War. Show your students a map such as Free
Persons of Color (available through a link from the EDSITEment resource
Valley
of the Shadow) to illustrate that free blacks lived throughout our nation,
most notably in the South.
Uncle Tom's Cabin created a sensation. Lincoln himself
called the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, "the little lady who made this big
war." Her fiction managed to dramatize the realities of slavery for many Northerners
in a way nothing else had. Read all about it in Uncle
Tom's Cabin Appeared in Serial Form, June 5, 1851.
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