Library of Congress
Loc: America's Story: Detective Allan Pinkerton
Allan Pinkerton saved Abraham Lincoln from an assassination attempt, started the United States Secret Service and helped slaves seek freedom via the Underground Railroad. Learn about his early life in Scotland and view a photograph of...
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: America's History in the Making: Reconstruction
This wonderful unit from Annenberg Media examines Reconstruction through three themes: reintegrating the former Confederate states in to the Union; the freedom of blacks and what that entailed socially and economically; and the economic...
Digital Public Library of America
Dpla: Torn in Two: Mapping the American Civil War
This exhibition tells the story of the American Civil War both nationally and locally in Boston, Massachusetts, through maps, documents, letters, and other primary sources.
Virginia Historical Society
Virginia Historical Society: An American Turning Point: Civil War in Virginia
An exhibition that commemorated the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. While slavery caused the war, the war was not begun to free the slaves, but to determine whether the Confederate States of America would be allowed to break...
PBS
Africans in America: Virginia Recognizes Slavery
Here is a general description of the gradual change from using indentured servants to recognizing Africans as slaves and the laws reflecting this change.
Digital Public Library of America
Dpla: Cotton Gin and the Expansion of Slavery
The sources in this primary set document the invention of the cotton gin and the expansion of slavery. Includes teaching guide.
iCivics
I Civics: Slavery: No Freedom, No Rights
From the basics about slavery to the attitudes that defended it and the efforts of those who wanted to see it abolished, in this lesson young scholars learn about this dark part of America's past.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Labor, Slavery, and Caste in the Spanish Colonial System
A self-evaluation using primary sources assesses labor, slavery, and caste in the Spanish colonial system.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Gold Coast, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
Two documents, separated by 200 years, depicting the lives of enslaved Gold Coast Africans in 1450 and 1657, and three original accounts by Europeans of the cultural practices of Gold Coast Africans.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Resistance, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
Recollections of slave resistance by observers like Frederick Douglass, narratives of slave resistance collected during the Depression, and mid-nineteenth century accounts by former slaves calling for resistance to and overthrow of the...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: The Institution, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
Interviews from the 1930s that reflect on African Americans' experience of the institution of slavery. A narrative with firsthands accounts is linked within this resource.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Labor, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
Selections of original accounts either written during slavery or recorded in the 1930s that depict work as a plantation laborer, house servant, shipyard worker or boatman.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Driver, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
Unusual letters from black slave drivers, and in one case, letters in reply from the white slave owner, about crops, labor, and conditions on plantations in the mid-1850s.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Canada
Descriptions of fugitive slave communities in Canada and comments from those who escaped to these locations as well as welcoming statements to fugitive slaves in the mid-nineteenth century.
Digital Public Library of America
Dpla: Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beloved is a novel inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner, who escaped with her family from slavery in Kentucky to freedom in Ohio in 1856.
Library of Congress
Loc: The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship
Online exhibit from the Library of Congress explores black America's quest for equality from the early national period through the twentieth century. Exhibit contains a wealth of items including books, government documents, manuscripts,...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Senegambia, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
Drawings of West Africans and two accounts of Africans before enslavement, one by an African of Gambia, one by a French traveler to Senegal. They examine how Africans lived in freedom before enslavement.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Religion, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
A series of songs, narratives, and memoirs that examine the spiritual beliefs of and experiences with religion among slaves in southern plantation communities.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Plantation, Making of African American Identity: V. 1
Numerous photographs of a Virginia plantation (taken in 1960), an autobiographical account of life on a Mississippi plantation from the nineteenth century, and an interview with a former slave about a Louisiana plantation recorded in 1937.
PBS
Pbs: Jazz Timeline
With this timeline, learn about how the history of slavery, Jim Crow laws and other forms of racial oppression impacted the rise of jazz in America. Also highlights the achievements of women, including Viola Smith in this world of music....
Henry J. Sage
Sage American History: Sectional Issues, 1815 to 1860
Article describes the sectional issues present in America between 1815 and 1860, including tariffs, banking, and the divisive issue of slavery.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: The Growing Crisis of Sectionalism in Antebellum America
In this Curriculum Unit, students will consider "The Growing Crisis of Sectionalism in Antebellum America: A House Dividing" in 4 Lessons. The unit also includes worksheets and other student materials that can be found under the resource...
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Colonial Williamsburg: The Two Williamsburgs
This lesson plan on daily life in Colonial Williamsburg challenges students to compare and contrast the lives of the African and European populations.