Digital History
Digital History: Pre Civil War Reform: Introduction
A good introduction to the topic of reform movements in Pre-Civil War America. What were the reasons that encouraged reform of many social ills?
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Africans Ii, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Three illustrations and five documents about slave codes, master-slave power dynamics, and free blacks within French and Spanish settlements of the Caribbean.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: New World: Part I: American Beginnings: 1492 1690
A variety of paintings and drawings that display European images of their first encounters with the land, plants, animals, and native peoples of the western hemisphere. With questions for discussion.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Slave Trade, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
A West African map and three accounts of the development of slave acquisition display the process and the brutality of the Atlantic slave trade.
British Library
British Library: Discovering Literature: Oroonoko: Historical and Political Contexts
As a young woman, Aphra Behn was a spy for Charles II's government in Antwerp and probably in South America. Two decades later, she used these experiences to write Oroonoko, the story of a prince kidnapped from West Africa, enslaved, and...
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: American Passages: Social Realism: Booker T. Washington
Focused on his personal racial and civil philosophy, Booker T. Washington moved mountains making the public aware of the injustices and inequalities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Click "Booker T. Washington...
British Library
British Library: Discovering Literature: The Rise of Consumerism
With the increasing variety in clothes, food, and household items, shopping became an important cultural activity in the 18th century. This article describes buying and selling during this period and explains the connection between many...
Curated OER
Virginia Tobacco Plantation
Four accounts of the complex power relationships between slaves and slave holders within English colonies in Barbados, Virginia and Pennsylvania, as well as documents about slave revolts and anti-slavery agitation.
McGraw Hill
Mc Graw Hill: Colonial Economy and Patterns of Society
Although tied to pages from a specific text, these AP study questions allow anyone to consider aspects of colonial economics. (Answers to some of the questions are located at the following link:...
Digital History
Digital History: Southern Radicalism
A look at a little-studied action in American History when men, known as filibusters raised private armies to invade foreign countries. See what these filibusters had to do with the desire to spread slavery.
University of Groningen
American History: Outlines: Settlers, Slaves and Servants
This resource provides a brief overview of how many settlers in the colonies were indentured servants and how the system of indentured servitude tied to slavery.
Curated OER
Portrait of Phyllis Wheatley Writing.
See photos of a recently discovered letter written by Phillis Wheatley , the first published female black poet in America who was sold into slavery but later taught to read and write.
Curated OER
Educational Technology Clearinghouse: Maps Etc: Northwest Territory, 1795
The Ohio Valley and Great Lakes region after the French and Indian War (1754-1763). The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was the first organization of land in the United States after the first 13 colonies. This ordinance set the important...
Curated OER
Slideshow
Three illustrations and five documents about slave codes, master-slave power dynamics, and free blacks within French and Spanish settlements of the Caribbean.
Library of Congress
Loc: Booker T. Washington Delivered "Atlanta Compromise"
Booker T. Washington was one of the most influential African Americans of his day. This site highlights his famous "Atlanta Compromise" speech, as well as a general overview of his views.