Professor David Foster analyzes Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, looking at what the novel, its characters, and the life of its author reveal about the "American character" and views of American ideals and life at the time of its writing. This lecture continues from the lecture "Mark Twain and the American Character, Part One."
Professor David Foster analyzes Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, looking at what the novel, its characters, and the life of its author reveal about the "American character" and views of American ideals and life at the time of its writing.
Archaeologist Ellen Berkland discusses the significance of archaeological finds at the African Meeting House on Nantucket.
Textbooks often present a quick, uncomplicated overview of Reconstruction—a vast oversimplification of a time of social upheaval, tension, and violence. After Slavery: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post-Emancipation Carolinas, a joint project of Queen's University Belfast, the University of Memphis, and the University of London, provides primary sources that take a closer look at the time period.
Focusing on the themes of labor, race, and citizenship, After Slavery presents sources from North and South Carolina as examples of trends nationwide. A 2,500-word Introduction explores Reconstruction and the rationale for choosing the Carolinas as the project's focus. About the Project explains the structure and rationale behind the website's learning units.
The Learning Units form the heart of the site. Ten units cover topics including emancipation, mobilization, land and labor, black soldiers, conservative reactions, justice, gender, poverty and white supremacy, coercion and resistance, and the Republican Party. Each unit includes a 400-word introduction and six or more primary documents with three to eight discussion questions each. Units can be viewed online or downloaded as PDFs. An introductory essay explains the mission behind creation of the units, and Recommended Reading lists more than 80 books, 50 articles, and 15 primary sources.
As of December 7, 2012, other materials on the site are still content-light. Interactive Maps uses Google Maps to pinpoint only two events—the Hamburg Massacre and the Cainhoy Riot—with five to seven subevents included in each, as well as five-item lists of related sources.
Interactive Timelines includes three timelines with one-sentence descriptions on each item. Timelines look at general Reconstruction history as well as Reconstruction in North and South Carolina. Teacher Resources currently features links to more than 30 digital collections and exhibits, research tools, military records, audiovisual resources, and more. The section notes that lesson plans will be added in the future.
A valuable resource for teachers looking to complicate the textbook narrative on Reconstruction, and for teachers covering North or South Carolina history.
What was farm life like for a girl in the late 19th and early 20th century? What was life like for the children of Ulysses Grant at Hardscrabble Farm? Where can I find historical information about women and their roles within the community—maintaining communication, family safety, and home and farm while husbands were gone?
Children today may be struck by ways in which their own lives contrast with those of farm children’s in earlier times. One difference is the extent to which girls and boys, from a very early age, were given hard work that was essential to the running of the farm and to the economic success of the entire family. On the other hand, children today might be surprised by how independently children in times past ranged in work and play, far from immediate adult supervision, protection, and surveillance. This was true, not just on the farm, but in towns and cities as well.
Farms were—and are—vastly different from one another in very many ways, depending on their size, location, the financial resources of the owners, the ethnic background and education of the families who worked the land, and other factors. So I can only offer a few very tentative places where you might begin your reading.
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series, although fictionalized, provides a good idea of her life growing up on a farm in the Midwest in the second half of the 19th century. An interview that a Works Progress Administration writer did in 1938 with Nettie Spencer colorfully describes her pioneer rural childhood in the 1870s in Oregon. The website of Old Sturbridge Village provides a short essay that includes a useful description of how girls’ and boys’ lives were integrated into the work of their families’ farms, including which jobs on the farm girls and boys were typically expected to do. On children’s education in the 19th century, Pat Pflieger’s website on 19th-century American children and what they read offers plenty of primary sources—articles, book selections, children’s scrapbooks, and photos—from the time.
Ulysses and Julia Grant received from Julia’s family as a wedding gift an 80-acre plot of land not far from St. Louis. Grant and some of his friends erected a two-story rustic cabin on the land in 1856. When it was finished, he ruefully named it “Hardscrabble,” and the Grants moved in with their children—Fred, who was six years old; Buck, who was four; and Nellie, who was one year old. Grant, along with slaves whom he and Julia owned, attempted to develop the land and also helped manage and work his in-laws’ farm, White Haven, nearby by growing potatoes, wheat, and other vegetables, tending a fruit orchard, and cutting and cording wood.
The Grants only lived in the Hardscrabble cabin for a short while. When Julia’s mother died and their fourth child, Jesse, was born in 1858, the Grants moved out and took a small house in St. Louis, where Ulysses worked at various jobs. Consequently, the Grants’ children were all really too young during the family’s stay at Hardscrabble to have done many chores.
In 1982, two books were published almost simultaneously that shaped many people’s ideas about 19th-century women on the farm. They were Lillian Schlissel’s Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey and Joanna Stratton’s Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier. Together, they give the impression that the lives of farm women were ones of extreme hardship, isolation, and degradation. However, Amy Mattson Lauters’ 2009 book, More Than a Farmer’s Wife: Voices of American Farm Women, 1910-1960, tells a different story in which farm women thrived, happily independent of the city, and “saw farming as an opportunity to be full partners with their husbands and considered themselves businesswomen central to the success of their farms.” Lauter considers evidence from interviews, but also from the many journals and magazines that farmers and their wives subscribed to, such as American Agriculturalist, New England Farmer, Southern Cultivator, and The Farmer’s Wife (many issues of these magazines, back into the 19th century, are available online at Google Books). An interesting letter from “A Lady”—clearly a farmer’s wife—was published in The New England Farmer in 1852. She wrote:
But there are those who sincerely believe, that no class of women in this country, do work so hard as the farmer’s wives. That circumstances often require this, it is useless to deny. But that a woman is constantly to work, and have no leisure, because she is a farmer’s wife, I do deny. A man who owns a small farm, is not required to hire much help, so that the labor of his wife is not very great. One who owns a larger one, and is required to hire help “out of doors,” if he manages as he ought, with economy and skill, will also be able to hire all needful assistance “in doors.” Where a man owns a large farm and is still unable to hire all needful help for his wife, we infer that there is an exception, and is not the general rule. Bad management, an avaricious disposition, or anything which tends to increase the burden of the wife, are wrong management somewhere, and this makes not necessarily the result of tilling the soil, but these same habits and traits of character would exhibit themselves in any other situation in life, and of course the result would be the same.
The correspondent had been moved to write her letter after she overheard two women from the city disparage one of their friends for having married a farmer.
The White House Historical Association works "to enhance the understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of the White House." The website has a number of useful educational resources if you know where to look.
Start with the Themes and Media page that gathers educational resources from the entire website into thematic categories from African American history to protests. Within each collection, you'll find relevant selections from the website's pool of 10 text timelines, more than 15 online exhibits and tours, and more than 20 lesson plans labeled by grade level. One exhibit covers the political symbolism of, and national reaction to, First Lady Lou Hoover's invitation of Jessie DePriest, wife of the first African American elected to Congress in the 20th century, to tea.
The History page gathers the majority of these resources in one location. From information on artwork in the White House to milestones in White House staff history to White House pets, there's plenty to discover.
Most of the content in the Classroom section overlaps with that in History. However, here you can access all available lesson plans, sorted by grade level (K3, 48, 912), as well as more than 10 primary sources. Finally, this is the place to go for more information on touring the White House or reserving a program for your DC Metro-area classroom.