Author Jacqueline Tobin reexamines the history of the Underground Railroad, looking at the extension of the Railroad into Canada and the escape of fugitive slaves into Canada. She also examines the life of ex-slaves as free people in Canada.
Video and audio versions are available.
As a part of a bicentennial series celebrating Boston Athenaeum writers, Marshall Moriarty presents orator and statesman Daniel Webster (17821852); Representative Martha M. Walz presents activist Lydia Maria Child (18021880); and Daniel R. Coquillette presents sixth President of the U.S. John Quincy Adams (17671848).
Author Zoe Trodd follows the history of protest literature in the United States, looking at its use in movements ranging from pre-Revolutionary War to the present day. The presentation also includes Adoyo Owuor reading the Emancipation Proclamation, Timothy Patrick McCarthy reading Eugene v. Debs Statement to the Court, John Stauffer displaying a collection of 20th-century protest photography, and Doric Wilson presenting excerpts from his play Street Theater.
An mp3 of the presentation may be downloaded.
Note: Thank you for your interest in our posters. We no longer have the Civil War poster in stock, but you may print a copy or visit the interactive online version.
What can a quilt, a map, some photographs, a haversack, and a receipt tell you about the past? Thanks to Teachinghistory.org’s new FREE poster, “How Do You Piece Together the History of the Civil War?,” these objects can teach a lot about the Civil War and about how historians piece together the past.
This 24 x 36 inch poster features an engaging collage of primary sources and related questions that get students thinking about how we know what we know about the past, especially in relation to our country’s most devastating conflict, the Civil War. The question, “How can geography impact a battle?,” accompanies a map of Gettysburg while a slave receipt prompts students to think about the laws, economics, and people involved in the institution of slavery.
As a special bonus for teachers, Teachinghistory.org has created an interactive version of this poster with links to teaching materials and websites related to the Civil War. Topics include children’s voices during the Civil War, African American perspectives, women’s roles, Civil War era music, and emancipation, as well as military history and life on the battlefield.
This poster and online resources illustrate that it takes many sources and perspectives to develop a rich understanding of the Civil War in all of its complexity.
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:
"In this lecture, Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, traces Franklin's career from his early days as an apprentice in his brother's Boston print shop to his involvement, at the age of eighty-four, with the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Franklin was an autodidact, self-taught in every field he entered, but the virtue that he most embodied, Isaacson argues, was tolerance. The ultimate self-made man, Franklin's life remains essentially American."
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute website:
"On October 16, 1854, from the steps of the courthouse in Peoria, Illinois, an obscure former congressman named Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech arguing that slavery was incompatible with the Founders' vision of America as articulated in the Declaration of Independence. Lewis Lehrman, co-founder of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and author of Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point, explores the origins and the consequences of this important speech."
From the Gilder Lehrman website:
"Columbia University professor Christopher Brown examines the rise of anti-slavery thought during the Revolutionary Era. Focusing on the often contrasting motivations behind the anti-slavery rhetoric of the British and the Americans, Brown pointedly illustrates how the anti-slavery movement was a global phenomenon that emerged from a wide variety of ideologies."
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American history website:
"University of Maryland Distinguished University Professor Ira Berlin suggests that the unique circumstances of American slavery continue to shape the nation even today. Unlike most other slave-holding countries, the United States had a large indigenous slave population and one of the most stringent definitions of race—the '"one drop" rule'—in the world. The result is a society whose very fabric is bound up in the legacy of human bondage."
From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American history website:
"Institute President James G. Basker examines early strains of abolitionism in eighteenth century literature. From John Newton, the slave trader-turned-minister who wrote the anti-slavery hymn 'Amazing Grace,' to black poets Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley, Basker argues that slavery was very much on the minds of eighteenth century writers and readers."
Professor Eric Foner argues that the idea of sending African American slaves to colonize Africa (an idea which Abraham Lincoln at times embraced) was part of the larger idea of emancipation for American slaves, but it did not allow its supporters to consider how freed slaves might become part of American society. It was Lincoln's consideration of this very issue, Foner says, that distinguishes him from other advocates of emancipation.