Woodrow Wilson spent his childhood in Augusta Georgia in this house. Today, the house functions as a museum dedicated to Wilson's early life.
School tours of the house were developed with Georgia teaching standards in mind. Teacher resources have also been developed for the site.
The 30-acre Belle Meade Plantation holds the Federal-style 1853 Belle Meade mansion and seven other historic buildings, including a stable and carriage house. The plantation was founded by John Harding in 1807. Harding was a devoted thoroughbred breeder and racer, as were many gentlemen from the South during his time. Tenneessee thoroughbred breeding became less common after the Civil War, as the state saw extensive troop movement. The mansion facade includes Greek Revival elements added in 1853, and the interior is furnished with 19th-century pieces. The plantation owned more slaves than the majority of antebellum Nashville plantations. Some of these slaves served as horse grooms and jockeys.
The plantation offers period rooms, 45-minute guided mansion tours, five educational program options for students, summer camps, home school days, traveling trunks, toddler programs, a student book club with online interactive activities, a junior docent program, culinary guided tours, and a restaurant. Reservations are required for groups of 15 or more. The second floor is not wheelchair accessible.
An adjunct site to a PBS "Frontline" program exploring the claim that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one and maybe all of the children of his slave, Sally Hemmings. This view is supported by DNA testing and believed valid by a consensus of historians and experts. The site presents ten essays ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 words in length by prominent historians and other scholars—including Joseph Ellis, Annette Gordon-Reed, Philip D. Morgan, Jack Rakove, and Gordon Woods—on the controversy, its historical background and significance, interracial sex in the antebellum Chesapeake region, Jefferson's legacy, and America's mixed-race heritage. The site also provides accounts by four Monticello slaves and the chief overseer; four video segments, from seven to nine minutes each; transcripts of interviews with Ellis, Gordon-Reed, Dr. Eugene Foster, who designed and carried out the testing, and Lucia Cinder Stanton, from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation; and links to a clearinghouse for information that argues against the claim.
Was economic difference—manufacturing in the North and slave-driven agriculture in the South—the primary cause of the Civil War?
Textbooks have traditionally taught that incompatibility between northern and southern economies caused the Civil War. Everything else was tied to that economic difference, anchored by cotton.
Census data from 1860 shows farms, manufacturing, and cities in the North and the South, as well as the location of slaves and cotton in southern states, all of which challenge the notion of a purely agricultural South and industrialized North.
The Civil War was fought for many reasons, not solely or even primarily because of the growing importance of cotton on southern farms. Moving away from economic differences and cotton as simplistic causes leads to a more accurate, and far more interesting, understanding of the causes of the Civil War.
For years, textbook authors have contended that economic difference between North and South was the primary cause of the Civil War. The northern economy relied on manufacturing and the agricultural southern economy depended on the production of cotton. The desire of southerners for unpaid workers to pick the valuable cotton strengthened their need for slavery. The industrial revolution in the North did not require slave labor and so people there opposed it. The clash brought on the war.
Economic divergence is certainly one of the reasons for the Civil War, but neither the major one nor the only one. Many factors brought about the war. Focusing only on different economies would be like arguing that one professional football team will always win because it has taller players.
The true causes of the Civil War are downright intriguing and just as complex as the conflict itself.
Historical aspects of many of the 384 areas under the National Park Service's stewardship are presented in this expansive site. A "Links to the Past" section contains more than 25 text and picture presentations on such diverse history-related topics as archeology, architecture, cultural groups and landscapes, historic buildings, and military history. Of particular interest to teachers, a section entitled "Teaching with Historic Places" features more than 60 lesson plans designed "to enliven the teaching of history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects" by incorporating National Register of Historic Places into educational explorations of historic subjects. Examples include an early rice plantation in South Carolina; the lives of turn-of-the-century immigrant cigar makers near Tampa, Florida; a contrast between the Indianapolis headquarters of African-American businesswoman Madam C. J. Walker and a small store in Kemmerer, Wyoming, that grew into the J. C. Penney Company, the first nationwide department store chain; the Civil War Andersonville prisoner of war camp; President John F. Kennedy's birthplace; the Liberty Bell; Finnish log cabins in Iowa; and the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Saugus Iron Works. Especially useful for teachers interested in connecting the study of history with historic sites.
This exhibit tells "the story of Southern Jewish settlers and their descendants from the late 1600s through the 21st century." It currently consists of two presentations, each with more than 50 pages presenting an image from the exhibit's collection with accompanying explanatory text. Images include portraits, maps, historical documents, photographs of Jewish ritual books and religious and cultural objects, paintings and photographs of synagogues, and photographs of Jewish businesses. "First Families" explores the period from the 1600s to the 1820s through more than 50 images and "This Happy Land" explores the antebellum and Civil War years through more than 90 images. (The presentation "Pledging Allegiance," recounting the story of Jewish migration to the South in the first half of the 20th century, is under construction.) Visitors can listen to six interviews featuring voices from the past (transcripts are available). Additionally, a photographic essay with more than 40 photographs, "Palmetto Jews" by Bill Aron, examines Jewish life in South Carolina over the past 50 years. There is no site search capability.
Did Northerners all respond the same way to Brown's infamous raid? Southerners?
Textbooks present the response to John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry as polarized according to geographic sections, with Southerners condemning Brown as a dangerous fanatic and many Northerners supporting his bold and violent strike against slavery. That portrayal reaffirms the deep and growing sectional divide and depicts a nation barreling towards secession and war.
As one of the most riveting events of the antebellum era, Brown’s raid precipitated passionate responses in newspapers, sermons, and political speeches. Those sources provide a compelling glimpse into a vast nation’s complicated responses to the captivating moment in time.
Historians detect more variation in the responses to Brown’s raid, and more nuance even among Northerners and Southerners. In particular, the raid provoked deep and complicated reactions in the North, ranging from celebration to political censure. Those responses reveal a country deeply divided over the institution of slavery, but far from uniform in thought.
Textbooks present John Brown’s abortive raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 as a polarizing event in the growing sectional rift between North and South, unifying opinion in both regions. In fact, the initial response to the raid was more nuanced than it is often portrayed—particularly in the North, where different reactions revealed a complex and multifaceted society struggling with the implications of Brown’s actions.
As men flocked to join the Union and Confederate armies, so, too, many women left their homes to serve as nurses in the war effort. This website presents the story of one such woman, Amanda Akin, who at 35 years of age left New York to work at Armory Square Hospital in Washington, DC, for one year and three months. During that time, she both kept a journal and wrote letters to her sisters recording her experiences.
The website offers images of Akin's diary, photograph portraits, and choice quotes from her recollections, as well as brief explanations and sources related to Civil War nursing in general—for example, books of orders and photographs. The title is somewhat misleading in that the diary itself is not available on the website. Instead, the interactive document link takes you to a map of Washington, DC, with locations relevant to Akin's story and major events of the time. Each location provides photographs (sometimes with a comparison image of the location today), advertisements, and/or artworks; quotes from Akins and other sources; and a small amount of contextual information.
The site links to a copy of Amanda Akin Stearns's (Akin's married name) The Lady Nurse of Ward E which Akin penned in 1909 as a memoir of her time working in the hospital.
These Civil War-era documents relate to three American women of diverse backgrounds and political persuasions. The site includes correspondence and news clippings relating to Rose O'Neal Greenhow, a Confederate spy and Washington socialite, whose espionage work was so appreciated by Jefferson Davis that he "credited her with winning the battle of Manassas"; correspondence, a testimonial, and a pension certificate relating to Sarah E. Thompson, who organized Union sympathizers near her home in the predominately Confederate-leaning town of Greenville, Tennessee, aided Union officers, served as an army nurse, and lectured about her war experiences; and 16-year-old Alice Williamson, a Gallatin, Tennessee, schoolgirl who kept a 36-page diary from February to September 1864 about the Union occupation of her town and atrocities attributed to the invading army.
The materials are accompanied by 500-700 word background essays, images of original documents, and photographs of Greenhow and Thompson. Also contains nine links to additional resources.
Writings of three African American women of the 19th century are offered in this site. Features scanned images and transcriptions of an 85-page memoir by Elizabeth Johnson Harris (1867-1923), a Georgia woman whose parents had been slaves, along with 13 attached pages of newspaper clippings containing short prose writings and poems by Harris; a 565-word letter written in 1857 by a North Carolinia slave named Vilet Lester; and four letters written between 1837 and 1838 by Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson, slaves on an Abingdon, VA, plantation.
The documents are accompanied by three background essays ranging in length from 300 to 800 words, six photographs, a bibliography of seven titles on American slave women, and eight links to additional resources. Though modest in size, this site contains documents of value for their insights into the lives of women living under slavery and during its aftermath in the South.