Columbia University Professor Eric Foner describes the difficulties that slave families faced as they ran north across Union army lines during the Civil War.
This feature is no longer available.
As runaway slaves crossed into the North, they demanded their freedom from the Union government. But the Lincoln administration wasn't prepared to deal with them, says Columbia University Professor Eric Foner.
This feature is no longer available.
This iCue Mini-Documentary introduces the the Northwest Ordinance, adopted by Congress in 1787, which called for new states to be developed in the Ohio region.
This feature is no longer available.
Professor Eric Foner of Columbia University explains the origin of "forty acres and a mule."
This feature is no longer available.
This iCue Mini-Documentary describes one of the horrors of slavery: the separation of families. After Emancipation, slaves wandered hundreds of miles across the south to try to find their spouses and children.
This feature is no longer available.
This iCue Mini-Documentary describes how, as the Civil War progresses, slaves fled north. As their numbers increased, they became a weapon of the Union Army.
This feature is no longer available.
Reenactor Marcia Estabrook plays half-white, half-black slave Ellen Craft. Estabrook tells Craft's story of her upbringing as a slave and her escape from slavery dressed as a white man, with her husband posing as a slave.
This feature is no longer available from WGBH.
This iCue Mini-Documentary describes how backlash against Chinese Workers in the 1850s led to the Chinese Exclusion Act, perhaps the harshest anti-immigration legislation in American history.
Historian Carroll Gibbs discusses African American life in Georgetown prior to and just after the Civil War, looking at laws that discriminated against and segregated African Americans, at historic churches in the area, at records that suggest African Americans escaped from Georgetown by the Underground Railroad, and at reactions to African Americans' gaining the right to vote.
This feature is no longer available.
This iCue Mini-Documentary describes how, to assure citizenship to blacks after the Civil War, Congress proposed the 14th Amendment. However, most Southern states refused to ratify it.