Was the Civil War the result of conflict between small militant anti-slavery and pro-slavery groups? The questions is still debated today. To allow your class to join in on the debate, History Now provides a lesson plan for high school level students exploring Militancy in the Abolition Movement. The lesson provides primary source documents to [...]

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Ella Forbes, former professor of African American studies at Temple University and author of “But We Have No Country: The 1851 Christiana, Pennsylvania Resistance,” has written an article on the use of violence at the Christiana Resistance. Forbes argues that the use of violence at Christiana is “…an indication of the alienation blacks felt in [...]

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History Now, an online journal of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, provides essays studying a variety of issues and events throughout history. Abolition of slavery is one among them. In the September 2005 issue of History Now, abolition is the topic. Robert Abzug, a professor of History at the University of Texas at [...]

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The National Park Service presents a website explaining the history of the Underground Railroad and listing sites throughout the United States, in twenty-one states. The site gives brief overviews of topics in the history of American slavery. For each site listed, a brief overview is given. Visiting information is given for sites open to the [...]

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This article published by the New York Times gives a glimpse of the tension of the raid from the perspective of those seeking to end it. The document is part of a wider collection of Harper’s Ferry material on A House Divided.

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The Pennsylvania Historical Society, much more than just compiling the history of the state and collecting artifacts, provides freely lesson plans on the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, abolition in a more general context, and the experience of the free black community in Philadelphia. The seven lessons are for Middle to High School age students. Glossary, primary [...]

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Abolition in the United States, like in Great Britain, had religious inspirations. Some of the first and most outspoken abolitionists were members of the religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. Benjamin Lay addressed the Yearly meeting of Quakers on the subject of abolishing slavery as early as 1738. Quakers continued their support for abolition throughout [...]

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Author Fergus Bordewich’s “Bound for Canaan” traces the abolition movement from 1790 to the eve of the Civil War, primarily through the Underground Railroad. Bordewich writes that the Underground Railroad “…occupies a romantic place in the American imagination that is shared by only a few episodes in the nation’s history: the Lewis and Clark expedition, [...]

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The issue of civil liberties during wartime is as crucial today as it was during the Civil War. The detention of suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay prison has led to endless debate and confusing equivocation regarding the rights of detainees and civil liberties during war time. The confusion is nothing new. Curbing civil liberties during [...]

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The Lincoln-Douglas Debates is a topic often written about and discussed, certainly in this blog, and certainly among teachers, historians, and political scientists. The Debates are always relevant in telling the story of the nation, especially of those steps into civil war. This year in particular, much has been said about the Debates, whether by [...]

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