The National Archives offers unique online access to the original five-page handwritten version of the Emancipation Proclamation along with several helpful tools well-designed for classroom use. However, a transcript of the document can be found below with study questions interjected … Continue reading
(By Cory Palmer, Dickinson College, Class of 2012) Thomas Rutling was born a slave in 1854 in Wilson County, Tennessee. He was the youngest of nine children, whose father either ran away or was sold before he was born. His … Continue reading
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In September 1841, Abraham Lincoln encountered a group of chained slaves (called a “coffle”) from Kentucky being taken down the Ohio River on a steamboat –victims of the domestic slave trade. The sight affected Lincoln deeply, although he described its … Continue reading
Abraham Lincoln hated slavery, but he always appeared to proceed cautiously about emancipation. Why? There are many possible answers to this profound question and all good students need to figure out for themselves what they believe best explains the evolution … Continue reading
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An undated portrait of Louis Hughes found in his autobiography. (By Mary Chobanian, Dickinson College, Class of 2012) Louis Hughes was born in 1832 to a white plantation owner and black slave in Charlottesville, Virginia. His autobiography entitled Thirty Years a Slave: … Continue reading
(By Mary Chobanian, Dickinson College, Class of 2012) Thomas Almond Ashby describes his experience at the moment of slave emancipation in his memoir, The Valley Campaigns. While living on his family’s plantation in Front Royal, Virginia, at age seventeen, Ashby witnessed his … Continue reading
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Charles Nordhoff (18301901) produced a nineteenth-century civics textbook entitled, Politics for Young Americans (Harper & Brothers, 1875) that included a revealing description of abolitionists in a section about the proper roles of minorities and majorities in American political culture (“Of … Continue reading
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There is a good bibliography of primary and secondary sources related to emancipation in the District of Columbia posted by the H-DC Discussion Network. Matthew Gilmore posted the resource in 2007, which means that it does not include Kate Masur’s … Continue reading
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In what was arguably the best-known speech of the antebellum era, Senator Daniel Webster (Whig, Mass.) provided a stirring attack on extreme southern states’ rights in his “Second Reply to Hayne,” delivered on the Senate floor, January 26-27, 1830, in … Continue reading
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Historian James Oakes argues that there was a “federal consensus” about slavery in the years between 1787 and 1861 that has too often been overlooked in examinations of emancipation’s origins. Oakes believes that a careful reading of some important primary … Continue reading
