The HISTORY channel has just launched a new short video series for teachers and students called, “Sound Smart,” that offer concise ways to think about major topics in U.S. history. House Divided Project director Matthew Pinsker has helped inaugurate the series with several episodes from the antebellum and Civil War era.
Pinsker’s topics include:
- Manifest Destiny (1840s)
- Compromise of 1850
- Fugitive Slave Law (1850)
- Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
- Bleeding Kansas (1856)
- Dred Scott Case (1857)
- Fort Sumter (1861)
- Women in the Civil War (1861-65)
- Homestead Act (1862)
- 19th Amendment (1920)
Each episode offers a summary of the topic in just about two minutes, designed mostly to help focus classroom discussions and provoke further research at the middle or high school level.