This is a website dedicated to Harriet Tubman’s home and includes a short overview of her history with the house. It has numerous links to other websites to explore.

This web page is dedicated to the Niagara region of the US-Canadian border which was the final stage in many slaves’ journeys to freedom in Canada. It has a nice section where one can learn about different abolitionists of the time period, view historical markers about the underground railroad, or view pictures of various important people and places. There is also a section with games, a puzzle, and a quiz.

This National Geographic site would be good for kids. They play the role of a runaway slave and must navigate through the story line to freedom. The kids are called upon several times to make decisions, such as if they are going to approach a “safe house” or hide in the woods. And yes, the wrong choice can get you caught (but, unlike on the real underground railroad, you do always get another chance). The journey is short, only 15 minutes at most even for slow readers. However, there is ton of information packed into the game. Can you make it to Freedom?

AP US teachers should find the Teaching the Journal of American History site a great resource for their classes. Allen C. Guelzo’s article on the Lincoln Douglas Debate, which was published in the September 2007 issue, is available (no subscription required) along with the author’s suggestions for teaching it. Five activities are available that ask students to answer questions based on information from the article as well as their interpretation of primary sources. Each activity has links to these sources for students to use.

Even if you do not have students read the Guelzo’s article, you should still check out the other resources that are available, such as the five maps that track where in Illinois Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas went between August and October 1858. This article is the only one from the House Divided era, but others are available on topics such as the Scopes Trial.

In this book review published on Slate.com, historian David Greenberg examines a new book on the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America written by Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College. With campaigning for the upcoming presidential election in full swing, debates will surely play a big role in swaying public opinion toward or away from a particular candidate. With that in mind, it might be an interesting time to reexamine the Lincoln-Douglas debates from a new perspective. According to Greenberg, Guelzo’s book helps to demystify the significance of the debates and present a clearer picture of the divergent positions taken by the incumbent Senator Douglas and the up-and-coming Lincoln. This might be a new piece of scholarship worth checking out.

The Historical Society of Frederick County has converted the home of Roger Brooke Taney, the Supreme Court Chief Justice who issued the Dred Scott ruling, into an historical site which includes his house, detached kitchen, root cellar, smoke house, and slave quarters. Guided tours are available, and special events are held at the home.

Harvard Law School has hosted a retrial of the Dred Scott case, presided over by a Current US Supreme Court Justice and nine U.S. appeals court judges, in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of this infamous case. Lawyers and academics argued on both sides of the case. So, how did Scott fair with this long delayed appeal?

For anyone looking for an educational field trip or just for a personally enriching day trip, St. Louis’s Old Courthouse could be interesting. Not only is this the place where Dred Scott first sued for his freedom, it is also the site of a women’s suffrage case as well. Two of the court rooms have been restored to look much as they did in the 1870s and there is a museum dedicated St. Louis history.

Landmark Cases has an easy to follow diagram of the steps which the Dred Scott case took to reach the Supreme Court. Activities to help explain the case are included.

In this article, an African American historian of mental illness argues that the recent rhetoric which describes Barak Obama’s followers as being caught up in Obama-mania is connected to racist ideas from the civil war era that slaves were more inclined to mental insanity than whites. The author links this idea to the notion that blacks were not seen as able to make moral judgments, because they were morally insane, and states that this belief was reflected in the Dred Scott finding. He also discusses how Negro-Mania, which was a medical term invented to describe a white who is obsessed with the slavery question and was used to caste doubts on the sanity of abolitionists, is linked to the current phrase Obama-Mania.