Category: Project Categories

The House Divided research engine offers access to thousands of historic images and records covering a period from 1840 to 1880. Visitors enter the site exactly 150 years ago from today allowing them to experience everything from the headlines of the moment

to profiles of the people who were celebrating birthdays at that time. All collections have been connected in easy-to-navigate ways designed to help visitors discover relationships and learn more background, transforming the usual “search engine” experience. Although still in “draft edition,” this new research engine is growing and improving every day with the goal of becoming a premier learning resource for all teachers and students of the Civil War Era.

To help teachers use the abundant primary source materials available through House Divided, we have begun to create a series of special classroom sites. The Underground Railroad Digital Classroom, for example, offers hundreds of documents, images, and stories to help explain the importance of the antebellum effort to help runaway slaves. The classroom also includes dozens of lesson plans from master teachers located across the U.S., and features exciting new tools such as interactive runaway slave ads and virtual historic tours in Google Earth.

The Emancipation Proclamation was just one milestone in a long and often complicated story about the destruction of slavery in the United States

The Underground Railroad was a metaphor first used by antislavery advocates in the 1840s to describe the increasingly organized and aggressive efforts to help slaves escape from bondage. The fight over fugitive slaves then became one of the primary causes of the Civil War.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates Digital Classroom

Welcome to our Digital Classroom devoted to the subject of the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858. This contest between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas broke many of the political precedents of the day and helped redefine the struggle over slavery and the nation’s future.

The House Divided Project also currently features a blog, an online journal and a new atlas. The Blog Divided provides useful descriptions of the latest digital tools available across the web for the entire period, 1840 to 1880. The Journal Divided is a new site that hosts interactive essays on period topics, using a format that allows readers to click through directly to documents, images and other sources. The journal also features audio narration.

Blog Divided This blog community is designed for teachers and students who are interested in nineteenth-century American history, especially the period before, during and after the Civil War.
Journal Divided Visitors can explore a new interactive essay format that allows direct access to documents and background.

From its beginnings, the House Divided Project has sought out institutional partners to create a series of engaging special exhibitions on the Civil War era. Visit “Building the Digital Lincoln,” a joint effort with the Journal of American History to see some exciting new tools for researching Abraham Lincoln. Or come see the poignant exhibit about Confederate soldier William Elisha Stoker and his Texas family based on materials from the National Civil War Museum. Also, please take a look at a new website called the “Pennsylvania Grand Review, co-sponsored by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and designed to honor black Civil War soldiers from the state.

Cumberland Civil War (with CVVB)  This site honors the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War in the Cumberland Valley.Built in partnership with several local  Carlisle-area institutions.

Digital Lincoln (with JAH) This special resources site offers a snapshot of how historians and digital humanists have helped to build a new understanding of Abraham Lincoln with a series of innovative and powerful Web-based tools.
Dred Scott Case Slideshow (with GLI) “The Dred Scott Decision and its Bitter Legacy” is an online slideshow that House Divided created with the Gilder Lehrman Institute.
Lincoln and Douglas Slideshow (with GLI) “Lincoln, Douglas, and Their Historic Debates” is an online slideshow that House Divided created with the Gilder Lehrman Institute.
PA Grand Review (with PA-DCED) A broad coalition of organizations have decided to commemorate the Grand Review that took place in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on November 14, 1865. This website supports those efforts and hopes to supplement their outreach by offering descendants and other willing students of history a dynamic forum for sharing their stories and finding out more about the bravery and sacrifice of a generation of African Americans who were sometimes ignored or slighted by the government they helped save.
Texas Farmer’s Civil War (with NCWM) This website from the House Divided Project features Stoker’s memorable and moving letters which are now held by the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

The House Divided Project exists to share resources freely with all engaged teachers and students of any age and from any country. In that spirit, we are promoting our content in social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We have posted word clouds in the Wordle Gallery, lesson plans at Scribd, and our favorite bookmarks at Delicious.

Delicious Bookmarks Delicious is a free social site that acts as a bookmarking service. Members can save their own bookmarks online, share with others, and investigate the most popular bookmarks amongst the community. Its most useful service is the fact that users can access their personal bookmarks from any computer at any location.
Facebook Page Facebook, which was created in 2004, is a popular social networking website.
Flickr Photostream Flickr is a free online management and sharing application. House Divided’s Photostream has several sets of selected images from the project’s main image collection.
Google Maps Google Maps is a free online service that allows users to create custom maps. House Divided’s map collection includes Jeb Stuart and the Gettysburg Campaign, Dickinson College Class of 1858 and Class of 1860
Scribd Page Scribd, which was founded in 2007, is a social publishing and reading site that allows users to share documents.
Twitter Page Twitter is a “real-time information network” that was created in 2006.
Wordle Gallery Wordle is a tool that enables users to make analysis of any body of text. Wordle’s swift digital reading provides “word clouds” that highlight the words that appear with most frequency in speeches, essays, or any other writing. Free to download and use, resulting images can be saved, printed, or shared with other users in the Wordle on-line gallery.
YouTube Channel YouTube is the most popular hosting service for on-line video in the world. Founded in February 2005, the service allows for the simple upload and sharing of video clips, either on the YouTube site and through embedding capability across the Internet.