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The story of how runaway slaves helped launch the movement toward wartime emancipation in spring 1861 is becoming better known, yet it remains one that is typically not featured in history textbooks or classrooms. However, students and teachers can find … Continue reading
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
The following men were key figures in the development of congressional confiscation policy, which emerged during the 37th Congress (1861-63) as the initial way that Republicans on Capitol Hill had hoped to emancipate slaves. The First Confiscation Act (August 6, … 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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Slavery made a significant impact at the 1787 Constitution Convention. Most of the Framers believed that they had other more pressing worries than the fate of that increasingly sectional institution, but they knew full well that a national debate over … Continue reading
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Figure 1 Nast’s Emancipation Evolution The print above is based on an illustration by Thomas Nast. Click on the image to find out how the print-makers altered Nast’s original drawing following Lincoln’s death in 1865. Figure 2 … 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
