+
Handout
PBS

Pbs: Africans in America: Part 3: Impact of the Cotton Gin

For Students 9th - 10th
An African American associate professor of history at Cornell discusses the impact of the cotton gin on slavery.
+
Website
PBS

Pbs: Africans in America

For Students 3rd - 8th
PBS offers a four-part series on the plight of African Americans from slave days to the end of the Civil War. Resources such as interactive maps, a Resource Bank, and Teacher's Guide are available.
+
Unit Plan
PBS

Pbs: Cet: Africans in America: The Growth of Slavery in North America

For Students 9th - 10th
Discusses the economics of slavery in South Carolina and its importance to the profitable growing of rice. It continues with ways the slaves were controlled and punished in South Carolina and Georgia. Click on Teacher's Guide for teacher...
+
Website
University of Maryland

Voices of Democracy: Abraham Lincoln, "A House Divided" (16 June 1858)

For Students 9th - 10th
Read the full text of the "House Divided" speech that Lincoln delivered on June 16, 1858, as he accepted the Republican nomination for the U.S.Senate seat from Illinois that was held by Stephen A. Douglas. This speech exemplifies...
+
Unit Plan
iCivics

I Civics: Civil Rights

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Use this library of mini-lessons to teach students about the early days of the expansion of slavery in the United States through the momentous 1950s and 60s and into the modern Civil Rights Movement.
+
Unit Plan
Other

Ithaca College:project Look Sharp: Media Construction of Presidential Campaigns

For Teachers 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login Required] Provides a multi-unit curriculum kit on presidential campaigns that incorporates media literacy. Downloads include teacher guides, student handouts, media documents, visual and audio materials, and more.
+
Article
Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation

History Is Fun: Cultures at Jamestown [Pdf]

For Students 9th - 10th
A six-page discussion of the mix of cultures that converged in the colony of Jamestown and the challenges this presented. These cultures were the English settlers, the indigenous Powhatan people, and the African slaves. Despite many...
+
Article
Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation

History Is Fun: Life at Jamestown [Pdf]

For Students 9th - 10th
A 16-page history of the establishment and growth of the colony of Jamestown. Covers the early challenges, the starving time, the Virginia Company, the conflict with Powhatan, the beginnings of the tobacco economy, the introduction of...
+
Activity
National Geographic

National Geographic: The Underground Railroad Route

For Teachers 1st - 4th
A classroom activity enhancing study about slavery in the United States focused on the Underground Railroad. Students will explore the slave and free states and look at routes the Underground Railroad took to help slaves escape to...
+
Handout
US Department of State

Bureau of International Information Programs: History Outline: Sectionalism

For Students 9th - 10th
Article reviews several conditions of American society that sowed the seeds of civil war, particularly slavery and sectional conflict.
+
Handout
Other

University of Michigan: Susan B. Anthony House: Susan B. Anthony

For Students 9th - 10th
This resource divides her life into the following parts: abolitionist, educational reformer, labor activist, temperance worker, suffragist, and women's rights campaigner.
+
Article
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Gilder Lehrman Institute: History by Era: Slavery and Anti Slavery

For Students 9th - 10th
[Free Registration/Login Required] An excellent essay explaining the roots of the anit-slavery movement in the United States in the early 1830s and its evolution over the next twenty-five years. Read about the abolitionists, both white...
+
Unit Plan
University of Richmond

Dsl: University of Richmond: Visualizing Emancipation

For Students 9th - 10th
A map of slavery's end during the American Civil War. It finds patterns in the collapse of southern slavery, mapping the interactions between federal policies, armies in the field, and the actions of enslaved men and women on countless...
+
Unit Plan
The Newberry Library

Newberry Library: Slavery, Civil War, and the "New Birth of Freedom"

For Students 9th - 10th
Newberry Library presents primary source materials from which students learn about the arguments made for abolition before the Civil War, how the appeals against slavery were framed, and what freedom would mean for the South and the...
+
Website
Cornell University

Cornell University: Library: I Will Be Heard! Abolitionism in America

For Students 9th - 10th
A collection of original manuscripts, letters, photographs, rare books, and other materials on abolitionism from the 1700s through 1865.
+
Handout
Other

Missouri State Archives: Freedom Suits Case Files, 1814 1860

For Students 9th - 10th
An exhaustive, searchable website with original court records on 300 legal petitions for freedom by people of color, originally filed in St. Louis courts between 1814 and 1860.
+
Website
The Newberry Library

Newberry Library and Chicago History Museum: Lincoln at 200

For Students 9th - 10th
This is resource provides information which allows users to examine key aspects of Lincoln's life and legacy, such as the circumstances of his birth, his views on slavery, and his assassination.
+
Website
Smithsonian Institution

National Portrait Gallery: Civil War@smithsonian

For Students 9th - 10th
Access to the Smithsonian's extensive collections that document the American Civil War.
+
Website
University of North Carolina

University of North Carolina: Slavery and the Making of the University

For Students 9th - 10th
This online exhibit from the University of North Carolina chronicles the impact slaves had on campus during the antebellum period. View primary sources showing contributions of slaves, college servants and free persons of color to their...
+
Unit Plan
Mariners' Museum and Park

Mariners' Museum: Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade

For Students 9th - 10th
Online exhibition from the Mariners' Museum chronicles the plight of African slaves from the beginning of their journey when they are torn from their homeland all the way to the shores of the Americas. Caught up in the lucrative...
+
Lesson Plan
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Kentucky's Underground Railroad

For Teachers 5th - 8th
Discover what the Underground Railroad was, the role it played in our county's history, and why Northern Kentucky was such a key location. For this interactive lesson, young scholars will develop a written response to questions.
+
Primary
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Primary Source Set: Ida B. Wells and Anti Lynching Activism

For Students 9th - 10th
This collection uses primary sources to explore Ida B. Wells and anti-lynching activism.
+
Unit Plan
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Writing in u.s. History: The Emancipation Proclamation

For Students 9th - 10th
Assess how the Emancipation Proclamation expanded ideas of freedom and liberty, looking at the antislavery debate that led to the proclamation, the influences on Lincoln's decision, and the provisions of the document. In this interactive...
+
Primary
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Primary Source: The Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

For Students 9th - 10th
This collection uses primary sources to explore Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.