Library of Congress
Loc: Slavery the Peculiar Institution
Using primary sources, explore the slavery system in the South. Sources include advertisements for slaves, pictures of slave ships, the Supreme Court decision in the Amistad case, spiritual freedoms, journal entries, and pamphlets.
Understanding Slavery Initiative
Understanding Slavery Initiative: Resistance and Rebellion
Enslaved Africans fought hard to win back their freedom through resistance, rebellions, and uprisings. Rebellions along the Middle Passage and in places like the Caribbean were important to the retention of African culture.
Understanding Slavery Initiative
Understanding Slavery Initiative: The Campaign for Abolition
Learn how the anti-slavery movement mobilized the British population to stage the campaign for the abolition of slave trade.
Understanding Slavery Initiative
Understanding Slavery Initiative: Emancipation
Although the British Parliament passed the Abolition of Slavery Act in August 1833, the trade continued, and for many years there were exceptions to abolition. Learn how the British government attempted to prevent the slave trade from...
Understanding Slavery Initiative
Understanding Slavery: Atlantic Crossing: Capture and Enslavement Case Study
Find out about the four ways African men, women, and children became enslaved: criminals sold by chiefs, free Africans captured, domestic slaves resold, and prisoners of war sold to other slave owners.
Understanding Slavery Initiative
Understanding Slavery Initiative: Atlantic Crossing: Slave Forts Case Study
Find out about the disparity between the castle-like headquarters of slave forts and the deplorable conditions in which enslaved Africans lived while waiting to be transported by slave ship to the Americas.
![Read Works: Mali & African Empires: The African Slave Trade [Pdf] Activity](https://d15y2dacu3jp90.cloudfront.net/images/attachment_defaults/resource/large/FPO-knovation.png "Read Works: Mali & African Empires: The African Slave Trade [Pdf] Activity")
Other
Read Works: Mali & African Empires: The African Slave Trade [Pdf]
[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text about the African slave trade. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.
Ibis Communications
Eyewitness to History: Aboard a Slave Ship, 1829
A historically significant account of what Reverend Robert Walsh observed on a slave ship off the African coast in 1829.
Library of Virginia
Virginia Memory: Petition From Judith Hope
In this lesson, learners examine what grounds Judith Hope, the daughter of a freed slave, used to ask for her freedom.
Independence Hall Association
U.s. History: The Peculiar Institution
A very brief look at the "Peculiar Institution" of slavery in the South before the Civil War. Read about how slavery became so entrenced and why it drove a wedge between the North and South.
Independence Hall Association
U.s. History: Revolutionary Changes and Limitations: Slavery
See how the conflicting ideas of land ownership and person ownership flew in the face of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the ideals of the Revolutionary War.
Constitutional Rights Foundation
Constitutional Rights Foundation: An Overview of the African American Experience
Lesson with article and questions for discussion on the experience of African-Americans beginning with the slave trade.
Other
The Spread of u.s. Slavery, 1790 1860
Presents population maps of enslaved and free African Americans before the Civil War based on census population.
Other
Binghamton University: Lincoln, Labor and Liberation
The free labor ideology of the nineteenth century was grounded in the beliefs that Northern free labor was superior to Southern slave labor. It was this free labor ideology and not the republicanism of the Revolutionary War era that...
University of North Carolina
University of North Carolina: Slave Narratives
This site from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, part of the 'Documenting the American South' project, contains information about the slave narratives from their beginnings until 1920 and the importance of this form of...
University of North Carolina
Documenting the American South: Thirty Years a Slave
From the extensive site, "Documenting the American South," read Louis Hughes' "Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom: The Institution of Slavery as Seen on the Plantation and in the Home of the Planter," which was originally...
University of North Carolina
Documenting the American South: John Andrew Jackson
Read this exciting recollection of John Andrew Jackson in his book, "The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina, "published in 1862. Find out about his experiences as a slave and his escape. Included are illustrations, biographical...
Other
Read Works: West Africa: West African Slave Trade [Pdf]
An informational text about the West African slave trade. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.
Other
Online Archive of 19th Century u.s. Women's Writings: Emancipated Slaveholders
Writing in the 1840s, Lydia M. Child tells the story of ex-slavers living in Virginia. Demonstrates the complexity of the abolition debate in Pre-Civil War America.
Library of Congress
Loc: Learning Page: Pre Civil War African American Slavery
Get an overview of slavery in the South, but also see physical evidence in photographs and historical narratives from slaves of the time.
Other
Digital Schomburg Images: Slavery
A collection of 41 images depicting African American slaves in the Civil War era from the New York Public Library.
The History Cat
The History Cat: Slavery in America
Discusses the growth of the slave trade to America, the experiences of slaves, the difference between indentured service and slavery, and how slaves were bought and sold at auction. Describes the lives of slaves, their homes, the...
Independence Hall Association
U.s. History: Cotton and African American Life
But for the invention of the cotton gin, slavery perhaps would have died out in the United States in the early 19th century. Read about why technological advances caused the spread of slavery in the South and read about how slaves clung...
CommonLit
Common Lit: Book Pairings: "Beloved" by Toni Morrison
Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but 18 years later she still isn't free; instead, she's haunted by the ghost of her daughter and memories of the past. Selected (10) reading passages (grades 7-12) to pair with "Beloved" by...