Slavery, Race and the Civil War Era
- What impact did slavery have on slaves, masters, and bystanders?
- Why did views about slavery become more divergent and strident in the 19th century?
- How did economic and religious transformations influence these changes?
- How did gender and immigration influence the debate on slavery?
- Why did compromise become increasingly elusive, eventually collapsing the Jacksonian Party System, and culminating in the Civil War?
- What were the possibilities for transformation in the Civil War and Reconstruction, and why were so many basic injustices left in place (or reinstated) by the 1890s?
Primary Documents: Frederick Douglass, David Walker, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, William Lloyd Garrison, Angelina Grimke, William Henry Seward, Abraham Lincoln, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois and others.
Selected Secondary Sources:
Greenberg, Kenneth S., Editor. The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1996.
Johnson, Paul, A Shopkeeper’s Millineum: Society and Revivalism in Rochester, 1815-1917. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978
McPherson, James, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Scott, Donald, “Mormonism and the American Mainstream.” National Humanities Center. http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/nevanrev.htm
Reconstruction: The Second Civil War. DVD. Directed by Llewellyn Smith and Elizabeth Deane. Boston: WGBH, 2005.
Watson, Harry L. Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America. New York: Noonday Press, 1990.