Piedmont Farmer: The Journals of David Golightly Harris
Slavery and Abolition
Before the Civil War, David Golightly Harris (1824-1875) had been a small slaveholder in Spartanburg District, South Carolina. According to the 1860 census, he owned ten slaves and 550 acres of land, 100 of which he had under cultivation. Though not among the volunteers who were eager to take up arms in defense of the Confederacy, Harris believed in slavery. As the war drew to a close, he continued to conduct his farming operations as he had before and during the war. These passages are drawn from his journal entries for 1865.
David Golightly Harris
David G. Harris, <em>Piedmont Farmer: The Journals of David Golightly Harris, 1855-1870</em>. Edited with an introduction by Philip N. Racine (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990), from <em>After Slavery: Educator Resources</em> http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/after_slavery_educator/unit_one_documents/document_one
April 1865 - December 1865
Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
A Committee of Freedmen on Edisto Island Reveal Their Expectations
Slavery and Abolition
Civil Rights and Citizenship
This letter was written by a group of freedmen to the Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Land (known as the Freedmen’s Bureau). The freedmen were from Edisto Island, South Carolina, an area that came under Union control early in the war and where formerly enslaved people had been allowed to cultivate the land under the supervision of Union forces after their owners fled. When the freedmen wrote this letter, national policy on the redistribution of lands owned by former Confederates was in flux.
Henry Bram, Ishmael Moultrie, and Yates Sampson
Henry Bram et al. to Major General O. O. Howard, [20 or 21 Oct. 1865], B 53 1865, Letters Received, ser. 15, Washington Hdqrs., RG 105, from <em>After Slavery: Educator Resources</em>, http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/after_slavery_educator/unit_one_documents/document_seven
October 1865 (Circa)
Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
Background Essay on Who Freed the Slaves?
Slavery and Abolition
This essay introduces you to the main forces behind the abolition of slavery in the United States, as well as the debate among historians as to who played the key role.
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
2015
ASHP
Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
Analysis Worksheets: On to Liberty
These worksheets help students analyze the Theodor Kaufmann painting On to Liberty. The graphic organizer included here can also be used to analyze the painting A Ride for Liberty by Eastman Johnson. The worksheets are included as part of Lessons in Looking: Contraband in Paintings.
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, 2011.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
2011
Copyright American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
<div><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/" rel="license"><img style="border-width: 0;" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons License" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/" rel="license">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License</a>.</div>
1619, 1488, 1026
English
Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
Analysis Worksheet: Lincoln in Richmond
This worksheet helps students analyze the 1865 print Lincoln in Richmond.
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, 2011.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
2011
Copyright American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
<div><a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons License" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License</a>.</div>
1214, 1387
English
Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
Analysis Worksheet: A Runaway Slave Predicts "Freedom Will Reign"
This worksheet helps students analyze a letter from John Boston, a runaway slave during the Civil War, to his wife.
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, 2011.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
2011
Copyright American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
<div><a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons License" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License</a>.</div>
1762, 1387, 1773
English
Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
Who Freed the Slaves: Weighing the Evidence worksheet
This worksheet helps students evaluate different pieces of evidence to determine who freed the slaves, Abraham Lincoln or slaves themselves. The worksheet is part of the activity "Emancipation and "Contraband": Who Freed the Slaves During the Civil War."
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, 2011.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
2011
Copyright American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons License" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License</a>.
English
Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
Active Viewing: <em>Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided</em>
Slavery and Abolition
<em>PBS American Experience’s Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided</em> is a 6 episode mini-series available as a 3 DVD set. The following activity focuses on the causes and consequences of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation through an active viewing of <em>Episode 4: The Dearest of All Things</em> (Disc 2). There is a companion website to the series, <em><a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lincolns/" target="_blank">The Time of the Lincolns</a></em>, that contains a Teacher’s Guide, primary sources, and episode transcripts.
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, 2011.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
2011
Copyright American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
<div><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License</a>.</div>
English
Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
A Union Army Captain Testifies Before the Freedmen’s Commission (with text supports)
In May, 1861, Union General Benjamin Butler offered military protection to runaway slaves in Virginia, declaring them wartime "contraband." In every region touched by the war, African-American men, women, and children flocked to the protection offered by Union encampments. In exchange they provided manual labor and information about local terrain and Confederate troop movements. By the end of the war, nearly a million ex-slaves were under some kind of federal protection, many in the so-called "contraband camps" established by Union commanders beginning in 1862. Life in the camps was often harsh. Provisions for food, clothing, shelter, and medicine were inadequate, given the number of former slaves who sought refuge and the desperate condition in which many of them arrived.
C.B. Wilder
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1863
Excerpts from testimony of Capt. C.B. Wilder before the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, 9 May 1863, National Archives, from University of Maryland History Department, Freedmen and Southern Society Project, http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/wilder.htm
1387, 1782
English
Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
"Colored Troops under General Wild, liberating slaves in North Carolina"
In this journalistic sketch, a group of African American soldiers liberates a plantation in eastern North Carolina. The troops were the so-called "African Brigade" composed of black recruits from Massachusetts and newly freed contraband slaves from Union-occupied territories of North Carolina. Like all black troops in the Civil War, the African Brigade was led by a white officer, in this case an abolitionist from Massachusetts. Although some Northerners doubted whether freedmen would make effective soldiers, Union officers in the area reported that "recruiting for the African Brigade is progressing lively and enthusiastically...Quite a recruiting fever has seized the freedmen of [New Bern]...Four thousand colored soldiers are counted upon in this [district]." Another officer wrote "One can hardly forget the enthusiasm amongst the negroes of this place..."
Unknown
<em>Harper's Weekly</em> (Jan. 23, 1864), p. 52; available from <em>The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas</em>, Image Reference HW0022.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1864
<em><a href="http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/Conditions.php" target="_blank">The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas</a></em>.
1778, 1387
English
Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)