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"House Slave vs. Field Slave"
Professor Greg Downs dispels the common misunderstandings about social tension between "house slaves" and "field slaves" and discusses the fluidity between different roles and jobs for enslaved people on large plantations.
"Slave Associations"
Historian Greg Downs describes how slave communities built associations to resist and survive the conditions of enslavement. His examples including slaves helping runaways, staking out space in outlying woods or other secluded areas, and building [...]
"Slave Patrols"
Historian Greg Downs describes the evolution of the slave patrol system in the American South. He also briefly describes how innovations created by slave patrols were the model for policing in later times.
"Why Non-Slaveholders Fought for the Confederacy"
Historian Greg Downs describes the motivations that drove non-slaveholding white Southerners to fight for the Confederacy and to protect slavery.
"Family Formations in Slavery"
Professor Greg Downs describes the pressures on family formation under slavery and the strategies that enslaved people employed to form and preserve families. He looks at what happened to families that broke up because of sale, westward migration, [...]
Another View of the "Statue of Emancipation"
Even as the dramatic events of the Civil War were unfolding, artists and sculptors struggled to depict emancipation. After the war, as local communities and the nation attempted to memorialize the conflict and the transformation of four million [...]
Abraham Lincoln Explains His War Aims
In this open letter to Horace Greeley, President Lincoln maintained that the central cause of the Civil War was to keep the country united and not to free the slaves. Greeley was a reformer, abolitionist, and editor of the New York Tribune, an [...]
George A. Croffut Explains the Print "American Progress"
Entrepreneur George A. Croffut published several tourist guides and manuals encouraging Americans to visit and settle in the West. His guides prominently featured the expanding railroad network as the best way to explore the vast territory beyond [...]
"Slavery and Community"
In this podcast, Professor Greg Downs discusses the many ways that enslaved people sought to create community and resist the conditions of slavery.
White into Black: Seeing Race, Slavery, and Anti-Slavery in Antebellum America
In this "Lesson in Looking" from the website Picturing U.S. History, historian Sarah L. Burns explains how to unpack antebellum depictions of slavery and enslaved people, including Eyre Crowe's 1862 painting The Slave Auction.