- Historical Eras > Antebellum America (1816-1860) (x)
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Runaway Slave Laws in Border States, 1794-1846
Every southern state passed laws, sometimes called slave codes, to restrict the activities of African Americans and to prevent slave rebellions. White lawmakers in slave-holding border states, such as Maryland and Kentucky, were particularly [...]
Map of Free and Slave States in 1860
This map identifies which states and territories of the United States allowed slavery and which did not in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War. The slaveholding border states included Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.
John Parker Describes the Challenges of Running Away (with text supports)
John Parker was born in Virginia in 1827, and was the son of a wealthy white man and an enslaved woman. He spent the first 18 years of his life as a slave and earned a reputation as a troublemaker for regularly trying to escape. In 1845, he [...]
Excerpt from Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (with text supports)
In this book excerpt, historians John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger explain the difficulties faced by runaway slaves who attempted to escape to northern states or Canada. Franklin and Schweninger studied many primary source documents to reach [...]
Henry Bibb Remembers Running Away (with text supports)
Henry Bibb was born in Kentucky to a slave mother and her owner, Kentucky state senator James Bibb. His brothers and sisters were sold away when he was a child, and Bibb was also sold frequently—he lived in at least seven southern states. After [...]
Abolitionist Strategies Worksheet
This worksheet helps students to consider and debate three different strategies available to abolitionists in the 1850s as they worked to end slavery.
An American Journalist Explains “Manifest Destiny”
John L. O’Sullivan was an influential journalist and supporter of the Democratic Party. In 1839, he laid out historical, moral, political, and economic reasons for westward expansion. In 1845, O’Sullivan rallied support for the annexation of [...]
Analysis Worksheet: Boston Abolitionists Warn of Slave Catchers
This worksheet helps students to analyze a poster about the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
The Lowell Offering
Beginning in the 1820s, a group of Boston businessmen built textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts. The first factories recruited women from rural New England as their labor force. These young women, far from home, lived in rows of boardinghouses [...]
A Mill Girl Explains Why She Is Leaving Factory Life (with text supports)
Born on a Vermont farm, Sarah Rice left home at age 17 to make it on her own. Eventually she journeyed to Masonville, Connecticut to work in textile mills much like those of Lowell. Rice's first letter was written after she had been weaving in the [...]