Lehrman American Studies Center

Websites

• Confessions of Nat Turner by Nat Turner

• Autobiography of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

  The selections from his autobiography are taken from the 1883 edition of Douglass' Autobiography and represent all of chapters 4, 5, and 6.

• The Slave Trade, Foreign and Domestic (Excerpts) by Henry Carey

• Africans in America: the Colonial Era

• Africans in America, 1791-1831

• Africans in America, 1832-1865

• Petition from the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, 1790

• Notes on Slavery by Thomas Jefferson

• Securing the Leg Irons: Restriction of Legal Rights for Slaves in Virginia and Maryland, 1625 - 1791 by Charles P.M. Outwin

• Slavery and Liberty in the American Revolution by Gregory D. Massey

• Wilberforce, Lincoln, and the Abolition of Slavery ( Gilder Lehrman Collection )

  Gilder-Lehrman Institute introduction: This exhibition presents a variety of original documents and images highlighting the story of the abolition of slavery between 1787 and 1865 in England and America. Each item has its own historic significance as well as a…

• Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition ( Yale University )

  The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, a part of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, is dedicated to the investigation and dissemination of knowledge concerning all aspects…

• Influence of Prominent Abolitionists: The African-American Mosaic ( Library of Congress )

  The abolitionist movement took shape in 1833, when William Lloyd Garrison, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and others formed the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. The group issued this manifesto announcing the reasons for formation of the society and enumerating its…

• The Geography of Slavery in Virginia ( University of Virginia )

  Digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves.

• American Slave Narratives: An On-line Anthology by WPA

• Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record ( University of Virginia )

  From website introduction: The approximately 1,235 images in this collection have been selected from a wide range of sources, most of them dating from the period of slavery. This collection is envisioned as a tool and a resource that can…

Articles

• Journey in the Seaboard States, 1856 by Frederick Law Olmsted

• Between Slavery and Freedom: Virginia Blacks in the American Revolution by Sylvia Frey

Books

• Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery 1660-1810 by James G. Basker

• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois

  From Bartleby's website: W.E.B. Du Bois said, on the launch of his groundbreaking 1903 treatise The Souls of Black Folk, "for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line"-a prescient statement. Setting out to show to…

• Frederick Douglass by William S. McFeely

  This biography of Frederick Douglass covers the life of an orator, abolitionist and writer. Douglass was one of the most powerful voices for freedom in the United States and his autobiographies ("Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass") have shaped…

• An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America by Henry Wiencek

  Was George Washington a dedicated slaveholder and, like Thomas Jefferson, a father of slave children? Or was he a closeted abolitionist and moralist who abhorred the abuse of African-Americans? In An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation…

• Life under the "Peculiar Institution"; Selections from the Slave Narrative Collection [Library of Congress] by Selected

• The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-bellum South by Kenneth M. Stampp

• Generations of Captivity : A History of African-American Slaves by Ira Berlin

  Ira Berlin traces the history of African-American slavery in the United States from its beginnings in the seventeenth century to its fiery demise nearly three hundred years later. Most Americans, black and white, have a singular vision of slavery, one…

• Inhuman Bondage : The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World by David Brion Davis

  David Brion Davis has long been recognized as the leading authority on slavery in the Western World. His books have won every major history award--including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award--and he has been universally praised for his…

• Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery by Robert William Fogel

• Slavery and the Making of America by James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton

  The history of slavery is central to understanding the history of the United States. Slavery and the Making of America offers a richly illustrated, vividly written history that illuminates the human side of this inhumane institution, presenting it largely through…

• American Slavery, American Freedom: the Ordeal of Colonial Virginia by Edmund S. Morgan

• The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders by James Oakes

  This pathbreaking social history of the slaveholding South marks a turn in our understanding of antebellum America and the coming of the Civil War. Oakes's bracing analysis breaks the myth that slaveholders were a paternalistic aristocracy dedicated to the values…

• Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger

  From John Hope Franklin, America's foremost African American historian, comes this groundbreaking analysis of slave resistance and escape. A sweeping panorama of plantation life before the Civil War, this book reveals that slaves frequently rebelled against their masters and ran…

• Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867 (3 volumes) by Ira Berlin

• The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government's Relations to Slavery by Don E. Fehrenbacher and Ward M. McAfee

  Many leading historians have argued that the Constitution of the United States was a proslavery document. But in The Slaveholding Republic, one of America's most eminent historians refutes this claim in a landmark history that stretches from the Continental Congress…

• Been in the Storm So Long: the Aftermath of Slavery by Leon F. Litwack

  Based on hitherto unexamined sources: interviews with ex-slaves, diaries and accounts by former slaveholders, this "rich and admirably written book" (Eugene Genovese, The New York Times Book Review) aims to show how, during the Civil War and after Emancipation, blacks…

• Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Olive Gilbert

• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

• Water from the Rock: Black Resistance During the Revolutionary Age by Sylvia Frey

  From Princeton University Press website: The era of the American Revolution was one of violent and unpredictable social, economic, and political change, and the dislocations of the period were most severely felt in the South. Sylvia Frey contends that the…

• Slave counterpoint: Black culture in the eighteenth-century Chesapeake and Lowcountry by Philip D. Morgan

  From University of North Carolina Press website: On the eve of the American Revolution, nearly three-quarters of all African Americans in mainland British America lived in two regions: the Chesapeake, centered in Virginia, and the Lowcountry, with its hub in…

• Roll, Jordan, roll: the world the slaves made by Eugene D. Genovese

  A landmark book that explores slave culture as well as the master-slave relationship in the antebellum South. Winner of the 1975 Bancroft Award.

• The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed

  From the publisher's website: This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the…

• Treatise on Constitutional Law by Ronald D. Rotunda and John E. Nowak

  This book is a six volume Treatise on American Constitutional Law, which examines the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, the development of case law, the current state of the law, and its future direction. It has yearly supplements that…

Timelines

• Timeline of Slavery in America

• Slavery Timeline

  A timeline of slavery from 1501-1865.

• Struggle to End Slavery

Online Libraries / Collections

• From Slavery to Civil Rights: A Timeline of African American History

• Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860

  Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860 contains just over a hundred pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and 1889) concerning the difficult and troubling experiences of African and African-American slaves in the American colonies and the United States. The documents, most…

• North American Slave Narratives

• Southern Home Front, 1861-1865

• Documents from Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867 ( University of Maryland )

  The following are sample documents from the volumes of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation. Like all the documents in Freedom, they are transcriptions (or, in a few cases, images) of originals housed in the National Archives of the United…

• Mr. Lincoln and Freedom

• From Slavery to Freedom : The African-American Pamphlet Collection ( Library of Congress )

  From Slavery to Freedom: The African-American Pamphlet Collection, 1822-1909 presents 396 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, published from 1822 through 1909, by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related…

• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-38. ( Library of Congress )

  Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project…

• Third Person, First Person: Slave Voices ( Duke University )

Images

• Slave Sale in Easton Maryland

• Union with freemen -- No union with slaveholders. Anti-slavery meetings!

  A crudely drawn satire bitterly attacking Democratic presidential candidate Franklin Pierce and appealing to the "Freemen of America." The print, possibly executed by a free black, criticizes the Democrats' platform, as established by the Baltimore Convention, which in the interest…

• The great Presidential sweepstakes of 1856. Free for all ages, "go as they please"

  A nativist perspective on the campaign of 1856. In a race scene, American party candidate Millard Fillmore leads in the bid for the White House. Fillmore rides in a carriage "American Express" at left, driven by the youthful "Young America…

• "GET OFF THE TRACK!" A song for Emancipation, Sung by The Hutchinsons ( Harpweek )

• United States Slave Trade 1830 ( Harpweek )

  An abolitionist print possibly engraved in 1830, but undocumented aside from the letterpress text which appears on an accompanying sheet. The text reads: "UNITED STATES' SLAVE TRADE, 1830. The Copper Plate from which the above picture has just been engraved…

• Frederick Douglass ( Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-15887 )

• Abolition Frowned Down

  A satire on enforcement of the "gag-rule" in the House of Representatives, prohibiting discussion of the question of slavery. Growing antislavery sentiment in the North coincided with increased resentment by southern congressmen of such discussion as meddlesome and insulting to…

• Can you rest one hand on the sacred altar of Liberty, and with the other extend the domain of the darkest curse ... ( Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-10487 )

  A strongly pro-Van Buren cartoon, espousing the antislavery platform of the Free Soil party and condemning Whigs and conservative Democrats alike. The artist also reflects the lingering bitterness among many Democrats over the death in 1848 of former Democratic governor…

• Abolition of the Slave Trade, or the Man the Master ( Library of Congress )

  Library of Congress Summary: Illustration shows the reversal of roles for slaves and slave masters, with former slaves now in the role of the slave master.

• Slave Market of America -- Washington, D.C. ( Library of Congress )

  Library of Congress Summary: A broadside condemning the sale and keeping of slaves in the District of Columbia. The work was issued during the 1835-36 petition campaign, waged by moderate abolitionists led by Theodore Dwight Weld and buttressed by Quaker…

• The House that Jeff Built ( Library of Congress )

  Library of Congress Summary: An extended and bitter indictment of Jefferson Davis and the Southern slave system. The work consists of a series of twelve vignettes with accompanying verse, following the scheme of the nursery rhyme "The House That Jack…

• Practical illustration of the Fugitive Slave Law ( Library of Congress )

  Library of Congress Summary: A satire on the antagonism between Northern abolitionists on the one hand, and Secretary of State Daniel Webster and other supporters of enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Here abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (left)…

• United States slave trade, 1830 ( Library of Congress )

  Library of Congress Summary: An abolitionist print possibly engraved in 1830, but undocumented aside from the letterpress text which appears on an accompanying sheet. The text reads: "United States' slave trade, 1830. The Copper Plate from which the above picture…

• Slave Ship ( Library of Congress )

  Library of Congress: Print showing emaciated male and female slaves crowded onto the deck of a sailing ship.

• Receipt for $250.00 as payment for Negro man, January 20, 1840 ( Library of Congress )

• The Sale -- of Slave ( Library of Congress )

  Card showing Afro-American slave being sold.

• The abolition of the slave trade Or the inhumanity of dealers in human flesh exemplified in Captn. Kimber's treatment of a young Negro girl of 15 for her virjen (sic) modesty. ( Library of Congress )

  Library of Congress: Print shows sailor on a slave ship suspending an African girl by her ankle from a rope over a pulley. Captain John Kimber stands on the left with a whip in his hand.

• Underground Railroad ( Library of Congress )

  Library of Congress Summary: African Americans in wagon and on foot, escaping from slavery.

• The Mower ( Library of Congress )

  Library of COngress Summary: The curiously pastoral scene actually carries a strongly anti-Copperhead message. The artist contrasts the blessings of Northern free labor with the inhumanity of the Southern plantation system. Anti-Republican or "Copperhead" northerners, who advocated a negotiated reconciliation…

• Am I not a man and a brother? ( Library of Congress )

  Library of Congress Summary: The large, bold woodcut image of a supplicant male slave in chains appears on the 1837 broadside publication of John Greenleaf Whittier's antislavery poem, "Our Countrymen in Chains." The design was originally adopted as the seal…

• The resurrection of Henry Box Brown at Philadelphia, who escaped from Richmond Va. in a bx 3 feet long 2 1/2 ft. deep and 2 ft wide ( Library of Congress )

  Library of Congress Summary: A somewhat comic yet sympathetic portrayal of the culminating episode in the flight of slave Henry Brown "who escaped from Richmond Va. in a Box 3 feet long, 2-1/2 ft. deep and 2 ft. wide." In…

• A History of the Amistad Captives featuring woodcut: The Death of Capt. Ferrer 1840 ( Gilder Lehrman Collection )

• Letter from George Washington to Francis Mercer ( Gilder Lehrman Collection )

  Summary from the Gilder-Lehrman Collection: In this brief note, written at a time when there were some 277 slaves at Mount Vernon, George Washington expresses his hope for the gradual abolition of slavery. In his will, Washington provided for the…

• Manumission of a Slave Named Jacob ( Gilder Lehrman Collection )

  Gilder Lehrman Collection Summary: Emancipating Jacob Murray, a slave, in accordance with the will of Doctor George D. Spratt. Signed by Minor, Carter B. Berkley, Thomas M. Locke, George D. Nicolson and Jonathan Chew as executors of Spratt's estate. Signed…

Maps

• Maps of Slavery

Legal Documents

• Argument of John Quncy Adams in Amistad Case by John Quincy Adams

  Argument of John Quincy Adams, before the Supreme Court of the United States : in the case of the United States, appellants, vs. Cinque, and others,... Africans, captured in the schooner Amistad, by Lieut. Gedney, delivered on the 24th of…

Transcripts or Manuscripts

• Letter from William Lloyd Garrison to Ebenezer Dole

  Gilder Lehrman Collection Summary: William Lloyd Garrison was the leading proponent of the immediate abolition of slavery without compensation to owners. In this letter, he explains that life under slavery is far worse than the seven weeks he spent in…

• Stand From Under

• Confessions of Nat Turner

• The American Anti-slavery Society Constitution

• A Minute Against Slavery, Addressed to Germantown Monthly Meeting, 1688.

Modules

• Abraham Lincoln by Phil Hamilton

  Abraham Lincoln remains one of the most important figures in American history for his presidential leadership during the crisis of the Civil War. Born in 1807 in slaveholding Kentucky, Lincoln moved at the age of eight to the free state…

Syllabi

• American Political Thought: Abraham Lincoln and the House Divided by Joseph Fornieri

  American Political Thought: Abraham Lincoln and the House Divided "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free." Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858 Course Purpose The Civil War has been…