As he later recounted in his memoirs, Frederick Douglass endured daily beatings and forced labor before taking his chances on the road to freedom.
Our first President spoke about abolishing slavery, but couldn’t manage without the unpaid labor of hundreds on Mount Vernon.
Chief Justice Roger Taney made his contribution to the ideology of white supremacy when he asserted that blacks were a people apart, beyond the promise of the Declaration and the guarantees of the Constitution.
While the Underground Railroad helped enslaved black people escape north, another version ran in reverse, sending free men, women, and children back into bondage.
The famous photographs at Harvard, first published in American Heritage in 1977, are at the center of a difficult debate over who owns the images.
The complexities of race in early America had deep ramifications for the daughters of one of its most important citizens.
The Emancipation Proclamation opened the door for Pennsylvania's African-American soldiers
The highly lucrative cotton crop of 1860 emboldened the South to challenge the economic powerhouse of the North
South Carolina severed ties with the Union not out of concern for states' rights but because of slavery
Having given slavery a new lease on life, he then made Northern triumph inevitable
Fistfights broke out in Congress in 1850 over whether the territories just won in the Mexican War should be slave or free—and only a last-minute series of compromises prevented catastrophe
Over the question of whether Missouri should be admitted to the Union as a free or slave state in 1820, creative moderates brokered an ingenious compromise that averted civil war
At five critical junctures in American history, major political compromises have proved that little of lasting consequence can occur without entrenched sides each making serious concessions
Without the material support of a half-dozen prominent northerners known as the Secret Six, John Brown’s attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry 150 years ago may well never have occurred
Slavery Televised
It was the nation’s biggest business, it was well organized as a Detroit assembly line, and it was here to stay. It was slavery. David Brion Davis, a lifelong student of the institution, tells how he discovered—and then set about teaching—its vast significance.
Should our leaders say they’re sorry about slavery? About Indians? About their personal behavior? Such questions are hardly new; public contrition has been a national preoccupation for centuries.
THE VISITORS WHO COME HERE FOR THE OLYMPICS this summer won’t find Tara. What they will find is a city facing an unusual—and sometimes painful—past with clarity of vision and generosity of spirit.
BORN IN SLAVERY AND RAISED IN ITS PAINFUL AFTERMATH TO BECOME ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL AMERICAN ICONS, SHE HAS BEEN MADE TO ENCOMPASS LOVE AND GUILT AND RIDICULE AND WORSHIP —AND STILL SHE LIVES ON
The struggles and torments of a forgotten class in antebellum America: black slaveowners
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the most controversial historical novel in memory, the author of The Confessions of Nat Turner speaks of a novelist’s duty to history and fiction’s strange power not only to astonish but to enrage
Deep South states are taking the lead in promoting landmarks of a three-hundred-year heritage of oppression and triumph—and they’re drawing visitors from around the world
While the Revolution was still being fought, Mum Bett declared that the new nation’s principle of liberty must extend to her too. It took eighty years and a far more terrible war to confirm the rights she demanded.
More than the Revolution, more than the Constitutional Convention, it was the crucial test of the American nation. The author of Battle Cry of Freedom, the most successful recent book on the subject, explains why the issues that fired the Civil War are as urgent in 1990 as they were in 1861.
Thousands of them sided with Great Britain, only to become the wandering children of the American Revolution
How the mistress of the plantation became a slave
PRESIDENT LINCOLN MOVES AT LAST
Influence of “Advanced Republicans” Seen as Crucial to the Outcome
THE UNION UNITED STILL
THE PRESIDENT’S TACT & COURAGE
HE WAITED ON THE PROPER HOUR
JUBILATION AMONG THE BLACKS
They Stand Ready to Defend With Arms the Rights Thus Gained
NEW LIGHT SHED ON THE PARTICULARS OF THE GREAT DRAMA