Frederick Douglass, Speech, 1876 Frederick Douglass on Lincoln and Reconstruction from The Gilder Lehrman Institute on Vimeo. This close reading will cover excerpts from Frederick Douglass’s speech at the dedication of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, DC in April 1876. … Continue reading
From US Diplomatic History, Fall 2020: A recurring theme in this chapter that I had not previously considered was the oversimplification of Stalin’s motives during the Cold War Era by the Truman administration and U.S. officials. The Truman administration seemed … Continue reading
Louis Masur begins the final chapter of his book, The Civil War: A Concise History (2011) with a powerful opening line: “On January 11, 1865, Robert E. Lee wrote a letter that would have been unthinkable three years earlier.” The reference is … Continue reading
Print-makers and illustrators in the nineteenth-century could be quite creative and calculating. In fact, the banner image from this course website provides a good example of what might be called pre-photoshop photoshopping undertaken by a commercial printer in Philadelphia following Abraham Lincoln’s … Continue reading
The Underground Railroad was a metaphor used by antislavery activists to describe and publicize efforts at helping runaway slaves during the years before the Civil War. While secrecy was essential for particular operations, the movement to help fugitives was no … Continue reading
Backcountry, n. –a rural area or wilderness Traditional US history textbooks typically focus on North-South sectionalism, because of the overriding importance of the Civil War. However, students must never forget that other types of regional divisions also seemed quite powerful to American contemporaries, such … Continue reading
The two most famous published ex-slave narratives were produced by Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington. Students can choose to write about Douglass’s Narrative (1845) (or one of his two other subsequent autobiographies, My Bondage and My Freedom from 1855 or Life and Times from … Continue reading
The same week in September 1787 that the Framers “delivered” their Constitution to the American people, midwife Martha Ballard was busy caring for and delivering real babies in Hallowell, Maine. To the right, one can view an image of her … Continue reading
What do Dickinson College history majors and Bernie Sanders have in common? Lately, they’ve both been involved (albeit indirectly) in a pretty bitter academic debate over whether or not the original US Constitution should be considered pro-slavery or anti-slavery. … Continue reading