Category: Southern

1890s

Overview The nineteenth century had always been an age of certainties, but by the 1890s, some of the post-Civil War consensus about American civilization and progress was beginning to fragment as it had never quite done before.  Populists challenged the distribution…

1860s

Overview When Booker T. Washington recalled the outbreak of the Civil War, he claimed that “every slave on our plantation felt and knew that, though other issues were discussed, the primal one was that of slavery.”  Washington’s memory of life as young slave…

ESSAY –Emancipation Moments

The essay excerpted below originally appeared in Emancipation at 150: The Impact of Emancipation, a special e-book anthology produced in 2013 on the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln’s Cottage and the US Commission on Civil Rights.   Emancipation…

EXHIBIT –Remembering America Since 1945

In spring 2015, Dickinson students in History 118 (US Since 1877) conducted oral histories and produced essays with multi-media appendixes (such as podcasts or videos).  Several of these extraordinary projects have been featured in this Storify essay summarizing their work.…

VIDEO –Confederate Family

The National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania holds a series of remarkable wartime letters from a Texas farmer who served in the Confederate army.  William Elisha Stoker described life in the army and openly expressed his concerns about the…