Slavery Was Not Invented by Europeans nor Americans. In fact, the word slavery comes from the word Slavs, because millions of white Slavs where enslaved by Imperial Islam.5,000 Years of Slavery - Available in the Library![]() Atlanta's Role in the Civil War. The Battle of Atlanta occurred on July 22, 1864, and it's considered to have been one of the major battles of the Civil War. Union Army Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman directed this battle as a part of the Atlanta Campaign. Atlanta was a strategic city for the South because it was a railroad hub, a major supply center, and a symbol of the Confederacy. The Confederate loss of the Battle of Atlanta was significant, and it helped to precipitate the end of the Civil War.
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![]() Ken Burns and his collaborators have been creating historical documentary films for more than forty years. Known for a signature style that brings primary source documents, images, and archival video footage to life on screen, these films present the opportunity to pose thought-provoking questions for students, and introduce new ideas, perspectives, and primary sources.
Lesson Plan (46), Video (322), Media Gallery (92), Interactive (1), Image (26), Document (15) for Grades 4-13+
Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at BPL |
Middle School Resources
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How did we get from "The Civil War" to "The War of Northern Aggression?" The North won the war (whatever that means) but the South clearly won the propaganda war afterwards..These are the results of the "Daughters of the Confederacy's" Education program. How is it that the President’s Chief of Staff John Kelly, a well educated man and former General, commented that the Civil War would not have happened if there had been "compromise." He further said that General Lee "was an honorable man" when clearly the General forsook his oath to defend the United States, and the Constitution, to traitorously fight "for his state." I implore you, how did the “Civil War” metamorphosize into “War of Northern Aggression?”Why Schools Fail To Teach Slavery's 'Hard History'"In the ways that we teach and learn about the history of American slavery," write the authors of a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), "the nation needs an intervention."
This new report, titled Teaching Hard History: American Slavery, is meant to be that intervention: a resource for teachers who are eager to help their students better understand slavery — not as some "peculiar institution" but as the blood-soaked bedrock on which the United States was built. To read more click here... White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, whose boss is well known for unique opinions about the Civil War, introduced his own hypothesis to the world last night when he blamed the war on “the lack of an ability to compromise.”
The Washington Post has already written about what historians think of Kelly’s thoughts, their assessments ranging from “dangerous” to “kind of depressing.” But the truth is, the panicky months before the Civil War were full of attempts to compromise with the rebellious South. The most popular proposal, by far, was a constitutional amendment that would have irreversibly immortalized slavery as a feature of the United States. And although supporters of this compromise — up to and including Abraham Lincoln and most of Congress — did fail to pull it off, it wasn’t for lack of trying. ![]() White supremacy has a history in the North as well. For instance, in Rochester, NY.
There are no Confederate monuments in Monroe County, and no white supremacist rallies are scheduled. But the Rochester New York area, proud as it is of its role in the anti-slavery movement, does have a history of racist groups and gatherings. It dates at least to 1872, when the local hero of that anti-slavery movement, Frederick Douglass, had his South Avenue house burned down while he was out of town. Read the whole story click here. |
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![]() Each State a Sovereign Country? With Basically No Federal Government.
While later claims have been made after the war's end that the South Carolinian decision to secede was prompted by other issues such as "State's Rights," tariffs and taxes, these issues were not mentioned at all in the declaration. The primary focus of the declaration is slavery and the perceived violation of the Constitution by northern states in not extraditing escaped slaves (as the U.S. Constitution required in Article IV, Section 2) and actively working to abolish slavery (which South Carolinian secessionists saw as Constitutionally guaranteed and protected). The main thrust of the argument was that since the U.S. Constitution, being a contract, had been violated by some parties (the northern abolitionist states), the other parties (the southern slave-holding states) were no longer bound by it. Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas offered similar declarations when they seceded, following South Carolina's example. The declaration does not make a simple declaration of "states' rights" as was later claimed, but emphasizes the institution of slavery. It asserts that South Carolina was a sovereign state (a sovereign country unto its own) that had delegated only particular powers to the federal government by means of the U.S. Constitution. It furthermore protests other states' failure to uphold their obligations under the Constitution. Read the original declaration. Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union |
The Political Climate
Years before the Civil War, South Carolina adopted a policy of jailing free black sailors, from other US states, at South Carolina ports (Holding 121).. This policy violated a treaty between Great Britain and the United States, not to mention the rights of the other states. The Supreme Court ruled against South Carolina, but South Carolina defied both the court and the treaty (Holding 121).. Directly and indirectly, the South had practically controlled the government during its whole existence. Excited to ambition by this success, she sought to perpetuate that control. The extension of slavery and the creation of additional Slave States was a necessary step in the scheme, and became the well-defined single issue in the presidential election. But in this contest the South for the first time, was overwhelming defeated. The choice of Lincoln was a conclusive and final decision, in legal form and by constitutional majorities, that slavery should not be extended; and the popular vote of 1860 transferred the balance of power irrevocably to the Free States. In the political discussions throughout this presidential campaign, as well as in preceding years, the South had made free and loud use of two leading arguments, always with telling effect: the first, to intimidate the North, was the threat of disunion; the second, to "fire the Southern heart," was the entirely unfounded alarm-cry that the North, if successful, would not merely exclude slavery from federal territories, but would also destroy slavery in the Slave States. The unthinking masses of the South accepted both these arguments in their literal sense; and Southern public opinion, excited and suspicious, became congenial soil in which the intended revolt easily took root. The State of South Carolina, in addition, had been little else than a school of treason for thirty years. She was, moreover, peculiarly adapted to become the hotbed of conspiracy by the fact that of all the States she was least republican in both the character of her people and the form of her institutions. She was exclusive, aristocratic, reactionary; had a narrow distrust of popular participation in government, and longed for the distinctions of caste and privilege in society. |
When Is It OK To Pull Down Statues?The descendants of Lee, Jackson and Davis want the Confederate statues to come down |