Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail

The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm, 1820 - 1861 Stephen B. Oates

Suggested Teaching Ideas & Resources

Websites

"The Coming of the Civil War." Biography of America. Annenberg Media. Available at: http://www.learner.org/biographyofamerica/prog10/index.html

This site for teachers and students provides an overview of key events from the Mexican-American War to the Civil War, an interactive map of free and slave states before the Civil War, a webography with links to sites with primary and secondary source material on many of the people in The Approaching Fury, and a 30 minute video program with primary sources and historians' commentary. While the video is particularly scholarly and may not appeal to all students it provides a clear and concise overview of the events and issues that led to the Civil War.

"Judgment Day: Resource Bank." Africans in America. PBS. Available at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/index.html

Focused on the period from 1831 - 1865 this section of the Africans in America Website provides biographies, primary sources, and historians' commentary on topics that include antebellum slavery, abolitionism, fugitive slaves and northern racism, westward expansion, and the Civil War.

Mintz, Steven. “Digital History for Teachers.” Digital History. Available at: . http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/teacher.cfm

Lesson plans, explorations, and learning modules offer numerous short primary source excerpts along with guiding questions for students. Topics to utilize include: eXplorations - John Brown: Hero or Terrorist? Why did the South Secede? Classroom Tested Handouts and Fact Sheets: Slavery, Slavery Fact Sheets, Manifest Destiny, Sectional Conflict, and Secession and the Civil War; and Learning Modules: The Coming of the Civil War.

“Slavery in America Image Gallery.” Slavery in America. Available at: http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/scripts/sia/gallery.cgi

The Slavery in America Image Gallery is part of the broader website “Slavery in America,” created to support the PBS Series Slavery and the Making of America. The site provides secondary source history, political cartoons, photographs, slave narratives and biographies. The image gallery guides students and teachers to use visual images to study history. The “Political Cartoons of Slavery: The Defense of Slavery” are particularly useful in studying point of view.

“Voices from North and South: Reviews of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1853.” The Struggle for Racial Justice, 1780 - 1863. Mass Moments. The Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. Available at: http://www.massmoments.com/teachers/primedoc.cfm?pid=37

This section of the Mass Moments site provides two contrasting reviews of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. A broader lesson plan on the site provides guiding questions for the sources.