6–12 FRAMEWORK TEACHINGTEACHING HARDHARD HISTORYHISTORY

AA FRAMEWORKFRAMEWORK FORFOR TEACHINGTEACHING AMERICANAMERICAN SLAVERYSLAVERY

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY I ABOUT THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Alabama, is a nonpar- tisan 501(c)(3) civil rights organization founded in 1971 and dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.

ABOUT TEACHING TOLERANCE A project of the Southern Poverty Law Center founded in 1991, Teaching Tolerance is dedicated to helping teachers and schools prepare children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy. The program publishes Teaching Tolerance magazine three times a year and provides free educational materials, lessons and tools for educators commit- ted to implementing anti-bias practices in their classrooms and schools. To see all of the resources available from Teaching Tolerance, visit tolerance.org.

II TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY Teaching Hard History A 6–12 FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY

TEACHING TOLERANCE

© 2019 SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. —james baldwin, “black english: a dishonest argument”

2 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY CONTENTS

Preface 4 Introduction 8 Key Concepts and Summary Objectives 10 Pre-Colonial and Colonial Era | to 1763 12 The American Revolution and the Constitution | 1763–1787 18 Slavery in the Early Republic | 1787–1808 24 The Changing Face of Slavery | 1808–1848 26 The Sectional Crisis and Civil War | 1848–1877 38 Acknowledgments 52

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 3 Preface

America’s founders enumerated their lofty goals for the new nation in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Racial justice, however, was not one of their objectives. Rather, the founders sought to preserve white supremacy by embedding in America’s guiding document pro- tections for slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. In this way, they guaranteed that racial inequality would persist for generations.

Racial justice, however, is the key to achiev- dependent were white Southerners on the ing the democratic aims spelled out in the institution that they took up arms against Constitution’s Preamble. As is often said, their own to keep African Americans in “No one is free until everyone is free.” But to bondage and to prevent the prohibition of achieve racial justice, we the people have to slavery in western lands taken from Native come to terms with America’s long history nations. White Southerners simply could of racial injustice. The starting point for this not allow a world in which they did not have reckoning process is an honest examination absolute authority to control black labor and of slavery. Indigenous land. The central role that slav- Some say that slavery was our country’s ery played in the development of the United original sin, but it is much more than that. States is beyond dispute. Slavery is our country’s origin. The enslave- And yet, we the people do not like to talk ment of Indigenous people allowed the about slavery, or even think about it, much British, the Spanish and other European less teach it or learn it. The implications of colonizers to gain a foothold in the Americas. doing so unnerve us. If James Madison, the The enslavement of Africans propelled the principal architect of the Constitution, could growth of the English colonies, transforming hold people in bondage his entire life, refus- them from far-flung, forgotten outposts of ing to free a single soul even upon his death, the British Empire to glimmering jewels in then what does that say about our nation’s the crown of England. And slavery, together founders? About our nation itself? with the dispossession of Indigenous people, Slavery is hard history. It is hard to make was a driving power behind the new nation’s sense of the genocide that started it. It is hard territorial expansion and industrial matura- to comprehend the inhumanity that defined tion, making the United States a mighty force it. It is hard to discuss the violence that in the Americas and beyond. sustained it. It is hard to teach the ideology Slavery was also our country’s Achil- of white supremacy that justified it. And it is les’ heel, responsible for its near undoing. hard to learn about those who abided it. When the Southern states seceded, they did We the people have a deep seated aversion so expressly to preserve slavery. So wholly to hard history because we are uncomfort-

4 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY able with the implications it raises about the past as well as the present. So we pretend that the most troubling parts of our past simply do not exist. We ignore the fact that slavery prevailed in Massachusetts as well as in Missis- sippi. Or we rationalize evil, dismissing Thomas Jefferson’s sexual predations with the enslaved girl Sally Hemings, who bore him six children, as a wistful May-December romance, rather than what it was: rape. Indeed, we revel at the thought of Jefferson proclaiming, “All men are created equal,” but ridicule the prospect of Hemings declaring, “Me too.” Or we fabricate history. We con- jure up false narratives about secession, reimagining traitors as national heroes and insisting that the cornerstone of the Confederacy was something other than slavery. We the people are much more comfortable with the Disney version of history, in which villains are easi- ly spotted, suffering never lasts long, heroes invariably prevail and life always gets better. We prefer to pick and choose what aspects of the past to hold on to, gladly jettisoning that which makes us uneasy. We would rather suspend reality watching the animated Pocahontas white womanhood. To perpetuate this false- than trouble our minds with Reel Injun, an hood, they littered the country with monu- eye-opening documentary on Hollywood’s ments to the Lost Cause. repugnant portrayal of Indigenous people. Our preference for nostalgia and for a his- Literary performer and educator Regie tory that never happened is not without con- Gibson had the truth of it when he said, “Our sequence. We miseducate students because problem as Americans is we actually hate of it. Although we teach them that slavery history. What we love is nostalgia.” happened, we fail to provide the detail or his- But our antipathy for hard history is only torical context they need to make sense of its partly responsible for this sentimental long- origin, evolution, demise and legacy. In some ing for a fictitious past. It is also propelled cases, we minimize slavery’s significance so by political considerations. In the late 19th much that we render its impact—on people and early 20th centuries, white Southern- and on the nation—inconsequential. And in ers looking to bolster white supremacy and almost every case, we ignore the precursor justify Jim Crow depicted the Confederacy to African enslavement in what is now the as a defender of democracy and protector of United States. We completely skip over the

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 5 enslavement of several million after the land grabs of the early 19th century Indigenous people through- and the forced relocation of Native nations out the Americas. As a result, from their ancestral homes as a part of the students lack a basic knowledge Trail of Tears. As a result, public policies and understanding of the in- tend to treat disparities involving African stitution of slavery, from early Americans and Indigenous people as simply European colonists’ near-total a product of poor personal decision-making, dependence on enslaved Indig- rather than acknowledging that they are the enous labor to slavery as the result of racialized systems and structures central cause of the Civil War. that restrict choice and limit opportunity. This is profoundly troubling Understanding American slavery is vital because American slavery is to understanding racial inequality today. A graduate of the key to understanding the complexity of The formal and informal barriers to equal Morehouse our past. How can we fully comprehend the rights erected after emancipation, which College and Duke Univer- original intent of the Bill of Rights with- defined the parameters of the color line for sity, Jeffries out acknowledging that its author, James more than a century, were built on a founda- holds a Ph.D. Madison, enslaved other people? How can tion constructed during slavery. Our narrow in American history with we understand that foundational document understanding of the institution, however, a specializa- without understanding that its author was prevents us from seeing this long legacy tion in African well versed not only in the writings of Greek and leads policymakers to try to fix people American history. He is philosophers and Enlightenment thinkers, instead of addressing the historically rooted an Associate but also in Virginia’s slave code? How can we causes of their problems. Professor of ignore the influence of that code, that “bill of The intractable nature of racial inequal- History at The Ohio State rights denied,” which withheld from African ity is a part of the tragedy that is American University and Americans the very same civil liberties Madi- slavery. But the saga of slavery is not exclu- chair of the son sought to safeguard for white people? sively a story of despair; hard history is not Teaching Hard History Adviso- Our discomfort with hard history and hopeless history. ry Board. our fondness for historical fiction also lead Finding the promise and possibility with- us to make bad public policy. We choose to in hard history requires considering the lives ignore the fact that when slavery ended, of the enslaved on their own terms. Trapped white Southerners carried the mindsets of in an unimaginable hell, enslaved African enslavers with them into the post-emancipa- Americans forged unbreakable bonds with tion period, creating new exploitative labor one another. Indeed, no one knew better the arrangements such as sharecropping, new meaning and importance of family and com- disenfranchisement mechanisms including munity than the enslaved. They fought back literacy tests and new discriminatory social too, in the field and in the house, resisting systems, namely Jim Crow. It took African enslavers in ways that ranged from feigned Americans more than a century to eliminate ignorance to flight and armed rebellion. these legal barriers to equality, but that has In much the same way, we need to consid- not been enough to erase race-based dispar- er the lives of Indigenous people, including ities in every aspect of American life, from those who were held in bondage. Indigenous education and employment to wealth and people experienced a horrific genocide, but well-being. In much the same way, we turn they survived this holocaust, buoyed by a a blind eye toward the federal government’s fierce determination and resistive spirit that dismissive and discriminatory treatment of reflected longstanding cultural traditions Indigenous people, which continued long and political practices.

6 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY Indeed, Indigenous people fought back just like enslaved Africans. In 1680, the Pueblo nations revolted against Spanish colonizers, driving the invaders out of their ancestral home in present-day New Mexico and keeping them away for a dozen years. The Yamasee rebelled too, forging an alliance with other Native nations in the British-con- trolled Carolina colony. In 1715, they killed one in 10 Europeans in a bold bid to throw off the yoke of colonial oppression. Resistance enabled Native nations to survive European colonization and American territorial expansion. Despite the stubborn insistence that Indigenous people have disappeared, a tale spun to ease our anxiety about crimes against humanity committed in the name of advancing American civiliza- tion, Indigenous people remain—profoundly impacted, but with their cultures vibrant and communities strong. America’s founders were visionaries, but their vision was severely limited. Slavery blinded them, preventing them from seeing everyone as equal. We the people have the opportunity to broaden the founders’ vision, to make racial equality real. But we can no longer avoid the most troubling aspects of our past. We have to have the courage to teach hard history, beginning with slavery.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 7 Introduction

Welcome to Teaching Tolerance’s revised need to truly understand if they are to grasp 6–12 framework for teaching American slav- the historical significance of slavery. The Key ery.1 The team of educators and scholars who Concepts also serve as tools educators can use worked on this project are passionate about to structure their teaching. its importance and pleased to share this outline of the components of the framework 2 These ideas are expanded in the chrono- along with advice for how to use them. logical scope and sequence, which breaks the Our goal is to inspire a widespread com- framework into five eras to provide a blue- mitment to robust and effective teaching print for integrating American slavery across about American slavery in K–12 classrooms. the entire span of pre-1877 American history. This history is fundamental to understanding Each era is designated with a section title and our nation’s past and its present. If the topic with dates so teachers can skip to a particular is taught with inadequate breadth or depth, time period or consult the framework contin- students are unable to draw connections uously as they move through their courses. between historical events and the concurrent struggles for racial equality or to contextu- 3 Each era also contains “Summary alize how the world they inhabit today was Objectives,” broad student learning outcomes shaped by the institution of slavery and its related to the era. There are 22 Summary ideological progeny, white supremacy. Objectives in this document. These objectives In 2018, Teaching Tolerance issued A map to the Key Concepts. (See page 10.) Framework for Teaching American Slavery. The framework was welcomed and has been 4 Beneath each Summary Objective, the widely used by teachers, scholars and edu- framework includes two sections providing cational leaders at all levels, many of whom additional support for teaching that objective. have engaged with us to expand the work. Because the literature on American slavery is This new edition tells a substantially more vast and we don’t expect all teachers to be con- inclusive story about American slavery—one tent experts, we’ve included a section titled that includes the enslavement of Indigenous “What else should my students know?” for people. This framework and its elementary each Summary Objective. This section provides companion are the results of extensive work key content at a more granular level. with historians and educators. It has many additions, subtractions and improvements to 5 The last section of each Summary Objective its first iteration. We are confident that it will is called “How can I teach this?” This section improve upon the support we offer to educa- provides information about critical resources tors seeking to teach the essential history of that can help educators plan lessons for each American slavery. objective. Many of these resources—and scores of other primary and secondary sources—are 1 The Framework begins with 10 “Key available for download in the Teaching Hard Concepts,” important ideas that students History Text Library.

1 “American” is used instead of “United States” because the framework addresses the history of slavery beginning before the colonization of lands that are now the United States.

8 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY KEY CONCEPTS 1. Slavery, which was practiced by Europeans prior to their arrival Pre-Colonial and inthe Americas, was important to all of the colonial powers and existed in all of the European North American colonies. Colonial Era | to 1763 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the economy SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 1 to enslave; some colonists fi nanced or other- across British North America and, later, the Students will recognize that slavery existed wise encouraged Native American allies to United States. around the world prior to the European settle- engage in wars with other Native Americans 3. Protections for slavery were embedded in the ment of North America. for the purpose of acquiring Native Americans founding documents; MAPS TO KEY CONCEPT 1 to enslave. In South Carolina, English enslave- enslavers dominated the federal government, ment of Native Americans was so pervasive and Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 What else should my students know? lucrative that it fi nanced the rise of American through 1860. 1.ABefore the 15th century, most enslaved rice plantations. 4. “Slavery was an people were not Africans. Even the plantation institution of power,” designed to create system itself did not begin with African labor: How can I teach this? profit for the enslavers and break the will of Until the 1450s, European ugar planters in The BBC program Story of Africa and its accom- the enslaved and was the Mediterranean imported enslaved laborers panying website allow users to search for a relentless quest for profit abetted by from parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. information about slavery and the slave trade racism.* in Africa. t-t.site/story-africa 5. Enslaved people resisted the eŠ orts of 1.BSlavery was widespread in larger African their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in kingdoms (the Kongo and Asante, for exam- “Indian Slavery in the Americas” by Alan Gallay both revolutionary and ple). It was quite limited in smaller societies is a short essay on the Gilder Lehrman Institute and fundamentally changed the existing slave based on data including (but not limited to) ori- everyday ways. in regions like the Upper Guinea Coast. of American History website, available to K-12 trade in Africa. The demand for enslaved peo- gin, destination or date. t-t.site/slave-voyages 6. The experience of slavery varied depending teachers with a free account. It is accessible as ple in the European colonies of the Western on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of 1.CIn many African societies, people became a reading assignment for upper-level students Hemisphere greatly expanded the African slave “Stowage on the Slave Ship Brookes, 1788” slaveholding and gender. enslaved when they were captured during war. or can be used as teacher preparation. trade beyond its traditional wartime context. represents 18th-century guidelines for trans- 7. Slavery was the The status of enslaved people changed as they t-t.site/indian-slavery porting enslaved people during the Middle central cause of the Civil War. 2.D learned the customs and integrated into their Europeans believed that dark skin color Passage. Abolitionists used this image to con- 8. Slavery shaped the captors’ community. Slavery was not always (which they hyperbolically described as vey the horrifying conditions enslaved people fundamental beliefs of Americans about intergenerational; the children of enslaved SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 2 “black”), lack of Christianity and different suœ ered while being forcibly transported from race and whiteness, and white supremacy parents were not necessarily enslaved. Students will be able to describe the slave trade styles of dress were evidence that Africans were Africa to the Americas. was both a product and from Africa to the Americas. less civilized. legacy of slavery. 1.DSlavery was a part of some Native American MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 & 10 Portuguese chronicler Gomes Eannes de 9. Enslaved and free people of African societies before European settlement. In some 2.EThe Middle Passage was the voyage of Azurara compiled accounts of the slave trade descent had a profound impact on American Native American societies, slavery could be What else should my students know? enslaved people from the west coast of Africa circa 1450. His description of the division of culture, producing socially alienating. But others had a built-in 2.AIn the 1400s, Portugal was the earliest par- to the Americas. Enslaved people endured trau- captives demonstrates the prejudices of the leaders and literary, artistic and folk fl exibility about slavery, so enslaved people ticipant in the transaltantic slave trade. It was matic conditions on slavers' ships, including Europeans and the horrors of the slave trade. traditions that continue could integrate into their societies and even followed by other European nations. cramped quarters, meager rations and phys- to influence the nation. 10. By knowing how become people of power and influence. ical and sexual assault. Excerpts from slaver John Newton’s journal to read and interpret 2.BWestern Hemispheric destinations of describe the terrors of the Middle Passage, the sources that tell the story of American 1.EEuropean colonists in North America captive Africans included South America, the How can I teach this? including disease, suicide attempts and sex- slavery, we gain insight into some of what bought, sold and enslaved Native Americans. Caribbean and North America. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database maps ual assault. He also discusses the ways enslaved enslaving and enslaved Some white colonists engaged in wars for the the destinations of ships of the Middle Passage people resisted their captors, including plans Americans aspired to, created, thought explicit purpose of acquiring Native Americans 2.CEuropean slave traders participated in and allows users to search slave trade voyages for violent rebellion. and desired.

8 TEACHING HARD HISTORY FRAMEWORK TEACHING TOLERANCE 9

Available through the Teaching Tolerance nuanced primary and secondary sources website, tolerance.org, the Teaching Hard that educators and students can rely on to Each chrono- History Text Library provides educators with further meaningful inquiry and dialogue. It logical era includes a free access to a large collection of primary must also acknowledge the causal connec- description of and secondary sources they can use as they tion between American slavery and white how to teach implement the framework in their curric- supremacy, an ideology that disrupts inter- the relevant Summary ulum and their classrooms. The library is group relationships and undermines justice Objectives. searchable by topic, author or grade level, in our country even today. It is our hope that The blue links and each text includes an introduction and the Key Concepts, Summary Objectives and indicate re- sources found reading questions for students. additional teaching resources presented in on the Teaching Any national effort to improve our teach- A 6–12 Framework for Teaching American Tolerance ing about enslavement must help educators Slavery accomplish these goals and, in doing website. The purple links integrate this history into the existing curric- so, significantly raise the quality of our na- indicate exter- ula. It must make clear connections between tional dialogue about race, racism and racial nal supporting the institution of slavery and the major reconciliation. resources. events of American history. It must provide

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 9 Key Concepts and Summary Objectives

The Key Concepts are important ideas that students must truly understand if they are to grasp the historical significance of slavery. They also serve as tools educators can use to structure their teaching. Summary Objectives are broad student learning outcomes related to each chronological era in the frame- work. Each of the 22 Summary Objectives maps to at least one Key Concept.

KEY CONCEPTS

1. Slavery, which Europeans practiced before they invaded the Americas, was important to all colonial powers and existed in all North American colonies.

2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the colonial economies and what is now the United States.

3. Protections for slavery were embedded in the founding documents; enslavers dominated the federal government, Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 through 1860.

4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” designed to create profit for the enslavers and break the will of the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism.*

5. Enslaved people resisted the efforts of their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in both revolutionary and everyday ways.

6. The experience of slavery varied depending on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of slaveholding and gender.

7. Slavery was the central cause of the Civil War.

8. Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs of Americans about race and whiteness, and white supremacy was both a product and legacy of slavery.

9. Enslaved and freed people worked to maintain cultural traditions while building new ones that sustain communities and impact the larger world.

10. By knowing how to read and interpret the sources that tell the story of American slavery, we gain insight into some of what enslaving and enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

Ira Berlin, “Foreword: The Short Course for Bringing Slavery into the Classroom in Ten Not-So-Easy Pieces” in Understanding and Teach- *ing American Slavery, ed. Bethany Jay and Cynthia Lyerly (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016), xviii.

10 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY SUMMARY OBJECTIVES KEY CONCEPT

PRE-COLONIAL AND COLONIAL ERA | TO 1763 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1. Students will recognize that slavery existed around the world prior to the European invasion of North America, changing forms depending on time and place. The enslaved often were perceived as outsiders: captives in war, the vanquished or colonized, or ethnic/religious others. 2. Students will describe the nature and extent of colonial enslavement of Indigenous people.

3. Students will describe the slave trade from Africa to the Americas.

4. Students will demonstrate the impact of slavery on the development of the French, British and Spanish colonies in North America. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND THE CONSTITUTION | 1763–1787 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

5. Students will describe the roles that slavery, Native nations and African Americans played in the Revolutionary War.

6. Students will demonstrate the ways that the Constitution provided direct and indirect protection to slavery and imbued enslavers and slave states with increased political power. SLAVERY IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC | 1787–1808 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

7. Students will examine how the Revolutionary War affected the institution of slavery in the new nation and the ways that slavery shaped domestic and foreign policy in the early Republic. THE CHANGING FACE OF SLAVERY | 1808–1848 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

8. Students will examine how the expanding cotton economy spurred Indian Removal and the domestic slave trade.

9. Students will describe the principal ways the labor of enslaved people was organized and controlled in what is now the United States. 10. Students will analyze the growth of the abolitionist movement in the 1830s and the slaveholding states’ view of the movement as a physical, economic and political threat.

11. Students will recognize that enslaved people resisted slavery in ways that ranged from violence to smaller, everyday means of asserting their humanity and opposing their enslavers.

12. Students will discuss the nature, persistence and impact of the spiritual beliefs and cultures of enslaved people. THE SECTIONAL CRISIS AND CIVIL WAR | 1848–1877 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

13. Students will examine the expansion of slavery as a key factor in the domestic and foreign policy decisions of the United States in the 19th century.

14. Students will analyze the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln and the subsequent decision that several slave states made to secede from the Union to ensure the preservation and expansion of slavery. 15. Students will examine how Union policies concerning slavery and African American military service and describe how free black and enslaved communities affected the Civil War. 16. Students will examine how Indigenous people participated in and were affected by the Civil War.

17. Students will recognize that slavery continued in many forms in many forms through most of the 19th century in what is now the United States.

18. Students will examine the ways that people who were enslaved tried to claim their freedom after the Civil War.

19. Students will examine the ways that the federal government’s policies affected the lives of formerly enslaved people. 20. Students will examine the ways that white Southerners attempted to define freedom for freed African Americans.

21. Students will examine the impact of the Compromise of 1877 and the removal of federal troops from the former Confederacy. 22. Students will examine the ways that the legacies of slavery, white supremacy and settler colonialism continue to affect life in what is now the United States.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 11 Pre-Colonial and Colonial Era | to 1763

traders enslaved and sold millions of Africans SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 1 beginning in the eighth century. Enslavement Students will recognize that slavery existed was common in the Mayan empire. When around the world prior to the European invasion Europeans arrived, most enslaved people in of North America, changing forms depend- Africa and the Americas were war captives. ing on time and place. The enslaved often were Once taken, their lives differed. In some soci- perceived as outsiders: captives in war, the van- eties, slavery could be socially alienating, with quished or colonized, or ethnic or religious others. enslaved people considered as labor, pres- MAPS TO KEY CONCEPT 1 tige goods or expendable. In other societies, enslaved people could integrate into kinship What else should my students know? networks and even become people of power 1.A Slavery is the holding of people through and influence. In North America, as in Africa, force, fraud or coercion for purposes of European intervention greatly expanded sexual exploitation or forced labor so that the slavery in scale, scope and consequence. enslaver can extract profit.2

1.B While people have enslaved others in How can I teach this? many ways in different times and places, un- The BBC program Story of Africa and its ac- free labor is not always slavery. For example, companying website allow users to search for chattel slavery is an intergenerational system information about slavery and the slave trade of slavery where individuals are held as prop- in Africa. t-t.site/slavery1 erty and traded as commodities. Indentured servants are not enslaved. They sell their la- Paul T. Conrad’s chapter “Why You Can’t bor for a certain number of years to pay a debt. Teach the History of U.S. Slavery without American Indians” in the edited volume Why 1.C Europeans enslaved people long before You Can’t Teach United States History Without colonization. Slavery was widespread in the American Indians offers teaching suggestions Roman Empire, and later justified on the ba- for how to engage the histories of, for example, sis of religion during the Crusades. Until the Chaco Canyon, Cabeza de Vaca and the early 1450s, European sugar planters in the Med- trade of enslaved Indigenous people in the iterranean imported enslaved laborers from Carolinas. These lessons help students think parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. about what slavery is, how it existed in North America before the arrival of Europeans and 1.D Slavery was common in Africa and the how European involvement changed the prac- Americas before European invasion. Arab tice on the continent. t-t.site/slavery3

2. Adapted from Free the Slaves. t-t.site/slavery2

12 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY KEY CONCEPTS 1. Slavery, which Europeans practiced before they invaded the Americas, was important to all colonial powers and existed in all North American colonies. 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the colonial economies and what is now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery were embedded in the founding documents; enslavers dominated the federal government, Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 through 1860. 4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” designed to create profit for the enslavers and break the will of the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism. 5. Enslaved people 2.C European pursuit of enslaved Indige- resisted the efforts of SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 2 their enslavers to reduce nous labor caused widespread warfare. Of- them to commodities in Students will describe the nature and extent ten, colonists financed or otherwise coerced both revolutionary and everyday ways. of colonial enslavement of Indigenous people. their Indigenous allies to engage in wars with 6. The experience of MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 1, 2 & 4 other Indigenous peoples for the purpose of slavery varied depending on time, location, crop, acquiring people to enslave. Some Native na- labor performed, size of What else should my students know? tions initiated conflicts and capture to profit slaveholding and gender. 2.A Throughout the Americas, Europeans from selling captives to Europeans. 7. Slavery was the central cause of the enslaved between 2.5 million and 5 million Civil War. Indigenous people. In much of what is now 2.D The violence of slavery further dev- 8. Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs North America, Indigenous people were astated Native nations already weakened of Americans about bought and sold until the late 19th century. race and whiteness, by European-introduced diseases. Because and white supremacy of the combined effects of disease, slavery was both a product and legacy of slavery. 2.B All European colonies enslaved Indige- and war, the Indigenous population in the 9. Enslaved and freed nous people for profit, justifying the practice Americas declined from 60 million people to people worked to because of perceived racial and cultural maintain cultural as few as 4 million by the 1600s. These pop- traditions while building inferiority. Many enslaved Indigenous peo- ulations later rebounded significantly, and new ones that sustain communities and impact ple were forced to labor far from home, as today there are about 5.2 million Indigenous the larger world. evidenced by the mass export of women and people living in the United States alone. 10. By knowing how to children to Europe and the Caribbean, often read and interpret the sources that tell the story called the “Reverse Middle Passage.” Some- of American slavery, we gain insight into some times the profit from these sales was used to How can I teach this? of what enslaving and purchase enslaved Africans to work in the New research suggests that the European enslaved Americans aspired to, created, American colonies. invasion of the Americas may have resulted thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 13 commemorate “Spanish America” and are very controversial. t-t.site/slavery6 • t-t.site/ slavery7

Historians are still trying to figure out how many Indigenous people were enslaved in the Americas. Students should examine what their textbooks say about this practice and compare representations with current estimates.

An episode of the NPR podcast Hidden Brain provides useful context for examining the enslavement of Indigenous people. t-t.site/slavery8

“Indian Slavery in the Americas” by Alan Gal- lay is accessible as a reading assignment for upper-level students or can be used as teach- er preparation. K–12 educators can create a school account for free access through the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. t-t.site/slavery9

The Native History Project at Grinnell Col- lege offers sample lesson plans for teaching the history of Indigenous enslavement. t-t.site/slavery10 “Stowage on in the deaths of as much as 90 percent of the the Slave Ship continent’s Indigenous population. For more on the colonial enslavement of In- Brookes, 1788” t-t.site/slavery4 represents digenous people, see Margaret Ellen Newell’s 18th-century essay “The Changing Nature of Indian Slav- guidelines for Enslaving Indigenous people was a primary ery in New England, 1670–1720,” available transporting goal of many Spanish “explorers,” but most through the website of the Colonial Society enslaved people textbooks and memorials do not discuss during the of Massachusetts. t-t.site/slavery11 Middle Passage. this. Students should learn that Christopher Abolitionists Columbus and Ponce de León were enslavers “Written Out of History: Contemporary Na- used this image and examine contemporary representations tive American Narratives of Enslavement,” to convey the of these figures.t-t.site/slavery5 horrifying available with a free login on Academia.edu, conditions draws on oral traditions from contemporary enslaved people To connect the past to the present, students Native nations to explore the history of In- suffered while should learn about Juan de Oñate, whose digenous slavery. t-t.site/slavery12 being forcibly brutality toward Acoma captives is still the transported subject of protests in New Mexico. An epi- from Africa to The National Humanities Center has the Americas. sode of the podcast 99% Invisible tells that excerpted accounts of the enslavement of story. Many statues were erected by Mexican Indigenous peoples in the Spanish Caribbean American and Hispanic organizations to from 1495 to 1544. t-t.site/slavery13 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, RARE BOOK AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS DIVISION, PRINTED EPHEMERA COLLECTION DIVISION, PRINTED EPHEMERA COLLECTIONS AND SPECIAL BOOK RARE OF CONGRESS, LIBRARY

14 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY Slate has prepared an interactive graphic enslaved Native people, women and children showing the names of all of the enslaved were the most highly valued because they people in the colonies of New France be- were thought to be less rebellious and more tween 1660 and 1760. It explains the trends suited to household labor. Enslavers assigned in Indigenous slavery in New France and will different values to enslaved Africans and KEY CONCEPTS help students to explore the impact of French African Americans, particularly in the 19th 1. Slavery, which culture on Indigenous populations. century. Men in their mid-20s were the most Europeans practiced before they invaded the t-t.site/slavery14 expensive because of their physical strength; Americas, was important to all colonial powers young enslaved African women were most and existed in all North valuable before puberty because of the as- American colonies. sumption that they would have children who 2. Slavery and the slave SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 3 trade were central to would be the property of their enslaver. the development and Students will describe the slave trade from growth of the colonial Africa to the Americas. economies and what is now the United States. MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 & 10 3. Protections for slavery How can I teach this? were embedded in the founding documents; What else should my students know? Slave Voyages maps the destinations of ships enslavers dominated 3.A Western Hemispheric destinations of of the Middle Passage and allows users to the federal government, Supreme Court and captive Africans included South America, the search slave trade voyages based on data Senate from 1787 Caribbean and North America. including (but not limited to) origin, destina- through 1860. 4. “Slavery was an tion or date. t-t.site/slavery221 institution of power,” 3.B European slave traders participated designed to create profit for the enslavers in and fundamentally changed the existing Slate has developed a short interactive an- and break the will of the enslaved and was slave trade in Africa. The demand for en- imation illustrating the transatlantic trade a relentless quest for slaved people in the European colonies of in enslaved people. With an accompanying profit abetted by racism. 5. Enslaved people the Western Hemisphere greatly expanded short essay by Jamelle Bouie, the video offers resisted the efforts of the African slave trade beyond taking people a global perspective of the trade over time. their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in captive in war. t-t.site/slavery21 both revolutionary and everyday ways. 6. The experience of 3.C Europeans argued that dark skin color “Stowage on the Slave Ship Brookes, 1788” slavery varied depending (which they hyperbolically described as represents 18th-century guidelines for on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of “black”), lack of Christianity and different transporting enslaved people during the slaveholding and gender. styles of dress were evidence that Africans Middle Passage. Abolitionists used this image 7. Slavery was the central cause of the were less civilized. These were rationales for to convey the horrifying conditions enslaved Civil War. enslavement. Many believed that it was gen- people suffered while being forcibly trans- 8. Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs erally acceptable to enslave non-Christians. ported from Africa to the Americas. of Americans about t-t.site/slavery22 race and whiteness, and white supremacy 3.D The Middle Passage was the voyage of was both a product and enslaved people from the west coast of Africa Portuguese chronicler Gomes Eannes de legacy of slavery. 9. Enslaved and freed to the Americas, usually via the Caribbean. Azurara compiled accounts of the slave trade people worked to Enslaved people endured traumatic condi- circa 1450. His description of the division of maintain cultural traditions while building tions on slavers’ ships, including cramped captives demonstrates the prejudices of the new ones that sustain communities and impact quarters, meager rations and physical and Europeans and the horrors of the slave trade. the larger world. sexual assault. t-t.site/slavery23 10. By knowing how to read and interpret the sources that tell the story 3.E Enslavers assigned monetary value to Excerpts from slaver John Newton’s journal of American slavery, we gain insight into some the people they traded. These prices varied describe the horrors of the Middle Passage, of what enslaving and over time and place. For much of the trade in including disease, suicide attempts and enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 15 sexual assault. He also discusses the ways en- Indigenous. In the Caribbean and Louisiana, slaved people resisted their captors, includ- French colonists developed vast plantations ing plans for violent rebellion. powered by enslaved African and Indigenous t-t.site/slavery24 laborers. Intense work, poor diet and unre- lenting heat made sugar plantations espe- The Clotilda was the last known ship carrying cially deadly. In the 1600s and 1700s, many enslaved Africans to what is now the United enslaved people were Indigenous captives States. Examining its recent discovery and the whom the French acquired through warfare importance of this finding for descendent com- or trade. But plummeting Indigenous popu- munities makes connections to the present. lation levels led the French to rely increas- t-t.site/slavery25 ingly on the African slave trade.

4.D Enslavement was widespread under SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 4 Spanish rule in the Americas. Colonists Students will demonstrate the impact of slav- relied upon labor by enslaved Indigenous ery on the development of the French, British and African people forced to mine for gold and Spanish colonies in North America. and silver, grow crops and perform domestic MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 & 10 labor. The monarchy’s repeated attempts to constrain or outlaw the enslavement of What else should my students know? Indigenous people did not end it. Colonists 4.A Enslaved labor was essential to the defied the crown outright or exploited ex- economy of all colonies in North America. ceptions, including the establishment of the Enslaved people produced the major agricul- repartimiento system whereby Indigenous tural and mineral exports of the colonial era, people were legally free but wealthy colo- including tobacco, rice, sugar, indigo, silver nizers still forced them to work. As Euro- and gold. peans sought to profit from enslaved labor, Indigenous peoples increasingly sold people 4.B Indigenous people were enslaved captured during war instead of integrating throughout all British colonies. The trade in captives into their communities. Some Na- enslaved Indigenous people contributed to tive nations exploited colonial loopholes by transformative conflicts such as the Pequot taking control of the initial capture and sale War and King Philip’s War. After the Yamasee of newly enslaved Indigenous people. War, several Southern Native nations rose up against British trade practices and nearly destroyed South Carolina. Thereafter, British How can I teach this? colonies increasingly turned toward enslav- The resources of the Whitney Plantation in ing Africans in much larger numbers. The Louisiana offer valuable perspective on the English in the Middle Colonies and New En- history of enslavement in the French colo- gland were involved in slavery and its related nies. t-t.site/slavery26 trade, shipping foodstuffs, lumber and other necessities in exchange for rice, sugar and In 1537, Spanish colonizers were alerted molasses produced by enslaved people. to the possibility of a plot among enslaved African and Indigenous people. The Viceroy 4.C Enslavement varied in French colonies. of New Spain wrote to the king to explain the In New France, most enslaved people were situation and recommend that the number

16 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY of Africans sent to the colony be reduced. the Louisiana Purchase) is a useful resource. The National Humanities Center provides t-t.site/slavery31 excerpts from his report. t-t.site/slavery27 The British Library collection includes a let- ter that an English planter in the West Indies Slavery could be used as a punishment in a KEY CONCEPTS “holy war” or a “just war.” These designa- wrote in response to the growing abolitionist 1. Slavery, which tions came from legal and religious author- movement in England. The unnamed planter Europeans practiced before they invaded the ities, depending on place and time. If an uses racist arguments to make the case that Americas, was important to all colonial powers enemy refused to accept Christ, they could slavery is beneficial to African people. and existed in all North be enslaved. The “Requirement,” a document t-t.site/slavery32 American colonies. widely used in the Spanish conquest of the 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to Americas, warned populations that failure In a short video from Teaching Tolerance, the development and growth of the colonial to accept Christianity would lead to enslave- Dr. Ibram X. Kendi shows how Virginian economies and what is ment. The Spanish used this concept to jus- colonists protected slavery to ensure their now the United States. wealth. t-t.site/slavery33 3. Protections for slavery tify enslaving millions of Indigenous people. were embedded in the The National Humanities Center archives founding documents; enslavers dominated the full text of the 1510 Requerimiento. Episode three of Teaching Tolerance’s Teach- the federal government, t-t.site/slavery28 ing Hard History: American Slavery podcast Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 discusses the ways that enslavement was through 1860. The 1641 Massachusetts Body of Liberties critical for the Northern economy. 4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” was the first British North American colonial t-t.site/slavery20 designed to create profit for the enslavers statute to formally establish the legality of and break the will of slavery. t-t.site/slavery29 the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism. The Triangular Trade is one way to discuss 5. Enslaved people resisted the efforts of Northern colonies’ complicity in slavery their enslavers to reduce and the slave trade. Fish and foodstuffs from them to commodities in both revolutionary and Northern colonies were traded to the West everyday ways. Indies to feed the enslaved population. In 6. The experience of slavery varied depending return, Northern merchants brought home on time, location, crop, sugar and molasses produced by the enslaved labor performed, size of slaveholding and gender. population. That sugar and molasses were 7. Slavery was the distilled into rum in Northern distilleries. central cause of the Civil War. Northern enslavers and traders sent some 8. Slavery shaped the of that rum to West Africa, where it was fundamental beliefs of Americans about exchanged for enslaved Africans. Those en- race and whiteness, slaved Africans were sold to the West Indies and white supremacy was both a product and and mainland British North America. The legacy of slavery. Crispus Attucks Museum has a useful graphic 9. Enslaved and freed people worked to depicting the Triangular Trade. maintain cultural t-t.site/slavery30 traditions while building new ones that sustain communities and impact When studying the culture of slavery in Cath- the larger world. 10. By knowing how to olic colonies, the Code Noir (the set of French read and interpret the laws regulating slavery in Louisiana before sources that tell the story of American slavery, we gain insight into some of what enslaving and enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 17 The American Revolution and the Constitution | 1763–1787

SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 5 cord and Bunker Hill, but General George Students will describe the roles that slavery, Washington opposed including them in the Native nations and African Americans played Continental Army. After the British offered in the Revolutionary War. freedom to black men, Washington relented. MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 2, 3, 5, 9 & 10 He raised a black regiment to reinforce the Continental Army, and thousands of black What else should my students know? men fought in the Continental Army or at sea. 5.A The Declaration of Independence addressed slavery in several ways, including 5.E The British actively recruited free and author Thomas Jefferson’s indictment of the enslaved black men. Though the British prom- crown’s initiation of the slave trade (delet- ised freedom in return for service, black Loy- ed from the final draft) and the charge that alists faced an uncertain future as the British the king had “excited domestic insurrection retreated at the end of the war. Many fled and among us.” The document also describes In- others were captured and re-enslaved. digenous people as “merciless Indian Savages.”

5.B Free and enslaved people used the lan- How can I teach this? guage of the Revolution to argue for their own Prince Hall, a free man who had been en- rights. African American and Indigenous par- slaved in Boston, is believed to have fought ticipation in the war was largely in pursuit of at Bunker Hill. He claimed Indigenous and freedom rather than loyalty to a particular side. African ancestry. An active Freemason, he also authored the 1777 “Slaves’ Petition for 5.C Many Native nations fought in the Freedom to the Massachusetts Legislature.” Revolutionary War on both sides, while others t-t.site/slavery35 tried to remain neutral. Disagreements about the Revolution split the Iroquois Confederacy. For colonists using the metaphor of slavery, Most nations allied with the British because see the 1764 tract by James Otis, “The Rights they hoped to end further colonial encroach- of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved.” ment. After the war, even nations that had t-t.site/slavery36 sided with the colonists lost land and liberties. Several other documents demonstrate the 5.D Black soldiers participated in the early ways that enslaved colonists argued for their Revolutionary battles of Lexington, Con- rights, including:

18 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY KEY CONCEPTS 1. Slavery, which Europeans practiced before they invaded the Americas, was important to all colonial powers and existed in all North American colonies. 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the colonial economies and what is now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery were embedded in the founding documents; enslavers dominated the federal government, Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 through 1860. 4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” designed to create profit for the enslavers and break the will of the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism. 5. Enslaved people resisted the efforts of their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in both revolutionary and • “Peter Bestes and Other Slaves Petition “A Proclamation of the Earl of Dunmore” everyday ways. 6. The experience of for Freedom, 1773” t-t.site/slavery37 (the Royal Governor of Virginia) offered slavery varied depending freedom to any men enslaved by Patriots who on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of • “Petition to End Slavery in Connecticut, agreed to risk their lives by fighting for the slaveholding and gender. 1788” t-t.site/slavery38 Loyalists. t-t.site/slavery43 7. Slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. • “1779 Freedom Petition to the New Hamp- The Black Brigade of Loyalists, the Ethiopian 8. Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs shire State Legislature” t-t.site/slavery39 Regiment and the Black Pioneers were famous of Americans about groups of Loyalist soldiers. Boston King and race and whiteness, and white supremacy • Phillis Wheatley’s 1774 letter to Samson Colonel Tye were two famous black Loyalists. was both a product and Occum t-t.site/slavery40 legacy of slavery. 9. Enslaved and freed The Book of Negroes documents the service people worked to Though painted after the fact, John Trum- of 3,000 black Loyalist soldiers evacuated by maintain cultural traditions while building bull’s The Death of General Warren at the the British to Nova Scotia. new ones that sustain communities and impact Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775 (ca. 1815) the larger world. and Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing Among the primary documents available 10. By knowing how to read and interpret the the Delaware (ca. 1851) both include images through the website of the PBS series Afri- sources that tell the story of African American soldiers. cans in America is a British pass issued to a of American slavery, we gain insight into some t-t.site/slavery41 • t-t.site/slavery42 black Loyalist in 1783 ensuring transport to of what enslaving and enslaved Americans Nova Scotia. t-t.site/slavery44 aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 19 During the Boston Massacre, British soldiers killed five protesters. Crispus Attucks, a black sailor who had formerly been enslaved, was the first man killed.

The website of Colonial Williamsburg details shows how teachers can use process drama in the story of Harry Washington, a laborer the classroom with an example drawn from enslaved by George Washington who fought decisions enslaved people had to make during for the British and was evacuated from New the Revolutionary War. t-t.site/slavery48 York City over Washington’s protests. t-t.site/slavery45 SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 6 The essay “African Americans in the Revolu- Students will demonstrate the ways that the tionary War” by Michael Lee Lanning offers Constitution provided direct and indirect pro- an overview of African American service tection to slavery and imbued enslavers and on both sides of the war. K–12 educators slave states with increased political power. can create a school account for free access MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 2, 3, 4, 7 & 10 through the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. t-t.site/slavery46 What else should my students know? 6.A Articles 1, 4 and 5 of the Constitution The essay “American Indians and the Amer- offer direct protection of slavery. ican Revolution” by Colin Calloway offers an overview of Indigenous participation on both • Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 – The sides of the war. t-t.site/slavery47 “three-fifths” clause counted three-fifths of the enslaved population to determine Episode five of Teaching Tolerance’sTeach - a state’s representation in Congress. The ing Hard History: American Slavery podcast clause also stated that three-fifths of the PHOTO BY ANN RONAN PICTURES/PRINT COLLECTOR/GETTY IMAGES COLLECTOR/GETTY PICTURES/PRINT ANN RONAN BY PHOTO

20 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY enslaved population would be counted if a di- • Article 4, Section 3, Paragraph 1 – This rect tax were levied on the states according to section established a process to admit new population, though most delegates assumed states—both slave and free—to the Union. this would never happen.

• Article 4, Section 4 – This section guaran- KEY CONCEPTS • Article 1, Section 9, Paragraph 4 – This teed that the U.S. government would protect 1. Slavery, which section repeated the tax section of the three- states from “domestic Violence,” including Europeans practiced before they invaded the fifths clause. It reiterated that if a head tax rebellions by enslaved people. Americas, was important to all colonial powers were ever levied, enslaved persons would be and existed in all North taxed at three-fifths the rate of white people. • Article 5 – This section required three- American colonies. fourths of the states to ratify any amendment 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to • Article 1, Section 9, Paragraph 9 – The to the Constitution. This gave slave states a veto the development and growth of the colonial slave trade clause prohibited Congress from over any constitutional changes so long as they economies and what is banning the international slave trade before were not greatly outnumbered by free states. now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery 1808. It did not require Congress to ban the were embedded in the trade at that time. This clause exempted the 6.C The Constitution created a federal gov- founding documents; enslavers dominated slave trade from the Congressional power to ernment without the power to interfere in the the federal government, Supreme Court and regulate interstate commerce. domestic institutions of the states. This ensured Senate from 1787 that the federal government could not emanci- through 1860. • Article 4, Section 2, Paragraph 3 – The pate enslaved people in particular states. 4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” “fugitive slave” clause required that people designed to create profit for the enslavers who escaped enslavement be returned to their and break the will of enslavers even if they had fled to another state. the enslaved and was How can I teach this? a relentless quest for Between 1787 and 1860, the majority of pres- profit abetted by racism. • Article 5 – This article prohibited any 5. Enslaved people idents and Supreme Court justices enslaved resisted the efforts of amendment of the slave trade or head tax people. Students could research presidents their enslavers to reduce clauses before 1808. them to commodities in and justices to determine the role that slav- both revolutionary and ery played in the lives of some of the most everyday ways. 6.B Articles 1, 2, 4 and 5 also offer indirect 6. The experience of powerful Americans. slavery varied depending protection of slavery. on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of The speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth slaveholding and gender. • Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 15 – This of July?” by Frederick Douglass draws specif- 7. Slavery was the section empowered the use of the militia to central cause of the ic and repeated attention to the hypocrisy of Civil War. suppress rebellions, including rebellions by a “land of liberty” that preserves and defends 8. Slavery shaped the enslaved people. fundamental beliefs slavery. t-t.site/slavery49 of Americans about race and whiteness, • Article 1, Section 9, Paragraph 5 – This and white supremacy The U.S. Constitution includes many connec- was both a product and section prohibited taxes on exports. This tions to slavery, enslaved people and enslav- legacy of slavery. prevented Congress from indirectly taxing 9. Enslaved and freed ers. Students could study the text of the doc- people worked to slavery by taxing products produced by en- ument itself to search for these connections. maintain cultural traditions while building slaved laborers. new ones that sustain communities and impact The Electoral College has affected elections the larger world. • Article 2, Section 1, Paragraph 2 – This since its founding. Students could research 10. By knowing how to section included the three-fifths clause as election results to explore this impact and read and interpret the sources that tell the story part of the Electoral College, giving white examine arguments for and against retaining of American slavery, we people in slave states a disproportionate gain insight into some the Electoral College. of what enslaving and influence in the election of the president. enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 21 In a short video by Teaching Tolerance, Dr. Annette Gordon-Reed shows how debates over slavery shaped the founding documents of the United States. t-t.site/slavery50

Episodes 10 and 11 of Teaching Tolerance’s Teaching Hard History: American Slavery podcast explore the many ways the Consti- tution and the Supreme Court protected slavery. t-t.site/slavery51 • t-t.site/slavery52

22 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY KEY CONCEPTS 1. Slavery, which Europeans practiced before they invaded the Americas, was important to all colonial powers and existed in all North American colonies. 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the colonial economies and what is now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery were embedded in the founding documents; enslavers dominated the federal government, Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 through 1860. 4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” designed to create profit for the enslavers and break the will of the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism. 5. Enslaved people resisted the efforts of their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in both revolutionary and everyday ways. 6. The experience of slavery varied depending on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of slaveholding and gender. 7. Slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. 8. Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs of Americans about race and whiteness, and white supremacy was both a product and legacy of slavery. 9. Enslaved and freed people worked to maintain cultural traditions while building new ones that sustain communities and impact the larger world. 10. By knowing how to read and interpret the sources that tell the story of American slavery, we gain insight into some of what enslaving and enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 23 Slavery in the Early Republic | 1787–1808

SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 7 How can I teach this? Students will examine how the Revolutionary Northern racism after emancipation is War affected the institution of slavery in the new visible in examples of the racist laws that nation and the ways that slavery shaped domes- emerged to limit the freedoms of African tic and foreign policy in the early Republic. Americans. The resource bank of the PBS se- MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10 ries Africans in America provides an overview in the essay “Race-based Legislation in the What else should my students know? North.” t-t.site/slavery53 7.A In most Northern states, a combina- tion of gradual emancipation laws, court The Prudence Crandall School for Negro decisions and other laws prohibiting slavery Girls in Connecticut offers more evidence of began the process of eliminating slavery after the racism that persisted in the North even the Revolution. Racism delayed and drew after emancipation. The school became the out plans for emancipation so that formerly target of mob violence when Crandall began enslaved people were denied legal equality educating young black women in the 1830s. and economic opportunities. The legislation that emancipated enslaved 7.B In the Chesapeake (British colonies that people in Northern states may also be exam- later became Virginia and Maryland), the ined. In Pennsylvania (1780), Connecticut egalitarian rhetoric of the Revolution had a (1784), Rhode Island (1784) and New York mixed impact. For white Virginians, the law (1799), these laws required children born to had a fairly limited impact on slavery despite enslaved mothers to serve their mothers’ en- the decline of the tobacco industry. Portions slavers until they reached the age of majority of the free black and enslaved populations (between the ages of 18 and 25). In New York, used the ideas of the American and Haitian slavery did not end until 1827. Revolutions as inspiration for Gabriel’s Re- bellion, a planned uprising by enslaved people Two Virginia laws, from 1782 and 1806, pro- that was to take place in Richmond in 1800. vide evidence of a varied response to emanci- pation. Initially, Virginians seemed enthusi- 7.C The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) astic about allowing individuals to manumit, inspired enslaved Americans and frightened or free, enslaved people. The 1782 “Act their enslavers. The United States, where to Authorize the Manumission of Slaves” enslavers were disproportionately represent- allowed enslavers to grant freedom to those ed in all branches of government, refused to they enslaved without legislative approval. recognize Haiti’s independence from France However, after the plan for Gabriel’s Rebel- until 1862. lion was discovered, white Virginians became

24 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY KEY CONCEPTS 1. Slavery, which Europeans practiced before they invaded the Americas, was important to all colonial powers and existed in all North American colonies. 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the colonial economies and what is now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery were embedded in the founding documents; enslavers dominated the federal government, Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 through 1860. 4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” designed to create profit for the enslavers and break the will of the enslaved and was a relentless quest for wary of a large free black population. In 1806, Many online resources will assist instruction profit abetted by racism. the state legislature amended its emancipa- about Haiti—not only the Haitian Revolu- 5. Enslaved people resisted the efforts of tion policy to require that, once they were tion, but also the nation’s history and pres- their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in emancipated, freed people would have to be ent. t-t.site/slavery56 • t-t.site/slavery57 both revolutionary and deported from Virginia. t-t.site/slavery54 everyday ways. 6. The experience of slavery varied depending Accounts of Gabriel’s Rebellion show the on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of ways that free and enslaved black people slaveholding and gender. used Revolutionary rhetoric to plan acts of 7. Slavery was the central cause of the resistance to slavery. Multiple accounts note Civil War. that Gabriel Prosser, the leader of Gabriel’s 8. Slavery shaped the Rebellion, planned to create a flag with the fundamental beliefs of Americans about motto “Death or Liberty”—a slogan of the race and whiteness, and white supremacy Haitian Revolution that also echoed Amer- was both a product and ican revolutionary Patrick Henry. One 1804 legacy of slavery. 9. Enslaved and freed document points out that a conspirator in people worked to Gabriel’s Rebellion reportedly likened him- maintain cultural traditions while building self to George Washington. t-t.site/slavery55 new ones that sustain communities and impact the larger world. 10. By knowing how to read and interpret the sources that tell the story of American slavery, we gain insight into some of what enslaving and enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 25 The Changing Face of Slavery | 1808–1848

8.C Although Congress banned participa- SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 8 tion in the international slave trade in 1808, Students will examine how the expanding cot- geographic and economic expansion allowed ton economy spurred Indian Removal and the by Removal dramatically increased the domestic slave trade. domestic trade in enslaved people of African MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 & 10 descent. Enslavers wanted to use the labor of enslaved African Americans to maximize What else should my students know? profits and expand the plantation system. 8.A The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 During the first half of the 19th century, more had a dramatic effect on the profitability of than a million African Americans were forced short-staple cotton. The cotton gin allowed to move to parts of the Deep South. This two enslaved laborers to remove the seeds separated and traumatized many families. So from 50 pounds of cotton in a single day. many enslaved people were forced to make Before its invention, a single enslaved laborer this journey that it came to be known as “The could clean an average of only one pound of Second Middle Passage.” cotton each day.

8.D Indigenous land dispossession and 8.B Motivated by a desire for cotton-rich the domestic slave trade led to large profits lands, many white people supported the Indi- for land speculators, removal agents and an Removal Act of 1830. Others, including enslavers. Complex economic structures many clergy and members of the Whig Party, emerged to support the domestic slave trade, opposed it. And many disenfrachised people including insurance companies that insured publicly spoke out against it even though enslaved people as property, traders and they lacked political power. Andrew Jackson auction houses that served as middlemen made Indian Removal the cornerstone of his and clearinghouses, and banks that provided presidency and enforced it in defiance of a credit for the purchase of enslaved laborers Supreme Court ruling (Worcester v. Georgia, or allowed the capital represented in the bod- 1832). The federal government, joined by ies of enslaved people to be used as collateral states and troops, used this act to force about for loans. 100,000 Indigenous people to move west of the Mississippi River. More than 4,000 African Americans, who were held in slavery How can I teach this? among Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws The University of Oregon’s website Mapping and Creeks, were also forced west. Thou- History provides a useful model comparing sands of people died in these migrations, the growth of cotton production and the which many remember as the “Trail of Tears” expansion of slavery between 1790 and 1860. or the “Trail of Death.” t-t.site/slavery58

26 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY KEY CONCEPTS 1. Slavery, which Europeans practiced before they invaded the Americas, was important to all colonial powers and existed in all North American colonies. 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the colonial economies and what is now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery were embedded in the founding documents; enslavers dominated the federal government, Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 through 1860. 4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” designed to create profit for the enslavers and break the will of the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism. 5. Enslaved people To teach about Removal, see the following Tayloe to his brother. Tayloe proposes selling resisted the efforts of digital resources from Native Knowledge the people his brother enslaved in Virginia their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in 360˚ at the National Museum of the Ameri- for a profit in Alabama. Although it was not both revolutionary and can Indian. They tell many stories of removal written until 1835, the letter allows for a dis- everyday ways. 6. The experience of and resistance. cussion of the decline of the Virginia tobacco slavery varied depending on time, location, crop, economy and the profitability of trading labor performed, size of • “A Story of Cherokee Removal” enslaved persons from the Upper South to slaveholding and gender. t-t.site/slavery59 the Deep South. This practice of transporting 7. Slavery was the central cause of the enslaved people from the Upper South to the Civil War. • “What Does It Mean to Remove a People?” cotton-producing states of the Deep South 8. Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs t-t.site/slavery60 was ongoing from the early Republic until of Americans about the Civil War. t-t.site/slavery64 race and whiteness, and white supremacy • “How Did Six Different Native Nations was both a product and Try to Avoid Removal?” t-t.site/slavery61 In a short video from Teaching Tolerance, Dr. legacy of slavery. 9. Enslaved and freed Adam Rothman discusses how enslaved labor people worked to • “The Removal of the Muscogee Nation” maintain cultural in the South fueled a global economic system traditions while building t-t.site/slavery62 during the 19th century. t-t.site/slavery65 new ones that sustain communities and impact the larger world. • “American Indian Removal: Does it Make In another short video from Teaching Tol- 10. By knowing how to Sense?” t-t.site/slavery63 read and interpret the erance, Dr. Edward Ayers shows how the sources that tell the story domestic slave trade affected the lives of of American slavery, we gain insight into some The online resources for the PBS series Afri- enslaved people. t-t.site/slavery66 of what enslaving and cans in America include a letter from Henry enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 27 “Scientific” theories about race evolved to the letter.) The frank language of the docu- support white supremacy and enslavement. ments underscores the commodification of In the mid-18th century, Carolus Linnaeus enslaved people, the inhumanity of the slave classifiedHomo sapiens into several different trade and the trauma that those affected by varieties, named according to their geograph- the domestic slave trade experienced. t-t. ic location. Linnaeus’ classifications reflected site/slavery70 popular stereotypes of different cultures. t-t.site/slavery67 • In a February 26, 1855 letter, the enslaver writes to ask Oakes for information about an In the 19th century, the scientific debate enslaved woman named Clarissa, including about race focused on whether different whether she has miscarried, has children or human races represented entirely different is “breeding.” t-t.site/slavery71 species with different origins (polygenesis) or different varieties of the same species • In a letter from Jesse King dated February (monogenesis). Polygenism could be used to 1, 1855, King inquires about the cost of sever- justify enslaving “inferior” races. al enslaved people. t-t.site/slavery72

Scientific racism was also used to justify the • A letter by E.A. Edwards, dated April 14, seizure of Indigenous land. Lewis Cass (who 1857, accompanies a trunk sent to Tom, an later implemented Andrew Jackson’s policies enslaved man who had recently been sold. toward Indigenous people as a member of It includes a note presumably dictated by Jackson’s cabinet) used theories drawn from Fatima, Tom’s wife, discussing her distress at scientific racism to rationalize Removal. The his sale. t-t.site/slavery73 National Humanities Center has archived an 1830 article by Cass outlining these argu- Portions of the book Twelve Years a Slave, ments. t-t.site/slavery68 by Solomon Northup, describe the domestic slave trade. Students might read his account In 1825 Cherokee leader David Brown argued of an auction and the separation of Eliza that the 1,277 “African slaves” owned by the from her two children. Cherokee Nation were a sign of Cherokee t-t.site/slavery74 adoption of “civilization” as defined by white settlers. The Native nations of the Southeast In her essay “Cherokee Slaveholders and that adopted European-style enslavement Radical Abolitionists,” historian Natalie Joy did so in part to prove to Europeans that they, argues that abolitionists were willing to look too, were “civilized”—that they, too, used the past Cherokee enslavers—or even see slavery tools of white settlers’ economic growth. as a sign of “civilization”—because abolition- ists viewed the removal of Cherokees as part Slate published an interactive map by Rebec- of the expansion of the slaveholding South. ca Onion and Claudio Saunt showing Indige- t-t.site/slavery75 nous land loss from 1776 to 1887. t-t.site/slavery69

SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 9 The papers of Z.B. Oakes, a slaver in Charles- Students will describe the principal ways the ton, South Carolina, are available through labor of enslaved people was organized and con- the Boston Public Library. (Correspondence trolled in what is now the United States. can be accessed through the Digital Com- MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 2, 4, 5, 6 & 10 monwealth online collections by searching “Oakes,” along with the date and sender of

28 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY What else should my students know? Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave 9.A While the work of enslaved people includes descriptions of his life on cotton and varied widely across North America, most sugar plantations. In Chapter 16, Northup enslaved people lived in small households is made a driver. He describes the delicate in close proximity to their enslavers. They balance he had to maintain to keep both the KEY CONCEPTS labored to maintain their enslavers’ families, white and enslaved populations as happy as 1. Slavery, which possible. t-t.site/slavery78 Europeans practiced houses and farms. This included tasks such before they invaded the as cooking, child care and cleaning. Americas, was important to all colonial powers In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and existed in all North American colonies. 9.B Enslaved people were often highly skilled, Douglass provides an account of his child- hood in enslavement. In Chapter 1, he offers 2. Slavery and the slave using training and knowledge from their home trade were central to a description of Mr. Plummer, the drunk, the development and cultures while acquiring new abilities. growth of the colonial malicious overseer at the plantation where economies and what is now the United States. 9.C The labor that enslaved people were he was first enslaved.t-t.site/slavery79 3. Protections for slavery forced to do was often very dangerous and were embedded in the In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Har- founding documents; physically taxing, regardless of the type of enslavers dominated work or geographic location. Most enslaved riet Jacobs describes her work in a white the federal government, Supreme Court and people performed heavy labor growing crops household, where she is subjected to sexual Senate from 1787 such as cotton, rice and tobacco. About five harassment by her enslaver and anger from through 1860. his wife. t-t.site/slavery80 4. “Slavery was an percent of enslaved people labored in coal institution of power,” mines and industrial mills in the United designed to create profit for the enslavers States. Many enslaved people worked under In his January 19, 1854, letter to slaver Z.B. and break the will of Oakes, A.J. McElveen describes an enslaved the enslaved and was the supervision of an overseer or a driver. In a relentless quest for the southern United States, overseers were man named Isaac who works as a carriage profit abetted by racism. driver, painter, violinist and cook, among 5. Enslaved people often white Southerners. Drivers were usual- resisted the efforts of ly enslaved men who were entrusted (at least other things. t-t.site/slavery81 their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in temporarily) with supervisory powers. both revolutionary and To understand industrial slavery, students everyday ways. might look at Frederick Douglass’ autobiog- 6. The experience of slavery varied depending How can I teach this? raphy, which details his time as a caulker in on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of Enslavers devised systems to maximize a shipyard. Historian Charles Dew’s Bond of slaveholding and gender. production and profit from forced labor, Iron explores slavery at the Buffalo Forge, an 7. Slavery was the ironmaking venture in Virginia. central cause of the including the task system and gang labor. Civil War. They measured effectiveness and tried to 8. Slavery shaped the Episode seven of Teaching Tolerance’sTeach- fundamental beliefs maximize production using business and of Americans about accounting methods that have since become ing Hard History: American Slavery podcast race and whiteness, discusses the diverse lives of enslaved people, and white supremacy mainstream. The Boston Review has pub- was both a product and lished an excerpt from the book Accounting offering suggestions to teachers for ways to legacy of slavery. present this material to their students. 9. Enslaved and freed for Slavery. It shows how many of today’s people worked to ideas about business management have roots t-t.site/slavery82 maintain cultural traditions while building in the organization of enslaved labor in the new ones that sustain communities and impact Americas. t-t.site/slavery76 the larger world. SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 10 10. By knowing how to In a short video from Teaching Tolerance, Students will analyze the growth of the abo- read and interpret the sources that tell the story Dr. Daina Ramey Berry shows how enslavers litionist movement in the 1830s and the of American slavery, we gain insight into some used enslaved people to generate profit. slaveholding states’ view of the movement as of what enslaving and t-t.site/slavery77 a physical, economic and political threat. enslaved Americans aspired to, created, MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 3, 5, 7, 9 & 10 thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 29 What else should my students know? 10.F White women and free black Northern- 10.A Opposition to slavery in North America ers, many of whom also opposed the Indian dates to slavery’s beginnings there. Enslaved Removal Act, were among the largest groups men and women were constantly seeking represented in Northern abolitionist societ- ways to use the religious and civil values ies. Influential advocates included Frederick espoused by enslavers to argue for their own Douglass, Sojourner Truth, many others who freedom. Indigenous people in the early had escaped enslavement and the publishers British and Spanish colonies tried to use the of many black newspapers. Even so, scholars courts to gain freedom, but few succeeded. estimate that abolitionists never accounted for more than one percent of the popula- 10.B Some colonists argued for abolition tion, meaning that support for enslavement very early, including Bartolomé de las Casas continued to be widespread among the white in the 16th-century Spanish colonies and settler population. some white Quakers in 18th-century British colonies. 10.G Southern lawmakers and cultural leaders reacted to the growth of Northern 10.C During the Revolution, many enslaved abolition with an increased commitment to people actively sought their freedom by defending slavery as a positive good and with escaping to the British or by adopting the political actions to prevent the spread of the language of inalienable rights and challeng- abolitionist message in the South. ing white American colonists to live up to their liberty-loving rhetoric. How can I teach this? 10.D Many prominent white people, includ- In a short video from Teaching Tolerance, ing Thomas Jefferson and James Madison Dr. Martha Jones discusses the American (both enslavers), thought slavery would Colonization Society and its roots in white eventually end but did not support aboli- supremacy. t-t.site/slavery83 tion. In the early 19th century, they joined a majority of white Americans supporting the Angelina and Sarah Grimké were sisters from removal of African Americans to Africa. The South Carolina who became prominent advo- American Colonization Society raised money cates of abolition and women’s rights. Their to facilitate this removal, which they said writings are readily available. would include both free and enslaved African Americans. African American opposition to Sarah Parker Remond and her brother the American Colonization Society was part Charles Lenox Remond were members of of a new, centralized movement to promote a prominent free black family from Salem, abolition and work toward citizenship rights. Massachusetts. Both became popular anti-slavery lecturers. 10.E William Lloyd Garrison and black allies launched the radical abolitionist movement David Walker’s 1829 Appeal to the Colored in 1831 using the ideas of all of these prede- Citizens of the World described the condi- cessors. Garrison began promoting imme- tions of African American people in slavery diate abolition as an alternative to gradual and called for armed rebellion. Walker’s emancipation or colonization. He started Appeal was smuggled into the South using publishing the anti-slavery newspaper The underground networks and subterfuge. Liberator in 1831 and founded the American Enslavers severely punished anyone caught Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. reading or distributing it. The David Walker

30 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY though it perpetuated many racist stereotypes.

In 1835, the American

Anti-Slavery Society KEY CONCEPTS began a direct mail 1. Slavery, which campaign in the South. Europeans practiced before they invaded the Local postmasters re- Americas, was important to all colonial powers fused to deliver the mail and existed in all North and mobs in Charleston, American colonies. South Carolina, burned 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to the anti-slavery materi- the development and growth of the colonial als along with effigies of economies and what is abolitionists. Following now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery this campaign, various were embedded in the slave states passed laws founding documents; enslavers dominated that made it illegal to the federal government, deliver abolitionist Supreme Court and Sisters Sarah (left) and Angelina (right) Grimké rejected Senate from 1787 their South Carolina plantation roots and became staunch materials. The blog of the Postal Museum in- through 1860. supporters of the abolitionist movement after converting cludes a short article, “America’s First Direct 4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” to Quakerism. The outspoken sisters also advocated for Mail Campaign,” detailing this event. t-t.site/ designed to create the expansion of women's rights. profit for the enslavers slavery88 and break the will of the enslaved and was Memorial Project offers an overview of the a relentless quest for After the growth of abolitionist societies, profit abetted by racism. Appeal (including excerpts) and its distribu- Southerners produced a number of forceful 5. Enslaved people tion. t-t.site/slavery84 resisted the efforts of defenses of slavery grounded in specific ideas their enslavers to reduce about religion and science. For examples, see them to commodities in Free and fugitive black Northerners partic- both revolutionary and John C. Calhoun’s “Slavery a Positive Good” everyday ways. ipated in “Colored Conventions” to pursue from 1837, James Henry Hammond’s “Letter 6. The experience of educational, labor and legal goals. Before the slavery varied depending to an English Abolitionist, 1845” or Ham- war, the delegates to these conventions dis- on time, location, crop, mond’s 1858 speech, “Cotton Is King.” labor performed, size of cussed, among other topics, colonization and slaveholding and gender. t-t.site/slavery89 • t-t.site/slavery90 immediate abolition. t-t.site/slavery85 7. Slavery was the central cause of the Southerners also produced defenses of slav- Civil War. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman are 8. Slavery shaped the ery grounded in the comparisons between fundamental beliefs among the most well known of the many for- enslaved men and women and the Northern of Americans about merly enslaved people who became abolition- race and whiteness, working class. See, for example, the poem and white supremacy ists. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Doug- was both a product and “The Hireling and the Slave” by William legacy of slavery. lass is among several fugitive slave narratives Grayson. t-t.site/slavery91 9. Enslaved and freed available through the website Documenting people worked to the American South. t-t.site/slavery86 maintain cultural To understand the Southern reaction to traditions while building new ones that sustain abolition, see the 1836 Gag Rule, which auto- communities and impact Copies of The Liberator are widely available matically “tabled” (postponed) action on all the larger world. online. t-t.site/slavery87 10. By knowing how to abolitionist petitions relating to slavery with- read and interpret the out hearing them. Speeches on the subject by sources that tell the story Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 book, Uncle of American slavery, we John Quincy Adams are also useful. gain insight into some Tom’s Cabin, was an effective way to educate of what enslaving and enslaved Americans Northerners on the horrors of slavery, even aspired to, created,

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LIBRARY thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 31 Gradual emancipation procedures differed 11.D In 1831, Nat Turner, an enslaved man widely. For example, New York’s law allowed from Southampton County, Virginia, orches- for the abandonment of enslaved children trated a rebellion. Seeking freedom, enslaved who were destined for freedom and therefore people killed at least 50 white people. Many of little value to their enslavers. They would died in the attempt. Afterward, enslaved and be separated from their mothers and sent to free black people in the East were prohib- the local poorhouse to be rented out. ited from holding or attending religious t-t.site/slavery92 assemblies without white supervision. Many Southern states also tightened laws against teaching enslaved people to read and write SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 11 and further restricted the movements and Students will recognize that enslaved people liberties of free African Americans. resisted slavery in ways that ranged from vio- lence to smaller, everyday means of asserting 11.E Sometimes Indigenous people and their humanity and opposing their enslavers. African Americans joined together. During MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 & 10 the 1700s and early 1800s, many people of Af- rican descent (later called Black Seminoles) What else should my students know? came to Seminole territory in what is now 11.A Violent rebellions by enslaved people Florida. Some were forced there as captives, were rare in continental North America. Un- and others joined voluntarily, having es- like in the British Caribbean, where violent up- caped slavery elsewhere in the South. Black risings were more common, enslaved people in Seminoles became tributaries of Seminole British North America and the United States chiefs; they lived in independent villages were outnumbered by white people. Moreover, and enjoyed a great deal of liberty, but owed substantial militias in the United States were Seminoles a percentage of their crops as well ready to put down armed rebellions. as military allegiance. During the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), Seminoles and 11.B Despite the rarity of violent rebellion, Black Seminoles joined together to protect evidence suggests that enslavers were often themselves against Indian Removal and the anxious that enslaved people would find ways spread of slavery. to harm them. Enslaved women, for exam- ple, who were frequently the cooks in their 11.F Everyday acts of resistance were com- enslavers’ households, were often feared to mon. These included working slowly, breaking use poison. tools, feigning illness, feigning ignorance to avoid work and running away for short peri- 11.C Anger at slavery contributed to the ods. Religion—which stressed the self-esteem, Pueblo Revolt of 1680. In a coordinated dignity and humanity of enslaved people— uprising, the Pueblo people liberated them- also proved a means of resistance. Working to selves from Spanish oppression by killing build and maintaining kinship networks was hundreds of colonists and successfully driv- another “everyday” form of resistance. Many ing the Spanish from New Mexico for more enslaved people resisted by learning to read than a decade. and write European languages.

11.D In 1739, a group of enslaved people in 11.G Enslaved people who successfully South Carolina participated in the Stono Re- escaped were known as “fugitive slaves.” bellion, the largest rebellion against slavery Escape was common enough that: in the British mainland colonies.

32 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY The 19 Pueblo sovereign nations collectively main- tain the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, provid- ing resources that include a Pueblo-based curricu- lum. t-t.site/slavery94

William Henry Single- ton’s Recollections of My Slavery Days pro- vides many examples of everyday resistance. The National Endowment for the Humanities’ Edsite- ment website includes a useful lesson: “Recollec- tions of My Slavery Days with Emphasis on Resis- tance.” t-t.site/slavery95

Episode six of Teaching Tolerance’s Teaching Hard History: American Slavery podcast explores • There was an elaborate system of patrols the many ways beyond rebellion that en- to catch people escaping from slavery. slaved people employed to resist bondage. t-t.site/slavery96 • Enslavers depended on newspapers to advertise their “fugitive slaves.” In a short video from Teaching Tolerance, Dr. Tera Hunter shows how enslaved people at- • Some white men made a living catching tempted to have control over their own lives. fugitives. t-t.site/slavery97

• Residents of free states and of many The National Humanities Center has com- Native nations were bound by fugitive slave piled a useful overview of the Stono Rebel- laws and treaty provisions, respectively, to lion. The site also includes two accounts of return escapees. the rebellion—one provided at the time by a white official and another recorded in 1937 How can I teach this? by a descendant of the rebellion’s enslaved Scholars are still debating the extent to leader. t-t.site/slavery98 which enslavement influenced the Pueblo Revolt. Spanish imposition of Christiani- Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave has ty was also a major cause. The Wisconsin many examples of resistance, from prayer to Historical Society provides several primary violence. t-t.site/slavery99 sources that give different perspectives on the Pueblo Revolt. t-t.site/slavery93 In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs details her harrowing efforts to avoid

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 33 being sexually harassed and assaulted by her SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 12 enslaver, including explicitly resisting his Students will discuss the nature, persistence advances, escaping and spending years in and impact of the spiritual beliefs and cultures hiding. t-t.site/slavery100 of enslaved people. MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 5, 6, 9 & 10 “Slave for sale” and “Runaway slave” adver- tisements are widely available and illustrate What else should my students know? both the types of work that enslaved people 12.A Across all European colonies and often performed and their continued, some- what is now the United States, white settlers times violent, resistance to enslavement. forbade enslaved people from practicing The website Freedom on the Move collects their own spiritual practices and forced them ads that show the efforts of self-liberating to convert to Christianity. While religion people. t-t.site/slavery101 was often a critical tool of oppression and cultural extinction, it could also be a form The City College of New York has an online of resistance. Many enslaved people used collection of short texts about the Black Sem- the Christian message of God’s love and the inoles. t-t.site/slavery102 promise of a spiritual paradise to express their own desire for freedom in this world The “WPA Slave Narratives” (which should and the next. They also called on this idea to be introduced carefully and contextualized resist enslavers’ use of religion as a justifica- for students) offer many rich examples of tion for slavery. everyday resistance. t-t.site/slavery103 12.B Many enslaved African and Indigenous The poetry of George Moses Horton is a win- people used Christian rituals as tools of re- dow into one enslaved man’s struggle with sistance so they could continue their cultur- the ways slavery chained his creativity and al beliefs and practices. Others developed genius. Many of Horton’s poems, particularly hybrid traditions that blended their cultural “George Moses Horton, Myself” illustrate forms of spirituality and religion with Prot- the ways Horton refused to see himself as his estant and Catholic rituals and beliefs. These enslaver saw him. t-t.site/slavery104 new forms of religious expression continue to thrive across what is now the United States. Students should examine treaties between Native nations and the United States that 12.C Enslaved people drew on longstanding include provisions related to enslavement. traditions of communicating oral history to For example, the Treaty of Hopewell in pass along knowledge and stories when read- 1785 was the first treaty signed between the ing and writing were strictly controlled. United States and the Cherokee Nation. Article 1, which demanded that the Cherokee 12.D More than 573 sovereign Native na- Nation return all African Americans who had tions exist today in what is now the United escaped or were taken captive, was a stan- States. Many of the Indigenous people who dard feature of treaties during this time. Note belong to these nations continue to engage also Article 2, wherein Cherokees demanded with their lands, languages, art forms, food the release of all Indigenous captives taken traditions, political systems, economies and by white people during and after the Revolu- spiritual belief systems. tionary War. t-t.site/slavery105

34 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY 12.E Enslaved Africans created two of Spirituals offer rich ground for exploration in America’s most enduring musical forms: many dimensions, including subject matter, spirituals and blues music. lyrical style, cultural importance and con- temporary interpretations. There are many

12.F Indigenous and African foodways versions online. Many spirituals illustrate KEY CONCEPTS persisted and developed during enslavement, the relationship between Christian allusions 1. Slavery, which continuing to the present day and influenc- and imagery and the desire for freedom from Europeans practiced before they invaded the ing diets across what is now North America enslavement. The songs “Hold the Wind” and Americas, was important to all colonial powers with foods like corn and barbecue. “We’ll Soon Be Free” are two useful exam- and existed in all North ples. “Run, Mary, Run” was a popular spiri- American colonies. tual that incorporated African traditions of 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to drumming and syncopation with a message the development and How can I teach this? growth of the colonial When teaching about Indigenous cultural of freedom. t-t.site/slavery113 • t-t.site/slav- economies and what is persistence, resilience and influence, it is ery114 • t-t.site/slavery115 now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery essential to unpack stereotypes, generaliza- were embedded in the The Library of Congress has multiple online founding documents; tions and appropriations. An article from enslavers dominated the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memora- collections that include the music of enslaved the federal government, African Americans, including recordings of Supreme Court and bilia provides an excellent introduction to Senate from 1787 identifying and countering common miscon- free people singing and playing music they through 1860. learned while enslaved. t-t.site/slavery116 4. “Slavery was an ceptions and stereotypes about Indigenous institution of power,” people. t-t.site/slavery106 designed to create profit for the enslavers In a short video by Teaching Tolerance, Dr. and break the will of Ibram X. Kendi discusses the ways that the the enslaved and was In 1991, a construction project unearthed the a relentless quest for African Burial Ground in New York City, a cultural practices of enslaved Africans per- profit abetted by racism. colonial cemetery. The bodies interred there sist and continue to influence others.t-t.site/ 5. Enslaved people slavery83 resisted the efforts of showed evidence of African burial traditions their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in such as the burying of ritual objects with the both revolutionary and deceased. t-t.site/slavery107 Many non-Indigenous people have miscon- everyday ways. ceptions and stereotypes about the music 6. The experience of of Indigenous people. A 1977 Folklife article slavery varied depending Some early advertisements for Indigenous on time, location, crop, provides a good, if somewhat dated, start to labor performed, size of people who escaped slavery specify cultural slaveholding and gender. exploring these. t-t.site/slavery118 or geographic origin, showing evidence that 7. Slavery was the enslaved Indigenous people resisted assimi- central cause of the Explore the ways that Indigenous people Civil War. lation. For example, some describe “Carolina 8. Slavery shaped the shaped contemporary music with the docu- fundamental beliefs Indians.” t-t.site/slavery108 of Americans about mentary Rumble or the documentary Sounds race and whiteness, of Faith, by Lumbee filmmaker Malinda and white supremacy Many enslaved Africans were Muslim. The was both a product and Library of Congress has collected documents Maynor Lowery. t-t.site/slavery119 • t-t.site/ legacy of slavery. slavery120 9. Enslaved and freed by and about Omar Ibn Said, an enslaved people worked to scholar from West Africa. This includes his maintain cultural For current music by Indigenous people, stu- traditions while building autobiography, originally written in Arabic. new ones that sustain dents could watch MTV’s documentary Rebel Rich supplemental resources include an En- communities and impact Music. t-t.site/slavery121 the larger world. glish translation, a podcast episode, discus- 10. By knowing how to sion questions and his obituary. read and interpret the The “Br’er Rabbit” folktales provide exam- sources that tell the story t-t.site/slavery109 • t-t.site/slavery110 • of American slavery, we ples of stories that originated among the gain insight into some t-t.site/slavery111 • t-t.site/slavery112 of what enslaving and enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 35 enslaved African population as a way to teach survival skills to enslaved children. When exploring these stories, be careful to use collections such as Jump! The Adventures of Brer Rabbit, which avoid the racism of earlier compilations by white folklorists.

There are many opportunities to explore the ways that Indigenous people sustain and in- novate cultural traditions and practices. Some topics can include contemporary Indigenous artists and those working to sustain languag- es. t-t.site/slavery122 • t-t.site/slavery123 Enslaved people encountered different Many popular foods have roots in enslaved versions of Christianity, including Bibles that communities. Gumbo shows how Indigenous, enslavers censored. The “WPA Slave Narra- African and European cultures sometimes tives” contain many testimonies about how merged. One traditional component of this enslavers and white preachers tried to reduce dish is an Indigenous ingredient called filé, a the Christian message to “Don’t lie, and don’t powder made from sassafras leaves. Our term steal.” Some narratives also contain enslaved “gumbo” derives from a West African word Christians’ clear repudiation of this version for okra, which is another essential ingredi- of Christianity. t-t.site/slavery127 ent. The French contributed flour, which is used for gumbo’s dark roux. Barbeque (which Peter Randolph’s “Sketches of Slave Life” comes from the Arawak word barbacoa) grew includes examples of the ways enslavers tried out of the culture of Indigenous and Afri- to control Christianity’s message. can enslaved people as a way to use smoke t-t.site/slavery128 VOLUME 102, 1892. 19, MARCH VOLUME and sauces with African spices to flavor the less-desirable cuts of pork that enslavers • Elizabeth Merwin Wickham’s narrative gave as rations. Historian Michael Twitty has discusses the way that enslaved ministers written several accessible articles on slavery defied the laws against preaching after Nat and the culinary history of the American Turner’s Rebellion. t-t.site/slavery129 South. Southern food in Indigenous com- munities, like the Lumbee Tribe of North • Lunsford Lane discusses how enslaved Carolina, also demonstrates this fusion. t-t. people abandoned an Episcopal minister be- site/slavery124 • t-t.site/slavery125 cause of his religious justifications for their slavery. t-t.site/slavery130 The Minnesota Department of Education’s Department of Indian Education offers an • Friday Jones’ narrative discusses several excellent resource for teaching about Indige- forms of resistance, including clandestine nous oral traditions and practices. religious meetings and running away. t-t.site/slavery126 t-t.site/slavery131 BRER RABBIT ILLUSTRATION. FROM PROJECT GUTENBERG VERSION OF PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI, OF PUNCH, OR THE LONDON VERSION GUTENBERG PROJECT FROM ILLUSTRATION. BRER RABBIT

36 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY KEY CONCEPTS 1. Slavery, which Europeans practiced before they invaded the Americas, was important to all colonial powers and existed in all North American colonies. 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the colonial economies and what is now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery were embedded in the founding documents; enslavers dominated the federal government, Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 through 1860. 4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” designed to create profit for the enslavers and break the will of the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism. 5. Enslaved people resisted the efforts of their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in both revolutionary and everyday ways. 6. The experience of slavery varied depending on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of slaveholding and gender. 7. Slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. 8. Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs of Americans about race and whiteness, and white supremacy was both a product and legacy of slavery. 9. Enslaved and freed people worked to maintain cultural traditions while building new ones that sustain communities and impact the larger world. 10. By knowing how to read and interpret the sources that tell the story of American slavery, we gain insight into some of what enslaving and enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 37 The Sectional Crisis and Civil War | 1848–1877

• Black people were not citizens of the Unit- SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 13 ed States. Because Scott was black, Taney’s Students will examine the expansion of slavery argument said, he was not a citizen. Because as a key factor in the domestic and foreign policy he was not a citizen, he had no right to sue. decisions of the United States in the 19th century. MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9 & 10 • The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional. According to Taney, the What else should my students know? Missouri Compromise restricted slavery in 13.A Slavery was key in the debates about en- the territories, which Congress did not have tering the Mexican War and admitting Missou- the power to do. ri, Texas, Kansas and California to the Union.

13.B The desire to maintain a balance of slave How can I teach this? states and free states in the Senate was central In his editorial “War With Mexico,” Freder- to Southern lawmakers’ domestic policy. ick Douglass discusses the war as a mecha- nism to expand slavery. t-t.site/slavery132 13.C The Kansas-Nebraska Act and its poten- tial effect on the expansion of slavery was a key Henry David Thoreau’s On the Duty of Civil event in the sectional crisis. After the Kansas- Disobedience discusses his protest against the Nebraska Act was passed, both Northerners Mexican War. t-t.site/slavery133 and Southerners rushed to populate Kansas. The violence of “Bleeding Kansas” resulted. The “Compromise of 1850” was a series of laws intended to appeal equally to free and 13.D In 1857, Chief Justice Taney wrote the slave states. The compromise strengthened majority decision for the Supreme Court in the Fugitive Slave Act, exacerbating sectional the Dred Scott case. Southern enslavers ap- tensions. New provisions included: plauded the decision, which they saw as rec- ognizing enslaved people as their property. • The appointment of “commissioners” to Northerners were outraged. Taney’s decision search for fugitives in the North. established several key precedents related to slavery. The three most important were: • The requirement that individuals and organizations in free states assist the com- • There was nowhere in the United States en- missioners searching for people who escaped slaved people could go to be free. Taney ruled slavery. that the status of enslaved people was deter- mined by the laws in their home state; travel- • The acceptance of spurious evidence to ing to a free state did not render an enslaved convict accused fugitives. person free (this was the key issue at hand).

38 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY KEY CONCEPTS 1. Slavery, which Europeans practiced before they invaded the Americas, was important to all colonial powers and existed in all North American colonies. 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to the development and growth of the colonial economies and what is now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery were embedded in the founding documents; enslavers dominated the federal government, Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 through 1860. • A compensation structure that paid the 4. “Slavery was an commissioners $10 if they returned an SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 14 institution of power,” Students will analyze the 1860 election of designed to create accused fugitive to slavery but only $5 if they profit for the enslavers found that the accused was legally free. Abraham Lincoln and the subsequent deci- and break the will of the enslaved and was sion that several slave states made to secede a relentless quest for Primary sources surrounding the 1854 trial from the Union to ensure the preservation and profit abetted by racism. 5. Enslaved people of Anthony Burns, an enslaved man who es- expansion of slavery. resisted the efforts of MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 3, 4, 7 & 10 their enslavers to reduce caped Virginia only to be arrested in Boston, them to commodities in offer examples of a range of responses to the both revolutionary and everyday ways. Fugitive Slave Act. t-t.site/slavery134 What else should my students know? 6. The experience of 14.A Lincoln disliked slavery but believed slavery varied depending that the Constitution protected the institu- on time, location, crop, To understand the violence that character- labor performed, size of ized “Bleeding Kansas,” students can look tion where it existed. He ran on the Repub- slaveholding and gender. at the 1856 sacking of Lawrence, Kansas, by lican platform of non-expansion of slavery 7. Slavery was the central cause of the pro-slavery forces and at John Brown’s mur- into the territories. Civil War. der of several pro-slavery voters at Pottawat- 8. Slavery shaped the 14.B fundamental beliefs omie Creek a few days later. The first seven states to secede from of Americans about the Union were South Carolina, Mississippi, race and whiteness, and white supremacy To understand the impact of the slavery Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and was both a product and legacy of slavery. debate on American political institutions, Texas. In their declarations to the world 9. Enslaved and freed students can examine the caning of Charles explaining why they seceded, slavery and people worked to the political conflict over slavery were the maintain cultural Sumner, a senator from Massachusetts. traditions while building Preston Brooks, a congressman from South central factors. new ones that sustain communities and impact Carolina, repeatedly struck Sumner with a the larger world. cane after the senator made a fiery speech de- 14.C The Confederate States of America was 10. By knowing how to established in February 1861 (but never recog- read and interpret the nouncing slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska sources that tell the story Act. t-t.site/slavery135 nized by any other government or nation). Its of American slavery, we gain insight into some constitution legalized and protected slavery. of what enslaving and enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 39 14.D It is estimated that 20,000 Indigenous Southern states were willing to go to war to people participated in the Civil War on the protect the institution of slavery. Union and Confederate sides. Their reasons t-t.site/slavery140 varied. The Confederacy, seeking to ally with slaveholding peoples of the Southern nations, Episodes one and two of Teaching Toler- promised to protect slavery as well as Indig- ance’s Teaching Hard History: American enous land. The Union, meanwhile, declared Slavery podcast discuss the ways that slavery that, to uphold existing treaties, Native nations caused the Civil War, offering concrete strat- had to side with them. Many Native nations egies for teaching. t-t.site/slavery141 • t-t. initially tried to remain neutral but were drawn site/slavery142 in once the war touched their territories. The City of Alexandria, Virginia, offers an accessible overview of Indigenous people and How can I teach this? the Civil War. The Cherokee Nation, which In Lincoln’s “First Inaugural Address,” he was surrounded by Confederate territory and reiterated, “I have no purpose, directly or divided in its support of Union and Confed- indirectly, to interfere with the institution erate causes, experienced great loss. The of slavery where it exists” and asked “dissat- population of the Cherokee Nation declined isfied fellow countrymen” to rethink their from 21,000 to 15,000 people after the war. decision to destroy the government. t-t.site/slavery143 t-t.site/slavery136 The John Hope Franklin Young Scholars, a group of middle school historians in Durham, In Lincoln’s December 22, 1860, letter to Al- North Carolina, made a documentary in 2015 exander H. Stephens, the future Confederate called The Civil Rights War about untold vice president, he stated that slavery was safe stories of the Civil War in North Carolina. where it existed and outlined the differences The documentary highlights the civil rights between enslavers and Republicans, namely, struggles of Lumbee and Cherokee people, “You think slavery is right and ought to be ex- freedmen, and women on the home front tended; while we think it is wrong and ought during the war. t-t.site/slavery144 to be restricted.” t-t.site/slavery137

States that left the Union created documents explaining why they did so. These documents SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 15 cite Lincoln’s hostility to slavery as the Students will examine how Union policies con- key reason for secession. South Carolina’s cerning slavery and African American military “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which service affected the Civil War, and they will Induce and Justify the Secession of South describe how free black and enslaved commu- Carolina from the Federal Union, December nities affected the Civil War. 1860” provides a useful example. MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 2, 3, 5, 7, 9 & 10 t-t.site/slavery138 What else should my students know? In his famous 1861 “Cornerstone” speech, 15. A Union political leaders initially rejected Alexander Stephens argued that slavery was emancipation and black military service to ap- central to the project of the Confederate pease border states, where slavery was legal. States of America. t-t.site/slavery139 15. B. Enslaved African Americans fled to In a short video by Teaching Tolerance, Union lines in such numbers that the mili- Christy Coleman explores the reasons that tary accepted them as contraband property,

40 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY a classification that negated any legal claims On the need to maintain the loyalty of the of ownership by enslavers and set important border states where slavery was legal, see an precedents for more general emancipation. 1861 letter from a Missouri Unionist to the commander of the Department of the West

15. C It was largely through the persistence and the commander’s reply. In the letter, KEY CONCEPTS of the African American community that Thomas T. Gantt asks whether the federal 1. Slavery, which Union policy on black military service government will interfere with slavery. Europeans practiced before they invaded the changed. Eventually, the 180,000 black t-t.site/slavery146 Americas, was important to all colonial powers soldiers who served, including the 98,500 and existed in all North formerly enslaved men, provided a crucial A widely republished 1861 letter from black American colonies. service to the Union Army. Ohioan William A. Jones to the secretary of 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to war discusses the formation and preparation the development and growth of the colonial 15.D Many enslaved African Americans who of a black regiment that was waiting for the economies and what is remained on Southern plantations and farms opportunity to fight.t-t.site/slavery147 now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery risked their lives to help Union forces and were embedded in the hinder the Confederate military, including In 1862, John Boston, a fugitive from Mary- founding documents; enslavers dominated by providing valuable information on troop land, writes to tell his wife that he has the federal government, enlisted in a Brooklyn regiment. t-t.site/ Supreme Court and numbers and positions. Senate from 1787 slavery148 through 1860. 15.E In the South, enslaved men, wom- 4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” en and children left plantations in large An 1863 letter “to the Commander of a Loui- designed to create siana Black Brigade” describes the service of profit for the enslavers numbers or refused to work. Their actions and break the will of affected the Confederacy’s ability to supply African American soldiers during the Battle the enslaved and was a relentless quest for its army and feed its civilians. of Port Hudson and offers firsthand accounts profit abetted by racism. of the bravery of these troops. t-t.site/slav- 5. Enslaved people ery149 resisted the efforts of 15.F The Emancipation Proclamation was the their enslavers to reduce culmination of evolving Union policy. Lincoln’s them to commodities in both revolutionary and proclamation freed enslaved people in areas of The First and Second Confiscation Acts offer everyday ways. seceded states not under Union control, though opportunities to examine evolving Union 6. The experience of slavery varied depending it did not necessarily include Indigenous policy. The First Confiscation Act (1861) on time, location, crop, allowed the Union Army to “confiscate” labor performed, size of enslavement. The Emancipation Proclama- slaveholding and gender. enslaved people as property, legally negating tion was the result of several factors: Lincoln’s 7. Slavery was the developing opposition to slavery, the changing enslavers’ claims to ownership. However, central cause of the Civil War. sentiment in the North about the necessity of the law did not clarify whether, once “confis- 8. Slavery shaped the ending slavery as a way to end the war, the valor cated,” these formerly enslaved people were fundamental beliefs free. The Second Confiscation Act (1862) of Americans about of the African American soldiers who fought race and whiteness, for freedom, and the self-emancipation of hun- freed everyone enslaved by a member of the and white supremacy was both a product and dreds of thousands of enslaved Southerners Confederate military or government. t-t.site/ legacy of slavery. who had already fled to Union lines. slavery150 • t-t.site/slavery151 9. Enslaved and freed people worked to maintain cultural The Militia Act of July, 1862 allowed African traditions while building American men to serve in the army. t-t.site/ new ones that sustain How can I teach this? communities and impact slavery152 the larger world. The archives of the Freedmen and Southern 10. By knowing how to Society Project website house a number of read and interpret the In his September 1861 editorial, “Fighting sources that tell the story letters that can serve as primary documents Rebels With Only One Hand,” Frederick Dou- of American slavery, we for student interpretation. gain insight into some glass makes a persuasive argument for black of what enslaving and t-t.site/slavery-145 enslaved Americans service in the Union army. t-t.site/slavery153 aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 41 The widely available diary of Mary Chesnut is another source. An elite white woman living in South Carolina, Chesnut provided accounts of enslaved peoples’ rebel- lions during the war. Stu- dents should be aware that Chesnut’s presentation of these events is intensely bi- ased and includes racist ideas and language. Significant dates in the diary include: For one example of the impact of black Union soldiers • October 7, 1861. In this passage, Chesnut in Company E service, see accounts of Harriet Tubman’s talks about the murder of Mrs. Witherspoon of the Fourth Combahee River expedition. Tubman, along by the people she enslaved. Colored with a regiment of African American Union Infantry at Fort Lincoln, soldiers, led a raid to disrupt Confederate • July 13, 1862. Chesnut recounts a story of Washington, supply lines and free hundreds of enslaved enslaved laborers in South Carolina attempt- D.C., in 1865. people. In the end, Tubman’s mission freed ing to inform a Union solider of the location 700 enslaved people. She gave an account of of a Confederate camp. the Combahee River raid to Sarah Bradford, who published it in Scenes in the Life of Har- • January 9, 1864. Chesnut records the es- riet Tubman. t-t.site/slavery154 cape of two enslaved people from the house- hold of C.S.A. President Jefferson Davis. She On the unequal pay of black soldiers, see the notes the surprise of Davis’ wife, Varina, at letter from 54th MA Corporal James Henry their leaving. Gooding to the president. Gooding asks Lin- coln to intervene to ensure that he and his fellow soldiers are fairly paid. Black soldiers were paid $10 per month while white soldiers SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 16 Students will examine how Indigenous people were paid $13. t-t.site/slavery155 participated in and were affected by the Civil War. Lincoln stresses how critical black service MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 8, 9 & 10 is to the Union in an 1864 letter to Isaac M. Schermerhorn. He writes that “[a]ny dif- What else should my students know? 16.A Indigenous people fought on both sides ferent policy in regard to the colored man, of the Civil War, depending on which side deprives us of his help, and this is more than they believed would better protect the inter- we can bear. We can not spare the hundred ests of their own nation. and forty or fifty thousand now serving us as soldiers, seamen, and laborers. This is not 16.B During the Civil War, the United States a question of sentiment or taste, but one of failed to meet many treaty obligations with physical force which may be measured and Native nations. In Minnesota, the Dakota Na- estimated as horse-power and Steam-power tion stopped receiving payments and food that are measured and estimated. Keep it and you had been promised for ceded land. They were can save the Union. Throw it away, and the starving and sought to reclaim their land. This Union goes with it.” t-t.site/slavery156

led to the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. When the ALAMY

42 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY Dakota nation surrendered, it suffered mass A Michigan Public Radio segment describes a internment. Lincoln authorized the hanging regiment of Indigenous people from several of 38 Dakota soldiers, the largest mass execu- nations that fought for the Union. t-t.site/ tion in the history of the United States. slavery162

KEY CONCEPTS 16.C In the Southwest, the Union army The University of Minnesota’s Center for Ho- 1. Slavery, which drove Texans out of New Mexico and killed locaust and Genocide Studies has a timeline Europeans practiced before they invaded the 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho civilians in the and many resources for teaching about the Americas, was important to all colonial powers Sand Creek Massacre. Next, Union forces led U.S.-Dakota War. t-t.site/slavery163 and existed in all North by “Kit” Carson attacked Navajo people when American colonies. they would not surrender and cede their The National Museum of the American 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to land. Slavers from Mexico and some Native Indian’s exhibit Patriot Nations: Native the development and growth of the colonial nations took thousands of Navajo captives Americans in Our Nation’s Armed Forces dis- economies and what is during the war and its aftermath. The United cussed the role of Indigenous people in many now the United States. conflicts, including the Civil War. 3. Protections for slavery States forced thousands of Navajo civilians were embedded in the to walk hundreds of miles, interning and t-t.site/slavery164 founding documents; enslavers dominated ultimately displacing them. the federal government, An editorial by scholars Boyd Cothran and Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 16.D After the Civil War, the United States Ari Kelman from The New York Times charts through 1860. redeployed many federal troops west to the relationship between the Civil War and 4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” continue national expansion by taking In- the “Indian Wars.” t-t.site/slavery165 designed to create profit for the enslavers digenous land. Indigenous people resisted. and break the will of The ensuing campaigns, which some call the the enslaved and was a relentless quest for “Indian Wars,” lasted through 1877. SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 17 profit abetted by racism. 5. Enslaved people Students will recognize that slavery continued resisted the efforts of in many forms through most of the 19th century their enslavers to reduce them to commodities in How can I teach this? in what is now the United States. both revolutionary and Scott Manning Stevens’ chapter “American MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 4, 6, 8 & 10 everyday ways. 6. The experience of Indians and the Civil War” in Why You Can’t slavery varied depending Teach United States History Without Amer- What else should my students know? on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of ican Indians provides a useful overview for 17.A In the Southwest, most bound laborers slaveholding and gender. the history of the Civil War with regard to were Indigenous or Latinx. They were forced 7. Slavery was the central cause of the Indigenous people. into labor through various means, including Civil War. capture in warfare and debt peonage. Indig- 8. Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs The National Park Service and the Essential enous enslavement in the Southwest was so of Americans about Civil War Curriculum websites have various widespread in the 1800s that by the mid- race and whiteness, and white supremacy resources related to Indigenous people in the 1860s, almost all property owners in New was both a product and Civil War. t-t.site/slavery157 t-t.site/slav- Mexico enslaved Indigenous people. legacy of slavery. 9. Enslaved and freed ery158 t-t.site/slavery159 people worked to 17. B Debt peonage was widely used in maintain cultural traditions while building The Cherokee Nation has a timeline of its the West throughout the 1800s. Enslavers new ones that sustain communities and impact participation in the Civil War. t-t.site/slav- claimed that their laborers were working off the larger world. ery160 debts, though these debts could be trans- 10. By knowing how to ferred from one landowner to another and read and interpret the sources that tell the story The magazine of the Smithsonian’s National could also be passed from parent to child. of American slavery, we gain insight into some Museum of the American Indian has covered of what enslaving and the role of Tuscarora soldiers in the Civil 17.C Some Native nations raided Mexico re- enslaved Americans aspired to, created, War. t-t.site/slavery161 peatedly, bringing Mexican captives north for thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 43 sale or for incorporation into their nations. role of Mormons in the slave trade in Utah. He Native nations engaged in the slave trade also notes that 400 Indigenous people were changed tactics and even purposes over time, enslaved in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1866, as social changes led to different economic illustrating that Indigenous enslavement con- needs. For example, while Comanche raiders tinued well into the late 19th century. once conducted raids for the purposes of ac- quiring captives to sell into slavery, a shifting California’s 1850 Act for the Government economy (a rise in the hide trade, for exam- and Protection of Indians was used to force ple) led to more incorporation of captives many Indigenous Californians into slavery. into their own labor force. As many as 10,000 Indigenous Californians were enslaved before 1863. 17.D Slavery took many forms in California, technically a free state, and expanded after Many resources cover the enslavement of the population boom associated with the Indigenous people related to the Gold Rush, California Gold Rush. Some enslaved Afri- including a chapter by Jean M. O’Brien in can Americans were forced to migrate west Why You Can’t Teach United States History alongside their enslavers. Many thousands Without American Indians. t-t.site/slav- of Indigenous people were held in bondage ery168 • t-t.site/slavery169 in households and on ranches and mines. As slavery evolved, mandatory employment RadioWest discussed the history of Mormon laws, forced apprenticeship, vagrancy laws enslavement of Indigenous people with and convict leasing came to control the labor history professors Elise Boxer and Matthew and lives of Indigenous people. Garret. t-t.site/slavery170

17.E In Utah, Mormons enslaved Indigenous people, holding at least 400 children between SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 18 1847 and 1900. The territorial legislature Students will examine the ways that people who authorized Utah residents to purchase In- were enslaved tried to claim their freedom after digenous children and hold them in bondage. the Civil War. The practice was justified as an attempt to MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 7, 8, 9 & 10 “civilize” or “save” these children; Brigham Young said that Mormons were called to What else should my students know? make Indigenous people into “a white and 18.A Provisions that guaranteed rights to delightsome people.” formerly enslaved Africans, such as the 13th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment, did not protect In- How can I teach this? digenous people from enslavement. African NPR reported on descendants of enslaved Americans enslaved by Indigenous people Indigenous people in New Mexico who are were also not clearly protected by these fighting for recognition of their ancestors’ provisions or by the Reconstruction Treaties enslavement. t-t.site/slavery167 signed after the Civil War. The tribal status of these freedmen remains controversial today. Andrés Reséndez, in his book The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian En- 18.B Indigenous people were not protect- slavement in America, covers the long history ed from involuntary servitude in large part of Indigenous enslavement in the Americas. because they were excluded from citizenship Among many other topics, he describes the rights in the Constitution as “Indians not

44 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY taxed.” The Supreme Court upheld the exclu- sion of Indigenous people from 14th Amend- ment protection in Elk v. Wilkins (1884).

18.C Freed African Americans sought to ex- ercise their freedom in several ways, including relocating (leaving the plantations where they had been enslaved); pursuing education (in the numerous schools established after the war); living as families; and participating in politics.

18.D Black voters became influential in South- ern elections during Congressional Recon- struction. Between 1865 and 1877, black men served in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Rep- resentatives and in state capitols. More than 600 black men also served in state legislatures.

18.E The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 for- mally extended citizenship to all Indigenous people. Though some Indigenous people were already citizens by this time, many Indigenous people did not desire citizenship in the United States (they were already citizens of their own the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the In 1878, African- nations). One byproduct of the law may have American Indian, the National Museum of American been that Indigenous people, as U.S. citizens, African American History and Culture and representatives in the South were now protected from enslavement. the Smithsonian Travelling Exhibition Ser- Carolina vice, which is available in book form online. Legislature The exhibit includes a discussion of tribal outnumbered white legislators. How can I teach this? citizenship for African-Indigenous people Reading the 13th Amendment creates an and shares personal stories from African- opportunity to discuss the scope of eman- Indigenous families. t-t.site/slavery173 • t-t. cipation. The provision for the treatment site/slavery174 of prisoners, for example, can lead to sub- Charlotte Forten’s article “Life on the Sea sequent conversations about continued Islands,” published in The Atlantic Monthly enslavement, including through the convict in 1864, describes her work teaching former- labor system. An excerpt from Slavery by An- ly enslaved students. George Mason Univer- other Name provides important details. t-t. site/slavery171 • t-t.site/slavery172 sity’s website History Matters provides an informative excerpt. t-t.site/slavery175 Several useful online resources cover the Reconstruction Treaties, including an essay In pursuing the freedom to live as families, from the Oklahoma Historical Society. For many formerly enslaved people searched for information about the histories and experi- family members who had been sold during ences of African-Indigenous people, see the slavery. The Historic New Orleans Collection exhibit IndiVisible: African-Native American has archived more than a thousand “Lost Lives in the Americas, a joint effort from Friends” advertisements from the South-

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 45 western Christian Advocate. Last Seen: National Archives. t-t.site/slavery184 • t-t. Finding Family After Slavery also offers a site/slavery185 free, searchable, online archive of such ads. t-t.site/slavery176 • t-t.site/slavery177 The Snyder Act was controversial among many Indigenous people. The Onondaga In December 1865, 2,500 black residents of Nation and the Haudenosaunee continue Washington, D.C., signed a letter to Congress to resist the Snyder Act, saying it is a tool of outlining their loyalty to the Union and assimilation and a rejection of their sover- contributions to the community and there- eignty. t-t.site/slavery186 by requesting the right to vote. The letter is available on the site of The Freedmen &

Southern Society Project. t-t.site/slavery178 SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 19 Students will examine the ways that the federal The African American Odyssey: A Quest for government’s policies affected the lives of for- Full Citizenship, from the Library of Con- merly enslaved people. gress, provides a variety of sources (both MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 8, 9 & 10 images and text) to explore the activities of formerly enslaved people in the South. What else should my students know? t-t.site/slavery179 19.A The U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freed- men and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen’s The account book from Hampton Plantation Bureau) was a large bureaucracy created after in South Carolina shows formerly enslaved the Civil War to help African Americans who people being paid for their work. had been enslaved. It provided services in- t-t.site/slavery180 cluding legal aid, food, housing and education. The Freedmen’s Bureau also tried to reunite The November 16, 1867, cover of Harper’s separated families and oversaw the attempts Weekly was a drawing by Alfred R. Waud to settle formerly enslaved people on confis- titled “The First Vote.” It showed African cated or abandoned Confederate lands. American voters casting their first ballots. t-t.site/slavery181 19.B Access to land was one of the main issues to affect the lives of formerly enslaved In 1878, African American representatives in African Americans. During the war, the the South Carolina legislature outnumbered Union Army relocated formerly enslaved white legislators. A photograph of the legis- people onto confiscated Confederate land. lature is archived at the Library of Congress. However, most of those resettled were kicked t-t.site/slavery182 off their farms in 1866 when President An- drew Johnson ordered the land returned to The first African American to serve in the the former enslavers. Senate was Hiram Revels of Mississippi. A group portrait featuring Revels, “The First 19.C By passing the 14th and 15th Amend- Colored Senator and Representatives,” was ments during Congressional (Radical) published by Currier and Ives in 1872. Reconstruction, the federal government t-t.site/slavery183 made a commitment to protect the legal and Several online histories of the Snyder Act political rights of African Americans. Federal (the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act) offer differ- troops enforced the civil and political rights ent details and documents, including at the of African Americans in the South during websites of the Library of Virginia and the Congressional Reconstruction.

46 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY 19.D None of these Reconstruction efforts The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 gave applied to formerly enslaved Indigenous peo- individual grants of 80 acres of publicly ple, whose lands and rights continued to be owned land to settlers who resided there for taken away after the end of the Civil War. five years. No one who supported the Confed-

eracy could file a claim before 1867. However, KEY CONCEPTS 19.E The 1877 Dawes Severalty Act divided the land was of poor quality and few formerly 1. Slavery, which tribal lands into allotments meant for private enslaved people had the money necessary to Europeans practiced before they invaded the ownership. The act, which was an attempt to move or to buy farming supplies. Landless Americas, was important to all colonial powers assimilate Indigenous people and undermine white people and white speculators benefit- and existed in all North tribal governance, offered citizenship to Indige- ted the most from this program. American colonies. nous people who accepted and held allotments 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to for 25 years. Other land was sold to non-In- Students can read the Dawes Act and ex- the development and growth of the colonial digenous people. Although Indigenous people amine maps of its effect on Indigenous land economies and what is successfully challenged the Act in court, it took holdings on the National Archives website. now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery 90 million acres of Indigenous land by 1934. Indian Country Today published a 2017 arti- were embedded in the cle that offers an in-depth examination of the founding documents; enslavers dominated Act’s causes and consequences. the federal government, t-t.site/slavery192 • t-t.site/slavery193 • t-t. Supreme Court and How can I teach this? Senate from 1787 A wealth of primary documents is available site/slavery194 through 1860. 4. “Slavery was an through the website of The Freedmen and institution of power,” Southern Society Project. t-t.site/slavery187 Efforts to assimilate Indigenous people in- designed to create cluded forcibly placing children into board- profit for the enslavers and break the will of ing schools. Students can read the words of the enslaved and was • A Georgia planter complained to the a relentless quest for Freedmen’s Bureau about free women who Carlisle School founder Richard Pratt and profit abetted by racism. preferred to take care of their families instead examine the resources offered by the Carlisle 5. Enslaved people Indian School Digital Resource Center. To resisted the efforts of of working in the fields.t-t.site/slavery188 their enslavers to reduce make connections with the present, students them to commodities in both revolutionary and • Demonstrating the persistence of forced can study the Indian Child Welfare Act and everyday ways. servitude, a free man in North Carolina current efforts to eliminate it. 6. The experience of t-t.site/slavery195 • t-t.site/slavery196 • slavery varied depending appealed to the Freedmen’s Bureau when on time, location, crop, t-t.site/slavery197 labor performed, size of his children were apprenticed to his former slaveholding and gender. enslaver. t-t.site/slavery189 7. Slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. • A Tennessee free man expressed his worry SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 20 8. Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs that his rights to federally controlled land Students will examine the ways that white of Americans about would disappear if the land were returned to Southerners attempted to define freedom for race and whiteness, and white supremacy former Confederates. t-t.site/slavery190 freed African Americans. was both a product and MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 2, 4, 5, 8 & 10 legacy of slavery. 9. Enslaved and freed William Tecumseh Sherman’s Special Field people worked to Order No. 15 (1865) confiscated 400,000 What else should my students know? maintain cultural traditions while building acres of land from enslavers in South Caroli- 20.A White Southerners largely wanted to new ones that sustain communities and impact na, Georgia and Florida and distributed it to return to the pre-war plantation economy. the larger world. people who had been enslaved. The land was Sharecropping and tenant farming, which 10. By knowing how to returned during Presidential Reconstruc- offered some independence to formerly en- read and interpret the sources that tell the story tion, when Andrew Johnson restored most slaved people, emerged as the dominant la- of American slavery, we gain insight into some former Confederates’ political rights and bor forms in the post-war South. Unfair labor of what enslaving and property. t-t.site/slavery191 contracts between farmers and landowners enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 47 Mississippi, protests labor contracts and Black Codes. t-t.site/slavery200

• In a December 16, 1865, letter to the Freedmen’s Bureau, black soldier Calvin Holly writes to protest the violence directed at formerly enslaved people in Mississippi. t-t.site/slavery201

The Colfax Massacre is an understudied act of violence that occurred after a contested In this 1862 left sharecroppers and tenant farmers in an Louisiana gubernatorial election in 1873. One photograph, endless cycle of debt and poverty. hundred and fifty black men were murdered taken in Fair by Southern Democrats who saw them as a Oaks, Virginia, 20.B Captain George The Ku Klux Klan emerged as a terror- threat to Democratic power. Several of the Armstrong ist organization committed to violent reper- perpetrators of the massacre were prosecut- Custer (right) cussions for African Americans or their white ed under the Enforcement Act (Civil Rights of the Fifth Cavalry allies who sought education, political power Act of 1870). This law was passed to protect sits with a or economic success for the black population. the rights of African Americans, who were Confederate regularly threatened by violent groups like prisoner, 20.C Lieutenant Black Codes were sets of laws passed the Ku Klux Klan. The Colfax convictions James B. by former Confederates who regained power were appealed all the way to the Supreme Washington, under Johnson’s Presidential Reconstruc- Court, which ruled in United States v. Cruik- and a child Washington tion. These laws codified certain rights, such shank (1876) that the protections of the 14th enslaved. as owning property or legally marrying, but Amendment protected people only from they also guaranteed harsher punishments the actions of state governments—not from for people of color accused of the same the actions of individuals. This meant that crimes as white people. the federal government could not use the Enforcement Act to target terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. A 2016 Smithso- How can I teach this? nian Magazine article explains Colfax and its To understand sharecropping and tenant consequences. t-t.site/slavery202 farming, examine a sharecropper contract. These documents are widely available on- Students might examine documents that line. These documents are widely available threatened African American rights. A broad- online, or K–12 educators can create a school side published by a “Committee” (likely the account for free access through the Gilder name for a local band of white vigilantes) and Lehrman Institute of American history. seized by the Freedmen’s Bureau in Ten- t-t.site/slavery198 nessee, outlined rules for formerly enslaved people and promised penalties for any infrac- Letters archived by The Freedmen and South- tions. t-t.site/slavery203 ern Society Project provide contemporary protests of racial violence and unfair laws. Key examples of Black Code legislation t-t.site/slavery199 included laws that exploited or regulated the labor of black bodies. Vagrancy laws (par- • In a January 25, 1866, letter to the Freed- ticularly in Mississippi and South Carolina) men’s Bureau, M. Howard, a freedman in allowed magistrates to arrest any black man who appeared unemployed and hire him

48 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY out to a white planter. Apprenticeship laws Slavery by Another Name covers this period meant that if courts ruled that parents were well. t-t.site/slavery204 unable to adequately care for children under 18, those children could be apprenticed out States imposed literacy tests and the grand- as labor, with preference given to former father clause, which were designed to KEY CONCEPTS enslavers. Licensure laws required African disqualify African Americans from voting. 1. Slavery, which Americans to get a special license to do any- Literacy tests were unfairly administered to Europeans practiced before they invaded the thing other than farm. the black population. The grandfather clause, Americas, was important to all colonial powers which obviously targeted African Americans, and existed in all North provided exemptions from these tests and American colonies. from poll taxes only for voters—or descen- 2. Slavery and the slave SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 21 trade were central to dants of voters up to grandchildren—who had the development and Students will examine the impact of the growth of the colonial Compromise of 1877 and the removal of fed- voted prior to 1867. economies and what is eral troops from the former Confederacy. now the United States. 3. Protections for slavery MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 2, 8, & 10 From producers Hannah Ayers and Lance were embedded in the Warren, An Outrage is a short documentary founding documents; enslavers dominated What else should my students know? on lynching in the American South. The film the federal government, Supreme Court and 21.A The Compromise of 1877 emerged from and the accompanying viewer’s guide teach Senate from 1787 the contested presidential election of 1876. about the rise of white Democratic rule in through 1860. the post-Reconstruction era and how African 4. “Slavery was an Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was given institution of power,” the presidency in exchange for the formal Americans resisted racial terror, in part by designed to create profit for the enslavers end of Reconstruction, including the removal joining The Great Migration. t-t.site/slav- and break the will of ery205 • t-t.site/slavery206 the enslaved and was of the last federal troops from the South. a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism.

21.B The digital project A Red Record documents 5. Enslaved people After the end of Reconstruction, the Ku resisted the efforts of Klux Klan and local and state governments histories of lynching throughout the former their enslavers to reduce Confederacy, demonstrating the connection them to commodities in attacked African American political partici- both revolutionary and pation, leading to the return of white Demo- between lynchings and white supremacy everyday ways. after the Civil War. t-t.site/slavery207 6. The experience of cratic rule in the former Confederacy. slavery varied depending on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of 21.C White Democratic governments across Many hundreds of Indigenous and Latinx slaveholding and gender. the South used Jim Crow legal codes to en- people were lynched throughout the West. 7. Slavery was the The history is still being uncovered, but central cause of the force new ways of controlling black labor and Civil War. several online resources provide an introduc- black bodies. 8. Slavery shaped the tion. The work of Ken Gonzales-Day in his fundamental beliefs of Americans about 21.D. A sustained campaign of racial ter- Erased Lynchings project illuminates some race and whiteness, of this history. t-t.site/slavery208 • t-t.site/ and white supremacy rorism, including public lynchings of thou- was both a product and sands of African Americans, enforced white slavery209 • t-t.site/slavery210 legacy of slavery. 9. Enslaved and freed supremacy after slavery itself was ended. people worked to maintain cultural traditions while building SUMMARY OBJECTIVE 22 new ones that sustain communities and impact How can I teach this? Students will examine the ways that the leg- the larger world. During the Jim Crow era, Southern states acies of slavery, white supremacy and settler 10. By knowing how to used peonage and convict labor to force Afri- colonialism continue to affect life in what is now read and interpret the sources that tell the story can Americans to work without pay for years the United States. of American slavery, we gain insight into some and even decades. The PBS documentary MAPS TO KEY CONCEPTS 2, 3, 4, 8 & 9 of what enslaving and enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 49 What else should my students know? 22.F Although race has no scientific ba- 22.A Long traditions of African American sis, as a social construct it has the power to and Indigenous resistance have shaped the profoundly affect the lived experiences of United States and continue in the present, fairness, equality and opportunity for people as shown by actions by the American Indian perceived to be non-white. Movement, the Black Panther Party, the Black Lives Matter movement and at Standing Rock. 22.G Legacies of seeing Indigenous wom- en as sexual objects to be bought, used and 22.B Segregation and inequality persist traded echo today in the extreme numbers of in the United States. This is most evident Indigenous women who go missing and are in employment, housing and education but murdered each year. can also be seen in health care, workplaces, sports settings and churches. How can I teach this? 22.C Profound economic inequalities Let’s Talk: Discussing Critical Topics With stratify American society. African Americans Students supports educators in thinking and Indigenous people face many obstacles critically about their own identities and in to advancement, including unequal educa- helping students talk about oppression and tional opportunities, unemployment, wage injustice in the classroom. t-t.site/slavery211 disparities, barriers to home ownership and persistent wealth inequality. Well into the Teaching The New Jim Crow is a set of 20th century, elite white landowners in the teaching tools (lessons and excerpts) for high West and South continued to hold Indige- school students that introduces the origins nous and African American people as captive of racial caste as well as the history and laborers through systems of debt peonage devastating impact of mass incarceration on and carceral labor. communities of color. t-t.site/slavery212

22.D Mass incarceration has devastated The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein tells many Native nations and communities of the disturbing story of how white supremacy color. Police officers, district attorneys and intentionally caused and perpetuated hous- judges arrest, charge and imprison African ing segregation in the United States. t-t.site/ Americans at rates far exceeding white peo- slavery213 ple, with lasting consequences for political and economic participation. The school- White Rage by Carol Anderson traces the to-prison pipeline leads many Indigenous ways in which white reactions to black social and African American students to come into and political gains undermined those gains contact with law enforcement at a young age and derailed progress for black Americans. after being suspended and expelled from t-t.site/slavery214 school at rates much higher than those for white students. Contemporary debates about removing Confederate monuments illustrate not just 22.E The legacies of settler colonialism con- the lasting legacy of white supremacy but the tinue in the many ways that Indigenous peo- ways that the Civil War was reframed to erase ple are disenfranchised and disadvantaged. Confederate support for slavery. “New Orle- Many Latinx people who come to the United ans’ Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s Address on the States are Indigenous, and they also face Removal of Four Confederate Statues” is the many of the legacies of slavery that manifest transcript of a speech given on Friday, May as contemporary oppression and inequity. 19, 2017, as a statue of Confederate General

50 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY Robert E. Lee was to be taken down. A video from Vox shows how the United Daughters of the Confederacy worked to reshape memory of the Civil War. t-t.site/slavery215 • t-t.site/ slavery216 KEY CONCEPTS 1. Slavery, which Episode eight of Teaching Tolerance’s Teach- Europeans practiced before they invaded the ing Hard History: American Slavery podcast Americas, was important to all colonial powers explores strategies for using crucial examina- and existed in all North tion of films to teach about representations American colonies. of the Civil War and Reconstruction. 2. Slavery and the slave trade were central to t-t.site/slavery217 the development and growth of the colonial economies and what is Equity Matters: Confronting Implicit Bias is now the United States. a teacher-facing webinar that includes many 3. Protections for slavery were embedded in the tools and resources that can be used with founding documents; enslavers dominated students. t-t.site/slavery218 the federal government, Supreme Court and Senate from 1787 An article from the Fall 2018 issue of Teach- through 1860. ing Tolerance’s magazine explains the nature 4. “Slavery was an institution of power,” and persistence of white privilege and sug- designed to create gests useful resources for confronting it. profit for the enslavers and break the will of t-t.site/slavery219 the enslaved and was a relentless quest for profit abetted by racism. Episode 14 of Teaching Tolerance’s Teach- 5. Enslaved people ing Hard History: American Slavery podcast resisted the efforts of their enslavers to reduce makes connections to modern practices of them to commodities in both revolutionary and slavery in the United States and around the everyday ways. world. t-t.site/slavery220 6. The experience of slavery varied depending on time, location, crop, labor performed, size of slaveholding and gender. 7. Slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. 8. Slavery shaped the fundamental beliefs of Americans about race and whiteness, and white supremacy was both a product and legacy of slavery. 9. Enslaved and freed people worked to maintain cultural traditions while building new ones that sustain communities and impact the larger world. 10. By knowing how to read and interpret the sources that tell the story of American slavery, we gain insight into some of what enslaving and enslaved Americans aspired to, created, thought and desired.

TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 51 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Teaching Hard History: A 6–12 Framework for Teaching American Slavery was written by Kate Shuster, Renée Gokey, Bethany Jay, Hasan K. Jeffries, Cynthia Lynn Lyerly, Meredith L. McCoy, Sarah B. Shear and Christina Snyder. The framework was designed by Russell Estes. Maureen Costello advised the content development process. Monita Bell and Julia Delacroix provided editorial support. Special thanks to all the members of the Teaching Hard History advisory board for contributing their time and talents to this project.

Special thanks to the University of Wisconsin Press and to all the scholars who contributed to the book Understanding and Teaching American Slavery. Your work provided the foundation upon which this project was built.

Cover and section illustrations by TAYLOR CALLERY

TEACHING TOLERANCE DIRECTOR Maureen B. Costello DEPUTY DIRECTOR Hoyt J. Phillips III MANAGING EDITOR Monita K. Bell SENIOR EDITOR Julia Delacroix SENIOR WRITER Cory Collins STAFF WRITER Coshandra Dillard NEW MEDIA ASSOCIATE Colin Campbell MARKETING COORDINATOR Lindsey Shelton EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Anya Malley PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Val Brown PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TRAINERS Sarah-SoonLing Blackburn, Kimberly Burkhalter PROGRAM ASSOCIATE Gabriel A. Smith PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT COORDINATOR Madison Coleman TEACHING AND LEARNING SPECIALIST Jonathan Tobin TEACHING AND LEARNING FELLOWS Christina Noyes, Ericka Smith SCHOOL-BASED PROGRAMMING AND GRANTS MANAGER Jey Ehrenhalt PROGRAM COORDINATOR Steffany Moyer ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT Hazel Griffin

CREATIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR Russell Estes SENIOR CREATIVE LEADS Michelle Leland, Scott Phillips, Kristina Turner DESIGNERS Shannon Anderson, Hillary Andrews, Cierra Brinson, Sunny Paulk, Alex Trott, Claudia Whitaker DESIGN ASSOCIATE Angela Greer

Suggested citation: Teaching Tolerance. Teaching Hard History: A 6–12 Framework for Teaching American Slavery. Montgomery: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019.

52 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY TOLERANCE.ORG/HARDHISTORY 53 54 TEACHING TOLERANCE // TEACHING HARD HISTORY // A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING AMERICAN SLAVERY