| The Move Toward Freedom | What is freedom worth? |
It’s easy to think of the two sides in the Civil War as monoliths, in which everyone supported the side where they lived. But many Southerners opposed secession and even fought as part of the Union Army.
Pundits from both political extremes sometimes bring up the idea of the United States having a new civil war. Here’s why that’s not going to happen.
The Civil War wasn’t only confined to battlefields. Find out how the war directly affected the lives of children on both sides of the battle lines.
Even before computers made it easy, people have tampered with photographs. On this web site, you can examine an image from the Civil War and learn how experts determined it was fake.
The poet Walt Whitman wrote extensively about the Civil War, although he did not fight in it. Find out what he was doing during those five pivotal years.
As if her work leading people out of slavery through the Underground Railroad weren’t amazing enough, Harriet Tubman also served a crucial military role during the Civil War.
One powerful driver of the abolitionist movement was the words of formerly enslaved people. Find out about some of the most influential slave narratives.
In this interview, a historian sets the record straight about Abraham Lincoln’s bold move.
Although she is best known for writing the childhood classic Little Women, Louisa May Alcott was far more interested in advocating for freedom for all. Learn more about this multifaceted American author.
Explore letters and official documents related to the Underground Railroad from the front line in Maryland.
What can the camera tell us about the lives and work of famous authors? In this article, poet Mark Strand examines an 1891 photograph of Walt Whitman.
In another chapter of America’s reckoning with the history of slavery, Baltimore has removed Confederate statues from one of its parks and renamed it after abolionist Harriet Tubman.
In 2017, a Pennsylvania historian found several slave narratives that had been published in a local newspaper in 1893. Read this article to learn more.
Why might singing be important for laboring slaves? Click this link to learn more about the important roles folksongs called spirituals played in the lives of slaves.
This article examines some of Frederick Douglass’s writings in which he describes how slave owners made use of food (and hunger) as a way of manipulating their slaves.
A former slave, Sojourner Truth was an ally of Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison in the fight for the abolition of slavery. Watch a mini-biography and read about this brave abolitionist and women’s rights advocate.
In March of 2017, the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center opened in Maryland. Read this article to learn more about the center, along with several other reasons Tubman has received fresh attention recently.
Read to learn about a professor who recently found one of the only manuscripts known to be written by a slave during his bondage. The professor has preserved the document by creating a digital version of the manuscript in its original form.
In 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a famous speech criticizing the celebration of Independence Day in a time of slavery. This article suggests that Douglass’ speech is as relevant today as it was before slavery was abolished in the United States.
Click this link to find out how an unknown novel written by poet Walt Whitman was recently discovered and to read a short excerpt from the manuscript.
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