WHAT ARE PRIMARY SOURCES?

Diaries, journals, speeches, interviews, letters, memos, manuscripts and other papers in which individuals describe events in which they were participants or observers.Memoirs and autobiographies. These may be less reliable than diaries or letters since they are usually written long after events occurred and may be distorted by bias, dimming memory or the revised perspective that may come with hindsight. On the other hand, they are sometimes the only source for certain information.Records of or information collected by government agencies.  Many kinds of records (births, deaths, marriages; permits and licences issued; census data; etc.) document conditions in the society. Records of organizations.  The minutes, reports, correspondence, etc. of an organization or agency serve as an ongoing record of the activity and thinking of that organization or agency. Published materials (books, magazine and journal articles, newspaper articles) written at the time about a particular event. While these are sometimes accounts by participants, in most cases they are written by journalists or other observers. The important thing is to distinguish between material written at the time of an event as a kind of report, and material written much later, as historical analysis.Photographs, audio recordings and moving pictures or video recordings, documenting what happened.Materials that document the attitudes and popular thought of a historical time period.  If you are attempting to find evidence documenting the mentality or psychology of a time, or of a group (evidence of a world view, a set of attitudes, or the popular understanding of an event or condition), the most obvious source is public opinion polls taken at the time. Since these are generally very limited in availability and in what they reveal, however, it is also possible to make use of ideas and images conveyed in the mass media, and even in literature, film, popular fiction, textbooks, etc. Again, the point is to use these sources, written or produced at the time, as evidence of how people were thinking. Research data such as anthropological field notes, the results of scientific experiments, and other scholarly activity of the time.Artifacts of all kinds: physical objects, buildings, furniture, tools, appliances and household items, clothing, toys.

Wolf by the Ears: The Wolf by the Ears: The Reconstruction of Race in Reconstruction of Race in Antebellum AmericaAntebellum America

"We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."

A House Divided Against itself . . .

The Evolution of Two Americas

The Hardening of Slavery, 1791-1861

The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act

Dred Scott

Justice Roger TaneyThe words "people of the United States" and "citizens" are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who ... form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives.... The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement [people of African ancestry] compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.

HarrietTubman

Underground railroad conductor

Narcoleptic

Union Spy

Feminist after the war.

She pointed a gun at the head of one of her “passengers” who threatened to go back to the plantation and said “you can go with us to freedom or you can die.”

d

Controlling slaves by law

Free Negroes Lose their Guarantee of Freedom

The Underground Railway

After the compromise of 1850 stated Northern officials “must” return runaway slaves, the railroad was extended to Canada.

Ingenious Slave “mails” himself to Massachusetts, shocking postal workers when they open the crate!

Slave Market, 1852

Richmond Slave Pen, 1860

Sale Receipt, 36 Year-Old Male

Resistance and Abolitionism

Nat Turner’sRebellion, 1831

Nat Turner Laying Out His Plan

Nearly 60 whites, men. Women and Children are killed. Turner is hung in Virginia.

Over 200 slaves are killed by vigilantes in the following weeks

Nat Turner’s “Hanging Tree”

The Capture of Nat Turner

The Abolitionists: All on Fire, William Lloyd Garrison

Abolitionist Tracts

Exposing Slavery

“There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution...”

Frederick DouglassBlack Abolitionists

Charles Lennox

Henry Highland Garnett James Forten

Robert Purvis

Samuel Cornish

William Sill

African American

Abolitionists

In 1834 the Philadelphia A.S. [Anti-Slavery] Society was formed, and, being actively associated in the efforts for the slaves' redemption, I have travelled thousands of miles in this country, holding meetings in some of the slave states, have been in the midst of mobs and violence, and have shared abundantly in the odium attached to the name of an uncompromising *modern* abolitionist, as well as partaken richly of the sweet return of peace attendant on those who would 'undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke.'

In 1840, a World's Anti-slavery Convention was called in London. Women from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, were delegates to that convention. I was one of the number; but, on our arrival in England, our credentials were not accepted because we were women. We were, however, treated with great courtesy and attention, as strangers, and as women, were admitted to chosen seats as spectators and listeners, while our right of membership was denied--we were voted out.

This brought the Woman question more into view, and an increase of interest in the subject has been the result. In this work, too, I have engaged heart and hand, as my labors, travels, and public discourses evince. The misrepresentation, ridicule, and abuse heaped upon this, as well as other reforms, do not, in the least, deter me from my duty. To those, whose name is cast out as evil for the truth's sake, it is a small thing to be judged of man's judgement.

This imperfect sketch may give some idea of the mode of life of one who has found it 'good to be always zealously affected in a good thing.'

Lucretia MottAbolitionism and

Feminism

Bleeding Kansas, 1857

John Brown: Violent ProblemViolent Solution

Abraham Lincoln, 1861-

1865

Ft. Sumter, April 1861

By Sword, Blood and Fire

Cleansing 253 Years of the Sins of a Nation

The Civil War and Emancipation

African Americans in the Union Army

Teamsters

Servants (pouring whiskey)

Abraham Lincoln:Emancipator or Opportunistic Politician?

Executive Mansion,Washington, August 22, 1862.Hon. Horace Greeley:

Dear Sir.I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable [sic] in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

Yours,A. Lincoln.

. . . by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all case when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

A. Lincoln, September 22, 1862

"I was impressed with his entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race. He was the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself."

"Measuring by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical and determined."

Frederick Douglass

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1864

• In this national crisis, it is not argument that we want, but that rare courage which dares commit itself to a principle....

• We cannot but remember that there have been days in American history, when, if the Free States had done their duty, Slavery had been blocked by an immovable barrier, and our recent calamities forever precluded. The Free States yielded, and every compromise was surrender, and invited new demands. Here again is a new occasion which Heaven offers to sense and virtue. It looks as if we held the fate of the fairest possession of mankind in our hands, to be saved by our firmness or to be lost by hesitation....

• Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.

Voting with their feet: slaves fleeing into union lines

When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation it did not free ALL slaves, only those in a handful of border states. Slaves in the Deep South did not wait for Lincoln to expand the order, they deserted their plantations by the thousand to flee behind Union lines which comprised sort of a rolling wave South as the Union closed in on final victory. They voted for freedom with their feet!

“Contrabands”

Oddly enough, fleeing slaves were labeled contrabands when they reached freedom: literally, confiscated property!

Apparently, the Union Army had no sense of irony!

Glory: The 54th Massachusetts

You can watch Glory for an extra credit movie and I recommend it, but I also recommend you not watch it as a unambiguously true story. The battle scenes are fairly accurate, but Denzel Washington’s character never existed. That unit did not allow escaped slaves into it’s ranks. That would come later in other units, but not in the 54 th, Those were all free African Americans who gave the full measure of their giving and fought and died so others could be free. You can’t and shouldn’t diminish that, but don’t mythologize history and thus obscure the price so many escaped slaves paid when they were finally allowed into the military, nor the fact that it would take nearly another 100 years before blacks were allowed to hold the rank of officers after World War II. Not until the Vietnam war were African American officers allowed to command White troops!

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow; better even to die free than to live slaves.

Frederick Douglass

Counting the Cost: 600,000 Dead; over 38,000 Black Soldiers - More

than 10% of all Union Soldiers Killed

Thomas Nast:In an Unusually

Beneficent Moment