Additional Assignments

1. Research what the response in your state was to the secession crisis between November 1860 and June 1861. You can search online for newspaper articles or editorials (especially useful is the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America site, chroniclingamerica.loc.gov). You can also search for speeches of state politicians at the time or look at the Congressional Globe (memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwcglink.html) to see what the arguments in Congress were. If you live in a southern state, you can easily look up your state’s secession documents.
2. The Lincoln-Douglas debates include the main arguments for and against slavery. For basic information and for the text of the speeches, start with the National Park Service (www.nps.gov/liho/historyculture/debates.htm).
3. A great deal about slavery is available online. For example, you can delve into how slaves lived using slave narratives (www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/slaveryinva.pdf) or through studying various images (www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/082_slave.html or http://www.nypl.org/search/nypl_digitalgallery/slavery images). The University of North Carolina has scanned a large number of manuscript collections that offer slaveholders’ points of view. (Start at www.lib.unc.edu/mss/shc/, go to the Research Tools tab, and then use the card catalog to search for specifics.)