In this activity, students will analyze a historical map showing percentages of enslaved people by county following the 1860 Census. Students will form an understanding of the distribution of slavery in the southern United States prior to the Civil War.

This Lesson plan uses 6 primary sources to teach students about the American Civil War and its impact on American Society.

This article examines the history of slavery in the United States leading up to the Civil War. This could be used as a teacher reference or it can be annotated with the class.

Students will be engaged in learning about American history prior and during the Civil War. They will be exploring historical documents and learning about the stories of people involved. They will then create a digitial story of what they learned to share with the class. Image attribution: Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

This resource is a Social Studies student activity that utilizes Utah's Online Library resources - specifically, Gale Virtual Reference Library and Gale Student Resources in Context to help students learn about the Mason-Dixon Line. 

This article examines the differences between the North and the South. This would be a good resource for teachers, or could be read and annotated as a class.

The road to Emancipation was indeed stony! Enslaved people struggled to free themselves and loved ones, one person at a time.

This activity includes primary sources from the official records of the U.S. District Court at Boston that tell the story of William and Ellen Craft, a young couple from Macon, GA, who escaped to freedom in Boston in 1848. The two traveled together, Ellen as a White gentleman (she was the daughter of an African-American woman and a White master and passed as White), and William as her slave valet. They made their way to Boston, and lived in the home of Lewis Hayden, a former fugitive and abolition activist.

With the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act in September, 1850, the Crafts' respective owners employed the legal system to regain their escaped property. A U.S. Marshal was sent to the home of Lewis Hayden. Hayden refused to let the marshal in and threatened to ignite kegs of gunpowder; the Marshal left. Ellen and William fled to Britain, where they remained for 20 years. They eventually returned to the United States and settled back in Georgia.

In this activity, students will examine historic documents about these fugitives from slavery. Then, using the documents, they will construct historical narratives to tell their story. They can explore perspective and use standard elements of writing (plot, character, setting, conflict, impact). Thinking about essential questions/topics, they will begin their writing with a topic/opening sentence that sets out the main idea.

The film's third program looks at the period from 1800 through the start of the Civil War, during which slavery saw an enormous expansion and entered its final decades. As the nation expanded west, the question of slavery became the overriding political issue of the time. These years saw an increasingly militant abolitionist movement and a widening rift between the North - which had largely outlawed slavery but continued to reap the vast economic benefits of the system - and the South, now home to millions of enslaved black men, women and children. This is the period of slavery most commonly depicted in history books and captured by dramas. Leading Southerners such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had been convinced slavery was nearing its end. But the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican War brought vast new territories into the United States, and the battle between those for and against slavery intensified. By 1860, every attempt at striking an agreement - the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, a draconian federal fugitive slave law - had failed, splitting apart the Union.

This article and accompanying videos go over several of the events that lead to the American Civil War. There is a quiz at the end of the page to see how much students have learned.

This is a collection of articles and video clips examining the contributions of women in the American Civil War. These can be used as an extension for students that would like to learn more. It could also be used for case studies about women and minorities during the war.