Table of Contents
- 1. The Slavery Question: Pro and Con
- 2. Black Experience in Colonial and Revolutionary America
- 3. Slave Trade, Oppression, and Resistance
- 4. Free Black Community before Emancipation
- 5. Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction and Its Legacy
- 6. Accommodation and Assimilation versus Reform
- 7. Militant Protest: Niagara Movement, NAACP, Black Power
- 8. Blacks in the Urban North
- 9. Civil Rights
- 10. Legal Cases and Arguments
- 11. Black Women’s Experience: Civil Rights and Equality
- 12. African Americans after Civil Rights
History
African American History
Slave ship (Library of Congress)
1. The Slavery Question: Pro and Con
From the very beginnings of the United States, slavery was a hotly debated subject. Religious leaders, merchants, farmers, and political leaders weighed in on whether slavery was a necessary and defensible institution—one perhaps even sanctioned by God—or a blot on the new nation's history and an offense against decency.
Documents
- Slavery Clauses in the U.S. Constitution (1787)
- Richard Allen: "An Address to Those Who Keep Slaves, and Approve the Practice" (1794)
- Prince Hall: A Charge Delivered to the African Lodge (1797)
- Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm: First Freedom's Journal Editorial (1827)
- David Walker: Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829)
- William Lloyd Garrison: First Liberator Editorial (1831)
- Joseph Story's “Privileges of Citizens—Fugitives—Slaves” (1833)
- William Lloyd Garrison's "The Triumph of Mobocracy in Boston" (1835)
- John C. Calhoun: "On the Reception of Abolition Petitions" (1837)
- Henry Highland Garnet: "An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America" (1843)
- William Lloyd Garrison: "Address to the Friends of Freedom and Emancipation in the United States" (1844)
- First Editorial of the North Star (1847)
- William Wells Brown: "Slavery As It Is" (1847)
- John C. Calhoun: "On the Slavery Question" (1850)
- Compromise of 1850 (1850)
- Henry Clay: Remarks on the Compromise of 1850 Resolutions (1850)
- Sam Houston's Speech Supporting the Compromise of 1850 (1850)
- Stephen A. Douglas: Speech Defending the Compromise of 1850 (1850)
- Frederick Douglass: "Fourth of July" Speech (1852)
- Wendell Phillips's "The Philosophy of the Abolition Movement" (1853)
- Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
- William Henry Seward: Speech on the "Irrepressible Conflict" (1858)
- William Lloyd Garrison's Speech Relating to the Execution of John Brown (1859)
- Brigham Young's Sermon on Race and Slavery (1859)
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Speech for the Anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1860)
- William Lloyd Garrison: Valedictory Editorial of the Liberator (1865)
