Browse Items (31 total)

Born into slavery, Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) thwarted repeated sexual advancements made by her master for years and then ran away to the North. She later published an account of her life (under the pseudonym Linda Brent) in her autobiography,…

This cartoon was published in an 1860 issue of Harper’s Weekly, which was a Republican periodical before the Civil War. In 1860, the country was in a heated debate over slavery and secession. The cartoon portrays a baby sitting on top of a box…

During the presidential election in 1860, James D. B. DeBow (1860-1867), the publisher of the influential DeBow’s Review, campaigned in support of secession. His most famous speech, excerpted here, replied to Hinton R. Helper whose Impending Crisis…

This political cartoon by Philadelphia printer, John L. Magee, depicts an incident that occurred on the floor of the Senate on May 22, 1856. During a session of Congress, South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks repeatedly struck Massachusetts…

John Stauffer is professor of English and African American studies at Harvard. His books include The Black Hearts of Men (2002), GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (2008), and The Battle Hymn of the Republic (2013),…

Melton A. McLaurin, professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, recounted the story of Celia, an enslaved woman, and her trial for the murder of her sexually abusive master. McLaurin placed Celia's trial in the…