Browse Items (31 total)

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),…

In August of 1831, seventy slaves in Southampton County, Virginia, revolted and killed 57 whites. The rebels and their leader, minister Nat Turner, were captured and hanged. “Horrid Massacre in Virginia” is an image from a pamphlet published by…

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…

Each state that withdrew from the Union prior to the Civil War did so by formally drafting an “Ordinance of Secession.” From January to May of 1861, delegates from the State of Virginia met in convention to consider their options. The deliberations,…

In the first image of the cartoon, a slave who has been given a pike by John Brown is depicted using the weapon as a potato-farming tool, rather than a weapon to fight with the revolt group as intended. In the bottom image, a southern plantation…

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…

Alexander H. Stephens (1812-1883), although originally opposed to secession, was elected vice-president of the Confederacy. After the war, he returned to political service in Georgia and in the House of Representatives. He served as governor of…

After the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln to the presidency on a sectional vote, leaders in South Carolina rejected cooperation with other slave states and seceded on December 20, 1860. In the following document, the South Carolina government…