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The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War

Explore the lives of people swept up in the great dramas of slavery, war, and emancipation in this updated version of the pioneering digital history project.
Map of Beaufort, South Carolina during the time of Rose Goethe's life.

“They Cleaned Me Out Entirely”

An enslaved woman’s experience with General Sherman’s army.
Federal Reserve Note featuring Salmon Chase held by the National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History

The War with Inflation and the Confederacy

During the Civil War, the Lincoln administration demonstrated that a progressive agenda and effective anti-inflationary measures could overlap.
Drawing of enslaved persons harvesting sugarcane.

Wesley, Whitefield, and a Gospel That Disrupts

Two preachers who shaped American Christianity diverged sharply on whether to protest or exploit slavery, with consequences that persist today.
Emancipation Day in South Carolina
Exhibit

Emancipation

The long history of emancipation in the United States, from individual escapes and manumissions, through Civil War fighting and Reconstruction legislation, to Juneteenth commemorations.

Photograph of people admiring the statue dedicated to Bett Freeman.

Statue Honors Once-Enslaved Woman Who Won Freedom in Court

Bett Freeman's story and the legal precedent her case established are now forever remembered in Sheffield, Massachusetts.
Abstract collage artwork called "the weight of scars."

A Framework to Help Us Understand the World

Out of a common history emerged racism, capitalism, and the whole world. This offers us a clue on how to change that world.
A photograph of a protest against Jim Crow laws.

The Wealth of Two Nations: The U.S. Racial Wealth Gap, 1860 - 2020

The racial wealth gap is the largest of the economic disparities between Black and white Americans, and one of the most persistent.
Civil War veterans in the Grand Army of the Republic, Cazenovia, New York, circa 1900.

The American Civil War and the Case for a “Long” Age of Revolution

The Age of Revolution, known mainly as the period between the American Revolution and the Revolutions of 1848, continued all the way to 1865.
Artistic collage of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

Was Emancipation Constitutional?

Did the Confederacy have a constitutional right to secede? And did Lincoln violate the Constitution in forcing them back into the Union and freeing the slaves?
Lithograph of African Americans in prayer as Liberty lays a wreath on Charles Sumner’s casket. By Matt Morgan, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1874.

Reconciliation Process

When Charles Sumner died in 1874, a bill he had sponsored two years earlier threatened to overshadow his legacy.
Workers working on ruins after the US Civil War, circa 1865.

The Abolitionist Legacy of the Civil War Belongs to the Left

The US Civil War was a revolutionary upheaval that crushed slavery and stoked hopes of a broader emancipation against the rule of property.
Illustration of Elizabeth Keckley
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Elizabeth Keckley's Memoir "Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four in the White House"

Keckley’s decision to write about her employers from the viewpoint of a household laborer—she was seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln—enraged audiences.
MLK waving at March on Washington
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"I Have A Dream": Annotated

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s iconic speech, annotated with relevant scholarship on the literary, political, and religious roots of his words.
A line of black civil war soldiers holding their rifles.
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Black Soldier Desertion in the Civil War

The reasons Black Union soldiers left their army during the Civil war were varied, with poor pay, family needs and racism among them.
Company of African American soldiers, 1865.

The Racial Politics of Demobilizing USCT Regiments

The inequitable dismissal of US soldiers following the conclusion of the Civil War.
Portrait photograph of John B. Cade.
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John B. Cade's Project to Document the Stories of the Formerly Enslaved

There are revelations in a newly digitized collection of slave narratives compiled by a professor and his students during the Great Depression.
Harvesting on a Louisiana sugar plantation, 1875; an overseer monitors laborers in the field, while a factory billows smoke in the background.

Making Sugar, Making ‘Coolies’

Chinese laborers toiled alongside Black workers on 19th-century Louisiana plantations.
Watercolor painting of enslaved people walking barefoot on a forced march, with white men on horseback at the front and back of the line.

Reparative Semantics: On Slavery and the Language of History

Scholarly accounts of slavery have been changing, but these correctives sometimes say more about historians than the historical subjects they're writing about.
‘This Little Boy would persist in handling Books Above His Capacity—and this was the Disastrous Result’; cartoon of Andrew Johnson by Thomas Nast, 1868

He Was No Moses

While he opposed slavery and southern secession early in his career, as president Andrew Johnson turned out to be an unsightly bigot.
Statue of Robert E. Lee on his horse.

Reëxamining the Legacy of Race and Robert E. Lee

The historian Allen C. Guelzo believes that the Confederate general deserves a more compassionate reading.
Painting of British soldiers surrendering their arms to George Washington.

The Yorktown Tragedy: Washington's Slave Roundup

History books remember Yorktown as a "victory for the right of self-determination." But the battle guaranteed slavery for nearly another century.
Archaeologists excavating grounds near the Rhode Island state house.

Before Rhode Island Built Its State House, a Racist Mob Destroyed the Community That Lived There

In 1831, a group of white rioters razed the Providence neighborhood of Snowtown. Now, archaeologists are excavating its legacy.
Image of John C. Calhoun

How Slavery Haunts Today’s Big Debates About Federal Spending

John C. Calhoun knew what a strong federal government might do.
Photo of Union commanders.

The Anti-Lee

George Henry Thomas, southerner in blue.
Red binder pulled from row of blue binders

Serendipity in the Archives

Or, a lost freedom story I found while looking for something else.
A cracked picture of Washington crossing the Delaware River.

The Incoherence of American History

We ascribe too much meaning to the early years of the republic.
Two hooded KKK members

The Ku Klux Klan Was Also a Bosses’ Association

The KKK violently resisted the revolutionary gains of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and sought to keep the black masses toiling in submission.
Side profile of Julia Grant

Julia Dent Grant’s Personal Memoirs as a Plantation Narrative

Her memoirs contribute to the inaccurate post-Civil War memory of the Southern plantation.
A supporter of US President Donald Trump holds a Confederate flag outside the Senate Chamber during a protest after breaching the US Capitol in Washington, DC, January 6, 2021. - The demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification.

Jan. 6 Was a "Turning Point" in American History

Pulitzer-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed reflects on the battle for the past and the fragile state of American democracy.
A painting entitled Our Town, with Black children playing on a suburban street

The Truth About Black Freedom

This year’s Juneteenth commemorations must take a deeper look at the history of Black self-liberation to understand what emancipation really means.

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