December 3, 1867: Third Annual Message to Congress | Miller Center
Eric Foner called this annual message of Andrew Johnson "perhaps the most blatantly racist pronouncement ever to appear on an official state document"
Special Message | The American Presidency Project
Grant's message to Congress on the anniversary of the 15th Amendment
Letter from John Mosby - Encyclopedia Virginia
The Reconstruction Era and the Fragility of Democracy | Facing History & Ourselves
Several lessons, primary source documents and videos
Speech by Prime Minister Mark Rutte about the role of the Netherlands in the history of slavery | Speech | Government.nl
Students should read this - what would a public discussion about this speech in the United States sound like today?
Reconstruction, political and economic, 1865-1877 : Dunning, William Archibald, 1857-1922 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
This history of Reconstruction written in 1907 has been discredited as a "Lost Cause" history reflective of turn-of-the-century racism. It was written by a professor at the University of Columbia, who many teachers would say counts as a "reliable source"
W. E. B. Du Bois Reflects on the Purpose of History | Facing History & Ourselves
This short excerpt includes an audio version making it easy to plug into a Reconstruction lesson. This excerpt, from a chapter titled “The Propaganda of History,” questions the ways in which Reconstruction was being studied and taught at the time.
Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States
This is a 13-volume collection of reports and testimonies from a Congressional committee that investigated the Ku Klux Klan and other insurrectionary movements in the former Confederacy after the close of the Civil War. The committee made their report in 1872. The report proper is in the first volume; the other volumes contain testimonies and miscellaneous documents.
Confederate Monument Interpretation Guide | Atlanta History Center
This is a helpful addition to anything students do with monumnets
Speech about Ratification of 15th Amendment by Tennessee in 1997
This speech in the US Congress concerns Tennessee's ratification of the 15th Amendment, a fact which could easily surprise anyone. Read through the first paragraphs and not the details as to why - more importantly, look at dates of the other state's ratification listed here
"Originalism Is Intellectually Indefensible": A Conversation With Eric Foner
Teachers should take a peek at this to see how vital the past is to the present. The trick to teaching is to make students see this as well
Black people dressed as enslaved show up at Civil War Enactment event -
Short TikTok video could start an interesting class discussion on public memory and how different people understand the past. Pair this up with "My Old Kentucky Home" and plantation reenactments of the 1890s
Lawrence Glickman on Twitter: "Critics of Reconstruction and Civil Rights made claims very similar to George F, Will’s argument about the need to weigh the rule of law against other values, such as “comity” and “domestic tranquility.” /1 https://t.co/fs92
This thread demonstrates the power we have to find documents and evidence of the past to use in today's conversations. This was not possible before - but, we can't assume what the effect this will have on society and public discourse. The question is - how has this changed teaching? How should it change teaching?
Senate Concurrent Resolution Number 547
Show this document to students - then see how long it take them to figure it out. Look at it yourself first, notice the dates, what seems strange about it to you? This could be a decent class introduction activity
Songs of the Confederacy and Plantation Melodies - Google Books
Published by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in early 1900s, this is musical support for the lost cause. Students can search through lyrics for examples of the lost cause
Confederate Veteran Magazine
Advertised as the official organ first of the United Confederate Veterans, United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Confederate Southern Memorial Society, this magazine sold thousands of copies in the late 18th, early 19th century. This collection of copies can be used and searched as a "free range" primary doc exercise exploring the "Lost Cause"
"Memorial Day Order" - National Cemetery Administration
General John Logan's Order Number 11 is commonly thought of as the first "Memorial Day " declaration (called "Decoration Day) could be shared with students to show how he stresses "rebellion" and "Free and undivided republic" - how has this meaning of Memorial Day changed?
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Report on the Condition of the South, by Carl Schurz
"Treason does, under existing circumstances, not appear odious in the south. The people are not impressed with any sense of its criminality. And, secondly, there is, as yet, among the southern people an utter absence of national feeling. "
NJ Department of State - Historical Commission - Juneteenth 2021
Do you teach that NJ was the last northern state to end the legal protection of a system of slavery?
Lost Friends Exhibition - The Historic New Orleans Collection
The Southwestern Christian Advocate, a newspaper published in New Orleans by the Methodist Book Concern and distributed to nearly 500 preachers, 800 post offices, and more than 4,000 subscribers in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Lost Friends notices, which ran well into the first decade of the 20th century, featured messages from individuals searching for loved ones lost in slavery. This database provides access to more than 2,500 advertisements that appeared in the Advocate between November 1879 and December 1900.
Joshua Benton on Twitter: "There are two approved Louisiana history textbooks for the state's 8th graders. This is how one of them introduces the Civil War: as tough times for a poor young white woman whose family owned 120 slaves. https://t.co/oR617iSkFO
Thread of discussion regarding the way a Louisiana textbook describes slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction. Worthwhile for teachers, but yet may also be a source of a lesson. screenshots from the text and snippets from the comments could be considered by students. The whole books can be found here http://www.eguastella.com/louisiana-our-history-our-home.html There is a media literacy lesson here as well. This is a book written by a Louisiana State University professor, it was approved by the state of Louisiana and purchased by many districts across the state. Yet it tells a twisted tale of the past.
Welcome · Civil War and Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi · Civil War and Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi
The Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Project (CWRGM) is digitizing, transcribing, and annotating these valuable records from Mississippi’s governors’ offices and making them freely available online
AHA Statement on Confederate Monuments | Perspectives on History | AHA
![[December 25, 1868.- Granting full pardon and amnesty to all persons engaged in the late rebellion.] By the President of the United States of America. A proclamation ... Done at the City of Washington, the twenty-fifth day of December, in the ye | Library](https://rdl.ink/render/http%3A%2F%2Ftile.loc.gov%2Fstorage-services%2Fservice%2Frbc%2Frbpe%2Frbpe23%2Frbpe236%2F23602600%2F001dr.jpg?width=92&height=&ar=&mode=&format=avif&dpr=2)
[December 25, 1868.- Granting full pardon and amnesty to all persons engaged in the late rebellion.] By the President of the United States of America. A proclamation ... Done at the City of Washington, the twenty-fifth day of December, in the ye | Library
Students in school after January 6, 2021 might view this proclamation differently. Thousands of confederates waged war against the United States of America - and this proclamation of Andrew Johnson granted them all a "full pardon and amnesty". This is the ultimate presidential pardon
1900: Speech in the Senate - Benjamin Tillman
Here the former Governor of South Carolina, a Senator from that state at the time, proclaims clearly that his state disenfranchised black voters. There were schools and there are halls at Clemson University named after Tillman. There is a statue of him at the capitol of South Carolina
Week 1- Race and Voting Rights on Vimeo
Lecture from GLI Teacher of the Year Alyssa Butler
Alabama History: Re-examined Part 4
Four minute local news story about Reconstruction in Alabama. This is just one of a four part series in which WFSA in Montgomery, Alabama is teaching the public about the past. How much do schools teach history? How much history is learning public media like this? This also balances the narrative of 21st century resistance to confronting the past
Who Was Jim Crow? - Jim Crow Museum - Ferris State University
The name American students know associated with the laws of segregation was actually a minstrel show character created by white actor Thomas Rice
The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden---1902 : Thomas Dixon
This novel is a revision of Reconstruction which portrays black voters as tyrants who are out to take wealth from white landowners and give it to themselves. This is one of the many books that portray Reconstruction as a failure, not in the sense that it did not do enough for blacks after the Civil War, but because it took power away from white people.
The Forgotten: The Contraband of America and the Road to Freedom | National Trust for Historic Preservation
Article for teachers to learn about something they were never taught, but perhaps should be included in their lesson sequence of Civil War or Reconstruction unit lessons