After Slavery: Educator Resources

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USHC Indicator 3.2

Summarize the course of the Civil War and its impact on democracy, including the major turning points; the impact of the Emancipation Proclamation; the unequal treatment afforded to African American military units; the geographic, economic, and political factors in the defeat of the Confederacy; and the ultimate defeat of the idea of secession.

Unit 1: Giving Meaning to Freedom
Document 1: A White Piedmont Farmer Reflects on Black Freedom
Document 2: President Johnson offers Amnesty to Former Confederates
Document 3: President Andrew Johnson Appoints William W. Holden Provisional Governor of North                                     Carolina
Document 4: A Northern Military Officer Advises Former Slaves on Freedom
Document 5: A Planter's Vision of Freedom and Free Labor
Document 6: Two North Carolina Freedwomen Testify Against Their Former Owner
Document 7: A Committee of Freedmen on Edisto Island Reveal their Expectations
Document 8: Former Slaves Describe Conditions on a Georgia Plantation
Document 9: A Charleston Freedwoman Opens A Bank Account

Unit 3: Land and Labor
Document 2: Freedmen's Bureau Report on the Treatment of Plantation Laborers in Gates County, North                             Carolina
Document 3: A Freedpeople's Colony on Roanoke Island, North Carolina
Document 5: General William T. Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15
Document 6: Freedpeople React to the Restoration of Land to their Former Masters
Document 8: South Carolina's 'Black Code' 

Unit 4: Freedom, Black Soldiers, and the Union Military
Document 1: General Rufus B. Saxton's Report on an Early Engagement by Black Troops
Document 2: New Bern's Black Community Negotiates their Terms for Military Service
Document 3: North Carolina's 'African Brigade' Raids the State's Interior
Document 4: General Saxton Protests against the Forced Enlistment of Freed Slaves
Document 5: Clashes between White and Black Union Troops in Charleston
Document 6: Georgetown (S. C.) Whites Petition for the Removal of Black Troops
Document 7: Contrasting Attitudes toward Union Troops in the South Carolina 
Document 8: Black Troops, White Hostility, and Radicalization in the Upcountry 

Unit 5: Conservatives Respond to Emancipation
Document 2: "The War is Not Over"

Unit 6: Pursuing Citizenship, Justice, and Equality
Document 3: Report on Conditions in a North Carolina Jail

Unit 10: Freedpeople and the Republican Party
Document 1: Black Charleston Reacts to News of the Confederate Surrender