Thread by @arothmanhistory

I'm teaching the history of slavery in North America this semester. Anybody want to follow along here on Twitter if I post sources, readings, etc?

Well, you've convinced me. Thanks for the enthusiastic response, folks. I'm amazed. Here goes #GUhist286. This course is designed for my @Georgetown undergrads. I'll post relevant materials on this thread over the next few months and try to keep up as best I can.

#GUhist286 1. Let's start with a song.

loc.gov/item/afc193900…

#GUhist286 2. Shall we take a look at the books you'll need for the semester?

#GUhist286 3. I don't use a traditional textbook. The book that covers the most ground for the class is Ira Berlin's Generations of Captivity. A wonderful survey. hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…

#GUhist286 4. I also assign lots of stuff from Willie Lee Rose's Documentary History of Slavery in North America, an extraordinary collection of primary sources. ugapress.org/book/978082032…

#GUhist286 5. Then we've got several books on more specific topics, starting with The Slave Ship by Marcus Rediker. penguinrandomhouse.com/books/295636/t…

#GUhist286 6. I'm pretty sure you're going to love Never Caught by @ericaadunbar simonandschuster.com/books/Never-Ca…

#GUhist286 7. Am I assigning my own book, Beyond Freedom's Reach? Yes, yes I am. Don't @ me. hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…

#GUhist286 8. The semester's final book is the extraordinary My Face Is Black Is True, the story of Callie House, by Mary Frances Berry. penguinrandomhouse.com/books/12958/my…

#GUhist286 9. Day 1. What is slavery? Here is sociologist Orlando Patterson's definition: "Slavery is the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons.” (Slavery and Social Death, p. 13.

#GUhist286 10. Day 1. Another definition of slavery: In January 1865, Rev. Garrison Frazier, a freedman, told U.S. leaders Stanton and Sherman that "Slavery is, receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent.” freedmen.umd.edu/savmtg.htm

#Guhist286 11. Day 2. Before 1619. How did the ancient practice of slavery start to take its distinctive Atlantic and American form? A big question (and debate) is about the relationship between slavery and racism. Read the intro & chap. 1 of Berlin's Generations of Captivity.

#GUhist286 12. Day 2. Another key reading is Barbara J. Fields, "Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America," New Left Review 1/181 (1990). Paywalled, I'm afraid. newleftreview.org/issues/I181/ar…

#GUhist286 13. Day 2. I think it's instructive to take a look at some ancient stories of slavery from the Bible, for example: the selling of Joseph. nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/pont…

#GUhist286 14. Day 2. Aristotle's idea of the "slave by nature" was a landmark in thinking about slavery: "He who participates in rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle, is a slave by nature." classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poli…

#GUhist286 15. Day 2. We end up with the early development of the law of slavery in Virginia, which Fields touches on in her essay. The 1662 law of descent is at the heart of everything to come. This is known as "partus sequitur ventrem."
virtualjamestown.org/laws1.html

#GUhist286 16. Day 2. How about another song? This is "Hard Times in Old Virginia," sung by the Georgia Sea Island Singers in 1960. research.culturalequity.org/get-audio-deta…

#GUhist286 17. Day 3. The Atlantic slave trade. Historians estimate more than 12 million captives were embarked from the shores of Africa for the Americas, & more than a million died at sea. Four centuries of murder. See the Slave Voyages database. slavevoyages.org

#GUhist286 18. Day 3. A database that helps to illustrate Atlantic slavery is *Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora*. A large and very well curated collection of images. #slaveryarchive slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimage…

#GUhist286 19. Day 3. This map from the early 1700s shows European recognition of the complex political geography of West Africa in the era of Atlantic slavery. loc.gov/item/200562533…

#GUhist286 20. Day 3. Listen to Gambian griot Alhaji Fabala Kanute narrate the rise of the Atlantic slave trade from a West African perspective in "Toolongjong." folkways.si.edu/alhaji-fabala-…

#GUhist286 21. Day 3. You can download the liner notes to Griots, which include the lyrics to Toolongjong in English. Here's a revealing excerpt. folkways.si.edu/griots-ministe…

#GUhist286 22. Day 4. Today we discussed Marcus Rediker's searing book, The Slave Ship. He challenges the "violence of abstraction" with vivid stories of the hardship of the slavers' crews, the barbaric treatment of captive Africans, and the desperate resistance they mounted.

#GUhist286 23. Day 4. Watch this 3-D visualization of the French slaver L'Aurore from @slavevoyages slavevoyages.org/voyage/ship

#GUhist286 24. Day 4. @gtownlibrary has digitized the logbook of a slave ship called the Mary, which sailed out of Providence, RI in 1795. The log records the trade in W. Africa, a shipboard uprising, and many deaths at sea. #slaveryarchive repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/1…

#GUhist286 25. Day 4. A transcription of the logbook of the Mary was published in Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, v. 2 (1930), pp. 360-378, freely available online here: babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.…

#GUhist286 26. Day 5. The expansion of colonial slavery, late 1600s-early 1700s. Readings include chap. 2 of Berlin, Generations of Captivity, and docs 5, 7, and 12 in Rose's Documentary History of Slavery. Berlin argues for shift from "creole" to "plantation" generations...

#GUhist286 27. Day 5. Two entries in Maryland merchant James Carroll's daybook from the 1710s are indicative of the new era. The first is a record of the sale of Africans from the slave ship Margaret in Annapolis in 1718... #slaveryarchive @GUslavery slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/240

#GUhist286 28. Day 5. The second is Carroll's "Account" of his own purchase of people starting in 1715... #slaveryarchive @GUslavery slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/135

#GUhist286 29. Day 5. Carroll bought a man named Tomboy from Col. Darnall. Here is a 1710 portrait of his son (I think) Henry Darnall III, attended by a dark-skinned boy, presumably enslaved, with a metal collar... mdhs.org/digitalimage/d…

#GUhist286 30. Day 5. Could things have been different? There were roads not taken: even more indigenous enslavement, a brief ban on slavery in Georgia, and revolts like at Stono in 1739. Here is the landmark Germantown Protest vs. slavery in 1688. loc.gov/item/rbpe.1400…

#GUhist286 31. Day 6. How did Africans survive, adjust, and cope with life in bondage in colonial America? Today's class focuses on cultural continuity and change, especially in terms of religion...

#GUhist286 32. Day 6. Let's start with the story of Samba, who was implicated in a revolt in Louisiana in 1731 and executed. But he had been fighting the French for a long time, starting in Africa... #slaveryarchive gutenberg.org/files/9153/915…

#GUhist286 33. Day 6. Omar Ibn Said, an African-born Muslim, wrote his autobiography in Arabic in North Carolina in 1831. It's now at the @librarycongress. He converted to Christianity in America but never forgot his Muslim heritage... loc.gov/ghe/cascade/in…

#GUhist286 34. Day 6. Omar Ibn Said reminds me of Yarrow Mamout, another African-born Muslim, who survived enslavement to become a free man of some celebrity in Georgetown. His portrait is in the @smithsoniannpg... npg.si.edu/object/npg_L_N…

#GUhist286 35. Day 6. The final figure for today is the famous poet Phillis Wheatley, who wrote in 1773, "Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain / May be refined, and join the angelic train." docsouth.unc.edu/neh/wheatley/w…

#GUhist286 36. Day 7. Slavery and the Revolution.

Read Berlin's Generations of Captivity, ch. 3: The Revolutionary Generation.

The painting below, Jean-Baptiste Le Paon's Lafayette at Yorktown (ca. 1783), depicts Lafayette with James Armistead...

academicmuseum.lafayette.edu/special/specia…

#GUhist286 37. Day 7. The rhetoric of slavery is all over the Revolution. A great example comes from Washington's General Orders, August 23 1776... founders.archives.gov/documents/Wash…

#GUhist286 38. Day 7. There was also a real politics of slavery, involving issues such as the slave trade and Dunmore's proclamation. These came together in Jefferson 1st draft of the Declaration, in a grievance that was cut out of the final version... jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-docum…

#GUhist286 39. Day 7. Black people, free and slave, served and fought on both sides. Some got free, in the US or elsewhere. Black people in Massachusetts petitioned for their emancipation on revolutionary grounds. masshist.org/database/viewe…

#GUhist286 40. Day 8. Today in class we discussed Never Caught by @ericaadunbar. Many thanks to Professor Dunbar for Zooming into class and sharing her insights. What a treat! #TeamOna simonandschuster.com/books/Never-Ca…

#GUhist286 41. Day 8. Advertisement seeking Ona Judge, who had "absconded from the household of the President of the United States." (Pennsylvania Gazette, May 24, 1796)... #slaveryarchive mountvernon.org/library/digita…

#GUhist286 42. Day 8. In this letter, dated Nov. 28, 1796, Washington explains why he didn't want to let Ona Judge go free. #slaveryarchive founders.archives.gov/documents/Wash…

#GUhist286 43. Day 9. Guess who??

A civics lesson from a slaver, hey neighbor
Your debts are paid 'cause you don't pay for labor
We plant seeds in the South. We create. Yeah, keep ranting
We know who's really doing the planting...

#GUhist286 44. Day 9. I love this painting by Titus Kaphar, Behind The Myth of Benevolence (2014)... kapharstudio.com/behind-the-myt…

#GUhist286 45. Day 9. Jefferson kept a record in his "Farm Book" of the many enslaved people and families he owned... #slaveryarchive @MHS1791 masshist.org/thomasjefferso…

#GUhist286 46. Day 9. Madison Hemings recounted four generations of his family's story in an 1873 interview. One of the most important sources in the whole history of American slavery... #slaveryarchive monticello.org/slavery/slave-…

#GUhist286 47. Day 9. TJ's view of the problem of slavery emerges in Query 14 & 18 of Notes on the State of Virginia. He thought it would ruin America ("I tremble for my country") but could only imagine gradual abolition w/ the removal of black people. docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/jeffe…

#GUhist286 48. Day 10. Slavery & the early United States. Should we judge the founding fathers by the standards of their own time? Sure, as long as we understand what those standards were. Here's "Humanity" writing to John Adams in January 1776... founders.archives.gov/documents/Adam…

#GUhist286 49. Day 10. We spent most of class talking about NW Ordinance & the Constitution, particularly the 3/5ths clause, the slave trade clause, and the fugitive slave clause... and why the framers did not use the word "slavery" in the original text. archives.gov/founding-docs/…

#GUhist286 50! Day 11. Slavery in the early United States, continued. The numbers of free people of color in the North, mid-Atlantic, and Chesapeake increased dramatically. People got free via legal emancipation, manumission, self-purchase, freedom suits, and flight...

#GUhist286 51. Day 11. A freedom suit. In 1791, Edward Queen sued Rev. John Ashton for his freedom. "The petition of Edward Queen humbly sheweth that he is held in slavery by the Revd. John Ashton altho he is informed he is entitled to his freedom..." earlywashingtondc.org/doc/oscys.mdca…

#GUhist286 52. Day 11. The rising tide of freedom spurred a backlash and restrictions on manumission in the Chesapeake. The citizens of Halifax, VA expressed their anxiety over emancipation in a 1785 petition. (Rose, Doc. Hist., #17) books.google.com/books?id=M_-Dx…

#GUhist286 53. Day 11. Gabriel's conspiracy in 1800 showed once again that black people were willing to fight for their freedom. The court testimony indicated a remarkable degree of organization. (Rose, Doc. Hist., #27) books.google.com/books?id=M_-Dx…

#GUhist286 54. Day 11. Is there a tendency to focus too much on the high politics of the Constitution? Today's sources testify to a fierce struggle over slavery on the ground in the early republic.

#GUhist286 55. Day 12. Rise of cotton and sugar. I argue against "cottonginitis" - seeing the cotton gin as magically causing the expansion of slavery. Simplistic! Reductionist! Instead, we focus on the global context of what historian Eric Hobsbawn called the "dual revolution."

#GUhist286 56. Day 12. An effective visualization of the spread of slavery in the US into the West and Deep South, from Lincoln Mullen. War, diplomacy, ethnic cleansing, land commodification, & the forced migration of enslaved people made it possible. lincolnmullen.com/projects/slave…

#GUhist286 57. Day 12. Not to be forgotten is the role of the Haitian Revolution in facilitating the Louisiana Purchase and the rise of sugar in the lower Mississippi valley, a grand irony of international history. slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimage…

#GUhist286 58. Day 12. The Louisiana Purchase opened a new arena for conflicts over slavery in the US. The largest slave revolt in US history took place not far from New Orleans in 1811. In 2019 @DreadScottArt staged a reenactment. Extraordinary! theguardian.com/us-news/2019/n…

#GUhist286 59. Day 12. From 1819-1821 Congress battled over the admission of Missouri (carved from the Louisiana Purchase) as a slave state. Jefferson saw the Missouri Crisis as a "fire bell in the night." A line drawn between free and slave states. founders.archives.gov/documents/Jeff…

#GUhist286 60. Day 13. Power, property, & plantations. We are looking at the social dynamics of southern slavery in the 1800s. Read chap. 4 of Berlin's Generations of Captivity about the "migration generations." This illustration is of cotton-picking... slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimage…

#GUhist286 61. Day 13. A few facts: In 1860 there were nearly 4M enslaved people & 400K slaveowners in the US. About 72% of slaveowners owned fewer than 10 people, but more than 50% of enslaved people lived on plantations with 20+ slaves (Kolchin, Unfree Labor, p. 54)...

#GUhist286 62. Day 13. Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park, toured the South in the 1850s & wrote some influential travel narratives describing slavery. Here he describes life on a cotton plantation... archive.org/details/cu3192…

#GUhist286 63. Day 13. Emily Burke, another northerner, also wrote about her experience in the antebellum South. She was a keen observer of enslaved women in particular, including one from Africa who recalled being "stolen one day while gathering shells." archive.org/details/remini…

#GUhist286 64. Day 14. Life in the shadow of the auction block. Berlin writes, "Fear of sale gnawed at the heart of slave life." (Generations of Captivity, 215) This class session explores forced migration and the domestic slave trade in the 1800s... slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimage…

#GUhist286 65. Day 14. One of the best accounts of the domestic slave trade is by Solomon Northup, who was shipped to New Orleans and sold. Read chaps. 3-6 of 12YAS... docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/northup/no…

#GUhist286 66. Day 14. When William Chambers toured a Richmond trader's pen, he saw three children "playing at auctioning each other"... (Rose, Doc. Hist., #31) loc.gov/resource/lhbtn…

#GUhist286 67. Day 14. The buying and selling of people was routine business in the 19th-century South, as this New Orleans city directory (the equivalent of a phone book) from 1861 shows... archive.org/details/gardne…

#GUhist286 68. Day 14. Last source for this lesson: Maria Perkins' letter to her husband expressing her urgent fear of being sold and separated from her son Albert, who had already been sold, and the rest of her family. (Rose, Doc. Hist., #32) thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/e…

#GUhist286 69. Day 15 & 16. Georgetown, the Jesuits, & the GU272. The history of slavery hits close to home at my school so we take some time to explore our own history. This has been a big part of my scholarly life for the past few years... @GUslavery slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu

#GUhist286 70. Day 15. The students got to meet Jeremy Alexander, a #GU272 descendant who works at Georgetown. Jeremy walked us through his family's long and extraordinary history. Thanks, Jeremy! Here's a video that he did with @Ancestry...

#GUhist286 71. Day 16. The Maryland Jesuit enslaved community is well documented. One poignant source is this record of the distribution of shoes to the people at St. Inigoes in 1818, indicating their shoe sizes... slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/228

#GUhist286 72. Day 16. The Jesuits also performed baptismal, marriage, and burial rites for the people they owned. Sylvester, born at Newtown to Joe and Easter, was baptized on 1819. They were part of the GU272, sold nearly 20 years later to Louisiana... slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/80

#GUhist286 73. Day 16. @Georgetown student Alana Hendy created this timeline of the 1838 sale using documents from the @GUslavery archive. A great tool for teaching and learning. Proud to use it in class. @gtownlibrary slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/464

#GUhist286 74. Day 17. We now turn our attention to the long process of overthrowing slavery, starting with the day-to-day resistance of enslaved people. Pictured below is Thomas Moran's painting Slave Hunt (1861-2)... philbrook.emuseum.com/objects/1830/s…

#GUhist286 75. Day 17. This lesson's sources highlight instances of everyday resistance "in" slavery rather than "to" slavery, although some may dispute the distinction. Here a planter complains about his carpenter, Ned... archive.org/details/planta…

#GUhist286 76. Day 17. Frederika Bremer tells a shocking story of a man who cut off his own fingers to get revenge against his owner, who wanted to sell him away from his family... archive.org/details/homeso…

#GUhist286 77. Day 17. John J. Audubon interrupted his tales of bird-hunting with an anecdote about coming face-to-face with a fugitive and his family in a Louisiana swamp... archive.org/details/ornith…

#GUhist286 78. Day 17. Last one for today: three short folk tales about "bewitching the master" from South Carolina... quod.lib.umich.edu/g/genpub/agy77…

#GUhist286 79. Day 17. All these sources can also be found in Rose's Documentary History of Slavery in North America. ugapress.org/book/978082032…

#GUhist286 80. Day 18. Nat Turner's Revolt, August 1831. Turner's bold revolt in Southampton, VA left 55 white men, women, and children dead, and doubtless many more black people in retaliation.... encyclopediavirginia.org/Revolt_Nat_Tur…

#GUhist286 81. Day 18. In jail waiting to be hanged, Nat Turner told his story to a white lawyer named Thomas Gray, who then published the "Confessions of Nat Turner," one of the most important, & enigmatic texts in American history... docsouth.unc.edu/neh/turner/tur…

#GUhist286. 82. Day 18. According to the Confessions, Nat Turner saw himself as a prophet. "Was not Christ crucified?" he asked. Astonishingly, Nat Turner's Bible is now on display at @NMAAHC... nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_…

#GUhist286 83. Day 18. In the wake of Nat Turner's revolt, the Virginia legislature held a lengthy debate over whether to gradually abolish slavery in the state. The gradual emancipationists lost and the country started down its path to the Civil War. babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.…

#GUhist286 84. Day 19. Today I introduced my class to the remarkable @fotmproject. Freedom On The Move has collected thousands of runaway slave ads and is crowdsourcing transcriptions and data entry. You too can do this from home! freedomonthemove.org

#GUhist286 85. Day 19. More from the annals of the Underground Railroad: that time Henry "Box" Brown mailed himself to freedom in 1849... #slaveryarchive loc.gov/pictures/item/…

#GUhist286 86. Day 19. UGRR conductor William Still published a memoir after the Civil War. One of my favorite stories is that of John Henry Hill, who escaped to Canada, where he wrote this powerful letter. gutenberg.org/files/15263/15…

#GUhist286 87. Day 20. Abolitionism. Today we were thrilled to be joined virtually by @ProfMSinha, whose book The Slave's Cause is a sweeping analysis of the abolitionist movement... yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030022…

#GUhist286 88. Day 20. The abolition archive is vast. It's hard to choose just a few representative sources. I selected William Wells Brown's songbook, The Anti-Slavery Harp (1848), a particularly lively if little-known artifact of abolitionist culture. utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/absoww…

#GUhist286 89. Day 20. More on abolitionism. No discussion is complete without recognizing David Walker's Appeal (1829): "America is more our country, than it is the whites--we have enriched it with our blood and tears"... docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walk…

#GUhist286 90. Day 20. The front page of the first issue of Garrison's Liberator (1831), featuring the cosmopolitan motto: "Our country is the world - Our countrymen are mankind"... theliberatorfiles.com

#GUhist286 91. Day 20. Women were active in the abolitionist movement, which was closely allied to the rise of women's rights... loc.gov/resource/rbpe.…

#GUhist286 92. Day 20. Abolitionists used a wide array of cultural tools, from live performance to the printed word and image, to spread its message. This illustration is from a children's magazine called The Slave's Friend... utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/gallsf…

#GUhist286 93. Day 20. And here is one of our favorites from the abolitionist press, The Anti-Slavery Alphabet (1846). This page highlights key abolitionist themes: slavery as violence & the disruption of family ties. #slaveryarchive mdah.ms.gov/arrec/digital_…

#GUhist286 94. Day 21. Now we are going down the crooked path to the Civil War, from the Mexican War to the Compromise of 1850 to Kansas to the rise of the Republican Party to Dred Scott to the Lincoln-Douglas debates (where we ended today). Whew! loc.gov/item/200362700…

#GUhist286 95. Day 21. Essential for understanding the rise of political antislavery and the contest for power in the North is the final debate between Lincoln (arguing for nonextension of slavery) and Douglas (arguing for popular sovereignty) in 1858. quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/linc…

#GUhist286 96. Day 22. The road to the Civil War continues with John Brown, the election of 1860, and secession. Big day! Here are a few of the sources from today's class, starting with a photograph of the old man himself from 1859. (This will be me by the end of the semester.)

#GUhist286 97. Day 22. Here is the "provisional constitution" for the antislavery state that Brown hoped to establish. It called for property to be held in common "equally, without distinction" to be used "for the common benefit." law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projec…

#GUhist286 98. Day 22. One anonymous letter-writer warned the Governor of Virginia that executing Brown would bring vengeance: "when you put the rope around his neck you put a dager in your own heart and in those of your state." lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/death…

#GUhist286 99. Day 22. A Pennsylvania newspaper summarized the Democratic response to Brown's raid in graphic terms, castigating the "Black Republican" argument as a dagger aimed at the South. elections.harpweek.com/1860/cartoon-1…

#GUhist286 100! Day 22. The election of 1860 was the most important in U.S. history. There were four major candidates: Lincoln (Republican), Douglas (Democrat), Breckenridge (Southern Democrat), and Bell (Constitutional Union). The momentous results: presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/ele…

#GUhist286 101. Day 22. Lincoln's election spurred the secession of 7 cotton states before his inauguration. Mississippi secessionists declared, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery." teachingamericanhistory.org/library/docume…

#GUhist286 102. Day 22. In his inaugural address, Lincoln condemned secession as "the essence of anarchy." Preserving the Union, not abolishing slavery, was Lincoln's motive, yet he also acknowledged that slavery was "the only substantial dispute." quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/linc…

#GUhist286 103. Day 23. This class traces the revolutionary process of wartime emancipation. Here's a detailed chronology of key events from Lincoln's election to the ratification of the 13th Amendment... (Source: Freedmen & Southern Society Project) freedmen.umd.edu/chronol.htm

#GUhist286 104. Day 23. Wartime emancipation was driven by the complex interplay of war, politics, and social struggle on the ground, including the actions taken by thousands of enslaved people who seceded from their owners... repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/5…

#GUhist286 105. Day 23. From the beginning of the war, enslaved people who sought refuge with the U.S. army were deemed "contraband." The word caught on in American culture. E.g., in Dec. 1861, the "Contrabands of Georgetown College" put on a show... slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu/items/show/424

#GUhist286 106. Day 23. Lincoln set the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation in Fall 1862, as antislavery forces in the North argued that abolition would cripple the Confederacy and end the war... loc.gov/pictures/item/…

#GUhist286 107. Day 23. The Emancipation Proclamation declared slaves in rebel-held territory to be "forever free" & authorized the recruitment of black soldiers. Slaves in Union-held territory and the Union slave states (DE, MD, KY, MO) were exempted... ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=…

#GUhist286 108. Day 23. Emancipation proceeded in an ad hoc fashion in places exempted from the E.P., sowing confusion. In 1864, Annie Davis wrote to Abraham Lincoln from Maryland asking "if we are free." Such a poignant letter! #slaveryarchive freedmen.umd.edu/adavis.htm

#GUhist286 109. Day 23. Few sources illustrate the military dynamic of emancipation in the U.S. better than this powerful 1864 letter from black soldier Spotswood Rice, who promised his children that he was coming to free them "if it cost me my life." freedmen.umd.edu/rice.htm

#GUhist286 110. Day 23. The revolution of wartime emancipation in the United States in one photograph. loc.gov/pictures/item/…

#GUhist286 111. Day 24. Beyond Freedom's Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery (@Harvard_Press 2015), WHICH I WROTE. Discuss among yourselves. hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…

#GUhist286 112. Day 25. The memory of slavery. Today we explore the history and memory of American slavery through the Federal Writers' Project interviews with ex-slaves from the 1930s, available online from the @librarycongress... #slaveryarchive loc.gov/collections/sl…

#GUhist286 113. Day 25. There are more than 2,300 interviews in this FWP archive. One of the most powerful featured Cornelia Andrews, an 87 year-old woman from Smithfield, NC. Read it here... loc.gov/resource/mesn.…

GUhist286 114. Day 25. Another extraordinary interview is the one with Mary Bell of St. Louis. Her father was none other than Spotswood Rice, the African-American soldier whose letter to his children during the Civil War we read in class last week... loc.gov/resource/mesn.…

GUhist286 115. Day 25. The @librarycongress collection of ex-slave interviews also contains many remarkable photographs. Here's one taken at "Old Slave Day" in Southern Pines, NC on April 8, 1937.