A Teacher’s Guide to

The Struggle Against Slavery:

A History in Documents

David Waldstreicher

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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A Teachers Guide to
The Struggle Against Slavery-. A History in Documents
by David Waldstreicher
Guide prepared by Diane N. Palmer
INTRODUCTION
One of the failures of the American democratic
system was its tolerance of slavery and the hor-
rific treatment of slaves. The Constitution was
founded on the belief that "all men are created
equal",- however, the United States in the twen-
ty-first century is still striving to make this ideal
a universal reality. For more than 200 years
African Americans were held in bondage and
treated as property. Even those who won free-
dom did not receive equal treatment either by
custom or by law. Faced with the injustices of
slavery and racial discrimination, slaves, free
African Americans, and a few whites struggled
to end this institution and guarantee all men and
women equal respect, opportunity, and treatment
under the law.
In The Struggle Against Slavery, a collection of
written and visual documents, David Wald-
streicher presents a chronicle of the struggle
from the seventeenth century through the Civil
War. He presents evidence of the struggle from
both African-American and white perspectives, a
strategy that alerts the student to the importance
of point of view when working with primary
sources. The volume also includes a picture
essay showing how visual images of slaves and,
in particular, their clothing shaped popular per-
ceptions of both slaves and free African
Americans.
E R S I T Y P R E S S
SAMPLE LESSONS
LESSON 1. INTERPRETING
DOCUMENTS
A single document can give a researcher or stu-
dent a picture of social situations. However, by
interpreting several similar documents from a par-
ticular time period, a researcher can form a more
accurate picture and make generalizations about a
historical situation.
1. Divide the class into small groups. Have each
group read one of the three laws or the advertise-
ment on pp. 20-26. Each group should use the
following reading guide questions:
• Who wrote the document?
• What is the purpose of the document?
• What are the main points in the document?
• What do you think happened to cause the doc-
ument to be written?
• What evidence supports your interpretation?
2. After each small group presents its findings to
the whole class, have students form generaliza-
tions about early slavery resistance and the reac-
tions of whites to resistance.
3. Students should defend their generalizations,
in writing or orally. They should be judged on
the rationality of their arguments and their use of
the documents to support their case.
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LESSON 2. USING A VARIETY OF
PRIMARY SOURCES
To form an accurate interpretation of historical
events, it is important to use a variety of docu-
ments. Literature, including poetry, is often an
excellent source for learning popular views held
at a particular moment in history. Photographs
and drawings also provide powerful evidence of
historical events. All of these genres are used in
this book to develop one of its important themes:
the lack of equal treatment of blacks.
How do the selections below deal with this theme?
1. Read the two poems by Phyllis Wheatley on
pp. 38—40. Identify lines from the poems that sup-
port her belief in equality.
2. With a partner, analyze the images that appear
in the picture essay on pp. 97-105. In the analysis
of each visual image, consider the following:
• Who created the image?
• Is it a positive or negative image?
• What was the purpose of the drawing or photo-
graph?
• How might the pictures be used to support the
belief that free people, no matter what color,
could be considered equals?
LESSON 3. USING PRIMARY
SOURCES TO REFUTE OR VERIFY
HYPOTHESES
Historians often try to investigate whether or not
an interpretation of an event or the words of an
observer are really true. The purpose of their
investigation is to confirm a hypothesis or to see
if there might be another valid interpretation of
the event or an author's words.
• In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas
Jefferson wrote that "all men are created equal"
and that they are "endowed by their Creator
with unalienable rights"—life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. These are familiar lines,
and most people assume that Jefferson believed
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what he wrote. The object of this lesson is to
re-examine the assumption to determine if it
is valid.
• Ask students, either in small groups or with a
partner, to read the sources cited below and dis-
cuss their findings. Each student can then write
an essay examining the contradictions between
what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of
Independence and what he stated at other
times.
Selections: Equality Disputed, pp. 54-60:, the
selection from "Notes on the State of Virginia" by
Jefferson, the letter from Benjamin Banneker, and
the sidebar of Jefferson's response to Banneker's
letter.
Use the following questions/guidelines to analyze
the documents:
• What is the purpose of the document?
• List several points that support the purpose.
• Identify points in the document that support or
refute the original hypothesis.
• What is your position regarding the beliefs of
Jefferson?
• What statements in the selections support your
position?
Use your findings to establish and support a
hypothesis regarding the possible contradiction
between Jefferson's beliefs and his words in the
Declaration of Independence.
LESSON 4. IDENTIFYING
PERSPECTIVE
Historical investigation often involves dealing
with conflicting sources. Any event or issue may
be reported from several different perspectives,
depending on the background of the observer
and the purpose of the observation. To reconcile
the conflicts and come to reasonable conclusions
about historical events, students must be able to
recognize perspective.
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Have students choose two of the selections

listed bel ow and answer the questions that
follow. Based on the information, students should
then predict how African Americans would be
treated after the Civil War.
Selections: Letter of John Copeland, pp. 148-49;
Emancipation Proclamation, pp. 156-57;
Charlotte Forten's journal entry, pp. 158-59; and
Report of Colonel Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, pp. 159-60.
Questions for Identifying Perspective
• Who created the source?
• What do you know about this person?.
• What is the purpose of the source?.
• What do you learn about the event or issue
from this source?
• What is missing?
• Is the tone positive or negative?
Selections: Illustration from the Anti-Slavery
Almanac, p. 74; New York State Constitution, pp.
82-84; speech of either Peter Osborne, pp.
84-86, or Frederick Douglass, pp. 86-89; account
of Elizabeth Jennings, pp. 89-91,- excerpt from
Martin Robison Delany's book, pp. 93-95; illus-
tration, p. 123; and excerpt from Incidents in the Life
of a Slave Girl, Written by herself, pp. 128-33.
1. After reading and studying the documents, stu-
dents should work with a partner or in a small
group to discuss the sources.
2. Each student should form a thesis statement
responding to the statement.
3. The student should prepare an outline support-
ing his/her thesis, including the following:
• Two or three main ideas that prove the thesis
• Reference to which documents support the
thesis. Student should use all, or all but one, of
the documents.

• What is, or might be, the impact of this • Explanation of how the evidence supports the
source—then, and now? thesis

Based on your study, how do you think
African Americans will be treated after the Civil
War? What is the basis for your judgment?
4. Using the outline, each student then writes an
essay. The outline will help students write a better-
crafted essay.

LESSON 5. DOCUMENT-BASED
QUESTION (DBQ)
A document-based question enables students to
analyze and interpret sources, and form conclu-
sions about an event or issue using multiple pri-
mary sources in different formats (narrative, essay,
visual, statistical, oral).
Using the selections listed below, students will
write a three- to four-page essay responding to
the following statement: Free blacks in the
North were treated as badly as slaves in the
South.

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SELECTED RESOURCES
Printed Sources
Bedini, Silvio. The Life of Benjamin Banneker. Rancho
Cordova, Calif.: Landmark, 1984.
Christian, Charles M. Black Saga: The African American
Experience. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.
Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom.
Reprint, New York: Dover, 1969).
Foner, Philip S. Black Rediscovery Series. New York:
Dover, 1969.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
OAH Magazine of History. Vol. 17, no. 3 (April
2003).The focus of this issue is colonial slavery.
Ripley, Peter C., ed. Witness for Freedom-. African American
Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin. Available in
numerous editions.

Websites
The best site is Library of Congress American Memory at
http://memory.loc.gov. Useful searches include:
• Daniel A.P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907,-
• Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project,
1936-1938,-
• Slavery and the Law- Slaves and the Courts,
1740-1860; and
• Slavery to Freedom.
www.progress.org/banneker/bb.html and http^/prince-
ton. edu/~mcbrown/display/banneker.htm are two
sites dedicated to Benjamin Banneker.
http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/wheatley.htm is OXPORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
a good site for further research on Phyllis
Wheatley. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
www.oup.com

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