Week 12 · Readings & resources

Week 12 — Readings & Resources

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 12 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 92–116 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text. Several items describe the sale of human beings, the separation of families, and the violence of slavery plainly; take them at your own pace.

Pick-one quick path (17–20 min total)

① Cotton, the domestic slave trade, and resistance

Chapter 12, Section “Follow the cotton: the economy and the domestic slave trade” · Session 1, Segment 1, “A system held by violence” · Remember: the domestic slave trade moved enslaved people south and tore families apart, and enslaved people resisted it in many ways.

To Be Sold: Virginia and the American Slave Trade — Library of Virginia — the library's page for its exhibition on the domestic slave trade out of Virginia, which it calls the second middle passage. Read the opening description: it centers the exhibition on paintings by the English artist Eyre Crowe, who watched the slave auctions in Richmond in 1853, and it says the trade is a story of numbers and of families torn apart. The figure it gives for the people forcibly moved south is the library's, not the course's, which teaches the scale in words. The rest of the page lists recorded talks; they are optional. It shows how a state library presents the trade; it does not show the trade through the eyes of the people sold. (reading, 5–8 min)
To Be Sold: Virginia and the American Slave Trade — LibraryofVa — a short film for the same exhibition. Speakers explain that Richmond's Shockoe Bottom was a center of the trade, that the trade grew after the Atlantic trade ended, and that its profits reached cotton mills in the North and in England. One speaker traces two of her own ancestors to sales out of Richmond. Its figures for both trades are the film's own; the course says the scale in words and keys none of them. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)
The Underground Railroad: Crash Course Black American History #15 — CrashCourse — the host separates fact from myth: the Underground Railroad was a loose network of people, mostly Black, not a train or a single organization. Watch for the section on the 1850 law: the host says commissioners were paid 10 dollars for sending a person south and 5 dollars for a ruling of freedom, which matches the act's own text in Chapter 12. Notice his point that most enslaved people did not escape and that resistance took many other forms. His escape estimates are the video's, not the course's. (video, 13 min) (captions: creator)

② Douglass in his own words

Chapter 12, Section “Read Douglass in his own words: My Bondage and Freedom” · Session 1, Segment 3, “An author and a witness” · Remember: Douglass wrote his autobiography himself, so you read him as the author of his own account and argument.

Frederick Douglass: Crash Course Black American History #17 — CrashCourse — a life of Douglass from his birth into slavery in Maryland to his escape in 1838 with help from Anna Murray, his work as a speaker and editor, and his answer to the Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision. Listen for the scene where an enslaver stops his reading lessons, then compare the line the host reads, from Douglass's first book of 1845, with the pinned fragment from My Bondage and Freedom: the two books word it differently, and the course quotes only the pinned one. The birth year and the slogan the host uses for the 1850 law are his own, not the course's. The closing minutes run into the Civil War and later years, which later weeks take up. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)
The Fugitive Slave Law: Becoming Frederick Douglass — PBS — a short clip from a documentary in which historians explain how the 1850 law put the federal government in the business of returning people to slavery and punished anyone who helped them. A narrator reads Douglass's own words on the danger the law brought even to people who had been free all their lives, and on his argument that Black Americans had the right to resist the slave catchers by force. Those spoken lines are not pinned, so paraphrase them and quote nothing from the clip. Use it while completing the Week-12 module overview. (video, 3 min) (captions: creator)

③ The compromises and Bleeding Kansas

Chapter 12, Section “Read the Compromise of 1850 row by row” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Line, vote, and violence” · Remember: Congress drew a line in 1820, then handed the question to settlers' votes, and Kansas turned violent.

Clay's Last Compromise — U.S. Senate — the Senate Historical Office's short account of Henry Clay's eight resolutions of 1850. Read how the Senate combined them into one omnibus bill, rejected it, and then passed the parts as five separate bills under Stephen Douglas of Illinois. Compare its list of what each side gained with the Compromise of 1850 row in Chapter 12. This builds on Week 9's work with the Missouri Compromise line, the rule Congress drew in 1820. It shows how the Senate passed the compromise; it does not show what the people it affected thought of it. (reading, 5–8 min)
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 — Daily Dose Documentary — a three-minute summary of the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, popular sovereignty, and the violence in Kansas. Check it against the course record as you watch: it dates the Missouri Compromise to 1821 and places its line at the 36th parallel, while the course pins 1820 and 36 degrees 30 minutes. Its closing minute on the collapse of the Whigs and the new Republican Party runs past this week. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)
Bleeding Kansas — Fort Scott National Historic Site, National Park Service — the park's page on the territory from 1854 to 1861. Read the opening: it says the Kansas-Nebraska Act let the settlers decide by popular vote whether the state would be free or slave, that people on all sides flooded in to sway that vote, and that rival territorial governments, election fraud, and quarrels over land claims fed the violence among three groups, pro-slavery settlers, free-staters, and abolitionists. Then read how one town split between a free-state hotel and a pro-slavery hotel, and how killings spread across eastern Kansas, among them John Brown's killing of five pro-slavery men at Pottawatomie Creek in 1856 and the Marais des Cygnes massacre of free-state men in 1858, a reprisal in the southeast of the territory. The page reprints a line of poetry and a letter; neither is pinned, so paraphrase them and quote nothing. Its counts of the dead are the park's own; the course keys none of them. It shows how the violence played out around one Kansas town; it does not show who could vote in the territory, which Chapter 12 takes from the act itself. (reading, 6–9 min)

④ Dred Scott's case, from St. Louis to the Supreme Court

Chapter 12, Section “State Dred Scott's holding from the record” · Session 2, Segment 6, “Not about one man” · Remember: the Court's holding reached every Black American and every federal territory, not one family alone.

Missouri's Dred Scott Case, 1846–1857 — Missouri State Archives — the state archives' history of the case, built from the court papers it keeps. Read through the section on the petitions: it explains Missouri's rule that a person taken to live on free soil was freed, describes how Dred and Harriet Scott each filed a separate petition in 1846 and signed with an X, and notes that the courts were turning against such suits. The later sections on the trials are optional. It shows how the case began in a Missouri court; it is not the Supreme Court's own text. (reading, 10–15 min)
C-SPAN Cities Tour - St. Louis: Dred Scott and St. Louis' Old Courthouse — C-SPAN — a National Park Service historian, standing in the Old Courthouse where the case began, tells the Scott family's story: separate petitions for Dred and Harriet, a lost first trial, a jury verdict for freedom that the state supreme court reversed, and their freedom in that same building after a new owner sold and freed them. Listen for how he describes the decision's reach into every federal territory. His account of the family's later years is taught in words, not keyed. (video, 12 min) (captions: automatic)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

My Bondage and Freedom by Frederick Douglass — Avalon Project — the full text of the week's workshop document as the Avalon Project keeps it. Use your browser's find tool to reach the first pinned fragment, in his account of learning to read in Baltimore, and the second, in his account of the purchase of his freedom. Near the end the book reprints extracts from his speeches, among them his Rochester speech of 1852; read those in paraphrase. Everything else on the page is optional. (reading, 20–30 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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