(Example questions: What are your views on slavery? What is your role in the Civil War?)
***Note: Please do not turn in 10 questions and 10 answers. Please format and write this assignment as if it were an actual letter.
Harriet Tubman - Black History. In 1849 Tubman fled Maryland, leaving behind her free husband of five years, John Tubman, and her parents, sisters, and brothers. “Mah people mus’ go free,” her constant refrain, suggests a determination uncommon among even the most militant slaves. She returned to the South at least nineteen times to lead her family and hundreds of other slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad.
Utilizing her native intelligence and drawing on her boundless courage, she eluded bounty hunters seeking a reward for her capture, which eventually went as high as forty thousand dollars. She never lost a fugitive or allowed one to turn back. Two things sustained her: the pistol at her side and her faith in God. Tubman collaborated with John Brown in 1858 in planning his raid on Harpers Ferry.
Tubman’s resistance to slavery did not end with the outbreak of the Civil War. After the war, Tubman returned to Auburn, New York, and continued to help blacks forge new lives in freedom. Harriet Tubman - Civil Rights Activist - Biography.com. Harriet Tubman escaped slavery to become a leading abolitionist. She led hundreds of enslaved people to freedom along the route of the Underground Railroad.
Synopsis Harriet Tubman was an American bondwoman who escaped from slavery in the South to become a leading abolitionist before the American Civil War. She was born in Maryland in 1820, and successfully escaped in 1849. Early Life Harriet Tubman was born to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland, and originally named Araminta Harriet Ross. Minty’s early life was full of hardship. Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family.
The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. By the time Harriet reached adulthood, around half of the African-American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free. Escape from Slavery and Abolitionism Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in 1849, fleeing to Philadelphia. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. Later Life. Robert E. Lee - General - Biography.com. Robert E. Lee was the leading Confederate General during the U.S. Civil War and has been venerated as a heroic figure in the South. Synopsis Born on January 19, 1807 in Stratford, Virginia, Robert E. Early Years Confederate General who led southern forces against the Union Army in the American Civil War, Robert Edward Lee was born January 19, 1807, in Stratford Hall, Virginia. Lee was cut from Virginia aristocracy. Lee saw himself as an extension of his family's greatness. After graduating from West Point, Lee met and married Mary Custis, the great-granddaughter of George and Martha Washington.
Early Military Career But while Mary and the children spent their lives on Mary's father's plantation, Lee stayed committed to his military obligations. In 1846, Lee got the chance he'd been waiting his whole military career for when the United States went to war with Mexico. But life away from the battlefield proved difficult for Lee to handle. Confederate Leader But not all went well. Final Years. Robert E. Lee. Born to Revolutionary War hero Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee in Stratford Hall, Virginia, Robert Edward Lee seemed destined for military greatness. Despite financial hardship that caused his father to depart to the West Indies, young Robert secured an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated second in the class of 1829.
Two years later, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis, a descendant of George Washington's adopted son, John Parke Custis. Yet with for all his military pedigree, Lee had yet to set foot on a battlefield. Instead, he served seventeen years as an officer in the Corps of Engineers, supervising and inspecting the construction of the nation's coastal defenses. Service during the 1846 war with Mexico, however, changed that. As a member of General Winfield Scott's staff, Lee distinguished himself, earning three brevets for gallantry, and emerging from the conflict with the rank of colonel. First White House of the Confederacy, Montgomery, AL. Jefferson Davis Biography Jefferson Davis, American statesman and President of the Confederate States of America, was born near Fairview, Kentucky, June 3, 1808, the youngest of ten children.
His father, who had fought in the Revolutionary War, named his last son for his political idol, Thomas Jefferson. When the boy was two, his family moved to Woodville, Mississippi where his father became a cotton planter. From the age of seven to nine, he attended St. Thomas’s Boys School in Kentucky. While in Wisconsin he fell in love with Sarah Knox, daughter of his commander, Colonel Zachary Taylor (later U.S. Davis was a Jeffersonian Democrat dedicated to the principle of State Rights under the Constitution.
In 1845 Davis married the eighteen year-old Varina Howell of Natchez; that same year he was elected Representative to Congress. In 1857 Jefferson Davis reentered the Senate. Jefferson Davis was a President without precedent. Jefferson Davis President Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis was born on June 3, 1808, in Christian (now Todd) County, Kentucky, and educated at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky. Military History U.S. Military Academy Graduated 1828. Afterwards was in the frountier service. Health forced him to resign from the army in 1835 Fought in the Mexican War at Monterrey and Buena Vista Wounded at Buena Vista Political History US senator from Mississippi from 1835 to 1845.
US Congressman from 1845 to 1846 US Congressman from 1857 to 1861 Withdrew from the Senate in 1861 when Mississippi seceded. On February 18, 1861, the provisional Congress of the Confederate States made him provisional president . He was elected to the office by popular vote the same year for a 6-year term and was inaugurated in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, on February 22, 1862. During the War Davis was nevertheless responsible for the raising of the formidable Confederate armies, the notable appointment of General Robert E. Digital History. Back to Frederick Douglass Exhibit Who was Frederick Douglass? Committed to freedom, Douglass dedicated his life to achieving justice for all Americans, in particular African-Americans, women, and minority groups. He envisioned America as an inclusive nation strengthened by diversity and free of discrimination.
Frederick Douglass rose from slavery to become the leading African-American voice of the nineteenth century. At an early age, he realized that his ability to read was the key to freedom. All of his efforts from then on focused on achieving freedom. Douglass worked with many notable abolitionists of the nineteenth century including Wendell Phillips and Abby Kelley. The antislavery crusade of the early nineteenth century served as a training ground for the women's suffrage movement. Together with abolitionist and feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Douglass signed the Declaration of Sentiments that became the movement's manifesto. Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass stood at the podium, trembling with nervousness. Before him sat abolitionists who had travelled to the Massachusetts island of Nantucket.
Only 23 years old at the time, Douglass overcame his nervousness and gave a stirring, eloquent speech about his life as a slave. Douglass would continue to give speeches for the rest of his life and would become a leading spokesperson for the abolition of slavery and for racial equality. The son of a slave woman and an unknown white man, "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey" was born in February of 1818 on Maryland's eastern shore. He spent his early years with his grandparents and with an aunt, seeing his mother only four or five times before her death when he was seven. Douglass spent seven relatively comfortable years in Baltimore before being sent back to the country, where he was hired out to a farm run by a notoriously brutal "slavebreaker" named Edward Covey. Previous | next. Ulysses S. Grant. Late in the administration of Andrew Johnson, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant quarreled with the President and aligned himself with the Radical Republicans.
He was, as the symbol of Union victory during the Civil War, their logical candidate for President in 1868. When he was elected, the American people hoped for an end to turmoil. Grant provided neither vigor nor reform. Born in 1822, Grant was the son of an Ohio tanner. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was working in his father's leather store in Galena, Illinois. He sought to win control of the Mississippi Valley. At Shiloh in April, Grant fought one of the bloodiest battles in the West and came out less well. For his next major objective, Grant maneuvered and fought skillfully to win Vicksburg, the key city on the Mississippi, and thus cut the Confederacy in two. Lincoln appointed him General-in-Chief in March 1864. Finally, on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Lee surrendered. Learn more about Ulysses S. WGBH American Experience . U.S. Grant: Warrior. Lincoln Papers: Lincoln Assassination: Introduction.
Abraham Lincoln Papers On the evening of April 14, 1865, while attending a special performance of the comedy, "Our American Cousin," President Abraham Lincoln was shot. Accompanying him at Ford's Theater that night were his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, a twenty-eight year-old officer named Major Henry R. Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancee, Clara Harris. After the play was in progress, a figure with a drawn derringer pistol stepped into the presidential box, aimed, and fired. The president slumped forward. The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, dropped the pistol and waved a dagger. A doctor in the audience immediately went upstairs to the box.
At almost the same moment Booth fired the fatal shot, his accomplice, Lewis Paine, attacked Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Henry Seward. Paine escaped into the night, believing his deed complete. There were at least four conspirators in addition to Booth involved in the mayhem. Lincoln Papers: Emancipation Proclamation: Introduction. Abraham Lincoln Papers Almost from the beginning of his administration, Lincoln was pressured by abolitionists and radical Republicans to issue an Emancipation Proclamation.
In principle, Lincoln approved, but he postponed action against slavery until he believed he had wider support from the American public. The passage of the Second Confiscation Act by Congress on July 17, 1862, which freed the slaves of everyone in rebellion against the government, provided the desired signal. Not only had Congress relieved the administration of considerable strain with its limited initiative on emancipation, it demonstrated an increasing public abhorrence toward slavery. Lincoln had already drafted what he termed his "Preliminary Proclamation. " Nine days later, on July 22, Lincoln raised the issue in a regularly-scheduled cabinet meeting.
The original autograph was lost in the Chicago fire of 1871. The Civil War in Art : Teaching & Learning Through Chicago Collections | Lincoln : Introduction. Let’s go see Old AbeSitting in the marble and the moonlight,Sitting lonely in the marble and the moonlight,Quiet for ten thousand centuries, old Abe.Quiet for a million, million years. -- Langston Hughes, “Lincoln Monument: Washington,” 1926 Abraham Lincoln is among the most recognized figures in United States history because so many images have been made of him.
Few if any U.S. presidents have been so frequently portrayed in art, nor have images of other presidents had such lasting meaning to so many Americans. Lincoln’s personal history and accomplishments have a lot to do with this. Lincoln was born in 1809 into a poor Kentucky family and had very little formal education. Lincoln became nationally known when he took part in several well-publicized debates with Illinois Senator Stephen A. This essay explores some of the many ways in which Lincoln was portrayed in art during a period of close to sixty years, leading up to, during, and after his presidency.