Lessons · Teaching · slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction
The war was about slavery, and the peace was unfinished
Slavery was a system of forced, unpaid, hereditary labour, legally enforced and central to the southern economy. Disagreement over its extension into new territory led to secession and to the Civil War. The war ended slavery; Reconstruction attempted to secure the rights of freed people, and was abandoned, and segregation followed.
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In beta. This lesson was written for Hone and has not yet been checked by a state certification officer. Practice material, not professional advice. What that means.
What it is for
This is the hardest thing on the road to say plainly to children and the thing most often softened into vagueness. A teacher who has practised saying it in plain words to an adult will manage it in front of a class, and a teacher who has not will reach for a euphemism.
How to think about it
Use accurate words: enslaved people rather than servants, forced labour rather than work. Keep the cause straight, because the examination does: the states that seceded said in their own declarations that they were doing so over slavery. Then follow the story past 1865, because stopping there teaches that it ended cleanly.
Worked example
Slavery was hereditary, lifelong, legally enforced and central to the economy of the southFour words that a euphemism removes.
The dispute over extending it into new territory brought secession and warThe seceding states said so themselves in their own documents.
Amendments ended slavery, made freed people citizens, and protected the vote in lawThree amendments, and the third was ignored for most of a century.
Reconstruction was abandoned and segregation was imposed for generations afterwardsWhich is why the story does not end in 1865 and neither does the lesson.
Your turn
Name what the seceding states themselves gave as their reason in their declarations.
Their own declarations named as the cause
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Teaching the cause as states' rights without saying the right at issue. The seceding states named slavery in their own documents, and a candidate who cannot say so has not understood the source material.