Pre-civil War literature lesson plan Rationale: Students should understand that the literature of the time was

very inflammatory and can be seen as a significant impact on the ideas and beliefs of American citizens Curriculum Frameworks: MA: USI.31, A,B, :36 D,E, NCSS 1: Culture: Learners will understand how human beings create, learn, share and adapt to culture Learning Objectives: SWBAT: Identify the primary causes of the U.S. Civil war. Analyze time period literature to determine or draw conclusions about views on slavery and sectionalism. Explain how literature helped to foment heated relations between the north and south. Teaching Methods: literature, primary sources, Group work Procedure: 5-10 min Opener: Hunger Games compared to (criticism of)Big Government o Who has read this book? Is it fairly popular? Did you enjoy it? o Are some people a little crazy about the book? o How many copies do you think the first book has sold? First printing- 200,000 copies in 2008 Since then, the entire series has sold well over 43 million copies o Can you say that this is a very popular book? Duh! 25-30 Min-Notes on The impending crisis of the union leading up to the civil war 35+ Min Activity on Pre-civil war literature o Split students into two groups and have them split the room Designate one the south and one the north If the group is very large then split each side into two groups to make the group reads more manageable. o Explain the activity You will be reading some excerpts of literature from just before the civil war. Some are newspaper articles, one is a fiction book and the other is an analysis of slavery. As you read these in your groups, highlight and note the things that will help you answer the questions on the graphic organizer. You will need to cite your answers. Afterwards we are going to do a mini-simulation as the north and the south- and your feelings about the readings

Assessment: Student responses on the graphic organizer- Participation in the mini-simulation, midterm exam Materials: Excerpts of: Uncle Toms Cabin, The southern journal review of UTC, Cannibals All!, The Impending Crisis, Graphic Organizer with questions on sectional feelings, Notes on the time period

Cannibals All! By: George Fitzhugh 1857

We are all, North and South, engaged in the White Slave Trade, and he who succeeds best is esteemed most respectable. It is far more cruel than the Black Slave Trade, because it exacts more of its slaves, and neither protects nor governs them. We boast that it exacts more when we say, that the profits made from employing free labor are greater than those from slave labor. The profits, made from free labor, are the amount of the products of such labor, which the employer, by means of the command which capital or skill gives him, takes away, exacts, or expatiates from the fee laborer. The profits of slave labor are that portion of the products of such labor which the power of the master enables him to appropriate. These profits are less, because the master allows the slave to retain a larger share of the results of his own labor than do the employers of free labor When the days labor is ended, he is free, but is overburdened with the cares of family and household, which makes his freedom an empty and delusive mockeryThe Negro slave is free, too, when the labors of the day are over, and free in mind as well as body; for the master provides food, raiment, house, fuel and everything else necessary to the physical well-being of himself and his family. The Negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither by care nor labor. The women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husband by their masters. The Negro men and stout boys work, on the average, in good weather, not more than nine hours a day. The balance of their time is spent in perfect abandon. The free laborer must work or starve. He is more a slave than the Negro because he works longer and harder for less allowance than the slave, and has no holiday, because the cares of his life with him begin when its labors end. He has no liberty, and not a single right
http://www.teachushistory.org/dred-scott-decision/resources/pro-slavery-argument-cannibals-all

The Impending Crisis of The SouthBy: Hinton Rowan Helper, of North Carolina ...And now that we have come to the very heart and soul of our subject, we feel no disposition to mince matters, but mean to speak plainly, and to the point, without any equivocation, mental reservation, or secret evasion whatever. The son of a venerated parent, who, while he lived, was a considerate and merciful slaveholder, a native of the South, born and bred in North Carolina, of a family whose home has been in the valley of the Yadkin for nearly a century and a half, a Southerner by instinct and by all the influences of thought, habits, and kindred, and with the desire and fixed purpose to reside permanently within the limits of the South, and with the expectation of dying there also?we feel that we have the right to express our opinion, however humble or unimportant it may be, on any and every question that affects the public good; and, so help us God, "sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish," we are determined to exercise that right with manly firmness, and without fear, favor or affection. And now to the point. In our opinion, an opinion which has been formed from data obtained by assiduous researches, and comparisons, from laborious investigation, logical reasoning, and earnest reflection, the causes which have impeded the progress and prosperity of the South, which have dwindled our commerce, and other similar pursuits, into the most contemptible insignificance; sunk a large majority of our people in galling poverty and ignorance, rendered a small minority conceited and tyrannical, and driven the rest away from their homes; entailed upon us a humiliating dependence on the Free States; disgraced us in the recesses of our own souls, and brought us under reproach in the eyes of all civilized and enlightened nations ? may all be traced to one common source, and there find solution in the most hateful and horrible word, that was ever incorporated into the vocabulary of human economy ? Slavery! Reared amidst the institution of slavery, believing it to be wrong both in principle and in practice, and having seen and felt its evil influences upon individuals, communities and states, we deem it a duty, no less than a privilege, to enter bur protest against it, and to use our most strenuous efforts to overturn and abolish it! Then we are an abolitionist? Yes! not merely a freesoiler, but an abolitionist, in the fullest sense of the term. We are not only in favor of keeping slavery out of the territories, but, carrying our opposition to the institution a step further, we here unhesitatingly declare ourself in favor of its immediate and unconditional abolition, in every state in this confederacy, where it now exists! Patriotism makes us a freesoiler; state pride makes us an emancipationist; a profound sense of duty to the South makes us an abolitionist; a reasonable degree of fellow feeling for the negro, makes us a colonizationist. With the free state men in Kansas and Nebraska, we sympathize with all our heart. We love the whole country, the great family of states and territories, one and inseparable, and would have the word Liberty engraved as an appropriate and truthful motto, on the escutcheon of every member of the confederacy. We love freedom, we hate slavery, and rather than give up the one or submit to the other, we will forfeit the pound of flesh nearest our heart. Is this sufficiently explicit and categorical? If not, we hold ourself in readiness at all times, to return a prompt reply to any proper question that may be propounded.... That we shall encounter opposition we consider as certain; perhaps we may even be subjected to insult and violence. From the conceited and cruel oligarchy of the South, we could look for nothing less. But we shall shrink from no responsibility, and do nothing unbecoming a man; we know how to repel indignity, and if assaulted, shall not fail to make the blow recoil upon the aggressor's head. The road we have to travel may be a rough one, but no impediment shall cause us to falter in our course. The line of our duty is clearly defined, and it is our intention to follow it faithfully, or die in the attempt.

Uncle Toms Cabin By. Harriet Beecher Stowe

Narrator: Eliza, a slave, has run away from her master with her son Harry. Her master had sold Harry away from her, but Eliza fled before they could be separated. After a long journey, Eliza finally managed to cross the Ohio River by leaping across the floating blocks of ice. At the far bank of the river, a man helps her to shore: Mr. Symmes: "Yer a brave gal, now, whoever ye ar!" Narrator: Eliza recognized the voice and face of a man who owned a farm not far from her old home. Eliza: "O, Mr. Symmes!--save me--do save me--do hide me!" Mr Symmes: "Why, what's this? Why, if 'tan't Shelby's gal!" Eliza: "My child!--this boy!--he'd sold him! O, Mr. Symmes, you've got a little boy!" Mr. Symmes: "So I have. Besides, you're a right brave gal. I like grit, wherever I see it. I'd be glad to do something for ye but then there's nowhar I could take ye. The best I can do is to tell ye to go thar." Narrator: Mr. Symmes pointed to a large white house which stood by itself, off the main street of the village. Mr. Symmes: "Go thar; they're kind folks. Thar's no kind o' danger but they'll help you,-- they're up to all that sort o' thing." Eliza: "The Lord bless you!" Mr. Symmes: "No 'casion, no 'casion in the world. What I've done's of no 'count." Eliza: "And, oh, surely, sir, you won't tell any one!" Mr. Symmes: "Go to thunder, gal! What do you take a feller for? Of course not. Come, now, go along like a likely, sensible gal, as you are. You've arnt your liberty, and you shall have it, for all of me." Narrator: The woman folded her child to her bosom, and walked firmly and swiftly away. The man stood and looked after her. Mr. Symmes: "Shelby, now, mebbe won't think this yer the most neighborly thing in the world; but what's a feller to do? If he catches one of my gals in the same fix, he's welcome to pay back. Somehow I never could see no kind o' critter a strivin' and pantin', and trying to clar theirselves, with the dogs arter 'em and go agin 'em. Besides, I don't see no kind of 'casion for me to be hunter and catcher for other folks, neither." Narrator: So spoke this poor, heathenish Kentuckian, who had not been instructed in his constitutional relations, and consequently was betrayed into acting in a sort of Christianized manner, which, if he had been better situated and more enlightened, he would not have been left to do.

The Southern Press 1852

We have just finished the perusal of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a work in two volumes, of more than three hundred pages each, which appeared originally in the National Era, in a succession of numbers, and has recently been re-published in its present form. The papers inform us that already, within eleven weeks of its re-publication, eighty thousand copies of it have been sold at the rate of a dollar to a dollar and a quarter per copy. The authoress of this work is HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, wife of Professor Stowe, and daughter of Dr. Beecher. She resided for many years, before and after marriage, in Cincinnati. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is an anti-slavery novel. It is a caricature of slavery. It selects for description the most odious features of slaverythe escape and pursuit of fugitive slaves, the sale and separation of domestic slaves, the separation of husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters. It portrays the slaves of the story as more moral, intelligent, courageous, elegant and beautiful than their masters and mistresses; and where it concedes any of these qualities to the whites, it is to such only as are, even though slaveholders, opposed to slavery. Those in favor of slavery are slave-traders, slave-catchers, and the most weak, depraved, cruel and malignant of beings and demons. It is a little curious, that the two works on slavery that have attained the largest circulation since the Wilmot proviso was proposed, have both emanated from Cincinnati. The first, the lecture on "the North and the South," by the senior editor of this paper; the other, "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Of the lecture, about three hundred thousand copies were printed in pamphlets and newspapers. The novel will probably reach an equal circulation. It deserves to be considered that the defense of the South was a documentary argument, consisting chiefly of a collection of all the evidence on the subject which existed in an authentic shape. The attack on the South is a novela romance. The system of the South relies on fact the sentiment of the North flies to fiction. This is significant. For some time before, the North, the practical, calculating, unimaginative North, claimed the facts. But since the appearance of "the North and the South," that pretension has almost been abandoned. We have been struck by the almost total abstinence of the northern press from all allusion to the results of the last census, when discussing the slavery question. That census has vindicated triumphantly the positions of the lecture on "the North and the South." Now, what is the value of a work of fiction in this controversy? What would be its value even if even incident it contains were founded on fact, as the writer intimates? Why, just nothing at all. Every man who is accustomed to reason is familiar with the artifice of a discomfitted antagonist. When refuted in argument, when overwhelmed with evidence, he insists on relating an anecdote, or telling a storyhe retreats into fiction, or cites a particular instancealthough everyone capable of reasoning knows that any proposition can be maintained, or any institution be overthrown, if the citation of particular incidents is accepted as argument. Government, society, law, civilization itself would fall in an hour, if we were to listen to the stories of the wrong and ruin that incidentally or exceptionally attend them. Do not murderers escapeare not the innocent sometimes put to death under the administration of criminal law? And yet, who would abolish it, even if hundreds of novels were written to

illustrate its defects, or under pretence of exposing its enormity? Do we not find bad men with wealth, or good men in wantthen why not have a novel to prove it and to insist on the abolition of property? Nay, there is religion itself, whose institutions cannot be divested of superstition, hypocrisy and fanaticism. How many romances could be written and have been written to illustrate these latter? Yet must we abolish religion? Mrs. Stowe may have seen, during her residence in Cincinnati, in the arrival and departure of emigrants, and in the trade and navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi, more families separated forever; she must know that from that single city more husbands, brothers, sons and fathers have gone voluntarily, as she calls it, from wives, mothers and children, and, in the pursuit of trade, met with untimely death by fevers and cholera on the river, or in the wilderness, leaving their families to suffer from want, their children to perish from neglect, than probably all who have been separated by the slave trade. Why don't she write a romance against emigration, and navigation and commerce? They are all permitted by our laws. But Mrs. Stowe complains that slavery gives to one man the power over another to do these things. Well, does not freedom, as she calls it? Cannot the landlord of Cincinnati turn out a family from his dwelling if unable to pay the rent? Cannot those who have food and raiment refuse them to such as are unable to buy? And does not Mrs. Stowe herself virtually do these very things? Suppose a poor man were to present himself to her and say, "Madam, I am a poor man with a large family, and we are destitute. And unless you prevent it, I shall be compelled tomorrow to hire myself as a hand on a flatboat to New Orleans, and besides exposing myself to the cholera and yellow fever, leave my wife in delicate health, my oldest daughter to the dangers of a large city without a protector, and my young ones to the diseases that depopulate the infancy of this place every summer. Now, I have read your novel, and I understand that you have already received a large fortune by the copy-right of it. Now, we are equalsexcept that I have none of your education, and that is not my fault. Yet somehow or other the laws of this freesoil State allow you to keep thousands of dollars in bank which you do not need, whilst I, for the want of a small part of it, am doomed to separation from all that I hold dear." We doubt whether Mrs. Stowe would recognize the cogency of this argument. But if she would, the laws of this country do not.

Pre-Civil War Literature

Read through the documents as group and work through these questions together Use text based evidence to support your evidence. Cite your evidence What is the document about? What is the authors stance on slavery? What would northerners think of the document? What would southerners think of the document?

Uncle Toms Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Southern Press Review of Uncle Toms Cabin

Caniballs All! George Fitzhugh

The Impending Crisis Hinton Harper