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Youtube Playlist The Civil War and Reconstruction - 1850 -1861 Discover how the issue of slavery came to dominate American politics, and how political leaders struggled and failed to resolve the growing crisis in the nation. A House Divided: The Road to Civil War, 1850-1861 is a course that begins by examining how generations of historians have explained the crisis of the Union. After discussing the institution of slavery and its central role in the southern and national economies, it turns to an account of the political and social history of the 1850s. It traces how the issue of the expansion of slavery came to dominate national politics, and how political leaders struggled, unsuccessfully, to resolve the growing crisis. We will examine the impact of key events such as Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, and end with the dissolution of the Union in the winter of 1860-61. This course is part of the series, The Civil War and Reconstruction, which introduces students to the most pivotal era in American history. The Civil War transformed the nation by eliminating the threat of secession and destroying the institution of slavery. It raised questions that remain central to our understanding of ourselves as a people and a nation - the balance of power between local and national authority, the boundaries of citizenship, and the meanings of freedom and equality. The series will examine the causes of the war, the road to secession, the conduct of the Civil War, the coming of emancipation, and the struggle after the war to breathe meaning into the promise of freedom for four million emancipated slaves. One theme throughout the series is what might be called the politics of history - how the world in which a historian lives affects his or her view of the past, and how historical interpretations reinforce or challenge the social order of the present. Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor o

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is the world's premier university source for market-oriented ideas-bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. A university-based research center, the Mercatus Center advances knowledge about how markets work to improve people's lives by training graduate students, conducting research, and applying economics to offer solutions to society's most pressing problems. Our mission is to generate knowledge and understanding of the institutions that affect the freedom to prosper, and to find sustainable solutions that overcome the barriers preventing individuals from living free, prosperous, and peaceful lives. Founded in 1980, the Mercatus Center is located on George Mason University's Arlington campus.

The Center for Global Studies is based out of the University of Illinois. Their resources primarily come from the University of Illinois but they also have videos and research submitted from other places. Always check the source! I find most of the information to be useful when thinking about world history and global studies type courses.

How might you or another social studies teacher use it in a class?

The Harvard University South Asia Institute (SAI) engages faculty and students through interdisciplinary programs to advance and deepen the teaching and research on global issues relevant to South Asia. With offices in Delhi, Dhaka, Karachi and Mumbai, SAI aims to be a catalyst and bridge between Harvard faculty and students and the region. The South Asia Institute's goals are to: Facilitate scholarly exchanges among Harvard faculty and students, international South Asia specialists, visiting academics, and public figures from South Asia. Sponsor lectures and conferences at Harvard and in the region by distinguished academic, governmental, and business leaders whose work contributes to a better understanding of the challenges facing South Asia. Support Harvard students with grants for language study, research, and internships in-region. Bring knowledge from South Asia to Harvard by supporting faculty and students with grants for research, study, and service learning. Build a community of stakeholders committed to building scholarship on South Asia at Harvard and in-region.

The Television News Archive is a database of nightly news broadcasts in the US from 1968. American University subscribes to the database, and it can be accessed through the library's website. At the news archive, you can search the database of nightly news programs for a specific date or topic. Then, you can watch many of these streaming videos online.

The Perry-Castaneda Map Collection at the University of Texas-Austin has a great selection of online maps. They have modern political maps, historical maps, maps about history, regional maps, thematic maps (population, climate, energy, ethnic, religious). Many of the maps have large PDF formats that are of great quality and detail.

Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) is a nonprofit organization founded in 2001 by Dr. Mary Shuttleworth, an educator born and raised in apartheid South Africa, where she witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of discrimination and the lack of basic human rights. The purpose of YHRI is to teach youth about human rights, specifically the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and inspire them to become advocates for tolerance and peace. YHRI has now grown into a global movement, including hundreds of groups, clubs and chapters around the world. Youth for Human Rights International teaches human rights education both in the classroom and in nontraditional educational settings. We aim to reach people from diverse backgrounds, with materials which often appeal across generations. By teaching human rights through all means-from conferences and workshops to hip-hop and dancing-this message has spread around the world.

From the website: History Matters is "a project of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning of the City University of New York and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Visible Knowledge Project. . . . Designed for high school and college teachers and students of U.S. history survey courses, this site serves as a gateway to web resources and offers unique teaching materials, first-person primary documents, and guides to analyzing historical evidence. We emphasize materials that focus on the lives of ordinary Americans and actively involve students in analyzing and interpreting evidence."

Well, it looks like a student in this group shared this in the past, but what a great website! I'll put up some more sticky notes. This website features a large number of primary source material of different media and is strong in its content. Beyond that, this site features information about the methods historians use (interesting to high school students, applicable to college students), a database of reviewed websites, lesson plans, syllabi, and teaching tips. A pretty comprehensive resource.

RegData is the first tool to allow for industry-specific quantification of federal regulation, permitting within-industry and between-industry analyses of the causes and effects of federal regulations. Mercatus Center George Mason University

This collection, run by the University of Texas, contains maps of all sorts from a large period of time. Additionally, it also houses links to collections not run by the university, but nearly all of both groups of maps are excellent scans of the original documents.

I use this site all the time for my research.

A resource for World History curriculum created by the San Diego State University and National Center for History in the Schools.  It is a through and evolving website for teachers.

This site features an online textbook of Amercian Government and Politics. It was created by a single individual who works for a university, but in a business and not an academic background. Despite its origins, site has a lot of information and links to primary sources.

Given that the author of the site is an individual, materials should be scrutinized for accuracy and bias. No obvious weaknesses in this regard on surface review.

Washington Post Magazine: D.C. 1791 to Today - Working with the Washington Post and washingtonpost.com, a team of students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill developed a series of images to digitally illustrate the myriad changes to the architecture and landscape of Washington, D.C. since the city's inception in 1791. Working from maps, plans, drawings, and photographs, the UNC students have represented the physical history of Washington in a set of time slices, showing side-by-side views of familiar landscapes, then and now, and modeling significant changes to important buildings and monuments.">

Wow- this a perfect map for my 5th grade class on the history of DC! Thanks Julian- JB

NYT's Celia Dugger examines the quality of education for South Africa's majority black population. 15 years after the election of Nelson Mandela and the official end to apartheid, the nation's school system remains a bastion of inequality.

The Valley of the Shadow (also called the Valley Project) website is a part of the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia. The material in the site documents the lives of two communities during the Civil War period; one community from the South and one community from the North. The site is an online library or an archive filled with primary resources such as letter, diaries, census records, government records, newspapers, speeches, maps, images and other materials. The site contains thousands of documents. The archive is divided into three sections: The Eve of War (Fall 1859-Spring 1861), The War Years (Spring 1861-Spring 1865), and The Aftermath (Spring 1865-Fall 1870). An example of one such document is a letter written in August, 1864 by a young militiaman to his parents telling them that he is well and that he will be sending home his pay. I have added a few lines because I find it so interesting and compelling. The letter comes from a camp near Petersburg. Dear Parents it is with the Greatest of Pleashure that I seat My self to inform you and My Brothers and Sisters that I like it well and am well feal Hartey like ite beter now than Ever I did I hope that youens Ar all well and all the Rest about [unclear: tomstorm] ile now state to you that I Received your Letter last Knight And was Glad to here from youens And was glad to here that Youenes wasened yet dissturbed By The Johneys Rebes you Stated in your letter that tha Wes moveing every thing out Of Town now if tha wold be men tha wold take In the same document but another page, the young man writes about his pay. Read this letter we ar getting Paid off to day I draw 1.20.10 that is one hundrad 20 dollars 10 cts Ile ex press 1 hundrade 10 dollars and mebbey fifteen dollars I dont want to ceep so mutch money here I cend it to you and if you want to make youse of it whi you may get the Chirldren wat ever tha want that is in the eating line And Close but you must be A littl

I ran out of room in the box above.....anyway, I am not certain what the citation rules are regarding this but I found the letter on the website that I have bookmarked, The Valley of the Shadow. Anyway, it is a great site….there is soooo much more.

In looking for primary sources and documents for lesson plans, I have noticed that most of the search results center on U.S. history and its related documents. I wanted to find a website that might provide links to a broader collection of documents on world history. This website has links to European historical documents, broken down by country as well as time period. Each link leads to a collection of other links where one can search for primary documents. It's admittedly a bit curious that this website is the product of an employee of Brigham Young University; I cannot tell if this bears any reflection on websites that are linked here, but the collection is extensive.

This website on Mesopotamia and early civilizations is maintained by The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. It provides a wealth of information about the early civilization between the two rivers and includes great photos of artifacts, teaching materials, and interviews with archaeologists. For students, it might be fun to use this site as a webquest, where they would have to explore the site to answer questions.

This is the site that the government has created to provide the average citizen with information regarding the "stimulus plan," which is actually called the Recovery Act. I must warn you that it is NOT an exciting site; however, it is useful if teaching government or making comparisons with other economic crises. For example, there is a ticker that is updated regularly and displays the number of jobs that have been created or saved from the money provided by the stimulus package. One can track awarded funds and used funds by state, project or recipient. For example, in Washington, DC approximately 2300 jobs have been created or saved and American University was awarded and received about 2.5 billion dollars from the recovery act. As I said, it is not exciting but certainly informative.

Ooops. Make the 2.5 MILLION not BILLION.