Research Guide: Slavery: Home

An important book of epic scope on America's first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for change

The civil war brought to a climax the country's bitter division. But the beginnings of slavery's denouement can be traced to a courageous band of ordinary Americans, black and white, slave and free, who joined forces to create what would come to be known as the Underground Railroad, a movement that occupies as romantic a place in the nation's imagination as the Lewis and Clark expedition. The true story of the Underground Railroad is much more morally complex and politically divisive than even the myths suggest. Against a backdrop of the country's westward expansion arose a fierce clash of values that was nothing less than a war for the country's soul. Not since the American Revolution had the country engaged in an act of such vast and profound civil disobedience that not only challenged prevailing mores but also subverted federal law.

Presents a history of slavery in America from the early seventeenth century to the end of Reconstruction and describes the horrors of slavery through the stories of those who witnessed it such as Dred Scott and William H. Carney, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery at Fort Wagner during the Civil War.

Explore[s] the experiences of the [Detroit River] area's freedom-seekers and advocates, both black and white, against the backdrop of the social forces--legal, political, social, religious, and economic--that shaped the meaning of race and management of slavery on both sides of the river

A comprehensive review of American immigration history since 1600 which examines the lives of immigrants from across all of the country's borders and analyses the relationship between immigration, race, slavery, and colonial expansion.