Abolitionist Leader William Lloyd Garrison

This video adapted from American Experience: “The Abolitionists” profiles William Lloyd Garrison, founder of The Liberator and a leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society, whose position on the slavery question generated strong and often violent resistance to the abolitionist cause.

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Building the Erie Canal

In this video segment adapted from American Experience, learn about the construction of the Erie Canal, the biggest public works project of its time.

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Building the Erie Canal

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students look at how the construction of the Erie Canal brought about major changes within United States, particularly in New York City, upstate New York, and the Midwest.

The Cherokee Alphabet

This video segment adapted from AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: “We Shall Remain” explains how a Cherokee man named Sequoyah developed an alphabet for the Cherokee language, and how that alphabet changed and strengthened Cherokee society.

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Ex-slave Frederick Douglass Joins the Abolitionists

This video adapted from American Experience: “The Abolitionists” describes the contributions of Frederick Douglass, a former slave, to the abolitionist movement in the early 1840s.

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Free, but not Free: Life of Free Blacks before the Civil War

This hands-on, media-enhanced lesson explores the life of free blacks in the United States prior to the Civil War using video segments from Finding Your Roots.

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin

This video adapted from American Experience: “The Abolitionists” describes how Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-selling novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was an act of protest against the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and built support for the abolitionist movement.

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Historic Archaeology at Ashland: Artifacts in a Privy

During an archaeological survey at Ashland, the estate of politician, farmer, and horse breeder Henry Clay in Lexington, Kentucky, historic archaeologists discovered an old privy used from 1860 to the 1920s. Filled with thousands of artifacts, it was remarkable for the number and variety of ceramic vessels it produced: more than 900 in all.

How the Mexican-American War Affected Slavery

This video adapted from American Experience: “The Abolitionists” describes how new territory acquired by the United States in the Mexican-American War, and the Great Compromise of 1850 that it generated, fueled greater division between abolitionists and slave owners.

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Mission US: Flight to Freedom

Students play this interactive adventure game and assume the role of Lucy. As the game opens, Lucy is a young slave on the King family’s plantation outside of Lexington.

Picturing America - Quilts

Learn about the cultural, technical, and regional influences reflected in the craftsmanship of 19th and 20th century American quilts in this film from Picturing America on Screen.

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Picturing America - Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Winslow Homer

Learn about the Civil War through the art of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Winslow Homer in this video from Picturing America on Screen.

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The Quest for Religious Freedom

In this lesson, video segments from the PBS series Finding Your Roots are used to explore how religion has played a part in attracting immigrants to the U.S. and the role it plays in the lives of modern American families.

Slavery in the North

This hands-on, media-enhanced lesson uses video segments from the PBS series Finding Your Roots to explore the extent to which slavery existed in the North.

Slavery in the North

This video segment from Finding Your Roots discusses the existence of slavery in the North through the ancestry of Kevin Bacon.

Southern Abolitionist Angelina Grimké

This video adapted from American Experience: “The Abolitionists” describes the efforts of Angelina Grimké, the daughter of a prominent southern slaveholding family, to end slavery and obtain equal rights for women.

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Transcontinental Railroad Recruits Chinese Laborers

This video segment adapted from American Experience examines the participation of Chinese laborers in the construction of the first transcontinental railroad during the 1860s.

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Wanda Sykes’s Free Ancestors in the 1600s and 1700s

This video segment from Finding Your Roots discusses Wanda Sykes’s long-standing free black ancestry. Her free ancestry traces back to her ninth great-grandmother, a white indentured servant who had a child with a slave.

Westward Expansion, 1860–1890

This interactive map produced for Teachers' Domain tracks trends in the growth of population, transportation networks and agriculture in the United States in the 30-year period between 1860 and 1890.