The Narrative orients you to the history and historical resources of this era. The Resource Bank provides annotated images and documents, stories, biographics, and commentaries. The Teacher's Guide helps you use the web site and TV series in U.S. history courses.
What's blooming now is... in many ways [a] golden age of American
optimism... It's a remarkably optimistic age that could give birth
to an Emerson or a Whitman, and even to the slave narratives themselves,
which are, in their own way, very optimistic narratives of ascension,
or coming from slavery to freedom.
But at the same time there's all of this optimism, this faith in progress in America, there is beginning to be a real fear that what's spreading across this continent is a problem that some day the country's got to face: that some day there has to be a solution to this contradiction of slavery in a land of liberty and freedom.
- David Blight, historian
Part 1: Narrative | Resource Bank Contents | Teacher's Guide
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