Unbroken Bonds: Middle and High School, Activity 2

Activity 2: Connections between North and South: In this activity, students continue to explore the lives of enslaved people on cotton plantations and begin to examine the connection between northern textile mills and southern cotton plantations.

One class period

Guiding Question: How were both the South and North complicit in making use of, and expanding, southern slavery?

Primary source exploration:

Divide the class into 5 groups. Give each group the three documents listed below.

Group 1

Document 11 Statistics of Lowell Manufactures1835

Document 12 Negro Law of South Carolina, 1848

Document 18 Slave Narratives, WPA

Group 2

Document 11 Statistics of Lowell Manufactures 1835

Document 12 Negro Law of South Carolina, 1848

Document 15 Cloth purchases, Evans Plantation, 1858-59

Group 3

Document 9 The Impending Crisis of the South

Document 13 The Growth of Cotton and Slavery Graph

Document 44 Statistics of Lowell Manufactures, 1857

Group 4

Document 9 The Impending Crisis of the South

Document 13 The Growth of Cotton and Slavery Graph

Document 15 Cloth purchases, Evans Plantation, 1858-59

Group 5

Document 11 Statistics of Lowell Manufactures 1835

Document 13 The Growth of Cotton and Slavery Graph

Document 44 Statistics of Lowell Manufactures, 1857

1. Have each group discuss the following:

Provide evidence from the documents you examined to support the assertion that both the North and South were complicit in the perpetuation and expansion of slavery in the United States.

2.    As a class, students share answers and discuss.