J. Robert Osborne
Introduction
I have been teaching United States History 1 for the last seven years and for an additional three years before that. One of the most challenging aspects of teaching that course is how to establish a meaningful context for understanding the impact of slavery in America on the nation and the peoples of that nation from all backgrounds. We tell the story of Africans in the United States by teaching about slavery. We need to establish different perspectives on the early African American experience as freemen and also examine how the states and national government struggled with the implications of having millions of the population trapped in enslavement while their labor built the economy.
The "Middle Passage" brought Africans acculturated in Africa to the New World where they learned that they were now property to be enslaved and renamed. As one of my students said, "I get it. When my ancestors got on the boat they were Africans and when they landed in the New World they were niggers." That was the beginning for many slaves and the students of today don't understand the historical context well enough to establish perspective about what happened regardless of how they see themselves and imagine what was happening in many parts of the Americas in the past. The Atlantic Slave Trade was a major economic force and at the same time a powerful producer of human misery.
Telling this story is hampered by the differential in original materials between the relatively voluminous written artifacts of the enslavers and the much smaller library of written accounts describing what the enslaved and former slaves experienced. Equiano, Frederick Douglas and Solomon Northrop wrote down what they had seen and lived as eyewitnesses to read about and later Alex Haley's research and book "Roots" helped me to teach the sophomores I taught from a perspective closer to what may have been experienced by Blacks in this country during slavery.
There are many important factors, thoughts and opinions that are important but they are also often ambiguous, contradictory and confusing that sophomores studying the early years of the United States through 1865 find it a real challenge to establish a meaningful understanding of the historical context of the time. Slavery existed in America from the 1600s until after the Civil War and all three of the founding documents of this country ignored it's presence or made veiled references to its particularities (particularly in the Constitution) except to utilize the presence of non voting slaves for purposes of establishing political power for the economic and political elite, not for the enslaved.
Most of my teaching about slavery in America has been about the cultural, social, moral and economic aspects of slavery and how people of those times acted and adjusted to the oppressive powerlessness and relentlessness of life as a slave. Since Blacks were excluded from most political and judicial positions in most colonies and then states there hasn't been a way to tie together the many issues of property, human rights, states rights, the expansion of slavery until this course. This course has provided the legal background needed to add the Law, the Judicial Process and the Supreme Court to what I have been teaching. It is a way to bring the continuity of a structured institution and its processes where the issues of slavery and manumission were examined away from the plantation to the historical context of what was happening to Blacks, enslaved and free in Antebellum America. For me, the culmination of this course is the critical relationship between the Majority Opinion in the Dred Scott v. Sandford Case before the Supreme Court on the Lack of Citizenship Rights for all Blacks as expressed by Chief Justice Roger Taney in bringing about the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments that sought to establish the very rights denied by the Supreme Court.
Lesson Plans
I plan to teach this unit to 10th Grade Honors Classes Next Year.
The classes meet every other day for 82 minutes.
I plan to take five full classes and the accompanying homework assignments to present and complete the unit itself.
It will be critical to provide the historical context to the students.
Throughout the course I plan to be providing the suitable historical context and buildup for this unit to be fully effective.
Goals for the Curriculum Unit:
1) To increase students' understanding of how the Supreme Court has worked historically.
2) To help students develop a greater understanding of race and slavery in America.
3) To improve students' appreciation of the legal and political relationships between the Federal Government and the States during the Antebellum Period in America.
4) To understand the particulars of the Supreme Court Case, Dred Scott v. Sandford and the potential impact of the Majority Opinion as expressed by Chief Justice Taney.
5) For students to realize that the exclusion of rights for all African Americans by Justice Taney created the impetus to legally define the rights of former slaves and freemen immediately after the conclusion of the Civil War.
Lesson One:
The teacher will start the first lesson with a Thought Question, (A Question Designed to Encourage Students to Think About the Question and Reflect Before They Answer by Writing what They Actually Think and Not What they Think the Teacher Wants Them to Know) that will ask the students to reflect on their Rights and where they may have come from?
Then there will be an opportunity to collect those thoughts and put them together on the Black Board to form a collective statement.
The students will then be given the two-page historical context background and they will read along as the teacher and other students take turns reading it.
Then there will be an extended discussion about the role of slavery in early America, the economic success of producing cotton with slave labor and the political obstacles that kept slavery protected as an Institution in many states in the growing United States.
The class will end with the teacher giving a concise description of the particulars of the Dred Scott v. Sandford Case that will be structured to inform the students of the key issues of the case, how it moved through the courts and when it was decided.
The students will write at least a three paragraph essay on what they think the outcome should be and why for homework. That will be the first assessment in the unit and it will help the teacher gauge what the students are thinking and how well they understand what has transpired in class.
Lesson Two:
The students will be asked to read excerpts from the Dred Scott Majority Opinion written by Chief Justice Taney and the Dissent by Justice Curtis.
At the beginning of class the class will be broken up into four groups. In one group, representatives of a slave state will discuss the pros and cons of both opinions and assess the possible impact.
Another group, representative of a state without slavery will do the same from their perspective.
The third group, representative of a territory where slavery is still a possibility will do the same from their perspective.
The fourth group, representative of cotton buyers from New England and England will also do the same from their perspectives.
After a discussion each group will elect two representatives to offer the group perspective and then participate in an exchange of perspectives with the representatives from the other groups.
In the last 15 minutes, each student will offer an individual analysis of the opinions themselves, the perspectives of their groups and the class exchange. (Second Assessment)
The teacher will move from student to student assessing and suggesting and the students will then complete what they have started as homework for the next class.
After the second lesson the teacher can reflect on these questions listed below to stimulate their own thinking on this topic.
Questions:
1) How to most effectively tell the story of slavery from the state and national perspectives?
2) How to link the denial of rights to African Americans to the denial of rights of Native Americans and others less initially politically acceptable peoples?
3) How to find the balance between the details of the Dred Scott Case, the decision and the process of adopting the Amendments that came after the Civil War?
Lesson Three:
This lesson will be about the events leading up to the Civil War, the role of the Dred Scott Case in that lead up and what the situation was in June of 1861 when the eleven Confederate States had seceded from the United States and formed their own country. What were the major issues for each of the following right at the beginning of the Civil War?
1) The Cotton Plantation Owners in the Deep South
2) The Slaves on those Plantations
3) President Abraham Lincoln of the United States
4) President Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States of America
5) A Leader in the United States Congress
6) A Cotton Clothing Mill Owner in Lowell, Massachusetts
7) The Governor of Maryland, a Border State
8) A Farmer in Tennessee
9) An Immigrant Recently Arrived in New York City
In groups of three, students will brainstorm and share ideas about what the best course of action might be for the person they chose and what obstacles and decisions their person should anticipate. That will take ten minutes and then each group will in turn visit with two other groups at random for five minutes to share their thoughts and hear from others.
Then each group will highlight by writing on the Board what Conclusions they reached and what did they still wonder about for their person.
The homework for the night would be to collaborate and produce a written detailed list describing in detail what they learned about their own person and then other things they learned about the other groups' people. (Third Assessment)
Lesson Four:
Will start with a brief quiz on the particulars of the Dred Scott Case and the causes of the Civil War. (Fourth Assessment)
After they read the Emancipation Proclamation and before they read the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment the students will hear a lecture from their teacher on the evolution of thinking towards the creation of the amendments as the war intensified and the losses on both sides mounted, then the Thirteenth Amendment, the assassination of President Lincoln and the contrast between him and his successor, Andrew Johnson and the situation faced by the country after four years of war and division. Special attention should be paid to what the Dred Scott Decision denied the recently freed slaves and how that was going to be overcome.
There will be a class discussion about the situation many different groups of people faced and the class will start to put a list together of the challenges to be met at the end of the War and then during the period of putting the country back together, Reconstruction.
The homework for the students will be to come up with their own list of challenges faced at two points, Right After the End of the War and Lincoln's Assassination and the other during Reconstruction after the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted before the adoption of the Fourteenth and then the Fifteenth Amendment. (Fifth Assessment)
Lesson Five:
There will be two list headings on the Board and after attendance each student in turn will write one of the challenges they anticipated under each heading and initial it. The list will be assessed for originality in determining the challenges faced. (Sixth Assessment)
There will be a class discussion about the challenges faced before the students are asked to read the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
They will then listen to the story from the teacher of how the Civil Rights Act of 1867, The Radical Reconstruction Bill was passed, the writing and adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment and what it set out to do and finally the Fifteenth Amendment.
Students will then write a question or questions they have after the unit is almost over and then they will read a question and call on a volunteer from the class that wants to try and answer the question asked. That should lead to some interesting exchanges and discussions.
The Final Homework for this lesson and the Curriculum Unit and the basis of the Seventh Assessment will be a five paragraph essay in which each student speculates about what is to come as a result of the three Amendments to the Constitution that came in order to establish the rights of former slaves to fill the void left by the opinion of Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott Decision. Will the Amendments protect the rights of people? What do they accomplish and what is missing?