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Category: National Expansion and Reform (1815-1860)

Poster Alerting Blacks of the presence of slave catchers in Boston

Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Fugitive Slave Act

Posted by: Cheryl Lederle

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was widely influential when it was published in 1852. The Library's “Sources and Strategies” article in the May 2014 issue of Social Education, the journal of NCSS, discusses the influence of the novel. Perhaps just as important as its effect, however, was Stowe’s original impetus for writing it.

One woman watches as another examines with a magnifying glass an ornate, decorative image on a printed page

12 Years a Slave: Primary Sources on the Kidnapping of Free African Americans

Posted by: Cheryl Lederle

Currently 12 Years a Slave, the film version of the true story of Solomon Northup, is showing in theaters. His account is a powerful one: A free African American, Northup was kidnapped in 1841 and taken from New York to Washington, D.C., then to New Orleans, where he was sold into twelve years of slavery. A study of primary sources from the Library of Congress indicates that Northrup's experience was far from unique.