Jan. 26, 1863: Black Troops Recruited for the Union Army

Lesson. By Bill Bigelow. 17 pages.
This role play engages students in thinking about what freedpeople needed in order to achieve — and sustain — real freedom following the Civil War. It’s followed by a chapter from the book Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution.

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 7 pages.
Students explore some of the myths of the Civil War through examining excerpts from Lincoln’s first inaugural address, the rarely mentioned original Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that Lincoln promised to support, and the Emancipation Proclamation.

Teaching Guide. By American Social History Project with foreword by Eric Foner. 1996.
Primary documents, essays, and questions to teach the untold story of Reconstruction.

Article. By David W. Blight. 2011.
The people’s history of Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina during Reconstruction.

Article. By Bill Bigelow. If We Knew Our History Series.
Students need to rethink the Great Emancipator myth by examining Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address, the Emancipation Proclamation, his timid approach to ending slavery, and, by contrast, the heroism of the abolitionists and the enslaved people themselves.

Book — Non-fiction. By W. E. B. Du Bois. Edited by Eric Foner and Henry Louis Gates. 2021. 1097 pages.
Originally published in 1935, Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction was the first book to challenge the prevailing racist historical narrative of the era and in sharp, incisive prose, tell the story of the Civil War and Reconstruction from the perspective of African Americans.

Book — Non-fiction. By Lerone Bennett Jr. 1967. 426 pages.
A bottom-up, student friendly text about the people’s history of Reconstruction.

Book — Fiction. By Harriette Gillem Robinet. 1998. 144 pages.
Historical fiction featuring 12-year-old Pascal, 8-year-old Nellie, and their older brother Gideon, a Union Army aide, as they claim and farm the land promised to them during Reconstruction.

Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

Harriet Tubman planned and guided a significant armed raid (becoming the first woman to do so in the Civil War) against Confederate forces, supply depots, and plantations along the Combahee River in coastal South Carolina.

The New York City Draft Massacre (“Riots”) were the largest civil insurrection in U.S. history besides the Civil War itself. White mobs attacked the African American community — committing murder and burning homes and institutions (including an orphanage.)

Secretary of State William H. Seward declared the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution to have been adopted.