White Southerners' Defense of Slavery

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Procedures

1. Divide students into three groups, and further divide them into teams of two or three students.
   
   
   
2. Hand out articles and questions:
   Group One: "The Danger of Insurrection"
   Group Two: "Freedom and Slavery"
   Group Three: "Northern Free Negroes and Southern Slaves"
   
   
3. Instruct students to work with their teams to read the article and answer questions on worksheet. If time permits, groups can read all three of the articles.
   
   
4. When students have completed their task, reconvene whole group to share findings.
   
   
5. Questions for whole class discussion:
• Do you think slaveholders really believed what they said and wrote in defense of slavery?
• Besides the reason given by the author of Article One, what reason can you think of for the failure of slaves to join John Brown's uprising?
• Are there institutions and practices that people defend today that may be considered immoral a hundred years from now?