National Achives Blog & the Emancipation Proclamation

The National Archives has a blog out which you might want to consult for class.  One of my favorite things to do in a US class is to have my students read a primary document.  Since our textbooks can often be dry, the documents bring to life the realities of our past.

For example, here is a letter from Annie Davis, a slave in the norther state of Maryland, to President Lincoln written fifteen months after the Emancipation Proclamation.  It is a good way to show your students that only those slaves in the South were freed under the order and, of course, until Northern troops took over an area, the South ignored the order.  What better way to accent this for your students and to show the politics of the situation, than by showing your students this letter.

I originally found this letter on a post from a genealogy blog called The Root.