If so, this lesson is for you!
It involves becoming a part of the Election of 1868. In it, students will become a person that is given to them to portray someone from this time period, experience speeches by Lincoln and Douglass, discuss their perspectives with other students, or "citizens," and vote based on the person that they are.
- Click here for the Lesson Plan.
LINCOLN: “Mr. PRESIDENT and Gentlemen of the Convention: (Change to: “Mrs. Biamonte and the citizens of 1860” when reading to the class.) ``A house divided against itself cannot stand.'' I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free…It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it…or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become…lawful in all the States…North as well as South.” “…our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it.” “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.” “Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.” “The ballot is stronger than the bullet.” “I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that his hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me - and I think He has - I believe I am ready.” “You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.” “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.” (compiled from: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/229.Abraham_Lincoln; http://millercenter.org/president/lincoln) DOUGLAS: “Uniformity in…local laws…of the different States is neither possible [nor] desirable. I ask you, are you in favor of conferring upon the negro the rights and privileges of citizenship? Do you desire to turn this…State into a free negro colony, [and] send one hundred thousand emancipated slaves into Illinois, to become citizens and voters, on an equality with yourselves? If you desire negro citizenship, if you desire to allow them to come into the State and settle with the white man, if you desire them to vote on an equality with yourselves, and to make them eligible to office, to serve on juries, and to adjudge your rights, then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party, who are in favor of the citizenship of the negro… I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form…I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon [any other] races. … Mr. Lincoln and his party…are trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the South, to excite a sectional war between the free States and the slave States, in order that the one or the other may be driven to the wall... I should like to know, if [we are] taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all mean are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop? The authors of the Declaration of Independence…intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. …I hold that New York had as much right to abolish slavery as Virginia has to continue it, and that each and every State of this Union is a sovereign power, with the right to do as it pleases …Why can we not adhere to the great principle of self-government, upon which our institutions were originally based?” (Compiled from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%E2%80%93Douglas_debates) |
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