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Getting Started |
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In this issue’s lesson, students examine a primary source that might seem both familiar and strange: a yearbook from 1860, complete with farewell messages from classmates. The yearbook’s owner was a Texan at Rutgers College in New Jersey, a scion of a plantation family who would go on to die for the Confederacy. On close study, the messages from his mostly northern classmates reveal much about the complexities of the “brothers’ war.”
The issue includes a timeline of national events in the four years these students were at Rutgers, 1856 to 1860. As the classmates were forming close friendships, the country itself was splitting in two. They entered their freshman year as proslavery and antislavery settlers were fighting in Kansas Territory. They graduated just after the nomination of Abraham Lincoln, whose election that year would result in secession.
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Smithsonian in Your Classroom is produced by the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies. Teachers may duplicate the materials for educational purposes.
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