Module 5: The Impact of Slavery

In Module five, you will read three of the most important writers who revealed the horrors of slavery to the American public in the decades leading up to the Civil War. The mid-nineteenth century was a challenging time for the United States, as the issue of slavery divided the nation, culminating in the Civil War in 1861. As you read the first-hand depictions of slavery by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Ann Jacobs, you’ll encounter the different experiences that African American men and women faced. In the excerpts from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a fictionalized account of slavery written by a white woman, and the best-selling American novel of the nineteenth century, you’ll be asked to think about how a reader’s emotions can be powerfully moved by a work of literature.