The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)

Professor Blight lectures on southern slavery. He makes a case for viewing the U.S. South as one of the five true "slave societies" in world history. He discusses the internal slave trade that moved thousands of slaves from the eastern seaboard to the cotton states of the Southwest between 1820 and 1860. Professor Blight then sketches the contents of the pro-slavery argument, including its biblical, historical, economic, cynical, and utopian aspects.

00:00 - Chapter 1. Introduction
08:39 - Chapter 2. The American South as Slave Society -- From the Foreign Slave Trade to the Slave Jail
23:54 - Chapter 3. Slavery for the Sake of Social Stability
33:54 - Chapter 4. Biblical, Historical, Amoral, Economic, and Utopian Arguments for Slavery
50:11 - Chapter 5. Conclusion

Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://open.yale.edu/courses

This course was recorded in Spring 2008.