Year: 2012
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Election Night 2012 – The Electoral College Decides
Our nation’s Electoral College is deserving of a better label than archaic. We Americans seldom acknowledge the fact that votes cast by electors, not those of the popular will, decide the winner of presidential and vice-presidential races. This is understandable since in more than 90 percent of the time, the two outcomes are indistinguishable from…
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Engaging History Lesson: The Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln first shared with his entire cabinet a draft of what would become the Emancipation Proclamation on July 22, 1862. His plan received a mixed reception among his advisers given the dire times in which the administration faced. When teaching about the Emancipation Proclamation, the dynamics surrounding the processes leading up to…
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Antietam, Slavery and the Emancipation Proclamation
Monday, 17 September 2012 marks the sesquicentennial of the Battle of Antietam. On this date in 1862, more American battle casualties were inflicted than on any other single day previous or since. For the first year and a half of the American Civil War, fighting had mostly consisted of raids, skirmishes by cavalry units and…
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Indiana’s Underground Railroad after Nat Turner
The Ohio River separates Indiana from the slave state of Kentucky however, in 1831 it did not insulate the former state from the inherent issues surrounding the institutional bondage of human beings. Regional and interstate tensions were already straining relations on the border of Free and Slave states by the time blood of both blacks…