Ch 7: Everyday Life in Antebellum America - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
About This Chapter
Who's it for?
This unit of our Middle School U.S. History Homeschool course will benefit any student who is trying to learn about what life was like in the era before the Civil War. There is no faster or easier way to learn about everyday life in Antebellum America. Among those who would benefit are:
- Students who require an efficient, self-paced course of study to learn about urbanization, slavery in America, the American Renaissance, reform movements and the Transportation Revolution.
- Homeschool parents looking to spend less time preparing lessons and more time teaching.
- Homeschool parents who need a U.S. history curriculum that appeals to multiple learning types (visual or auditory).
- Gifted students and students with learning differences.
How it works:
- Students watch a short, fun video lesson that covers a specific unit topic.
- Students and parents can refer to the video transcripts to reinforce learning.
- Short quizzes and an everyday life in Antebellum America unit exam confirm understanding or identify any topics that require review.
Everyday Life in Antebellum America Unit Objectives:
- Study the art, culture and literature of the American Renaissance.
- Learn about the reformers of the 19th century.
- Understand what occurred during the Transportation Revolution of the early 1800s.
- Review the economic developments of North America during the Commercial Revolution.
- Gain an understanding of how urbanization changed life in the North during the 19th century.
- Examine the state of the economy in the southern U.S.
- Get information on the history of slavery in America.
- Explore the important figures of the abolitionist movement.

1. American Renaissance: Uniquely American Art, Literature and Culture
America began creating its own distinct culture in the 1800s. Learn about popular trends in art, literature, and pop culture in the antebellum era. Also, learn how religion and utopian communes changed the way some Americans lived.

2. Reform Movements of the 19th Century
Inspired by the Second Great Awakening and Transcendentalism, Americans started a number of social reform movements in the antebellum era, including the fight against alcohol and slavery, as well as the fight for public schools, humane prisons and asylums, and women's rights.

3. The Transportation Revolution: Turnpikes to Steamboats to Railroads
In the half-century before the Civil War, America experienced a transportation revolution that improved the way people and goods crossed the nation, opened up new areas for settlement and altered the centers of economic power.

4. Economic Developments in the North: A Commercial Revolution
In the Antebellum Era, the Northern part of the United States was revolutionized by a series of innovations, triggering a shift from an agricultural to a commercial economy. These economic changes sharpened the differences between North and South.

5. Problems of Urbanization and Daily Life in the North
In the antebellum years, American cities grew. Find out why and what it was like to live in New York, Philadelphia and other Northern cities in the middle of the 19th century.

6. Life in the South: Ordered Society and Economy of the Southern States
While the North was urbanizing and industrializing, the South became more committed to its rural, leisurely lifestyle and its agricultural economy built on slave labor. Limited industry did exist, but cotton was king!

7. Slavery in America: Cotton, Slave Trade and the Southern Response
The United Sates was conceived on the idea of freedom and the rights of all people, but early on, an institution took hold that was the exact opposite of that idea. In this lesson, find out the roots of slavery in the States, how it took hold, how slaves lived, and how they resisted the bonds of slavery.

8. Abolitionist Movement: Important Figures in the Fight to End Slavery
The abolitionist movement spanned decades. Although slavery did not end peacefully, great Americans like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Beecher Stowe were some of the driving forces behind the anti-slavery movement.
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Other Chapters
Other chapters within the Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum course
- First Contacts in the Americas - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- Settlement of North America & the Colonies: Homeschool Curriculum
- The Revolutionary War - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- Creation of the Nation after the American Revolution: Homeschool Curriculum
- The Virginia Dynasty - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- Jacksonian Democracy - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- Manifest Destiny & American Expansion - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- Buildup to the American Civil War - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- The American Civil War - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- Reconstruction After the Civil War - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- American Industrialization of the Late 19th Century - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- The Early 20th Century Progressive Era: Homeschool Curriculum
- American Imperialism & World War I - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- 1920s America - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- America and the Great Depression - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- America and World War II - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- Post-War and the Cold War - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- Civil Rights Movements in America - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- America in the 1970s - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum
- America from 1992 to the Present - Middle School US History: Homeschool Curriculum