Before the war even began in the east, there was trouble in Kansas Territory over whether it would be a free or slave state. In our previous readings, we learned why and how the west was populated.  Next, we studied how the issue of slavery affected the nation.

Reading and Research

Here are the resources that we purchased for this study:

• Slavery’s Storm by Bentley Boyd
• Meet Addy(American Girl Book)

I also found a brand new copy of the Kansas Journey textbook at our library.  It was created by the Kansas Historical Society as a 7th grade overview of Kansas history.

We also used many pages from the Civil War Comes to Kansas notebooking pack that I shared.  It is free to download!

Read Kansas! cards that we used:

• The Gathering Storm exhibit
• Nat Turner’s Rebellion (video on history.com)
• Disunion (an overview and a set of printable timeline cards are towards the end of this file)
• The Missouri Compromise
• Fugitive Slave Act (video from pbs)
• Jayhawkers vs Bushwhackers
• Slavery and the Making of America

Notebooking, Lapbooking, and Activities

There were so many rabbit trails we could have taken with this study that it could have lasted us an entire year.

 The girls read the two books I purchased on their own- for fun.  So when we sat down to explore together we really focused on the battle over the Kansas Territory between the free-staters and the pro-slavery advocates.

Our main activity was reading the pamphlets found on the Read Kansas! cards about the dispute over whether Kansas would become a slave state.

Raven chose to support slavery, while Denna was a free-stater.  She opposed the expansion of slavery into the western states.

We had a great discussion about political debate, propaganda, and name calling.  Each of the pamphlets had truthful and deceptive statements and we had fun dissecting the arguments.

All of the notebooking pages we used came from the notebooking pack I created.

Here are some other lapbooking and notebooking resources you could use:

• Slavery in North America Lapbook (purchase)
• Modern Times Notebooking Pages (has a special section for the Civil War- purchase)
• Slavery in America Notebook
• The Underground Railroad notebooking pages

More books about slavery and the conflict in Kansas:

Let the whole world know!

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