This blackboard lesson is from The First Book of History. For Children and Youth, published in 1837 by Samuel Griswold Goodrich (1793-1860), the author of Peter Parley's Tales of America. Goodrich, who was born in Ridgefield, Connecticut, claimed to have written or edited 170 titles and to have sold seven million copies of his books; an 1884 estimate put the number at eleven million. Goodrich's books were extremely influential, and this history book demonstrates the popular understanding of slavery in the North by Northerners prior to the Civil War as something that was predominantly a Southern problem. Click on the image to read the transcription of the lesson.

Image: excerpt from Samuel Griswold Goodrich, The First Book of History. For Children and Youth (Collins, Brother & Co., N.Y., 1837). Courtesy Fairfield Historical Society, Fairfield, Connecticut.