Antebellum Period Images

Antebellum Period Images

Stage Stars of the Age

Edwin Forrest in the title role of Metamora by John Augustus Stone. Engraving by T. Johnson after a photograph by Mathew Brady, circa 1859

The Birth of a Stereotype

Lithograph advertising "Mr. T. Rice as Jim Crow," circa 1830s.

Blackface Minstrelsy

Detail from sheet music cover of "Sich a Getting Up Stairs," featuring Thomas D. Rice.

Mocking Upward Aspirations

The "Zip Coon" blackface minstrelsy character.

Nightlife in Antebellum New York

A Five Points district oyster cellar, from George Foster's New York by Gas-light (1850).

A Map to the Mind

The cover of the American Phrenological Journal, March 1848.