The real story of slavery's end involves one of the most significant social movements in the history of the United States and the heroic actions of the enslaved themselves. Revealing this history helps students begin to answer fundamental questions that urgently need to be addressed in classrooms across the country: How does major social change occur? What is the relationship between those at the top of society--presidents, Congress, elites--and ordinary citizens? What kind of power do "leaders" have? What kind of power do we have? If problematic, simplistic historical narratives--like Lincoln freed the slaves--persist, students will confront the world without understanding how change happens. What could be more important than learning how one of the country's greatest evils was ended? It is in this spirit that Adam Sanchez and colleagues at the Zinn Education Project have prepared 10 lessons and materials in a new resource for educators, "Teaching a People's History of Abolition and the Civil War," from which this article is excerpted.