07: Civil War

07: Civil War

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History News Network | It's Time to De-Confederatize "The American Pageant": An Open Letter to David Kennedy
History News Network | It's Time to De-Confederatize "The American Pageant": An Open Letter to David Kennedy
This is an article for teachers to read, yet share with students through lessons that show that the "history" students find in textbooks is still open for debate. Additionally, it shows one of the most popular AP US textbooks shapes a common misunderstanding about the cause of the Civil War
History News Network | It's Time to De-Confederatize "The American Pageant": An Open Letter to David Kennedy
St. Paul’s Episcopal and the Limits of Public History | CIVIL WAR MEMORY
St. Paul’s Episcopal and the Limits of Public History | CIVIL WAR MEMORY
Although this article may have a better place with college students than high school students, teachers who read it may be inspired to find ways to bring this topic to their classes in valuable lessons that explore the purpose and meaning of history in a particularly vital and worthwhile way. How should the present deal with the past?
St. Paul’s Episcopal and the Limits of Public History | CIVIL WAR MEMORY
How the Telegraph Helped Lincoln Win the Civil War
How the Telegraph Helped Lincoln Win the Civil War
When discussing the military technology of the Civil War, most think of rifled muskets, few think of communication. Yet, the communications revolution that came with the telegraph changed the very nature of the Civil War.
How the Telegraph Helped Lincoln Win the Civil War
Poet at Work: Recovered Notebooks from the Thomas Biggs Harned Walt Whitman Collection
Poet at Work: Recovered Notebooks from the Thomas Biggs Harned Walt Whitman Collection

Facsimiles of four of Walt Whitman's original notebooks—ranging in length from 24 to 210 pages. The notebooks contain both prose and poetry, and include ideas for prospective journal articles, early versions of poems that were used in Leaves of Grass, and notes taken during hospital visits to wounded Civil War soldiers. Students can comb through the what Whitman writes about Civil War soldiers as real historians - what can they learn of the soldier's experience?

Poet at Work: Recovered Notebooks from the Thomas Biggs Harned Walt Whitman Collection
Letter by Abraham Lincoln to Erastus Corning
Letter by Abraham Lincoln to Erastus Corning

Students should be required to struggle with the balance of liberty and security during the Civil War. Lincoln suspended basic civil rights of citizens in his prosecution of the war to save the Union based on the protection of those same civil rights. This is his best defense of his actions.

This important public letter is probably the most famous defense by President Abraham Lincoln of his civil liberties position in a time of domestic insurrection. He not only allowed but encouraged it to be printed and distributed; estimates of readership ran as high as 10 million, or about one in three Americans, and the response to it was widely favorable.

Letter by Abraham Lincoln to Erastus Corning
Virginia Governor Letcher's response to Lincoln's Call for Troops in 1861
Virginia Governor Letcher's response to Lincoln's Call for Troops in 1861
After Fort Sumter, President Lincoln requested 75,000 militiamen, including 2,340 officers and men from Virginia, to put down the Southern rebellion. This is a reprint of the response of the Virginia Governor. Students could be tasked with the interpretation of this document and synthesizing it with other common understandings of the causes of the Civil War.
Virginia Governor Letcher's response to Lincoln's Call for Troops in 1861
General McClellan to President Lincoln - July 8 1862
General McClellan to President Lincoln - July 8 1862
In this letter, McClellan tells president Lincoln how he thinks the war should be waged. It is in direct contrast to how the war was won. This could be used in connection with any lesson concerning the Emancipation Proclamation or the concept of total war. In a way, this letter could mark the end of "romantic" warfare and the beginning of modern, "total war." Quotes from this letter could fit into a lesson on the decision to drop the atomic bomb as well
General McClellan to President Lincoln - July 8 1862
Rantings of a Civil War Historian » Bennett Place vs. Appomattox Court House
Rantings of a Civil War Historian » Bennett Place vs. Appomattox Court House
The understanding that the Civil War ended at Appomattox is the perfect example of the "myth canon" - a general historical understanding that appears as a result of historical scholarship. It holds a seemingly unassailable place in state standards, textbooks and US History survey course curricula, but doesn't stand up to even the most modest historical scholarship.
Rantings of a Civil War Historian » Bennett Place vs. Appomattox Court House
BoothieBarn | Discovering the Conspiracy
BoothieBarn | Discovering the Conspiracy
Much can be learned from someone who devotes their time, energy and insight into an event in history. This blog contains much about the Lincoln Assasination and keeps readers abreast of current scholarship in the assassination and events surrounding its study and commemoration.
BoothieBarn | Discovering the Conspiracy
Counting the Civil War Dead Video - YouTube 2:50
Counting the Civil War Dead Video - YouTube 2:50
How often do lessons about the causes of the Civil War include references to the number that died? Shouldn't the answer be "every single time"? This quick three minute video explores the difficulty of establishing validity in the statistics. More importantly, it raises the question - what can we conclude about the reasons for this war when we consider the carnage both sides were willing to tolerate?
Counting the Civil War Dead Video - YouTube 2:50
President Lincoln's Proclamation Overruling Hunter's Emancipation, May 19, 1862
President Lincoln's Proclamation Overruling Hunter's Emancipation, May 19, 1862
Union General Hunter declared martial law in regions of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina that he occupied with his army. The text of that order is here - as well as Lincoln's message rescinding that order. Students look closely at the text of Lincoln's message can see hints of the Emancipation that would follow later than same year.
President Lincoln's Proclamation Overruling Hunter's Emancipation, May 19, 1862
Lincoln and Colonization: Policy or Propaganda?
Lincoln and Colonization: Policy or Propaganda?
This is not an article for students to read and understand, it is an article for earnest and committed teachers of history. In exploring the interpretation of Lincoln'c views on slavery in general and colonization in particular, this articles shows how "either/or" interpretations of history are always misleading. That is what could make it an article for students. Teachers can have students skim the article and skim to count the number of historians referenced in it. Make it a game - first one with the correct number wins. The point is this - look how many different ideas are generated by one question - what did Lincoln think about colonization as a solution to slavery?
Lincoln and Colonization: Policy or Propaganda?
The War of the Rebellion: Original Records of the Civil War | eHISTORY
The War of the Rebellion: Original Records of the Civil War | eHISTORY
No serious study of the American Civil War is complete without consulting the Official Records. Affectionately known as the "OR", the 128 volumes of the Official Records provide the most comprehensive, authoritative, and voluminous reference on Civil War operations. The reports contained in the Official Records are those of the principal leaders who fought the battles and then wrote their assessments days, weeks, and sometimes months later. The Official Records are thus the eyewitness accounts of the veterans themselves. As such they are "often flawed sources – poorly written in some cases, lacking perspective in others, frequently contradictory and occasionally even self-serving." Nevertheless, they were compiled before the publication of other literature on the subject that, in several cases, caused some veterans to alter their memory and perception of events later in life.
The War of the Rebellion: Original Records of the Civil War | eHISTORY
Of Methods and Madness - A Spatial History Approach to the Civil War's Guerrilla Violence
Of Methods and Madness - A Spatial History Approach to the Civil War's Guerrilla Violence
Maps of the Civil War's conventional battlefields often impose order where there was chaos. Conversely, because we have few good maps of the war's guerrilla conflict, we often think of the border conflict as anarchic and without pattern. The "Of Methods and Madness" Project utilizes digital map-making technologies to find order in the apparent chaos of the guerrilla theater and to see Civil War guerrillas as they were -- organized, opportunistic, and bent on destroying the Union army and its resources.
Of Methods and Madness - A Spatial History Approach to the Civil War's Guerrilla Violence
The Dakota Conflict (Sioux Uprsing) Trials of 1862
The Dakota Conflict (Sioux Uprsing) Trials of 1862
This article tells the story of one of those footnote events of American history that always impresses people when they are told, yet always marvel at the fact that they "heard nothing about this before. In the midst of the Civil War, the federal government allowed for the mass execution of 39 Native Americans
The Dakota Conflict (Sioux Uprsing) Trials of 1862
Avalon Project - Confederate States of America - Message to Congress April 29, 1861 (Ratification of the Constitution)
Avalon Project - Confederate States of America - Message to Congress April 29, 1861 (Ratification of the Constitution)
More evidence that the Confederacy was formed to protect slavery. Period. In the third paragraph, Davis constructs an interesting conspiracy theory that may engage students in his myth. Did the north intentionally sell its slaves to the south to reduce the number of blacks in the north - thereby making it easy for the north to abolish slavery? Then, when the north had sold its population of blacks to the south, it would end slavery?
Avalon Project - Confederate States of America - Message to Congress April 29, 1861 (Ratification of the Constitution)
Gary Gallagher civil war series Lecture
Gary Gallagher civil war series Lecture
Teachers who show students a clip of this lecture from 59:38 to 1:05:00 get the chance to have them watch a master historian at work. The University of Virginia professor and universally acknowledged expert on the Civil War responds to a question about the role of slavery in the War and in the process, thoroughly eviserates the notion that the war was about anything else but slavery. The clip can be used in many ways, the least of which is the content alone. Teachers can have students track the way he marshals evidence to support he thesis, the way he describes it and the links he makes between his evidence and his thesis. This is an historian at work, doing what he does best. Students see historians in documentaries too often - it is much better to show them fighting it out with ignorant ideas.
Gary Gallagher civil war series Lecture
Declaration of Causes of Secession
Declaration of Causes of Secession
Excerpts from the declarations of secession of South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas. Teachers can ask students to quickly search (ctrl+f) the word "slavery " and skim through the documents. How would the argument that the Civil War was based on something other than slavery stand up against this historical record?
Declaration of Causes of Secession
DeBow's Review full, searchable, text (University of Michigan Making of America)
DeBow's Review full, searchable, text (University of Michigan Making of America)
This collection of articles from one of the most widely read weekly newspapers of the south is a treasure-trove for antebellum primary documents. Teachers and students cal search through the issues or even look through them during significant events to see southern opinion on the Mexican War, Wilmot Proviso, the election of 1860, secession, etc.
DeBow's Review full, searchable, text (University of Michigan Making of America)
Crisis at Fort Sumter - Interactive Lesson from Tulane
Crisis at Fort Sumter - Interactive Lesson from Tulane
This is an interactive historical simulation and decision making program. Using text, images, and sound, it reconstructs the dilemmas of policy formation and decision making in the period between Abraham Lincoln's election in November 1860 and the battle of Fort Sumter in April 1861. Great lesson and materials, terrible design. They need to get rid of that circa 1997 wallpaper so the text is eaiser to read
Crisis at Fort Sumter - Interactive Lesson from Tulane
How the Charleston Elite Brought on the American Civil War - The New York Times
How the Charleston Elite Brought on the American Civil War - The New York Times
Just a brief book review that should be consulted by teachers before they explain the south" to their students as if it were one an only one thing. The conclusion offered by this book doesn't have to be accepted to understand the reality that there were many different "south"s. Add this to the many, many books that explain the seething cauldron of opinion that boils underneath the single label "the south"
How the Charleston Elite Brought on the American Civil War - The New York Times
Was the Civil War About Slavery? - YouTube
Was the Civil War About Slavery? - YouTube
What caused the Civil War? Did the North care about abolishing slavery? Did the South secede because of slavery? Or was it about something else entirely...perhaps states' rights? Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point, settles the debate.
Was the Civil War About Slavery? - YouTube
Abraham Lincoln SAC | Stanford History Education Group
Abraham Lincoln SAC | Stanford History Education Group
President Abraham Lincoln is usually remembered as a staunch abolitionist who ended slavery. However, historians have debated whether or not Lincoln truly believed in racial equality. In this structured academic controversy, students examine selections from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln's letter to a friend, and a contemporaneous, theoretical view of slavery to explore Lincoln’s multifaceted views on race.
Abraham Lincoln SAC | Stanford History Education Group
What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil WarSesquicentennial Review of theRecent Literature
What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil WarSesquicentennial Review of theRecent Literature
Twenty Five pages just to review the recent literature on the causes of the war - yet somehow US History teachers can manage to squeeze this into three unequivocal bullet points in a presentation slide. They shouldn't be faulted to summarizing, the survey course doesn't allow much else - but the can be faulted for never telling students about provisional nature of the absolutes of their teaching
What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil WarSesquicentennial Review of theRecent Literature
I Just Can't — The Rogue Historian
I Just Can't — The Rogue Historian
Blog Professor's blog entry that slams the lid on the "but what about the tariff?" argument. If you or your students are ever engaged in a discussion about the causes of the Civil War, invective writing like this is informative and powerful.
I Just Can't — The Rogue Historian
Causes of the Civil War
Causes of the Civil War
Despite it's late-90's appearance, this site links to primary sources that place the protection of slavery as the most prominent cause of southern sucession
Causes of the Civil War