- Abraham Lincoln’s Crossroads
Abraham Lincoln’s Crossroads is an educational game based on the traveling exhibition Lincoln: The Constitution & the Civil War, which debuted at the National Constitution Center in June 2005. The online game is intended for advanced middle- and high-school students. It invites them to learn about Lincoln’s leadership by exploring the political choices he made.
- Band Music from the Civil War
Band Music from the Civil War Era makes available examples of a brilliant style of brass band music that flourished in the 1850s in the United States and remained popular through the nineteenth century. Bands of this kind served in the armies of both the North and the South during the Civil War.
- BioClassroom: Abraham Lincoln
This biography traces Lincoln's life from the rustic childhood that shaped him through his tragic assassination. Throughout this documentary, historians offer insights into Lincoln's personality, his decision-making style, and the combination of factors that led him to become one of the most significant leaders in American history. This program examines Lincoln's writings, his complex family life, and the evolution of his career.
- BioClassroom: Frederick Douglass
While viewing the documentary, examine the ways in which Douglass accomplished his marvelous and inspirational ascent despite such great odds. How did Douglass eventually become a leading spokesperson for the full rights and equality of all Americans? What risks did he take, knowing quite well that his hard-earned freedom - and his life - could end immediately if he were caught?
- Causing the Civil War
For years, textbook authors have contended that economic difference between North and South was the primary cause of the Civil War. The northern economy relied on manufacturing and the agricultural southern economy depended on the production of cotton. The desire of southerners for unpaid workers to pick the valuable cotton strengthened their need for slavery. The industrial revolution in the North did not require slave labor and so people there opposed it. The clash brought on the war.
- Children’s Voices from the Civil War
Textbooks, which feature the passive voice and condensed versions of momentous events, rarely capture the passion and drama of the past. By supplementing the textbook with documents that show how real-life children experienced historical events, the teacher can engage students' interests and can also offer multiple perspectives on historical events.
- Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)
- Crisis at Fort Sumter
This site provides documents, essays, and questions about the events leading up to the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in 1861 and places the events within a broader context of secession and southern independence.
- Crisis of the Union
This archive contains material related to "the causes, conduct, and consequences of the U.S. Civil War." The collection contains more than 220 books, broadsides, cartoons, pamphlets, and other printed material from 1830 to 1880. The entire archive can be browsed by author, date of publication, title, or subject.
- Freedmen and Southern Society Project
This site provides 44 primary documents relating to the emancipation of African American slaves between 1861 and 1865. It includes a letter by General William T. Sherman explaining why he refused to return fugitive slaves to their owners; an 1864 letter from Annie Davis, a Maryland slave, to President Abraham Lincoln asking him to clarify her legal status; a description by a Union general of a bloody battle at Milliken's Bend, LA and much more.
- James Buchanan and the Dred Scott Decision
This month’s Presidents and the Constitution focuses on James Buchanan and his response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford. Buchanan’s fondest hope was to put to rest the building controversies regarding the spread of slavery. As President, he made it plain that he—and all citizens—should defer to the Supreme Court’s ruling.
- John Brown and the Underground Railroad
This lesson asks students to analyze John Brown's attitudes and actions against slavery and the differences between his views and those of other people who were active in the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement. Students will write journal entries pretending they are Underground Railroad conductors who have adopted John Brown's values and tactics.
- Lest We Never Forget: Triumph over Slavery
- Letters, Telegrams, and Photographs Illustrating Factors that Affected the Civil War
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Did the agitation and activities of the abolitionists advance or defeat their objective? The “essential question” posed as the aim of this lesson presents students with an open-ended, thought-provoking historical issue for their analysis and assessment.
- Spoils of War: Civil War Quilt
This tale of family, geography, and war tells the amazing story of a South Carolina quilt and the surprising paths history can take.
- The Civil War as Photographed by Mathew Brady
The sociology of the American Civil War can be viewed through a medium that was coming of age in the middle of the 19th century: photography. The National Archives and Records Administration makes available on-line over 6,000 digitized images from the Civil War.
- The Fight for Equal Rights: Black Soldiers in the Civil War
- Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture
This well-designed, comprehensive website explores Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as an American cultural phenomenon. "Pre-Texts, 1830–1852" provides dozens of texts, songs, and images from the various genres Stowe drew upon, including Christian texts, sentimental culture, anti-slavery texts, and minstrel shows. The section on the novel includes Stowe's preface, multiple versions of the text, playable songs from the novel, and Stowe's defense against criticism.
- Women and the Civil War
Using the classroom as an historical laboratory, students can use primary and secondary sources to research the history of women in the nineteenth century. The students will be engaged in the craft of historical interpretation; they will be identify the assumptions about women before the Civil War and then be able to discover the effects of the war on the history of women in the last of the century.
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