Introduction - A Note To Learners
Real learning happens when we engage with ideas, ask questions, explore, think critically, and use new information to construct meaning. The best learning results from that ongoing mental struggle - the effort we go through to build understanding. Thinking is work. And deep learning and mastery in social studies doesn’t come from simply memorizing names, dates, and events - so that we can get the right answers on a test. Deep learning in history means thinking, feeling, and doing what professional historians do (Renzulli, 2021; Ritchhart & Church, 2020, pp. 23-24). That is our task - to work like historians - to become historians. And being a historian means collecting and pouring through primary and secondary sources, finding evidence, understanding historical context, recognizing and pointing out bias, observing what things change and what things stay the same, looking at cause and effect relationships to understand why things happen, and evaluating all of the information and clues we gather so that we can answer questions, make historical arguments, solve problems, and bring the whole story (or truth) to light. Yet historians don’t just learn and share stories - although historians do get to hear the most interesting of all stories and tell moving stories with powerful voice; historians also change the way people think and act by helping them see from new perspectives, by demonstrating how historical events and people are significant and relevant to our lives today, by helping people to better understand themselves, and by making it possible for people to make a positive difference in the world. So, being a historian is like being an explorer, a detective, a researcher, a puzzle solver, a judge, a storyteller, a philosopher, a debater, and a changemaker.
Over the last couple of years, our society has again struggled with division. While geography (North and South) hasn't played as much of a role as it did in 1860, there has been intense division along party lines and political beliefs (Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives), arguments about health (maskers and anti-maskers, vaccines and anti-vaxxers, protecting the community or protecting personal freedoms), racial tensions, and extremist groups.
When we talk about the American Civil War, we often consider it a "necessary" war as the United States as we know it today would not likely exist without having fought that war. At the same time, we also refer to the American Civil War as America's bloodiest war. With roughly 620,000 dead, 2% of the entire population (or one out of every 50 people and one out of every four soldiers) lost their lives during the Civil War. To put that into perspective, that would be equivalent to over 6 million deaths today. In terms of monetary cost - government expenditures, physical destruction, work lost, etc. - the total costs of the war have been estimated at over $10 billion in 1860. That is equivalent to 1.5 times the total gross national product (GNP) of the nation at the time. In today's terms, that would be over $30 trillion dollars lost. And so, one has to question whether war really was "necessary" (the only way) to resolve differences and keep the Union together.
What can we learn from the American Civil War (1861-1865) and its causes and effects to help us become a stronger, more unified nation today? What can we do to avoid letting our current differences threaten to tear the nation in two as did for a time 160 years ago? And what will you do, in your community and world, to be a changemaker?
Over the last couple of years, our society has again struggled with division. While geography (North and South) hasn't played as much of a role as it did in 1860, there has been intense division along party lines and political beliefs (Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives), arguments about health (maskers and anti-maskers, vaccines and anti-vaxxers, protecting the community or protecting personal freedoms), racial tensions, and extremist groups.
When we talk about the American Civil War, we often consider it a "necessary" war as the United States as we know it today would not likely exist without having fought that war. At the same time, we also refer to the American Civil War as America's bloodiest war. With roughly 620,000 dead, 2% of the entire population (or one out of every 50 people and one out of every four soldiers) lost their lives during the Civil War. To put that into perspective, that would be equivalent to over 6 million deaths today. In terms of monetary cost - government expenditures, physical destruction, work lost, etc. - the total costs of the war have been estimated at over $10 billion in 1860. That is equivalent to 1.5 times the total gross national product (GNP) of the nation at the time. In today's terms, that would be over $30 trillion dollars lost. And so, one has to question whether war really was "necessary" (the only way) to resolve differences and keep the Union together.
What can we learn from the American Civil War (1861-1865) and its causes and effects to help us become a stronger, more unified nation today? What can we do to avoid letting our current differences threaten to tear the nation in two as did for a time 160 years ago? And what will you do, in your community and world, to be a changemaker?
Causes of the Civil War
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ESSENTIAL QUESTION: What was the single most significant cause of the Civil War: king cotton and the growing economics of slavery; differing opinions on the morality of slavery; Uncle Tom's Cabin; slave revolts; states’ rights; government actions and compromises related to territorial expansion such as the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act; economic, social, or cultural differences between the North and South; the Dred Scott case; John Brown's Raid; the election of Abraham Lincoln; or secession?
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See. Think. Wonder.
This work, painted at the close of the Civil War, forms a narrative triptych (84.12a, b, c) of African American military service. In "The Contraband" (84.12a)—a term that referred to enslaved people who fled to Union lines at the beginning of the conflict—the self-emancipated man appears in a U.S. Army Provost Marshall General office, eager to enlist. The Recruit (84.12b) represents him as proudly ready for military service. In "The Veteran" (84.12c), he is depicted as an amputee possibly seeking his pension in the same office where he first enlisted, or returning to military service. By the war’s end, African American men made up more than ten percent of the United States Army and Navy, fighting bravely in so-called U.S. Colored Troops. Wood, a White Vermont-born painter, produced this empathetic work in New York at a time when caricatured representations of African Americans were the norm.
CIvil War Medicine
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Primary Sources
HOSPITAL SKETCHES
L. M. ALCOTT, 1863
"The first thing I met was a regiment of the vilest odors that ever assaulted the human nose, and took it by storm... I progressed by slow stages up stairs and down, till the main hall was reached, and I paused to take breath and a survey. There they were! "our brave boys," as the papers justly call them, for cowards could hardly have been so riddled with shot and shell, so torn and shattered, nor have borne suffering for which we have no name, with an uncomplaining fortitude, which made one glad to cherish each as a brother. In they came, some on stretchers, some in men's arms, some feebly staggering along propped on rude crutches, and one lay stark and still with covered face, as a comrade gave his name to be recorded before they carried him away to the dead house."
L. M. ALCOTT, 1863
"The first thing I met was a regiment of the vilest odors that ever assaulted the human nose, and took it by storm... I progressed by slow stages up stairs and down, till the main hall was reached, and I paused to take breath and a survey. There they were! "our brave boys," as the papers justly call them, for cowards could hardly have been so riddled with shot and shell, so torn and shattered, nor have borne suffering for which we have no name, with an uncomplaining fortitude, which made one glad to cherish each as a brother. In they came, some on stretchers, some in men's arms, some feebly staggering along propped on rude crutches, and one lay stark and still with covered face, as a comrade gave his name to be recorded before they carried him away to the dead house."
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Reflecting Through Poetry
Civil War Hospitals - 6-Room Poem
What images do you see? (Individual words) |
What do you hear? (Individual words) |
What are your feelings or sensations? (Individual words) |
Describe the light. Where is it coming from? Reflections or shadows? (Phrases or descriptions) |
When you are sitting in this place, what questions do you have? (Complete sentences) |
Repeating words that capture or remind you of this place. (Write each word three times) |
Battles of the CIvil War
Explore All Battles By Location
Explore Major Battles & Campaigns Chronologically
Fort Sumter
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First Manassas (BUll Run)
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Fort Donelson
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Pennisula Campaign
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Shiloh
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Second Manassas
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Harpers Ferry
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SOUTH MOUNTAIN
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aNTIETAM
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