Civil War Resources: Teaching the Sesquicentennial

Two years ago on AHA Today we put together a number ofCivil War Resources for teachers, historians, and anyone interested in this critical time in our nation’s history. We noted Perspectives on History articles on the Civil War, like James McPherson discussing why he became a Civil War historian and Gary Gallagher looking at how the Civil War is portrayed in the movies. We also put together a list of Civil War podcasts, web sites, lesson plans, maps, and more.

As we continue to mark the Civil War’s Sesquicentennial, we invite you to look back at the resources in that previous post and also to revisit, EDSITEment’s Civil War Lesson Plans, articles from the National Archives Prologue magazine, and past AHA Today articles mentioned below.

EDSITEment
EDSITEment offers a large number of lesson plans that can be used when teaching about the Civil War. Each plan is full of resources, like primary documents, audio and video, images, and more.  Check out specific topics including slavery, causes of the war, Abraham Lincoln, art and literature during the Civil War, and Reconstruction. For example, here are a few lesson plans you can choose from (descriptions quoted from EDSITEment):

• Images at War
  Explore American attitudes toward conflict through Civil War photographs and World War II poster art.
• The Battle Over Reconstruction
  This curriculum unit of three lessons examines the social, political, and economic conditions of the southern states in the aftermath of the Civil War and shows how these factors helped to shape the Reconstruction debate as well as the subsequent history of American race relations.
• Abraham Lincoln on the American Union: “A Word Fitly Spoken”
  Curriculum unit. By examining Lincoln’s three most famous speeches—the Gettysburg Address and the First and Second Inaugural Addresses—in addition to a little known fragment on the Constitution, union, and liberty, students trace what these documents say regarding the significance of union to the prospects for American self-government.

National Archives
Corresponding with the National Archives’ “Discovering the Civil War” exhibit (which we highlighted on AHA Today in May last year), Prologue magazine’s spring 2010 issue featured a number of articles on the Civil War, including:

• “Out of War, a New Nation” by James McPherson
• “Discovering the Civil War” by exhibit curator Bruce Bustard
• “A Reasonable Degree of Promptitude about Civil War pension application processing

AHA Today
Here on the blog we’ve featured numerous posts about Civil War resources. We’ve written about:

• Women and War Resources
  Duke University’s collection of primary resources, an article on the Ten Common Myths about Women in the Civil War and How to Dispel Them, and much more.
• Free Lectures from the Forum Network
  For example, Ken Burns: The Civil War Series (which includes lectures on African Americans in the Civil War and Jews of the Confederacy).
• Teachinghistory.org’s Resources
  Our most recent post on the Civil War feature’s Teachinghistory.org’s collection of web site reviews, videos, lesson plans, links, and more.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.