Classroom Materials: Civil War
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Sixteen Months to Sumter
This site provides access to over 1,000 newspaper editorials detailing the shifting tides of emotion and opinion in the 16 months leading to Southern secession and the American Civil War. The site is intended primarily as a teaching resource, to enrich students’ exploration and understanding of the period and assist history teachers by expanding the available primary sources.
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The United States since the Civil War
Compiled by Mary Beth Emmerichs, this site contains links to groups of documents that can be used to generate discussions in the second half of the US history survey.
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The 19th Century US Survey and American Religions through the Civil War
David Hoeveler provides reviews of web resources teachers might use in teaching either a 19th century US histoey survey or a course on American religion through the Civil War.
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Teaching the American Civil War from a Transoceanic Perspective
In the following, Timothy Draper and Amy Powers provide ideas for ways of bringing global contexts into a unit or course on the American Civil War. They include useful topics to cover, along with primary and secondary source readings. Topics include Karl Marx on the Civil War, the war's impact on Hawaii, and the experience of various immigrant groups during the war.
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The Decision to Secede and Establish the Confederacy: A Selection of Primary Sources
The American Historical Association encourages continued public debate about monuments to Confederate leaders and about the public spaces and buildings named after those individuals, as well as the role of Confederate flags in public culture. Historians’ recent experiences in media interviews have suggested that too few participants in these conversations have read the essential primary sources that clearly articulate the reasons for secession and the establishment of a new nation. This page links to a limited set of documents with a singular focus: why did state governments decide to secede and form a new nation?