News Western Sanitary Commission Report on Civil War Refugees, 1863 Read about the report from the Western Sanitary Commission regarding the conditions of freed slaves in the Mississippi valley.
Spotlight on: Primary Source Civil War condolence letter for General Paul Semmes, 1863 By 1863, thousands of Northern and Southern women had volunteered in hospitals to help care for sick and wounded soldiers. In cities and towns near battlefields, wounded soldiers were often placed in private homes and other buildings...
Lesson Plan World War I, African American Soldiers, and America’s War for Democracy 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Click to download this lesson plan.
Spotlight on: Primary Source “The war ruined me”: The aftermath of the Civil War in the South, 1867 In the aftermath of the Civil War, former slaveholders struggled to adjust to the economic conditions resulting from the end of slavery as well as the destruction of plantations and markets and the population loss. Many southern...
Video John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights Government and Civics
Lesson Plan The Mexican-American War: Arguments for and against Going to War Geography, Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Click here to download this three-lesson unit.
Video War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Andrew Carroll, founder of the Legacy Project, recounts his search for letters from America’s wars and reads excerpts from several.
Basic Page History U | Origins of the Civil War Origins of the Civil War This History U course examines various aspects of what historians call “The Crisis of the 1850s,” the crucial decade that ended in the secession of eleven slave states from the Union. Why did they secede? And why didn’t...
Spotlight on: Primary Source A former Confederate officer on slavery and the Civil War, 1907 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ How can a soldier be proud of the country he defends while at the same time opposed to the cause he is fighting for? John S. Mosby, the renowned Confederate partisan leader, dealt with this moral dilemma years after the Civil War...
Spotlight on: Primary Source American Indians' service in World War I, 1920 Science, Technology, Engineering and Math 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 More than 11,000 American Indians served with the American forces during World War I. Nearly 5,000 Native men enlisted and approximately 6,500 were drafted—despite the fact that almost half of American Indians were not citizens and...
News Civil War Essay Contest Winners at the 2018 Lincoln Prize The 2018 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize will be awarded this evening to Edward L. Ayers for his new book, The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America , at the Union League Club in New York City. A...
News National Poetry Month, Part 3: Poem on a Civil War Death In the Battle of Ball’s Bluff, Virginia, on October 21, 1861, the 1st Minnesota Volunteers had just one casualty: a man named Lewis Mitchell. Mitchell was “only a private,” one of the approximately 750,000 casualties in the Civil War....