Lesson Plan The Soldier's Experience: Letters from Four American Wars 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Click to download this four-lesson unit.
Lesson Plan The Gettysburg Address: Identifying Text, Context, and Subtext Government and Civics, Literature, Religion and Philosophy 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Objective This lesson is part of Gilder Lehrman’s series of Common Core State Standards–based teaching resources. These resources were developed to enable students to understand, summarize, and analyze original texts of historical...
Spotlight on: Primary Source President Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, 1861 Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ On March 4, 1861, the day Abraham Lincoln was first sworn into office as President of the United States, the Chicago Tribune printed this special pamphlet of his First Inaugural Address. In the address, the new president appealed to...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Gettysburg Address, 1863 Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ On November 19, 1863, four months after the Battle of Gettysburg, a ceremony was held at the site in Pennsylvania to dedicate a cemetery for the Union dead. The battle had been a Union victory, but at great cost—about 23,000 Union...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Death of a soldier, 1863: Paul Semmes 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ The Civil War was the bloodiest in the nation’s history, with 618,000 Union and Confederate soldiers perishing in the war. Among the nearly 8,000 men mortally wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 were twelve commanding...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863 Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ The Emancipation Proclamation was shaped by both pragmatic considerations and Lincoln’s deeply held, lifelong hatred of slavery. It was timed, after the Union victory at Antietam, to strike a military blow against the South’s economic...
Spotlight on: Primary Source President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, 1865 Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ Just 701 words long, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address took only six or seven minutes to deliver, yet contains many of the most memorable phrases in American political oratory. The speech contained neither gloating nor rejoicing....
Spotlight on: Primary Source Best friends divided by the Civil War, 1861 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ On April 12, 1861, Confederate officials informed Major Robert Anderson, US commander at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, that they would allow one hour for him to surrender his forces. When he refused, Confederates...
Lesson Plan Who Was John Brown? Government and Civics 6, 7, 8 "Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic." —Frederick Douglass Background The late 1840s and the 1850s were a turbulent and complex time in American history as the...
Lesson Plan Lincoln and Civil Liberties Government and Civics 9, 10, 11, 12 Overview The tension between individual rights and a government’s need to preserve and protect national security during times of war has represented a constant theme throughout American history. During the John Adams administration, a...