- Subject:
- U.S. History
- Material Type:
- Module
- Provider:
- Ohio Open Ed Collaborative
- Tags:
- License:
- Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial
- Language:
- English
- Media Formats:
- Text/HTML
Education Standards
Civil War - Exercise 2 - LEE'S INVASION PROPOSAL
Civil War - Exercise 3 - 1864 Election
The Civil War 1860-1865
Overview
"The American Civil War, the bloodiest in the nation’s history, resulted in approximately 750,000 deaths. The war touched the life of nearly every American as military mobilization reached levels never seen before or since... The Civil War was a defining event in the history of the United States and, for the Americans thrust into it, a wrenching one." -The American Yawp, Chap. 14 Introduction
[Image: 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Color Guard - Ohio History Connection]
Learning Objectives
- Identify and describe the factors that led to the Civil War.
- Explain the reasons Southern states seceded from the Union.
- Describe the early battles of the Civil War, and explain how they revealed the presumptuousness of both the Confederate and Union sides.
- Identify and describe the political opposition and challenges to Abraham Lincoln's administration during the Civil War, including the Copperheads and Draft Riots, and explain Lincoln's responses to those challenges.
- Describe the Battle of Antietam, explaining how President Lincoln was able to use the battle's outcome to justify issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.
- Identify the turning points of the war that occurred in 1863, and explain how the war's outcome was influenced by these developments.
- Explain what is meant by the term "total warfare," and describe ho this term applied to the latter years of the Civil War.
- Describe the circumstances leading Robert E. Lee to surrender teh Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomatox Court House, and why the Confederacy collapsed soon afterward.
Textbook Readings
LUMEN BOUNDLESS -- U.S. HISTORY
OPENSTAX -- U.S. HISTORY
AMERICAN YAWP
Module Supplemental Readings & Multimedia
Appomatox
- Surrender at Appomatox (Encyopediavirginia.org)
- The Gentlemen's Agreement that Ended the Civil War (Smithsonian Magazine)
Battles
- Battles of the Civil War (Crash Course) - 7 mins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25HHVDOaGeE - Battle of Antietam (U.S. Army)
- Battle of Antietam Newspaper accounts (Newspapers.com)
- Battle of Bull Run: The End of Illusions (Ernest B. Ferguson)
- Battle of Chancellorsville (U.S. Army)
- Battle of Chickamauga
- Battle of Chickamauga (U.S. Army)
- Battle of Cold Harbor (National Park Service)
- Battle of Cold Harbor- BATTLE MAPS (LOC)
- Battle of First Bull Run (National Park Service)
- Battle of First Bull Run 1861 - A Concise History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d71FUSjKt0 - Battle of Fredericksburg (U.S. Army)
- Battle of Gettysburg
- Battle of Gettysburg (Gettsyburg, PA)
- Battle of Gettysburg (Mackubin Thomas Owens)
- Battle of Gettysburg-MYTHS (OSU eHistory)
- Battle of Gettysburg-NEWSPAPER ACCOUNTS (Newspapers.com)
- Battle of Gettysburg-PRIMARY SOURCE DOCS (Digital Public Library of America)
- Battle of Manassas: The Civil War Era in Four Minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALYd0sPNZPY - Battle (& Siege) of Petersburg (Historicpetersburg.org)
- Battle (& Siege) of Petersburg (History Central)
- Battle (& Siege) of Petersburg (petersburgsiege.org)
- Battle (& Siege) of Petersburg-MAPS (LOC)
- Battle of Spotsylvania Court House (National park Service)
- Battle of Spotsylvania Court House-BATTLE PLAN (LOC)
Campaigns
- Peninsula Campaign in the Civil War (virginiaplaces.org)
- Petersburg Campaign (encyclopediavirginia.org)
- Sherman's March to the Sea (georgiaencyclopedia.org)
- Vicksburg Campaign - Staff Ride Handbook (U.S. Army)
Dissent
- Copperheads (Ohio History Central)
- The New York City Draft Riots https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efpw6o5G9fs
- The New York City Draft Riots of 1863 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bxnUh86RB8
- Treason or Loyal Opposition? The Copperheads and Dissent during the Civil War (Rachel Rooney and Margaret Story)
Fort Sumter & Causes
- Fort Sumter: The Civil War Begins (Fergus M. Bordewich)
- Causes of the Civil War, Part 1 AUDIO -17 mins (15 Minute History)
- Causes of the Civil War, Part 2 AUDIO - 16 mins (15 Minute History)
Lincoln
- Abraham Lincoln -- Administration
- Abraham Lincoln Administration, 1861-1865 (State Department)
- Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties in Wartime (Frank Williams)
- Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
- Assassination news accounts in Newspapers (newspapers.com)
- Ford's Theatre (fords.org)
- Newspaper Clippings About Lincoln (newspapers.com)
- Trial of the Lincoln Assassination Conspirators: An Account (famoustrials.com)
Medical Care
- “Antietam: Aspects of Medicine, Nursing, and the Civil War,” by John Tooker, (American Clinical and Climatological Association)
- Civil War Medicine & Surgery (National Archives)
- Medical and Surgical Care During the American Civil War (National Institutes of Health)
- Medicine in the American Civil War (Dr. Mary Williams)
Naval War
- Civil War Naval History (U.S. Navy)
- Confederate Ironclad Navy (William N. Still, Jr.)
- Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies (Cornell)
Women & the War
Misc.
- A House Divided (U.S. History)
- A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln (Digital History)
- American Battlefield Trust
- Andersonville Prison
- Civil War, Part 1 - 12 Mins (CrashCourse)
- Civil War, Part 2 - 11 mins (CrashCourse) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzTrKccmj_I
- Civil War Curriculum (Essential Civil War Curriculum)
- Civil War Sites Series (National Park Service)
- War Between the Lines (U.S. History)
GENERAL PRIMARY SOURCES
- Amendments Proposed by the Peace Conference, February 8-27, 1861 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/peace.asp
- Amendments Proposed in Congress by Senator John J. Crittenden https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/critten.asp
- Civil War Archives (National Archives)
https://www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war - Civil War Maps (Library of Congress)
https://www.google.com/search?q=Library+of+Congress+%E2%80%93+Civil+War+Maps&rlz=1C1EJFA_enUS701US701&oq=Library+of+Congress+%E2%80%93+Civil+War+Maps&aqs=chrome..69i57j0j69i64.1091j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 - Civil War Photographs
https://memory.loc.govammem/cwphtml/cwhome.html - Confederate States of America Constitution
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp - Confederate States of America Documents
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=3953 - Confederate States of America Documents, 1860-1861
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/csapage.asp - Democratic Party Platform, June 18, 1860
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/dem1860.asp Lieber, Francis, “Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field,” April 24, 1863
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lieber.aspSecession Acts of the Thirteen Confederate States
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=3953Secession of the Southern States
https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/secession-of-the-southern-states
Glossary of Key Terms
Antietam: Battle in the Civil War that was the impetus behind Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation to prevent foreign intervention. The September 17, 1862 engagement it the single bloodiest day in American military history.
Army of Northern Virginia: The most successful Confederate army, commanded by General Robert E Lee.
Army of the Potomac: The main Union Army in the Eastern Theater of the Civil War. Its dual mission was to defeat the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and safeguard Washington, DC.
Border States: The four slave states -- Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware -- that did not secede during the Civil War.
Bull Run: First major battle of the Civil War and a victory for the South that dispelled the North’s notion of a swift victory.
Confederate States of America: Government established after seven Southern states seceded from the Union, later joined by four more states from the Upper South.
Copperheads: Northern Democrats who obstructed the war effort attacking Abraham Lincoln, the draft and emancipation.
Emancipation Proclamation: Declared all slaves in rebelling states to be free but did not affect slavery in non-rebelling Border States.
Fort Sumter: South Carolina location where Confederate forces fired the first shots of the Civil War in April of 1861, after Union forces attempted to provision the fort.
Gettysburg: Civil War battle in Pennsylvania that ended in Union victory and which the Confederacy managed to invade the North again.
greenbacks: Paper currency (printed in green) issued by the United States during the Civil War. They were legal tender by law, but were not backed by gold or silver.
Homestead Act: A federal law that gave settlers 160 acres of land in the west for about $30 if they lived on it for five years and improved it by building a house on it.
Merrimack and Monitor: Confederate and Union ironclads, respectively, whose successes against wooden ships signaled an end to wooden warships.
New York draft riots: Uprising, mostly of working-class Irish-Americans, in protest of the draft. Rioters were particularly incensed by the ability of the rich to hire substitutes or purchase exemptions.
Sherman's march: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's destructive march through Georgia, purposely targeting infrastructure and civilian property to diminish morale and undercut the Confederate war effort.
Vicksburg: Two-and-a-half-month siege of a Confederate fort on the Mississippi River that fell to Ulysses S. Grant and gave the Union Army control of the Mississippi River and splitting the South in two.
Instructor Resources
Classroom Exercises