Teaching the Civil War with Technology

The unfortunate Civil War soldier, whether he came from the North or South, not only was in the army when the killing power of weapons was being brought to a brand-new peak of efficiency; he enlisted in the closing years of an era when the science of medicine was woefully, incredibly imperfect. Efficient weapons and a very poor quality of medicine, for every wound and natural ailment, destined the soldier to increased suffering. . When he fought, he was likely to be hurt pretty badly; when he stayed in camp, he lived under conditions that were very likely to make him sick; and in either case he had almost no chance to get the kind of medical treatment which a generation or so later would be routine.

Both the Federal and Confederate governments did their best to provide proper medical care for their soldiers, but even the best was not very good. This was nobody’s fault. There simply was no such thing as good medical care in that age — at least as the modern era understands the expression.

The first enemy the soldiers faced was disease. Healthy recruits became victims of illnesses that were easily spread due to the large number of people in the camps, the often unsanitary conditions, and the poor diet of the soldiers. Childhood diseases such as measles could devastate regiments and many men succumbed to diarrhea and dysentery. Of the nearly 620,000 soldiers who died during the Civil War, two-thirds died not of bullets and bayonets, but of disease.

There is a vast amount of information on the Internet about medicine and medical practices of the period. The U.S. Sanitary Commission website contains information on how they raised money and supplies to help care for the sick and wounded soldiers. There is an excellent series of lessons entitled, “Challenges of Health Care During the Civil War”, which provides students with statistical data on the different types of injuries and diseases. This data could then entered into a spreadsheet and used to produce results such as percentages and averages. Additionally, the U.S. Civil War Center at Louisiana State University has, among other topics, an extensive list of sites specific to Civil War ear medicine.

Finally, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine has some excellent information on Civil War era medicine.

UPDATED 8/1/09: More Good Links

Caring for the Men, the History of Civil War Medicine
http://www.civilwarhome.com/medicinehistory.htm

Civil War Medicine
http://www.library.vcu.edu/tml/bibs/cwmed.html

Cyndi’s List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet: Medical and Medicine
http://www.cyndislist.com/medical.htm

eHistory.com – Medicine: More Civil War Medical Terms
http://www.ehistory.com/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/medicalterms.cfm

Galen Press: Civil War Medicine Challenges and Triumphs
http://www.galenpress.com/021.html

eHistory.com – Statistics on the Civil War and Medicine
http://www.ehistory.com/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon/statistics.cfm

Posted under Primary Sources, Websites

Okay, so back in December I asked you to take a look at the following photograph so we could explore all of its hidden treasures. This photograph shows the same building from my December 8th post that showed wounded soldiers from the battles in the “Wilderness” at Fredericksburg, Virginia, May 1864. This Gardner photograph of the US Sanitary Commission cooking tent is taken from a slightly different angle and a bit further away from the building. You can obtain a copy of the high resolution TIFF version of the image from the Library of Congress website.


So, let’s open up the photo in your favorite program (I use GIMP) and start taking a look around. On the surface we can several people standing and sitting around the yard. There appear to be a few wounded soldiers near the building, some gentlemen in front of the tent and some ladies sitting under the tree to the left of the barrels. There also appears to be a bed or cot in the middle of the yard.

Now, let’s grab our magnifying glass and see what else we can find. By increasing the magnification you can see at least people within this scene. Can you find them? There are two wounded soldiers (both with left arm wounds) on the left side of the image. There are 14 people situated near the center of the image. But where are the others? Zoom in on the area between the building and the back of the tent. You can see two and possibly three (there may be two in the carriage) people here. Finally, on the far right of the image, you can see the shadowy image of someone standing behind the barrels. Continue to zoom in on the individuals and look at their expressions and clothing.

What else can you find? See if you can locate some of the following items: the coffee pot, an umbrella, the US Sanitary Commission sign on the tent, a wash basin (look on the left side of the image), the stretcher that was leaning against the building in the previous image and the gentlemen drinking coffee.

Until next time, happy hunting.

Posted under Lesson Ideas, Primary Sources

So I thought that I would start a series on how to use photographs from the Civil War era in order to increase understanding. Looking at photographs can tell us a great deal about many different aspects of the war.

Today we will discuss the following photograph from the Library of Congress website:

This photo shows wounded soldiers from the battles in the “Wilderness” at Fredericksburg, Virginia, May 1864.

There are seven soldiers and one nurse pictured outside this makeshift hospital. For simplicity sake, let’s number them one to seven from left to right. So, number three is standing in the doorway.

What else can we notice? It looks like five out of the seven soldiers have some type of leg or foot wound that requires the use of crutches. Speaking of crutches…these ones look like one size fits all. Straight wooden poles with wooden parts for under the arms. The soldier six has his right arm in a heavy bandage.

What else can we notice? Hmm…. Well, soldiers one, two and three are all first sergeants based on the strips on their sack coats. Something that appears to be a stretcher is leaning up against the building on the right hand side. The solider one has a very interesting looking blanket under his wounded leg. The soldiers two and five both appear to be smoking a pipe and you can clearly see a chain across the front of soldier two’s vest. This was probably connected to his pocket watch. Look very close and can see soldier two’s hat on the ground in front of him.

As for the nurse, she is sitting watch over the wounded in her nice gown and matching bonnet. You can also see that she is holding a canteen in her lap.

Here is another picture taken from a slightly different angle looking at the back of the building.

The caption indicates that this is the cook house for the U.S. Sanitary Commission. What can you see in this photograph? Let me know what you find and we will discuss it in Part 2.

Posted under Lesson Ideas, Primary Sources

Clara Barton is one of the most famous women in American history. So while in 4th grade, it came time for my daughter to do a report on a famous person from history, she chose Clara. What was even more fun was that she wanted to do a slide show of pictures about Clara as she gave her oral report. So, she searched the web for pictures and information about Clara and then I showed her how to load them into iPhoto and how to make a slide show. It was a lot of fun working on this with her and we both learned a good bit about Clara and iPhoto, Garageband and iTunes.

So, I thought I would take her oral report and share some of it in a blog post, along with some of the photos, information and links about Clara that Sarah found.

Clara was born in 1821 in New Oxford, Massachusetts. My parents are Sarah Stone Barton and Capt. Stephen Barton. I have two brothers named David and Stephen and two sisters named Sarah and Dorothy (or Dolly).

This is a picture of the home where Clara was born.

Growing up Clara was a shy girl and enjoyed riding her horse. One day when David was out working on the barn roof he fell and broke his arm. The doctor told Clara that he may die, but she made a wish that he would not and cared for him for several weeks and her wish came true.

Clara’s brother and sister grew up to become teachers. In 1850, Clara became a teacher in this one-room schoolhouse. She earned praise when she refused to physically punish students. Clara liked to think that she left a mark on each school in which she taught, organizing the classroom and drafting lesson plans.

In 1861 when the civil war began I followed the troops taking care of the wounded soldiers. Clara and other women would care for the wounded soldiers by giving them food, bandaging their injuries and writing letters for them to their families.

During the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, Clara saw many wounded and dying soldiers everywhere she walked. They were in barns, in cornfields and even in the Dunker Church. These pictures show some of the wounded soldiers from the Battle of Antietam that she nursed back to health.

Although it is widely believed that Clara was set up on the Joseph Poffenberger farm on the north end of the battlefield, according to Ranger Mannie Clara was actually at the Samuel Poffenberger farm, a little more to the east. This is a modern photograph of the Samuel Poffenberger farmhouse, which is where she stayed for a week or so.

There is a monument at the Antietam National Battlefield to Clara that says:

Beginning in 1870, Clara spent 10 years organizing the American National Red Cross, which was officially incorporated in 1882. Under my leadership the Red Cross assisted with relief efforts following disasters like floods, forest fires, and earthquakes.

Thanks to Ranger Mannie from Antietam National Battlefield, Ranger Smith from Gettysburg Battlefield and Mr. Joe Korber of the 119th New York Field Music and The Sykes Regulars for information on Clara, photos and music for this presentation.

So, that was the bulk of her report. A few points to consider: 1) Sarah’s school has very little in terms of technology so it was great for her to show the other kids, 2) This provided me a change to help Sarah learn how to research a topic on the Internet, 3) I made sure that she asked permission to use photos and music for her presentation that were not in the public domain and 4) her class got to see a great presentation using technology.

A few more quick photos.
This is Sarah at the Clara Barton monument

and

Here is Sarah, holding her Junior Ranger certificate and badge, with Ranger Mannie.

Additional photos and information about Clara are available on the web at these sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton
http://www.civilwarhome.com/bartonbio.htm
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm072.html
http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/27barton/27barton.htm
http://www.clarabarton.org/

Updated from the old blog:  Check out Sarah’s new project Civil War Sallie who recently visited the Clara Barton home and wrote a two-part blog post on her visit.  Check out Part 1 and Part 2

Posted under Famous People, Primary Sources

In order to better understand the impact that the Civil War had on the United States, it is important for students to review data of how many soldiers were killed, died from disease, died as a prisoner of war, and died in accidents. Information such as this was collected during it is currently available online. The data can be obtained from Dyer’s Compendium (Union) Summary of Losses by State as listed on the website at http://www.civil-war.net/ Once students have obtained the required data, they will then be able to manipulate the data in order to determine totals and averages for states and/or categories.

The following could be some objectives for this lesson.

1. Students will analyze data from Dyer’s Compendium (Union) Summary of Losses by State.
2. Students will manipulate a spreadsheet in order to better understand the data provided.
3. Students will focus on the following issues: participation in the war by state, casualties of the war by state, averages for the various statistics.

So, the teacher could take the data from the website and replicate this table into spreadsheet. Then the students would take the spreadsheet provided by the teacher perform the following:

1. Enter formulas into the Total Deaths column to total the number of casualties for each state.
2. Enter formulas into the Totals section at the bottom of the spreadsheet to calculate the totals for each category.
3. Enter formulas into the Totals section at the bottom of the spreadsheet to calculate the averages for each category.
4. Review the data and answer questions about the data such as which state had the highest number of Total Deaths.
5. Additional questions for students to answer:

• What is the total number of people who died of disease during the Civil War?
• What was the cause of the most losses in Illinois during the War of the Rebellion?
• How many more died as prisoners of war in Pennsylvania than in Massachusetts?

The following table shows the losses that are specific to Pennsylvania

Posted under Lesson Ideas, Primary Sources