Teaching the Civil War with Technology

The Library of Congress sponsors discussions on various books and broadcasts them via their website. One of the webcasts was about Robert E. Lee and features the author Elizabeth Brown Pryor. The author talks about her research into Robert E. Lee and provides a unique insight into this famous historical figure.

Check out the webcast HERE

Photo credit: Selected Photographs of the Civil War

Stay warm…

Posted under Famous People, Primary Sources, Videos

In this season of elections, I thought it would be interesting to share a website on Civil War era elections.

Harper’s Weekly has created a website for researching historical elections from 1860 to 1912. According to the website, the Presidential Elections page features political cartoons from several different digital resource centers such as Harper’s Weekly, the Library of Congress and Vanity Fair. The website also “provides explanations of the historical context and images of each cartoon, campaign overviews, biographical sketches, a review of the era’s major issues, and other valuable information.”

Let’s take a moment to explore the 1860 election between Lincoln, Douglas, Breckinridge and Bell. First, each election contains four sections: Overview, Cartoons, Biographies and Events. From here you can learn about the events leading up to to the 1860 election, how the Democratic party split, the Union Constitution Convention, the Republican Convention and the Campaign.

One of the greatest part of this site for teachers are the political cartoons. Let’s look at one and see how you can use it in your classroom.

The above image shows Abe Lincoln as a rail-splitter and is intended to appeal to the average voter. Before giving your students the full description of the cartoon, ask them to tell you what they see, what do they think is going on in the cartoon, what does the little child represent and why are the words “Democratic Party” listed on the rail?

You can then follow up by reading them the complete description: “In order to appeal to average voters, Republicans emphasized the poor, hardworking origin of their candidate through the myth of Abraham Lincoln as a rail-splitter. This cartoon in the Wide-Awake Pictorial plays on that image by joking that the last rail he split is th Democratic Party in 1860, which divided into the Northern and Southern Factions.”

Then, have your students think about presidential campaign ads or commercials they have seen recently. Do any of those ads try to appeal to the average voter by making the candidate look like every hardworking American? I think so and can name a few but let me know what your students come up with as you review these cartoons.

Until next time….

Posted under Lesson Ideas, Primary Sources, Websites

Since I have posted on The Gettysburg Address in the past, I thought I would share this USA Today headline article about a “new” image of Abe Lincoln at Gettysburg being found at the Library of Congress.

The story discusses how an amateur historian was looking at photographs of the famous Gettysburg Address and found Lincoln in his famous top hat riding a horse to the speaker’s stand.

You can read the entire article HERE.

Here is a close up of the photo from the article showing what appears to be Lincoln

Photo from USA Today.

I have posted before about using photographs in your classroom. The historian in the article had researched the events around the Gettysburg Address and was simply looking at photographs and made a terrific discovery. You and your students can do the same thing in your classroom. Who knows, you may be the one to find the next photo of Lincoln or other famous Civil War figure.

Researchers advocate instructional approaches that engage students in the processes of doing history (Friedman, 2005). This process includes building historical knowledge through the use of primary sources, conducting historical inquiry, and encouraging students to think historically. As part of this process, students must be active learners, by seeking answers rather than waiting for them when engaging in the analysis of primary sources. The reason for this is that the process of engaging in historical thinking is more than simply absorbing information; instead it requires seeking out answers to questions (Friedman, 2005). While viewing a primary source, students will examine the historical document and then construct a narrative based on that document. Through the process of constructing this narrative, students have begun to develop inquiry skills that they will be able to use throughout their life (Wineburg, 2001). According to VanSledright (2002), children as young as seven and eight years old are capable of thinking historically.

Good luck and have fun exploring those photos.

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References:

Friedman, A. (2005, May). Using digital primary sources to teach world history and world geography: Practices, promises, and provisions. Journal for the Association of History and Computing, 8, Retrieved October 2005, from http://mcel.pacificu.edu/jahc/JAHCVIII1/articles/friedman.htm#037

VanSledright, B. (2002). In search of America’s past. New York, NY: Teacher’s College Press

Wineburg, S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Posted under Famous People, Primary Sources

Eric Langhorst is an 8th grade American History teacher in Liberty, Missouri and runs the Speaking of History podcast and blog. Eric has some great resources on his website for using Web 2.0 technologies into the teaching of History.

Eric recorded the presentation of a National Park Service Ranger at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC and provided it as a podcast for you to download. What a great way for you to have your students listen to this lecture and reflect on the event that occurred there in April, 185.

In addition to that Mike Lynaugh’s photography website has some great modern day photographs not only of Ford’s Theater, but also of the entire John Wilkes Booth Escape Route.

Use the photographs, the NPS site and podcast in combination to allow your students to experience the events of April 14-15, 1865.

Until next time…

Posted under Famous People, Websites

As many of you know, the Library of Congress has a website called Selected Civil War Photographs. This page makes browsing the photographs easy because they have a Search feature, a Subject browse, or you can look at photos from each year of the War. There is also information about Understand and Working with the Collection.

One of my favorites is the “Does The Camera Ever Lie” link. On this page it begins to talk about how photographers of the Civil War era changed or manipulated captions in photographs in order to achieve a more dramatic effect. This page provides two links: The Case of the Confused Identity and The Case of the Moved Body Let’s look at the one about The Case of the Moved Body.

The photograph (Figure 1) shows a very famous picture by Alexander Gardner of a dead Confederate solider in Devil’s Den shortly after the Battle of Gettysburg. According to research by William Frassanito (1975), Gardner actually moved this dead soldier some 50 yards up a hill in order to capture the now famous image (p. 191) . The LOC pages describe the two images and provide an analysis of how they are similar. But how can we let our students to some analysis of these photos?

Figure 1:

Here’s how: On this same website download the same two images from The Case of the Moved Body in the large RAW TIFF format. If you have access to a projector, show the images on the screen. Then using a paint program such as GIMP or Paint Shop Pro, open the images and begin to look at them in more detail. Now, use the magnifying glass of your paint program to zoom in on the images. The TIFF format of the photo allows you to zoom in to the photo with higher magnifications without distorting the image. So, at these higher resolutions, you can look at the face and clothes of the dead soldier and make comparisons.

In addition to making comparisons, you can also become a crime scene investigator by looking for more clues. So, super sleuths, using the photograph of the soldier in the “sniper’s nest” can you locate his cartridge box, his hat or a blanket? What other things can you find?

UPDATE 3/30/09: Sheryl McCoy over at the N2Teaching Blog has shared a great analysis of this post on her blog. Thanks Sheryl!

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References:
Frassanito, W. (1975). Gettysburg: A Journey in Time. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co.

Posted under Lesson Ideas, Primary Sources