Civil War era Presidential Elections

In this season of elections and how the current presidential primary and the upcoming presidential election 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....

Great Collection of Lesson Plans

A quick post today just to share a resource that I found. I was doing some research for another blog post and came across this great collection of lesson plans related to the Civil War.

The collection is from Fitchburg State College and is called Teaching American History Program : Lesson Plans and Teaching Ideas for Sectionalism, Civil War and Reconstruction

Enjoy!

Lincoln Loved Learning

Here is another cool use of VoiceThread for your classroom. Melanie Lewis is an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher in Virgina and has created a webpage called Lincoln Loved Learning.

Mrs. Lewis has taken several images from the life of Abraham Lincoln and combined them together with a narrative text using VoiceThread. These photographs depict various parts of Lincoln's life growing up including his family and how he loved to read. What is especially interesting about this project is that throughout the slideshow, several students provide additional insights and comments about the life of our 16th President. Finally, Mrs. Lewis has listed several additional resources for you to explore about the President.

I have discussed the use of this type of technology before, so here is just another example of how you and your students can create and share information. These types of activities are cross-curricular and promote student engagement and creativity.

Here are some ideas for other VoiceThread projects:

• Research a Battle and discussion the important facts
• Research a particular unit and show photos and provide information
• Research a specific figure from the Civil War (lots of possibilities here)
• Research a particular aspect such as medicine and show photos of wounded soldiers

So many possibilities...Let me know what you think and if you create any in your classrooms.

Free Resources Until April 30th!

The Alexander Street Press is providing FREE access to their online Civil War Collections until April 30th.

You can access the following Collections:

• The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
• The American Civil War Research Database
• Illustrated Civil War Newspapers and Magazines
• American Song

Try this, click The American Civil War Research Database then Click on: Analysis at the top of the page then click on Confederate and Union Losses Chart. You can view graphs of various statistics related to the Civil War, research specific regiments and get statistics (oh my) on soldiers.

For example, the following graph shows a comparison of Union and Confederate Losses of those who died or were killed in battle.


Why do you think there was a large increase in the number of Union soldiers killed in the early months of 1864?

Finding Resources with Del.icio.us

For those of you who don't know, del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site where people can store links to their favorite websites and access them from anywhere rather than being tied to a single computer.

One of the cool things about del.icio.us is being able to search for websites that others have bookmarked with del.icio.us. This website works with what is known as tags. These tags are words that people use to categorize their bookmarks. For example, you could have several websites related to the Battle of Antietam and when you bookmark them with del.icio.us you might give them the tag Antietam. Then the next time you want all of your bookmarked sites on Antietam you simply click on the Antietam tag within your del.icio.us.

Here is a link to the CommonCraft Show called Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Another interesting thing about social bookmarking is that you can subscribe to these tags via an RSS feed. For example, you can do a del.icio.us tag search for Gettysburg by entering the URL, http://del.icio.us/tag/gettysburg into your web browser. Once the results appear, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you will see an icon that says RSS feed for this page. If you click on this link (or right-click copy link location) you can add this RSS feed to your Bloglines or Google Reader account. Then, every time someone tags a website with the word Gettysburg, it will appear in your RSS aggregator.

You can also check out The Connected Classroom wiki on Social Bookmarking and RSS Feeds.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

More Gettysburg YouTube Videos

Here are a few more short videos related to the Battle of Gettysburg for you to view:

Three related to the story of Wesley Culp, Jack Skelley and Ginny Wade:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti2PcQR-SdU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBi_Vgt2MWs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5jaJyJKY3s

Story about Spangler's Spring:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj-mWP_H8P8

Just another great way for you to bring subject matter experts into your classroom.

Enjoy

Civil War Preservation Trust 7th Annual Teacher Institute

I recently received an email indicating that I'll be presenting at this year's Teachers Institute conducted by the Civil War Preservation Trust. Here are the details:

The Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) will host its Seventh Annual Teacher Institute from July 25-27, 2008 in Hagerstown, MD. This free weekend will feature "field trip" tours of Antietam and Harpers Ferry, focusing on techniques teachers can use to make a battlefield visit a central part of their Civil War curriculum.

Teachers will attend their choice of workshops on Friday and Sunday, covering a range of military and civilian topics. Past presenters of these workshops have included leading historians and educators, and topics have ranged from tactical military history to strategies for teaching the Civil War to struggling readers. These workshops are designed not only to impart specific information about the era but also a variety of pedagogical strategies to help teachers bring the Civil War to life in their classrooms.

Once again, Virginia Tech's Center for Civil War Studies will be an active partner in the institute, and Dr. James I. "Bud" Robertson, director of the center, will be a keynote speaker at the institute. Through our partnership with Virginia Tech, CWPT is able to offer Continuing Education Unit credits to participating educators.

The CWPT Teacher Institute is provided at no direct cost to teachers, who have only to pay for their room and travel. CWPT anticipates being able to provide travel stipends for 10 or more teachers who would not otherwise have been able to attend due to geographic or funding constraints. Stipend applications will be made available to teachers in the near future.

For more information, contact John Blanton at (202) 367-1861 x223 or by e-mail at jblanton@civilwar.org.

Registration forms and details on the CWPT Teacher Institute can also be found on the web at http://www.civilwar.org/historyctandclassrm.htm.