Antietam under the Surface

I'm an avid reader of the My Year of Living Rangerously blog done by Ranger Mannie. Back in December, he posted Antietam Under the Surface and I began to think about the educational aspects of this post.

Here is a debate topic for your class: What can we learn by excavating a Civil War battlefield? There are those who would say that it is hallowed ground and should not be disturbed. Others say that we must learn from our past in order to preserve the future. I believe that what they did at Antietam was very interesting and will benefit generations to come. How does your class feel about it? Not too long ago, they found bones of a Civil War era soldier near the famous railroad cut at Gettysburg.

What about the actual excavation process? From the photos it appears that they used precision survey equipment and some type of computer software to map coordinates on a graph in order to see where the various items were recovered. Why is this important? It's important because depending on the type of item found and what they know of the actual battle, they can make assumptions as to the unit that fought on that location or how heavy the fighting was in a particular area.

What about those bullets? I read somewhere that they estimate that three million bullets were fired during the Battle of Antietam. If a typical soldier could fire three rounds per minute, how long would it take a company of 100 or a regiment of 1,000 men to fire that many times?

Next time well talk more about weapons. Until then, read the other posts on Ranger Mannie's blog and let him know what you think. You may also wish to explore Virtual Antietam and listen to their brief podcasts and search the monument database.

Teaching the Civil War with YouTube.

I have to admit right up front that I am not a big user of YouTube. I have viewed some clips that people have sent me but I'm not a regular user. That being said, someone sent me a link the other evening to a video of a Civil War Fife & Drum group playing and I thought, "hmm, how can this be used in the classroom"?

So, I started doing some searches on YouTube for Civil War related videos and came up with some interesting results that I thought I would share. These videos are a unique way to show clips of various topics on the Civil War to your classes that may otherwise be inaccessible. The following is a list of a few videos and how you may want to integrate them into your classroom.

Fife and Drum: Here is a nice video of the Excelsior Brigade Fifes & Drums playing a medley of several tunes. This video provides a pretty good view of the corp playing. Take notice of the drummers and ask your students if any of them are drummers in a band. There are four snare drums and a bass drum. How about those fifers? Loud and clear over top of the drums and there are only two of them.

Antietam: The following videos were created by a park ranger from the Antietam National Battlefield. This ranger also has a blog entitled My Year of Living Rangerously which I really enjoy reading. The first video is from the 2006 Antitem Artillery Weekend and it shows pictures and video clips of how cannons are loaded and fired. The next video shows the 27th Virginia, a Civil War reenacting group, demonstrating how soldiers would load and fire their muskets as a unit.

Gettysburg: Simply doing a search in YouTube for the word Gettysburg yields pages and pages of videos. These videos range from school projects to vacation videos. There are several that show brief tours of the battlefield or are slide shows of the monuments. I found a few with clips from different movies including Gettysburg, ones of ghost tours and one of a GNMP tour guide.

My favorite is from the 2006 Remembrance Day ceremonies in Gettysburg. This video shows a great representation of the different types of uniforms that both Union and Confederate soldiers would have worn. There are several fife and drum groups shown (including members of Camp Chase Fifes and Drums around the 5min mark) and even a brass band. Best of all is starting at about 5:25 of the movie you can hear a great fife and drum group playing the tune Garry Owen. That group is made up of fifers and drummers from reenactors including yours truly.

As a follow up to this, there is a video of the Gettysburg Address from the ceremony as well.

So, as you can see, there are many videos out on YouTube for viewing. Try some different searches for different battlefields and see what you can come up with to share with your students.

Next time: uniforms and equipment.

Using Photos Part 2

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.