Civil War Wiki

I am sure that most of you are familiar with Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. Love it or hate it, Wikipedia is a part of our students' world. But what is a wiki? A wiki is a web page or website that is setup to allow anyone to easily contribute to or modify the content. Wikis are often used to create different collaborative sites such as eduwiki.us

While doing some research, I came across this interesting wiki related to the Civil War. A quick scan of the table of contents for the wiki shows that it covers the major aspects of the war including Causes of the War, Secession, an Overview of the War, Slavery, the Outcomes and Aftermath. There is also an extensive Bibliography and References section.

How can you use a wiki like this in your classroom? You could use it as a resource for information or you could use it as a starting point for additional inquiry. For example, the wiki states that Senator Stephen Douglas was the most powerful Democrat in the 1850s. How can your students verify this information? What research and resources could they use to verify this statement? If your students find more information or something to refute the information on the Wiki, edit the page and add or change it. It is all about sharing and collaborating.

So, no matter how you use wikis, they are collaborative and are not ALL bad.

Just as an additional resource, here is Wikipedia's page on The Civil War

Until next time...

The Secrets of the Civil War

The July issue of U.S. News and World Report had a special section called The Secrets of the Civil War.

The articles pretty good and there are some great resources that can be used in your classroom including a multimedia timeline of the war.

Check it out at The Secrets of the Civil War

Favorite Websites

I'm often asked about my favorite websites so I am providing the following list for your enjoyment.

PENNSYLVANIA IN THE CIVIL WAR ONLINE RESOURCES

Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission
http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/ppet/civilwar/page1.asp?secid=31

Camp Curtin Historical Society
http://www.campcurtin.org/

Gettysburg National Military Park
http://www.nps.gov/gett

Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania
http://www.libertynet.org/gspa/

Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society
http://www.rootsweb.com/~panepgs/

Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
http://www.state.pa.us/PA_Exec/Historical_Museum/DAM/psa.htm

Pennsylvania State Archives
http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/dam/overview.htm

Vital Records
http://webserver.health.state.pa.us/health/cwp/view.asp?a=168&Q=229939

Pennsylvania Links to Civil War Rosters
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Lair/3680/cw/cw-pa.html

Pennsylvania Civil War Soldiers
http://www.pacivilwar.com

ADDITIONAL ONLINE RESOURCES

American Battlefields: The Civil War
Contains information on Civil War parks and battlefields from the National Park Service.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/abpp/civil.htm

American Civil War Collections at the Electronic Text Center
This website at the University of Virginia, contains "primary source materials on the American Civil War, including letters, diaries, texts and newspapers."
http://etext.virginia.edu/civilwar/

Antietam on the Web
This site contains a broad overview of the conflict, battle maps, a number of well-written articles on various aspects of that fateful day, and a full listing of the participants. Also included are 278 official reports filed by military officers from both the Union and Confederate sides.
http://aotw.org/

Civil War Maps
From the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, this website "collection contains approximately 2,240 Civil War maps and charts and 76 atlases and sketchbooks."
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/cwmhtml/

Civil War Preservation Trust
http://www.civilwar.org

Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System.
A searchable database, provided by the National Park Service, of all soldiers and sailors who served in the Civil War.
http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/

Civil War Treasures from the New York Historical Society
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/nhihtml/cwnyhshome.html

Civil War Women: Primary Sources on the Internet
From the Special Collections Library at Duke University.
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/women/cwdocs.html

Digital History and the American Civil War
http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~ela/spring98.html

The Crisis of the Union
"Contains material related to 'the causes, conduct, and consequences of the US Civil War.' The collection is comprised of books, broadsides, cartoons, pamphlets, and other printed ephemera from 1830 to 1880."
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/abolitionism/

Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (1894 - 1922)
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.monographs/ofre.html

Selected Civil War Photographs
From the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/

The United States Civil War Center
This Website at Louisiana State University seeks "to locate, index and make available all appropriate private and public data on the Internet regarding the Civil War."
http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/

The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (1880 - 1901) The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.- an essential source for the war and one that also provides social and political material. Consequently, it’s an often overlooked source by social historians. It was printed by the government from 1880 to 1901 and the original run contained 128 volumes. It has been put on line by Cornell
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.monographs/waro.html

Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/malhome.html

American Civil War Home Page
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/warweb.html

American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
http://databases.library.yale.edu:8331/V/?func=find-db-1-locate&mode=locate&restricted=all&F-IDN=YUL03274

Civil War Resources on the Internet: Abolitionism to Reconstruction (Rutgers)
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/rr_gateway/research_guides/history/civwar.shtml

Documenting the American South (DocSouth)
A source for links documenting the American South run out of the Wilson Library at Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/index.html

Images of Battle: Selected Civil War Letters from the Southern Historical Collection (UNC)
http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/exhibits/civilwar/

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
http://209.10.16.21/TEMPLATE/FrontEnd/index.cfm

The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Archive of experiences of Northerners and Southerners in two neighboring communities
http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/

Primary source materials for the classroom with a number of standard documents
http://www.adena.com/adena/usa/cw/