Assignment 9, Beginnings of the Civil War

Essential Questions

1. What events pushed Americans to war?

2. How did the early war affect the attitudes of many Americans?

3. How was life in the various regions of America affected by the war?

Description 

The Civil War is too big and complex to cover in any exhaustive manner in the time we have for it. Accordingly, we are going to focus on a few key points in the war.

Objectives

For this assignment students will create a newspaper-style article about a key battle of the Civil War. They will also create a brief biography of someone from the Civil War period.

Instructions 
NOTE >> This assignment includes two parts - a battle analysis, and a biography.
We will cover a few in class, but if you need help selecting subjects for this, ask me for help.

For this assignment you will select one key battle of the Civil War to analyze.

1. Create a simple timeline of the battle. 

2. Give a newspaper - style account of the battle. (Who, what, when, where)

3. Include at least one personal account of someone who was in the battle. There are 1000s of journals and battle commentaries available. If you need help, ask.

4. Include the outcome of the battle and how it affected the larger war effort.
   
   

For this assignment you will also create a biography of someone who was involved in the Civil War.
It will need to include the following:

1. Create a simple timeline of the person's life.

2. Explain how and why they became involved in the Civil War.

3. Can you find an obituary from a primary source?

4. Explain what they contributed to the war effort.

5. Include a picture of the person you chose.
   NOTE >> For this assignment, it will probably work best if you choose someone fairly well known. Abraham Lincoln is off limits for this assignment.

Online Files for this Assignment

This is the link to the textbook chapter about the Civil War.

Click here to view the Civil War fact sheet.

Click here to access key information about Civil War battles. Look at the list on the right side of the screen for some specific links.

Click here to access a good variety of biographies about people involved in the Civil War.

This is an excellent place to begin for photo collections from the Civil War available at the Library of Congress.

Here is the link to a pretty detailed timeline of the Civil War. This is the link to an excellent timeline about the Civil  War and collections of photos at the Library of Congress.

This link will take you to the video about the Civil War we used in class.

This is a link to an excellent National Geographic summary of important battles of the Civil War.

Here is a link to some Civil War diaries at the Library of Congress.

Here is a link to the Civil War collection at the Library of Congress. Note >> This is a huge collection and it will take some digging, but there is a great deal here.

This is an excellent collection of content about all sorts of Civil War stuff from battlefields.org. It's got battles, people, news articles - you name it.

This is a great site hosted by the National Park Service that has a lot of journal entries about battles during the Civil War.

A printed copy of the assignment is not required. Check the instructions shown on this page.