Robert Gould Shaw
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Question
As I understand it, Robert Gould Shaw's parents decided to leave him buried in the mass grave near where he was mortally wounded at Fort Wagner. Is he still buried in that location beneath the sand? Is it now under water? Is there some sort of marker designating the burial spot?
Answer
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (1837-1863) was the young white Civil War Union army officer who commanded the otherwise all-black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. He was killed while leading a fierce but unsuccessful charge by his troops on the sand and earth parapets of Fort Wagner on Morris Island near Charleston, South Carolina, on July 18, 1863. The 54th Massachusetts lost many men that day, with a casualty rate of over 50%. The other Federal units in the attack suffered heavy losses as well. Union casualties for the day numbered more than 1,500. Union Brigadier General Quincy Granville sent an inquiry to the Confederate commander of Fort Wagner, asking about the disposition of Shaw’s body. The reply was that Col. Shaw had been “buried with his niggers,” in a common grave, a trench along the island’s shore, close to the fort. Indeed, this was where all the Union dead were buried on the tiny island. Whether or not the Confederate commander thought of this as inflicting a particular insult on Shaw, this is how it was taken in the North, especially because Shaw’s fellow officer, Col. Haldimand Putnam, commanding the 7th New Hampshire Infantry, who also died in the attack, “received all the honors of sepulture which the circumstances of his death permitted, from the fraternal hands of his West Point classmate, General Robert H. Anderson, of the Confederate Army,” although his body was not recovered. Nevertheless, even in the few days immediately after the bloodbath, Shaw had become, in the North, an uncommon martyr for the principle of black emancipation, and sentiment sprang forth to exert every effort to exhume his body and rebury him back in his hometown of Boston as a hero. Shaw’s parents, however, prominent in Boston as strong abolitionists, resisted this sentiment. His father sent instructions to the officers of his son’s regiment, writing, “We would not have his body removed from where it lies surrounded by his brave & devoted soldiers, if we could accomplish it by a word. Please to bear this in mind & also, let it be known, so that, even in case there should be an opportunity, his remains may not be disturbed.” By September, the decomposition of the bodies in the trench had begun to contaminate Fort Wagner’s Confederate defenders’ fresh water supply, and they abandoned the fort as a consequence. Union soldiers immediately moved in, but, guided by Shaw’s parents’ wishes, did not exhume Col. Shaw’s body. Morris Island is smaller than 1,000 acres and is subject to extensive erosion by storm and sea. Much of the previous site of Fort Wagner has been eroded away, including the place where the Union soldiers had been buried. However, by the time this had happened, the soldiers’ remains were no longer there because soon after the end of the Civil War, the Army disinterred and reburied all the remains—including, presumably, those of Col. Shaw—at the Beaufort National Cemetery in Beaufort, South Carolina, where their gravestones were marked as “unknown.” The Boston area has at least three memorials to Robert G. Shaw. In 1897, the Harvard Memorial Society erected a tablet on Massachusetts Hall, which had long served as a dormitory, that listed some of its past student residents who had gone on to fame. This tablet included Shaw’s name (he had been a Harvard student, but had withdrawn before graduating), along with such other notables as Artemas Ward, Elbridge Gerry, Francis Dana, Joseph Story, Jared Sparks, and Francis Parkman. The Shaw family also placed a bronze tablet in memory of Robert Gould Shaw on an earlier-installed cenotaph in its family plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston. The most well known memorial, however, is the Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial. It is a bas-relief of Shaw and his men, designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and placed on Boston Common, across Beacon Street from the Massachusetts State House, in 1897. The memorial was the focus of attention during the late 1980s and early 1990s, concurrent with the making of the film Glory, that depicted the actions of the 54th Massachusetts at Fort Wagner. It occasioned a public reassessment of the fact that, beginning from the immediate aftermath of the attack, a significant portion of the sentiment of white Northern abolitionists had elevated Shaw’s place as a determined sacrificial martyr to the cause of black emancipation far above the level of the other men of the 54th Massachusetts, almost as if the black men of the 54th could do nothing by themselves without a white savior in the person of Shaw. Abolitionist Eliza Sedgwick’s 1865 poem about Shaw contained the lines: “Buried with the men God gave him—Those who he was sent to save; Buried with the martyred heroes, He has found an honored grave.” Shaw’s mother and father did not have a patronizing view of the relationship between their son and his men and indeed shared a sentiment of African American empowerment that was embodied in a line from Lord Byron that abolitionists often quoted—“Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.” They objected to the original design for the memorial because it showed their son on horseback, elevated above the figures of the enlisted men around him on foot. Nevertheless, a public commission funded Saint-Gauden’s bas-relief, which portrayed this design, and it was dedicated as a memorial to Shaw. The public reassessment of the 1990s eventually refocused the memorial on the 54th Massachusetts as a whole, rather than on Shaw in particular.
For more information
The National Gallery of Art’s website on Augustus Saint-Gaudens Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, which features lesson plans for grades 3-12. Teach History’s blog entry on “Colonel Shaw, Sergeant Carney and the 54th Massachusetts,” by Ben Edwards.
Bibliography
Russell Duncan, ed. Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Peter Burchard, One Gallant Rush: Robert Gould Shaw and His Brave Black Regiment. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. Michael G. Kammen, Digging Up the Dead: A History of Notable American Reburials. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Charles Cowley, The Romance of History in “the Black County,” and the Romance of War in the Career of Gen. Robert Smalls. Lowell, Mass: 1882. Lydia Maria Francis Child, ed. The Freedmen’s Book. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1865.
My Lai Massacre Political Cartoon
Video Overview
Professor Meredith Lair examines a 1971 political cartoon and what it says about U.S. reaction to the My Lai Massacre and the trial of Lt. Willam Calley. She also looks at how important photographs were in proving that the Massacre happened, and at the conflicting information offered by primary sources.
Video Clip Name
Meredith1.mov
Meredith2.mov
Meredith3.mov
Meredith4.mov
Video Clip Title
Introducing the Cartoon
Introducing the Massacre
Word Spreads
Reacting to the Sources
Video Clip Duration
1:57
4:13
4:51
2:59
Transcript Text
This is an editorial cartoon by Paul Conrad that ran in the Los Angeles Times and was picked up by a lot of other newspapers. And the image itself was in reaction to a particular moment in history when Lieutenant William Calley—who was on trial for war crimes committed in March of 1968—was convicted and sentenced. There was a great deal of public reaction of varying kinds at the time and this cartoon was as much a reaction to the verdict as it was to the reaction to the verdict.
People sent hundreds of thousands of letters and telegrams to the White House, 99 percent of them demanding his release. What Paul Conrad is drawing here is that reaction: the cheering, the yelling, the flag waving. At the top of the ditch represents that swell of sentiment, that Calley was this hero and he was being scapegoated unfairly. You see mostly male figures and they seem to be wearing suits. And there are two signs evident. One says "We're With You, Lt. Calley." The other says, "Well done, Lt. Calley."
The caption is "The My Lai Ditch Claims Another Victim." It references the event of My Lai itself. And the ditch in My Lai was one of the most searing moments of the massacre. Conrad is clearly saying that the United States lost something very dear in that moment.
What appealed to me and caught my eye initially was that he was not just targeting some narrow facet of this story, but was literally attacking the American sense of conscience, and the American sense of what is right and what is wrong. Everything that American soldiers are supposed to be fighting and protecting is gone.
A turning point in the Vietnam War took place in January or February of 1968 with the Tet Offensive. Anti-war sentiment in the United States was swelling in late 1967 and to try and keep a lid on opposition sentiment, President Johnson and his administration embarked on a kind of pep talk campaign for the American people. The message to the American people was that we've almost got the communists licked and this war is almost over.
The enemy in fact was laying in wait and so January 31st, 1968, the North Vietnamese and their Vietcong allies launched a massive, country-wide assault on both American and South Vietnamese military and government installations. And the hope of the enemy with this offensive was that the people would join them and rise up, a mass uprising to evict what they saw as this American invader in their country.
So, the American people, having just been told that the war is almost over, are now treated on the nightly news to images of fighting in the American embassy compound in Saigon, to images of great carnage at the Marine Base at Queshan, at the imperial city of Hue. People are thinking, this war is not over. We've been lied to. We've been had. And public opinion started to tank.
In Vietnam, this really unnerved American soldiers. And the knowledge that the enemy had been able to orchestrate this offensive without any awareness on the part of the United States was deeply disturbing to soldiers who were trusting that the guys in charge know what they're doing.
They were enduring very harsh conditions in terms of rain and mud and sleeping outside and not eating hot meals. And they were experiencing casualties, but not casualties due to enemy engagement. They were getting picked off by snipers or by booby traps or by injuries. And there's a great sense of frustration that they can't find the enemy. They don't have anybody to blame.
The 1st Platoon, and perhaps the company as a whole, were not particularly well led. There's evidence from February 1968 of a breakdown in discipline. But what we see of Charlie Company in the month of February, in the early weeks of March 1968, is a group of soldiers starting to unravel. So when they were charged with this operation to go into My Lai, which the military referred to as "Pinkville," tensions were very, very high.
Vietnamese villages are complexes of little hamlets and this village was, to the Vietnamese, known as Song My. My Lai was just one of several hamlets in Song My village.
In fact, everyone agrees that the first shots fired at My Lai were against an old man who was farming when the helicopters came in. He waved at them and they shot him. The fog of war is often invoked for what came after that. Maybe some soldiers heard shots and interpreted that as enemy fire. But they basically moved the 150 meters from the landing zone into the village and continued firing at any Vietnamese person they saw.
At one point, a large group of civilians was gathered into the irrigation ditch, about 170 people. Calley told them, told some of his soldiers to "take care of them." So these guys are standing there watching these villagers, and Calley came back after a while and said, "I thought I told you to take care of them," and they said, "We're watching them, we're guarding them." And he said, "No, I meant kill them."
There was one instance where a helicopter landed and interceded. There was a helicopter piloted by a man named Hugh Thompson and he had a good view of what was going on underneath him. And he saw American soldiers shooting at women and children and he landed near the ditch and put his ship in between American guns and Vietnamese civilians. He managed to pick up around 20 people and loaded them on his helicopter and carried them to safety.
A turning point in the Vietnam War took place in January or February of 1968 with the Tet Offensive. Anti-war sentiment in the United States was swelling in late 1967 and to try and keep a lid on opposition sentiment, President Johnson and his administration embarked on a kind of pep talk campaign for the American people. The message to the American people was that we've almost got the communists licked and this war is almost over.
The enemy in fact was laying in wait and so January 31st, 1968, the North Vietnamese and their Vietcong allies launched a massive, country-wide assault on both American and South Vietnamese military and government installations. And the hope of the enemy with this offensive was that the people would join them and rise up, a mass uprising to evict what they saw as this American invader in their country.
So, the American people, having just been told that the war is almost over, are now treated on the nightly news to images of fighting in the American embassy compound in Saigon, to images of great carnage at the Marine Base at Queshan, at the imperial city of Hue. People are thinking, this war is not over. We've been lied to. We've been had. And public opinion started to tank.
In Vietnam, this really unnerved American soldiers. And the knowledge that the enemy had been able to orchestrate this offensive without any awareness on the part of the United States was deeply disturbing to soldiers who were trusting that the guys in charge know what they're doing.
They were enduring very harsh conditions in terms of rain and mud and sleeping outside and not eating hot meals. And they were experiencing casualties, but not casualties due to enemy engagement. They were getting picked off by snipers or by booby traps or by injuries. And there's a great sense of frustration that they can't find the enemy. They don't have anybody to blame.
The 1st Platoon, and perhaps the company as a whole, were not particularly well led. There's evidence from February 1968 of a breakdown in discipline. But what we see of Charlie Company in the month of February, in the early weeks of March 1968, is a group of soldiers starting to unravel. So when they were charged with this operation to go into My Lai, which the military referred to as "Pinkville," tensions were very, very high.
Vietnamese villages are complexes of little hamlets and this village was, to the Vietnamese, known as Song My. My Lai was just one of several hamlets in Song My village.
In fact, everyone agrees that the first shots fired at My Lai were against an old man who was farming when the helicopters came in. He waved at them and they shot him. The fog of war is often invoked for what came after that. Maybe some soldiers heard shots and interpreted that as enemy fire. But they basically moved the 150 meters from the landing zone into the village and continued firing at any Vietnamese person they saw.
At one point, a large group of civilians was gathered into the irrigation ditch, about 170 people. Calley told them, told some of his soldiers to "take care of them." So these guys are standing there watching these villagers, and Calley came back after a while and said, "I thought I told you to take care of them," and they said, "We're watching them, we're guarding them." And he said, "No, I meant kill them."
There was one instance where a helicopter landed and interceded. There was a helicopter piloted by a man named Hugh Thompson and he had a good view of what was going on underneath him. And he saw American soldiers shooting at women and children and he landed near the ditch and put his ship in between American guns and Vietnamese civilians. He managed to pick up around 20 people and loaded them on his helicopter and carried them to safety.
Any soldier who was there that day would have had the ability to write a complaint or to let someone in authority know what had happened. Hugh Thompson was the only one who did. He spoke with his chaplain with the understanding that the chaplain would follow this up the chain of command. The chaplain in this case dropped the ball and didn't pursue it.
Thompson also spoke with Colonel Henderson, Lieutenant Colonel Barker's superior officer, and nothing official was done about the accusations. In fact, there was a great deal of effort to cover up what had happened. The official report sent up the chain of command said that 128 enemy combatants had been killed in combat at My Lai and that three weapons had been captured.
The person who actually made the effort to tell the story wasn't even there. There was a soldier named Ron Ridenhour who was serving in Vietnam. He was not in Taskforce Barker. He had nothing to do with the incident at My Lai in March 1968.
Ridenhour was really troubled by it and so he started to seek out other men from the company to find out what happened. As a result of his own informal investigation, he starts to hear that the first guy's story is being corroborated down to the finest details.
And so in March of 1969, he writes a letter to his congressman who had just come out against the war. And he also sends copies of the letter to military and government officials, other congressmen, senators, the president, senior officials in the Pentagon. And so in April of 1969, the Army launches a preliminary inquiry.
Details about what Calley did started to come out in November of '69. The rumors were starting to emerge that a massacre had taken place, that perhaps hundreds of Vietnamese civilians had been killed by American soldiers. And I think people didn't want to believe that it was true.
Anything that makes it into Life Magazine is kind of a big deal. And so you're flipping through your Life Magazine, having heard these rumors or read a newspaper article or two about this Calley guy, and suddenly you turn the page and there, in Technicolor, is a pile of bodies. A pile of Vietnamese women and children. There's one photograph in particular that's become iconic of the My Lai massacre and it is of this pile of people in a road. On the top of the pile is a baby, a little, naked baby, with its bottom facing up. It's really hard to understand why the baby needed to be shot.
So the photographs pretty much silenced the naysayers who said this was a rumor. This was definitive proof, vindication for Vietnamese people who knew that this had happened. And it became the biggest story of the day, which is quite an amazing thing given that the war itself was incredibly controversial. Given that atrocities committed by the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese army had recently been unearthed in the city of Hue in Vietnam. It reignited anti-war sentiment. So what ensued then was the release of a lot of detail as the trials were underway and publicized with updates day in and day out. The people who cheered William Calley had seen those photographs and they had seen the interviews with the perpetrators and they had seen interviews with the victims in My Lai. And they had read the testimony in court. They knew what they were cheering.
Eventually, the charges that came down were charges of murder against William Calley. I think he was charged with over a hundred murders because of the incident at the ditch where he ordered his men to kill. And then there actually came a moment where his soldiers refused to continue because there were only children left and Calley took one of their rifles and "finished the job."
Calley's trial drew a tremendous focus and part of it was because of the defense that he used. He did not deny that he had done these things. In fact, he testified rather proudly about his conduct at My Lai. The Army law is the Uniform Code of Military Justice, says that soldiers have to follow orders and if in a combat or a wartime situation, they don't follow orders, that is a treasonable offense. So the defense went something like this: Calley was given these orders and under penalty of being shot or being prosecuted, he had to follow through. But the Uniform Code of Military Justice says that soldiers are not under any obligation to follow unlawful orders. So the question then becomes whether or not Calley and his men understood that the orders to kill unarmed civilians, women and children, were unlawful.
When I've used images like this or images of propaganda, I have them just work through the story. I think students sometimes are reluctant to just tell a narrative, where they think that somehow they're supposed to be offering some incredibly complicated insight. And, so, if you just have students answer the question, what is going on here, what do you see, they can collectively start to put it together. I see people about to fall off a cliff, or people celebrating.
He gives us this maw in the ground, this sense of divide, that there's one figure on one side and that there's another group of people on another side. They will, I think, arrive, at some sense of division, and that's a great starting point for understanding what happened to the American public during the Vietnam War.
There are clues that Conrad gives us. "The My Lai ditch claims another victim," so obviously this space that he's drawing represents the My Lai ditch. It's not any ordinary ditch. It's this iconic image of the 20th century, and Lt. Calley, his name as well is spelled out. He is not an anonymous person.
I would look at an image like this as a starting place and as a launching point to get students interested in a really complicated story. You can engage so many facets of the Vietnam War, you can talk about the actual incident at My Lai, you can talk about the trial, public reaction to the trial.
The image of the ditch and the incident at My Lai lends itself to a discussion of American strategy there, but I think what it ultimately arrives at is questions of the ethics, of who's responsible and which version of the story American wants to claim. And if students are conflicted I think that's okay. Anyone who has too definitive a perspective on My Lai isn't really paying attention.
I think Conrad would agree with me because he's targeting not the people who are confused, he's not criticizing the people who are sorting through, he's criticizing the people who are cheering and celebrating and are taking this singular one-sided view of the event.
Indiana Historical Society Digital Image Collections
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Annotation
This website boasts a growing collection of more than 38,000 photographs, lithographs, letters, cards, poems and other texts centering around Indiana history from the early 19th century to the present. The collection is especially strong in African American history in Indiana, with browseable collections on Madam C.J. Walker (18671919), a nationally renowned businesswoman and philanthropist, Flanner House, the first agency in Indianapolis devoted to meeting the social service needs of African Americans, and the Indianapolis Recorder, the longest continually operated African American newspaper in Indiana.
In addition to that of Madam C.J. Walker, there are collections of roughly 100 images each related to other notable Hoosiers. The website also contains a collection of more than 1,000 items related to President Lincoln, including portraits and busts of the president, as well as documents surrounding the trial of the Lincoln assassination conspirators. Other notable collections include one devoted to military history, several collections of images and portraits of Native Americans from the mid-19th century, and close to 200 historical maps of Indiana. All content is keyword searchable.
Midnight Ride of Paul Revere: Fact, Fiction, and Artistic License
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Website
Description
Students assess a famous artistic depiction of Paul Revere's ride, based on historical documents.
Article Body
This lesson asks students to use primary source evidence to assess Grant Wood’s famous 1931 painting, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. Students must also determine the event's historical significance. This lesson offers a wealth of resources for analyzing artwork as historical evidence and provides a nice example for using artwork along with written documents to learn about the past.
The lesson opens up by asking students to note their initial impressions of Wood's painting. Additional resources are included to help students analyze the painting.
Following the opening activity, students read a series of primary accounts of the event from the British perspective and the colonial perspective. Teachers should consider the lesson plan’s suggestion to jigsaw this activity since the documents range in length and difficulty.
The lesson concludes with multiple assessment options including analyzing the poem "Paul Revere's Ride" by Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, using evidence to distinguish between fact and fiction, and writing a short story. Teachers could also easily create a document-based question assignment to assess students' historical understanding.
Topic
Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride and Analyzing Paintings
Time Estimate
1-3 days
flexibility_scale
4
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship
Yes
Rubric_Content_Historical_Background
Yes
A wealth of background information is included about Revere's ride as well as relevant poetry and artwork.
Rubric_Content_Read_Write
Yes
Students are asked to read primary and secondary sources and write from the perspective of the historical actors.
Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations
Yes
Students analyze artistic interpretations of the past and construct historical interpretations of the past.
Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing
Yes
Students are asked to consider the author’s perspective as they read and analyze primary sources.
Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate
Yes
Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking
Yes
Includes guiding questions that scaffold thinking. However primary documents may need further editing and preparation depending on students' reading levels.
Rubric_Structure_Assessment
Yes
Multiple assessment options
Rubric_Structure_Realistic
Yes
Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals
Yes
Opening up the Textbook: Voices from My Lai
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This video shows high school students exploring primary sources related to the 1968 My Lai massacre to better understand U.S. public perceptions of Vietnam. The module feature, created for the Montgomery County (Maryland) TAH website, has two sections focused on Vietnam and the My Lai massacre. The scholar analysis provides historical background on U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the My Lai massacre, and public reactions. Classroom practice & teacher analysis features video of classroom instruction along with commentary and reflection by the teacher. The lesson asks students to look critically at the textbook and question it as one perspective on the past. The activities encourage students to engage with complex questions related to the Vietnam War and the American public's reactions to the war—reactions mediated by television news and publications such as Life magazine. The website provides examples of two promising practices:
- Engaging students in close, careful observation and reading of multiple primary source documents (using group work and comparative documents);
- Consideration of the textbook as one perspective among multiple historical narratives.
The Lesson in Action
In the Classroom Practice and Teacher Analysis section, we see the lesson in action and the teacher explains some of his instructional choices. The lesson begins the unit on the Vietnam War and starts with a five-minute warm-up question about how textbook authors decide what information to include (or not include).
Students see that while the textbook is one useful source of historical narrative, it is not the only—or necessarily the fullest—perspective, and may leave out key ideas.
After introducing the lesson, students analyze their textbook's account of the events at My Lai and suggest other perspectives they would like to hear to add depth to the textbook narrative. Next, students work with a partner to examine a collection of primary sources including trial testimony from Lieutenant William Calley and other soldiers involved in the massacre, accounts from My Lai villagers, and results from a 1971 telephone survey of public opinion of the case. Students see that while the textbook is one useful source of historical narrative, it is not the only—or necessarily the fullest—perspective, and may leave out key ideas. During the second half of the lesson, the teacher facilitates an in-depth analysis of Paul Conrad's editorial cartoon from the Los Angeles Times. The teacher projects the cartoon on a writeboard, revealing pieces one at a time. This focuses student attention on specific areas before looking at the whole—modeling careful, critical reading of a complex primary source. Throughout the lesson—from initial responses to the textbook narrative to working with primary sources that tell different stories to exploring the creation of a historical narrative—students encounter multiple viewpoints and engage with primary and secondary sources as complex and multifaceted tools for understanding history. At the same time, students learn about American involvement in Vietnam and the American public's evolving perceptions of the war through primary source analysis and historical thinking. Students also explore questions of authority and perspective in present-day historical accounts. You can find a comprehensive lesson plan, complete with primary sources, background information, and classroom worksheets, on the website.
Roads to Antietam
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Article Body
With so many topics to teach and so little time, many teachers find it difficult to cover military history. This lesson on the Battle of Antietam provides an excellent opportunity to both teach military history and promote historical thinking skills.
Students will hone these skills as they analyze two documents written by General Lee on the eve of the Battle of Antietam. The first document, Lee’s 1862 Proclamation to the people of Maryland, sheds light on Lee’s motivations for invading Maryland. The second document, Special Orders #191, is Lee’s marching orders that were famously intercepted by the Union Army before the battle. Focus questions that support close reading and historical thinking accompany each of these documents.
After analyzing the documents, students work in groups to create a battle plan that could be used by the Union Army to counter Lee’s plans as revealed in Special Orders #191. Each group draws their battle plan on a laminated map, and presents it to the class. This portion of the lesson is creative and interactive, but teachers are not provided with clear information about what would be an effective, historically accurate battle plan. Teachers may want to devise clear criteria for students to consider when developing the battle plan to prevent this from devolving into an ahistorical activity in which students draw up unrealistic or anachronistic plans. Alternatively, teachers and students could generate criteria together as they review the groups’ plans, but teachers will still want to be prepared to guide students in judging these plans in reasonable ways.
For homework, the lesson specifies that students are to research the battle tactics used by General McClellan to counter Lee’s plans at Antietam. This has potential to be a very useful assignment; but again, teachers will need to be attentive to the criteria students use for evaluating McClellan’s tactics.
Topic
Civil War, Battle of Antietam
Time Estimate
2-4 class periods (50 minutes)
flexibility_scale
3
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Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship
Yes
Rubric_Content_Historical_Background
No
Little background information is provided. Teachers will need to seek background information about the Battle of Antietam before class.
Rubric_Content_Read_Write
No
Students carefully read primary documents and answer focus questions, but the lesson does not include a significant writing assignment.
Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations
Yes
Students use primary documents to draw inferences about General Lee’s reasons for invading Maryland.
Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing
Yes
Students carefully read two documents about the Battle of Antietam and consider the source of the documents.
Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate
Yes
Appropriate for grades 8-12, but it may need to be adapted to meet the specific needs of particular classrooms.
Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking
Yes
Focus questions are provided to help students analyze the two primary documents. Teachers may wish to edit and adapt these questions to meet the needs of their students.
Rubric_Structure_Assessment
No
Students are assessed on the quality of the battle plans that they devise and their own assessment of McClellan’s battle plan. However, the lesson does not provide clear criteria for what would constitute a good battle plan.
Rubric_Structure_Realistic
Yes
The lesson provides clear directions and will work in many secondary US history classrooms.
Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals
Yes
Team Ships
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Team Ships (the Navy's Program Executive Office, Ships) was founded in late 2002 to manage construction and design of U.S. military vessels.
The site of Team Ships was obviously not designed for educators so much as for providing basic awareness of the office and its various vessel classes (likely intended primarily for military enthusiasts or marine hobbyists). However, there is one small section which may be of interest to you for your professional purposes.
Shipping, for transportation of goods and people, is crucial to American history. By extension, the shipbuilding trade was similarly imperative. However, few, if any, textbooks cover the process of shipbuilding. Team Ships' site's strength is that it offers a very basic overview of the general steps in creating a maritime vessel within the U.S. military system. (The individual steps are linked in the right hand navigation bar.) Many students are interested in World War Two land vehicles, ships, and planes. Why not offer them a hook by talking about shipbuilding in the Navy?