Lincoln Over the Years
Professor Mackubin T. Owens looks at perceptions of Abraham Lincoln, both during his presidency and over the course of American history.
Professor Mackubin T. Owens looks at perceptions of Abraham Lincoln, both during his presidency and over the course of American history.
This workshop will consider the myths and realities of four themes central to the figure of Abraham Lincoln. First, participants will examine Lincoln and American Nationalism. To more fully understand this theme, they will examine how historians have portrayed Lincoln over time. A starting point for this examination will be reading from primary sources including Lincoln's Message to Congress in Special Session (July 4, 1861), followed by selected sections from secondary sources: James McPherson's Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, and Barry Schwartz's Lincoln at the Millennium. Central to this examination is the question of how Lincoln used history, especially the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers, to develop his rhetorical defense of the Union and justification for action. Second, participants will consider Lincoln and power. The examination of this theme centers on the dilemma of how to fight a civil war and preserve civil liberties. Lincoln scholars will provide participants with opportunities to discuss how Lincoln attempted to preserve the Union without sacrificing the Constitution. The investigation begins with required reading of selections from David Donald's Lincoln and David Potter's Jefferson Davis and the Political Factors in Confederate Defeat. Participants will probe critical issues such as suspension of habeas corpus, censorship of the press, and declaration of martial law through reading Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. Third, participants will consider Lincoln and freedom. It has been argued that Lincoln changed the meaning of the Constitution. Participants will investigate this theme by first reading the Gettysburg Address and selected letters in which Lincoln describes his vision of equality. Then, they will analyze selections from Garry Wills's 1992 The Words that Remade America, which suggests that the change went beyond the relationship between the federal government and the states to the relationship between the federal government and the individual. How might Lincoln's words, "a new birth of freedom" suggest change in the vision of equality? Finally, participants will consider Lincoln and race. They will examine the Emancipation Proclamation and the complex issue of race in America. Readings for this theme draw on selections from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the Emancipation Proclamation and selected Lincoln letters, and readings from Lerone Bennet's Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist? and Philip Shaw Paludan's Emancipating the Republic: Lincoln and the Means and Ends of Antislavery. Much of Lincoln's position of honor in American history rests upon his action to free the slaves. Yet, some view the proclamation as an empty gesture or even a conservative attempt to forestall more radical action. These discussions will provide participants with an opportunity to explore the evolution of Lincoln's attitude toward emancipation that culminated in his support for the 13th Amendment.
No details available.
DC Public and Public Charter School Teachers are invited to participate in a five-day learning adventure that will immerse participants in the Civil War history of Washington and the country. By preparing and performing historical speeches, interpreting letters, and "reading" artifacts, images, and places, they will develop teaching techniques that strengthen reading comprehension and critical thinking skills.
Over the course of five mornings, participants will travel to three historic sites in some of Washington's most historic neighborhoods. In the afternoons, they will participate in interpretations of important speeches and letters, and learn tools that lead to rigorous visual and experiential learning. Teachers who attend the seminar also receive free school-year field trips for their students.
Participants who complete the program are eligible to receive free in-class visits from a teaching artist to support implementation of their Civil War Washington learning; a free performance of a History Play at Ford's Theatre; the opportunity to bring students to a History on Foot experience for free; special teacher preview tickets to Ford's Theatre performances and early opportunities to book seats for their students; and special teacher preparation for the Frederick Douglass Oratorical Competition.
In this workshop, teachers will get a chance to tour the Stones River National Battlefield and discuss ways to use the park's resources to help students master curriculum standards in multiple disciplines.
Why did it take the North so long to build an effective cavalry during the Civil War?
In the first two years of the Civil War, most judged the Southern cavalry—the horse-borne troopers who could travel far more quickly than their colleagues in the infantry—superior to that of the Union army. In the war’s first months, Confederate cavalry enjoyed a reputation for better horsemanship and more fighting spirit; they boasted the most colorful and well-known cavalry officers of the war’s early months, including the flamboyant J. E. B. Stuart and the daring Nathan Bedford Forrest; and celebrated some noteworthy victories over their Northern counterparts. No less an authority than Union General William Tecumseh Sherman described the Confederate cavalry in 1863 as “splendid riders, shots, and utterly reckless . . . the best Cavalry in the world.”
The diverging nature of life in the two regions provided Southerners with some initial advantages in fielding an effective cavalry force quickly. In 1860, far more Southerners lived in rural locations than did Northerners. Because roads in the South were generally poorer, a greater proportion of Southerners grew up in the saddle; because they learned to hunt as youths, fewer Southerners had to be taught to shoot. Those advantages in upbringing echoed in the proportion of Southerners in the cavalry units of the prewar army; despite their relatively smaller population, more cavalry officers hailed from the South than from the North, and upon the outbreak of war the majority of those cavalry officers resigned their commissions and joined the Confederate cavalry, leaving the Union Army at a further competitive disadvantage. Southerners furnished a number of explanations for their supposed prowess on horseback and in battle. Most believed themselves to naturally possess more “martial spirit” than their counterparts in the North. At the outset of the war, many if not most Southerners viewed their region as having a near monopoly on fighting ability; the fact that a larger number of West Point graduates and a greater proportion of Regular Army troops hailed from the South suggested to many that the South benefited from pronounced advantages in military aptitude. Southerners frequently regarded the North as a region of timid clerks and shopkeepers, ill-suited to the burdens of campaigning and fighting. (So widespread was that confidence in Southerners’ own innate superiority as soldiers that Confederate textbooks for elementary schoolchildren featured word problems like “A Confederate soldier captured 8 Yankees each day for 9 successive days; how many did he capture in all?” and “If one Confederate soldier can whip 7 Yankees, how many soldiers can whip 49 Yankees?”) During the first half of the war, Confederate victories at battles like Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville—against larger and better-equipped Union forces—seemed to confirm Southerners’ belief about their natural superiority in battle. The Southern cavalry’s exploits in the first months of the war, sometimes literally riding circles around their opponents, similarly suggested the Rebel horsemen’s inherent preeminence. In mid-nineteenth century armies, cavalry troops served a number of functions. Because of their speed and range, commanders often employed cavalry troops as a reconnaissance force, relying on them to furnish information about the location and strength of enemy troops: large bodies of infantry depended on the reports furnished by cavalry troopers to guard against surprise or entrapment by enemy forces. Cavalry also served as screens for infantry armies on the march: with footsoldiers strung out in long, vulnerable columns, often over several miles, horse troops could interpose themselves between enemy divisions and offer them some protection, as Confederate cavalry did so effectively in the Shenandoah Valley in 1862. Frequently, cavalry troops engaged enemy troops directly, either from horseback or (as became more and more common in the latter years of the war) fighting dismounted as infantry troops. Confederate raiders like Forrest and John Singleton Mosby used their cavalry to mount daring attacks on Federal supply lines, frustrating the outmanned Union cavalry’s efforts to check them.
The changing nature of tactics and technology during the Civil War led to a dramatic change in the way horse troops were employed as the war progressed. The mounted cavalry charge became less effective with the development of more accurate shoulder arms, and the importance of reconnaissance and dismounted fighting became more important. Stuart’s daring raids into Northern territory alarmed civilians and burnished Stuart’s reputation as a dashing cavalier, but the military significance of those raids was less significant. Stuart’s infamous long raid during the Gettysburg campaign captured several Union supply trains but left the Confederate army moving blindly through unfamiliar territory; Stuart’s absence led general Robert E. Lee to accept the battle at Gettysburg without a clear idea of the terrain or the strength of the enemy, with disastrous consequences. By the midpoint of the war, Union cavalry troopers had achieved at least parity with their Confederate counterparts, matching them in horsemanship and firepower thanks in part to the introduction of repeating carbines to the cavalry arsenal. The relentless process of weeding out less-competent leaders and replacing them with soldiers of demonstrated military acumen also benefited the Union as the war dragged on. By the final year of the war, the Union cavalry troopers had more than equaled the prowess of the Southern forces, and Federal commanders like Phil Sheridan had honed the Union cavalry into a devastatingly effective tool that helped maintain unyielding pressure on Confederate armies from 1864 on.
Baggett, James. Homegrown Yankees: Tennessee's Union Cavalry in the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009.
Woodworth, Steven, ed. Civil War Generals in Defeat. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1999.
McPherson, James. Battle Cry for Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Starr, Stephen. The Union Cavalry in the Civil War: The War in the West, 1861-1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007.
This lesson guides students through close analysis of a photograph of a piece of Civil War artillery as a means of better understanding the relationship between the Civil War and industrialization.
This lesson provides an excellent opportunity to teach students how to analyze historical photographs. Focusing on one photograph of a piece of Civil War artillery (though making use of a variety of other images), the lesson guides students step by step in carefully analyzing various elements of the photograph. Different portions of the image are isolated, and students answer questions about details in that portion of the image. Some questions may be difficult for students, and even teachers, to answer on their own, but answers to the questions are provided. This portion of the process would be a great opportunity for teachers to encourage students to make educated guesses in response to the more difficult questions before checking their answers.
While the lesson focuses on one particular photograph, it includes a remarkably useful collection of Civil War photographs to provide context for the featured image. We especially like the encouragement given students to re-evaluate their conclusions about the first image after looking at subsequent pictures. Openness to new evidence and new conclusions is an attitude that is important for students of history to maintain.
In addition to being a great lesson for teaching close analysis, this lesson also provides an excellent link between a single source and a much larger theme. It bridges two important topics in American history—the Civil War and Industrialization. The lesson concludes with a class discussion surrounding a set of questions about how the process of industrialization influenced the way in which the Civil War was waged. So often in our classrooms, historical events and themes turn into discrete, isolated units; this lesson provides a valuable reminder that all of the periods and events we study are interconnected: students have the opportunity to see how industrialization influenced the process and outcome of the war, and perhaps even how the war in many ways drove industrialization.
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In addition to providing answers to specific questions about the photograph, the lesson includes both text and additional photographs to help place the featured photograph in context.
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While no specific writing requirement is included, the questions about the photograph, as well as the discussion questions, can be used as writing prompts.
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There is only minimal reading with the lesson, but the process does require close analysis of photographic sources.
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The featured photograph is broken down into multiple sections, with built-in questions to guide students through analysis of each section.
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While possible assessment strategies are mentioned, no specific assessment tools or assessment criteria are included. Wrap-up discussion questions used as writing prompts, however, would provide a useful assessment of student understanding.
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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Little background information is provided. Teachers will need to seek background information about the Battle of Antietam before class.
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Students carefully read primary documents and answer focus questions, but the lesson does not include a significant writing assignment.
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Students use primary documents to draw inferences about General Lee’s reasons for invading Maryland.
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Students carefully read two documents about the Battle of Antietam and consider the source of the documents.
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Appropriate for grades 8-12, but it may need to be adapted to meet the specific needs of particular classrooms.
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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.
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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.
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The lesson provides clear directions and will work in many secondary US history classrooms.
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This website shows an 8th-grade teacher in Maryland teaching a lesson based on Civil War letters. Source Analysis, a feature created for the Montgomery County (Maryland) TAH website, has three sections focused on these primary sources: Scholar Analysis, Teacher Analysis, and Classroom Practice. The latter two sections show a lesson that asks students to examine what a Union and a Confederate soldier thought about the Emancipation Proclamation. In order to investigate this, the teacher asks students to study two letters written by soldiers during the Civil War. This series of videos provides examples of two promising practices:
In the Classroom Practice section, we see the lesson in action. Students are introduced to the letters and asked to transcribe the two handwritten letters they are working with. The teacher then points out two major themes in the letters: why soldiers were fighting the war and their opinions about the Emancipation Proclamation.
The teacher asks students to summarize the letters, reminding them that they have their textbooks, him, and the dictionary as resources. Students are further asked to analyze the letters for at least "five good points" made by the authors of the letters and generate questions about these sources. After students have consulted in groups, the teacher leads a discussion where they fill in a Venn diagram comparing the two letters and the soldiers' perspectives on the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Throughout this lesson, the teacher helps students think about the context within which these letters were written. Students see that the Emancipation Proclamation's significance for these soldiers was less about freeing the slaves and more about the effects it could have on the war and the safety of their families. Also on this site is a Teacher Analysis section in which the teacher explains some of what preceded this lesson and his instructional choices—a useful complement to the classroom videos. Each of these sections presents information in a set of videos that are clearly titled and visually interesting.