December 9

Blog #133 – Was the Civil War Inevitable?

It’s easy to look back from the vantage point of 150 years ago and say that the Civil War was inevitable.  That there was no denying that a clash over slavery would eventually occur, that the compromises would only last so long or work so well until something else came up to shatter the delicate balance that the Northern and Southern states tried to perpetuate.

And looking back over the past ten to 15 years before the war began, events like the Wilmot Proviso, the Mexican War, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the new Fugitive Slave Law, Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision, and John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry all take on additional significance because with the aid of time, historians can look back and see which events were more pivotal and which ones weren’t.

And the last year before the war, 1860, so many things had to click into place for the war to happen.  What if Lincoln wasn’t nominated or hadn’t won?  What if there was only John Bell or Stephen Douglas to win votes in the South instead of splitting up those Union votes in many parts of the South?  Could the election have gone to the House of Representatives if Lincoln hadn’t won the majority of the electoral votes, and what would have happened?

Other questions abound when I think of the last year and a half before the war – What if the Charleston Mercury editorial hadn’t been printed?  What if President Buchanan had been stronger in resisting the secession of the first seven states?  He tried to resupply Fort Sumter in January 1861 but the ship was fired upon and returned to Washington w/o resupplying Major Robert Anderson and his men at the South Carolina fort.  Buchanan didn’t think he had the power to stop the states from seceding, but he said it was unconstitutional. Or was Buchanan just leaving the job to Abe Lincoln?

The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 - Essential Civil War Curriculum

Check out this chronology here – https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/teaching-resources-for-historians/sixteen-months-to-sumter/chronology

Did the Southern states actually have to leave or could they have done something else beginning in December 1860?  They must have felt that working within the system of the established Constitution was not working even though that document guarantees slavery.  The election of Lincoln had additional significance for these Deep South states b/c not all slave states left the Union right away (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware stayed, and North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee left ONLY after Lincoln called for troops when Fort Sumter was bombed).  Were these Deep South states trying to resist Lincoln or were the resisting his party’s anti-slavery platform?  He was the first president elected since John Quincy Adams in 1824 that was avowedly not a Southerner or a Northerner soft of slavery, so he must have been perceived as some kind of threat.  Another thing people should take into consideration is that the Republicans, after Lincoln was elected, would be in charge of appointing almost 1,000 governmental jobs, including marshals, post masters, and others that had been appointed for the past 8 years under the Pierce and Buchanan administrations.

Election of 1860 - HISTORY

I know there are a lot of questions here that I’ve raised, and that’s b/c I wanted you to think about the inevitability of this whole stream of events that led to the bombing of Fort Sumter.  Please answer the following two questions:

1. Was there ONE thing in the time period (1846-1861) that you think impacted the start of the war more than any other event or thing?  Why?

2. Which event or action in the last 16 months (1860 – 61) had the greatest impact on starting the war?  Why?  Did this event make the Civil War inevitable or not?  Why?

Due Saturday night, Dec. 12 by midnight.  300 words minimum combined for both answers.

Category: Blogs | 54 Comments on Blog #133 – Was the Civil War Inevitable?
August 18

Blog #131 – Which statues need to be torn down?

Following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, there was a spasm of protests that touched every single state in the country.  Historians had not seen this many spontaneous protests since Dr. King’s assassination in April 1968, but this time, they were different than those in 1968.  Many of the protestors started using the slogans of Black Lives Matter, a group started in 2013 by 3 women who were angry that a Florida jury did not convict a white man who had killed Black teen Trayvon Martin.  Many of the protestors coopted the language of critical race theory that believes there are systemic racist structures that perpetuate white supremacy and white privilege.  Some of the protests turned violent.  Most did not.  And many white Americans started to notice and challenge racist notions that they had previously ignored before.

Aunt Jemima got retired off the syrup label because she was based upon a racist stereotype.

The NFL team in Washington D.C. bowed to pressure to change their racist mascot despite the owner proclaiming he would NEVER change it.

The Mississippi legislature voted in late June to change their state flag because it has included the Confederate battle flag since 1894- see image below.  There had been two efforts to change it in 2001 and 2015 but neither worked.

Flag of Mississippi (1894-1996).svg

Other countries’ sports teams wore Black Lives Matter t-shirts in games and practices.  And there were also huge protests across the world protesting America’s treatment of its citizens of color.

When Major League Baseball began play in late July, whole teams took a knee during the playing of the National Anthem.  Previously, sparked by Colin Kaepernick and other sports stars, critics had charged these players who knelt during the anthem as hating America or that he just wanted attention.

NBA players were allowed to modify their names on their jerseys when the league started up.  Many of the slogans included things like “I Can’t Breathe,” “Black Lives Matter,” and “Say Her Name.”

There was a strong push in both Congress and the media to rename the ten military bases named after Confederate military leaders.

And statues were torn down.  The list found here is extensive, but the statues included other Americans (plus an Italian named Christopher Columbus and several statues of Spanish priests who were instrumental in the deaths of indigenous people) who had nothing to do with the Civil War including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant (he was on the winning side!), John C. Calhoun (the founder of the idea that slavery was a “positive good”) among others.  There was also an attempt to take down the massive statue of President Andrew Jackson in D.C. before the President ordered it protected.  Other monuments were removed by the cities where they resided before they could be torn down.  And some statues were targeted for removal because of troubling imagery including one with Abraham Lincoln.

 

Was Abraham Lincoln really the 'Great Emancipator'? - HistoryExtra

These things happened so quickly and with such anger that it’s still shocking to think how quickly things changed just within the span of a month or two.  Even a monument to the some of the most famous Black soldiers in American history, the 54th Massachusetts in Boston, was defaced during protests in June (I was a bit confused about this one).

If you ever wondered why there are so many monuments (and military bases) honoring the Confederacy – normally monuments don’t get erected to honor the losers in a war but we have thousands of these monuments around the country – we have the United Daughters of the Confederacy to blame for that.  Take a look at this brief video on the UDC and their vast influence – not just through monuments but also through the writing of Southern history textbooks that shared something we will go much more in depth on called the Lost Cause – https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1562229127298017  

I get that there was a lot of pent-up anger at systemic racism that exploded in late May and in June.  I get why Washington, Jefferson, and Calhoun were all taken down (they were slaveowners, and so was Grant, albiet very briefly).  There has been a reckoning that America has been going through since May 25, and there has been tremendous pressure to fix things and do right by America’s POC.  What should be fixed and changed will likely not happen until next year (at the earliest), but I wanted to focus on the statues first.

Statues are usually put up to honor heroes of our history.  Given the UDC’s blatant attempt at rewriting the history of the Civil War, a number of statues were erected during the turn of the 20th Century, it’s no surprise that the traitors of the Confederacy were honored with statues.  But what has happened most dramatically seen since late May has been a shift in the way many white Americans have seen these statues.  The undercurrents of racism had been ignored by many white Americans.  Black Americans had previously been told to just accept these statues, they’re no big deal.  But they didn’t accept them or stop without a fight.  There was a push to remove some Confederate statues after the mass shooting of nine Black parishoners in Charleston, S.C. in 2015 by a white teen who had been radicalized by white hate groups.  Some statues were removed.  Others stayed up.  And there are likely some statues that might still get taken down.

So here are a few questions I’d like you to answer:

  1. Do you think that this emphasis on taking down statues is overblown, is just about right, or maybe even a desecration of American history?  Do we need to take down more statues?  Why?
  2. Statues capture a moment in time and place – the people at that time felt the need to honor someone who they felt needed to be remembered.  But times change and so do people.  Things that were acceptable 50 – 100 years ago may no longer be acceptable.  Should those statues and monuments be removed because times have changed?  Why or why not?  Or can we leave the statues up and change the way that those figures are taught and should be remembered?
  3. Should we even have any statues at all of our heroes?  Why or why not?

Your answers for all three questions should be a minimum of 400 words total (not 400 words for each question).  

Due by the first day of class before class meets.  

As you can see from the painting below, we have a history of tearing down statues in this country.

Tearing Down King George: The Monumental Summer of 1776 - The ...

Category: Blogs | 60 Comments on Blog #131 – Which statues need to be torn down?
March 15

Blog #118 – Two different takes on the causes of the Civil War

There has been a lot of time and money and energy spent talking about the causes of the Civil War ever since the guns stopped firing in April 1865.  And judging by the historiography, American historians have viewed the causes in a different light depending upon the time period in which they lived in.  One of the main reasons why there has been such interest in this topic is because the war set Americans vs. Americans and was, in one way, a fight over the future of the country.  Were we going to remain an agriculture-based economy (think Jefferson) or were we going to keep up with the times and become more industrial?  Another issue at stake was the status of African Americans in this country – would they stay or be sent back to Africa?  Would slavery and second-class citizenship be their continued status or would they share in the bounty of American freedom?

Historians writing about the conflict soon after the war tended to be Northerners who blamed an aggressive slave conspiracy that wanted to spread the institution all across America.  Southern historians saw the conflict as a moral one in which the North instituted an unconstitutional strategy of making the South economically subservient to the North.   A third group tended to blame the politicians of the antebellum era who could not reach compromises like had been done in the past.  President James Buchanan and Senator Stephen Douglas are their usual targets.

By the 1890s, a Nationalist school of history arose, sparked by America’s emergence as a world power economically and politically.  One particular historian, James Ford Rhodes, wrote that slavery was the primary cause, where the South fought the war to extend slavery and that the war was an “irrepressible conlfict”.  However, he didn’t see Southern slave owners as hideous monsters and in some ways blamed the cotton gin for making slavery become more entrenched in the South.  Slavery, in essence, became a burden that 1860 slaveowners had inherited and some thing that they couldn’t completely control.  Nationalist historians tended to focus also more on the outcomes of the war – American industry exploded after the war, a more powerful federal government emerged, and we became an imperialist nation starting in 1893.

The next group of historians, writing in the 1920s and 30s, was called the Progressive School and was influenced by the ill social effects of run-amuck industrialism and uneven distribution of wealth in the country.  Charles and Mary Beard were two of the most influential of this school, and they saw the war as a “social cataclysm” in which “the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy in the South.”   This school tended to focus more on the economic causes of the war instead of slavery, which fit well with some very racist historians writing at the time who portrayed the South as a land of chivalrous planters with their pathetically helpless and loyal slaves – by contrast the North were nasty, profit-driven capitalists trying to destroy the honor and tradition of the South.

Revisionist historians, writing in the 1930s and 40s, saw the war as an insufferable evil, regardless of causes.  The political leaders were to blame for not taking advantage of alternatives that could have saved the nation.  They thought that the war could have been avoided, and that the politicians had deliberately set apart the North and South during 1840 – 1860 as people who were both trying to preserve their culture and way of life.  James G. Randall called these politicians the “blundering generation”.

http://raymondpronk.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/civil-war-cause.png

Starting in the 1960s, newer historians started reevaluating all of these previous approaches and started to synthesize them together and not focusing on just one cause.  Prominent historians like Michael Holt, Eric Foner (the author of a competing APUSH textbook), James McPherson, Manisha Sinha all mashed these causes together and reformulated the causes of the war together.  Some focused on an ideological conflict – whether slavery or economics – that primarily caused the war.  During this time, we also see more women and African American historians with their own takes on the war as the academic world becomes more diversified.

So, when you think about what primarily caused the Civil War, there is a lot to choose from.  Slavery?  Economics?  States’ rights?  Clash of cultures?  Terrible politicians?  Westward expansion?

I think this Venn diagram kinda shows how that maybe all of them interlock together.  However, that’s not our job today.  What I am asking you to do today is to compare two videos.  One takes the strong stance that slavery was the main cause, while the other dissects that argument.

 

 

 

 

The following short film discusses unequivocally that slavery was the main / primary cause of the war.  It is presented by the lead history teacher at the West Point Academy, Colonel Ty Seidule, and is produced by Prager U.

 

This video, produced by social studies teacher, Tom Richey, who is from South Carolina.  His film is a direct rebuttal of the Prager U film.

After watching both videos, answer the following questions:

  1. Who do you think has the better argument about the Civil War?  Why?  Provide examples from the films.
  2. Do you think either man has something motivating them to take their position?  If so, what?  How do you think this motivation shaped their opinions?

400 words minimum for both answers.  Due Thursday, March 21 by class.  

Category: Blogs | 59 Comments on Blog #118 – Two different takes on the causes of the Civil War
February 26

Post #95 – Why We’re Still Fighting the Civil War

You’re in an Advanced Placement U.S. History class that analyzes different approaches to history.  As we have learned, history’s interpretation can change – use the formation of the Constitution’s interpretation as an example (Blog #93).  History can also be used as a weapon to support or discredit opponents like the way Richard Nixon / Watergate, Frederick Douglass, and Japanese internment camps are being used to discredit President Trump.  In the same way that history can be weaponized, the history of the Civil War has been discussed and fought over ever since General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House in April 1865.  Using the article, “The Way We Weren’t,” author David Von Drehle dissects the way Americans have viewed the bloodiest conflict in our history.

People in 2011 were polled in the 11 states of the Confederacy, and they answered that the primary cause of the Civil War was states rights, or in this case, the primacy of the states over the federal government, despite what the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause said.  However, as we have seen with the recent history we’ve studied, states rights was not just a Southern thing.  Northern states and cities resisted the new Fugitive Slave Law (and the federal government) and tried to foil sending slaves to their original owners.  Eminent Civil War historians like James McPherson and David Blight state that almost everything in the events leading up to the Civil War dovetail w/ slavery.

Confederate soldiers and citizens, the losers in the conflict, had to mentally hold onto their “due pride” after fighting so hard, so they invented the states rights cause.  Many historians, novelists, and filmmakers were willing to go along with this denial and write narratives that supported the states rights cause.  Confederate generals wrote their memoirs in the post-war world which distanced their sacrifice from slavery and attached it firmly to something more noble (in their minds) like states rights.  Insidious inside the states rights cause was the Lost Cause, the belief that slavery was a benign institution and that Black people had it better under slavery than freedom.  Freedom, as defined by the profit-hungry, industrial North, included working for tiny wages and ruthless competition. In Jefferson Davis’s book about the war, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, he portrays the South as hopelessly outgunned and outmanned (which it was) and compares the North to the serpent infiltrating the Garden of Eden (the South) where slave owners lived with their slaves in paradise.

However, this is not to blame the Civil War on just the South.  Yes, they were treasonous.  Yes, they killed hundreds of thousands of Northern soldiers, but EVERYONE was complicit in slavery.  As mentioned in the article, many Northern states, including Wall Street, benefitted dramatically from it.  Check out the New York Historical Society’s online exhibit, Slavery in New York.  There should be little doubt that the war was a long time coming, exacted a horrific toll on the nation, and still leaves us with a legacy that we are dealing with as a nation.

 

CSA states evolution.gif
By User:Golbez – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Questions to answer:

  1. Why was the Lost Cause or denial of slavery as the central cause so attractive to Americans in the aftermath of the war (even up until the 20th Century Civil Rights Movement)?
  2. On page 40 (1) of the article, it mentions several different causes of the Civil War:
    • Northern aggressors invading an independent Southern nation;
    • High tariffs like the Tariff of Abominations;
    • Blundering statesmen like Stephen Douglas, Roger Taney, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan;
    • Clash of industrial vs. agrarian cultures;
    • Caused by fanatics like John Brown and Southern “fire eaters”;
    • Representive of a Marxist class struggle – Southern aristocracy vs. Northern factory workers.

Which of these is most persuasive as a cause and which is the least persuasive cause?  Why?

3. The article focuses a lot on Bleeding Kansas as the pivotal point in which the Civil War seemed inevitable.  Would you agree with this assertion?  Why or why not?

Image result for gone with the wind

4. What are some major arguments that poke holes in the Lost Cause?  Think of movies like Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind  and their portrayal of the South.

5. When and why did America finally start to break away from the Lost Cause mythology (a.k.a. The Dunning School of Post War America)?

Pick 4 of the questions (including #1) and answer them in 400 words minimum total.  Due Friday, March 3 by class. 

Category: Blogs | 65 Comments on Post #95 – Why We’re Still Fighting the Civil War
February 8

Ch. 18 -19 Google Docs

2nd Hour – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tqXMoSfpu0mn2BdKeob0pf4ignp_3SyT6tQzn4SRAnA/edit?usp=sharing

3rd Hour – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GVbv66VPIs2qviHGuORZpUhOkH-OqYnHDz_M2ovTNFY/edit?usp=sharing

4th Hour – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tCDob5LKLQF0TphMLyltPA0dX-wGsfSwOafz0LPSO5w/edit?usp=sharing

5th Hour – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IvdNJw4R1aVniJbgQNiLSiIZOiY0uTfUyQNK56yLcWM/edit?usp=sharing

Due Sunday, February 12 by 10 pm.  

Extra credit film, Oklahoma City for PBS – http://www.okcityfilm.com/

Extra credit film, Race Underground for PBS – http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/race-underground/

Extra credit film, Ruby Ridge from PBS (available 2/14) – http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/ruby-ridge/

All extra credit films are due 2 weeks after they’ve aired, so Race is due 2/14, OKCity is due 2/21, and Ruby is due 2/28.  Minimum 1/2 page summary, minimum 1/2 page connection to APUSH.

 

Category: Power cards / Google Docs | 1 Comment on Ch. 18 -19 Google Docs
February 10

Blog #83 – Was the Civil War inevitable?

It’s easy to look back from the vantage point of 150 years ago and say that the Civil War was inevitable.  That there was no denying that a clash over slavery would eventually occur, that the compromises would only last so long or work so well until something else came up to shatter the delicate balance that the Northern and Southern states tried to perpetuate.

And looking back over the past ten to 15 years before the war began, events like the Wilmot Proviso, the Mexican War, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the new Fugitive Slave Law, Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision, and John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry all take on additional significance because with the aid of time, historians can look back and see which events were more pivotal and which ones weren’t.

And the last year before the war, 1860, so many things had to click into place for the war to happen.  What if Lincoln wasn’t nominated or hadn’t won?  What if there was only John Bell or Stephen Douglas to win votes in the South instead of splitting up those Union votes in many parts of the South?  Could the election have gone to the House of Representatives if Lincoln hadn’t won the majority of the electoral votes, and what would have happened?

Other questions abound when I think of the last year before the war?  What if the Charleston Mercury editorial hadn’t been printed?  What if President Buchanan had been stronger in resisting the secession of the first seven states?  He tried to resupply Fort Sumter in January 1861 but the ship was fired upon and returned to Washington w/o resupplying Major Robert Anderson and his men at the South Carolina fort.  Buchanan didn’t think he had the power to stop the states from seceding, but he said it was unconstitutional. Or was Buchanan just leaving the job to Abe Lincoln (see cartoon below, courtesy of Aldo B)?

Did the Southern states actually have to leave or could they have done something else beginning in December 1860?  They must have felt that working within the system of the established Constitution was not working even though that document guarantees slavery.  The election of Lincoln had additional significance for these Deep South states b/c not all slave states left the Union right away (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware stayed, and North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee left ONLY after Lincoln called for troops when Fort Sumter was bombed).  Were these Deep South states trying to resist Lincoln or were the resisting his party’s anti-slavery platform?  He was the first president elected since John Quincy Adams in 1824 that was avowedly not a Southerner or a Northerner soft of slavery, so he must have been perceived as some kind of threat.  Another thing people should take into consideration is that the Republicans, after Lincoln was elected, would be in charge of appointing almost 1,000 governmental jobs, including marshals, post masters, and others that had been appointed for the past 8 years under the Pierce and Buchanan administrations.

I know there are a lot of questions here that I’ve raised, and that’s b/c I wanted you to think about the inevitability of this whole stream of events that led to the bombing of Fort Sumter.  Please answer the following two questions:

1. Was there ONE thing in the time period (1846-1861) that you think impacted the start of the war more than any other event or thing?  Why?

2. Which event or action in the last 16 months (1860 – 61) had the greatest impact on starting the war?  Why?  Did this event make the Civil War inevitable or not?  Why?

Due Tuesday, Feb. 23 by class time.  300 words minimum.

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December 6

Blog #58 – Discuss causes of the Civil War

One of the main things that I hope that I have taught you over the past couple of weeks (going back to the Mexican War controversy) is that asking the question “What caused the Civil War?” is not a good question.  The question seems to indicate that there’s only ONE cause that can be found among all of the political compromises, peoples’ actions, economic forces, and differing social / cultural norms of the North and the South.  This oversimplification insults the intelligence of anyone who has studied the CW like we have, because there is no single, simple answer.

http://danmillerinpanama.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/civil-war-soldiers.jpg

In the past, historians have tried to blame the war on agitators – the abolitionists or the Slave Power conspiracies.  Both sides had radical “fire-eaters” who were unwilling to accept compromise and wanted it the Frank Sinatra way, “I did it my way!”  Also, past historians have tended to blame it on economic forces or states’ rights.  The threat of losing slavery meant the loss of billions of dollars of investment in people and land for the southern economy, and so the Deep South states pushed it to the brink to be left alone from federal interference (though Lincoln wasn’t going to interfere, he claimed that he just wanted to stop the spread of slavery out west).  This dove tails nicely with the idea that Stephen Douglas and others had championed – it was up to the states to decide what to do with slavery b/c the federal government (Congress) was prohibited from interfering with slavery.  Therefore, it was a state’s right to do with slavery what it wished since the federal government had its hands tied by the Dred Scott decision in 1857.

http://www.permaculturenews.org/images/slavery_chart.jpg

Other historians, more recently, have placed the blame for the CW squarely on the shoulders of slavery. Many Northerners felt that slavery was on its decline or would be limited in its area of growth by the Missouri Compromise (1820), but with the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, Compromise of 1850, and Kansas Nebraska Act, that small area had quickly expanded over the course of 35 years.  Then the Dred Scott decision seemed to say that slavery could exist anywhere within the country.  Those Northerners were now angry (for many different reasons, racism being one of them) that their politicians seemed to betray them.  This anger might explain the popularity of the Republican Party in the 1850s, an avowed anti-slavery party that appealed to many Northerners by 1860.  At the center of all this anger and controversy is the volatile subject of slavery and its spread.

Modern historian Edward Ayers, a Southerner, has divided up these historians into two camps: the fundamentalists who claim that the Civil War was a struggle over the future of the United States between slavery and freedom, and the revisionists who say that the Civil War was caused by the disintegration of the Democrats, the failure of compromise, and the election of Abraham Lincoln (the first Northern president elected who wasn’t pro-slavery since John Quincy Adams in 1824).  For the fundamentalists, slavery is the main cause, while for the revisionists, slavery is buried beneath layers of white ideology and politics.  Ayers feels that slavery was a crisis of immense magnitude but didn’t lead to war.  He said that the “war came through misunderstanding, confusion, miscalculation.  Both sides underestimated the location of the fundamental loyalty in the other.  Both received incorrect images of the other in the partisan press.  Political beliefs distorted each side’s view of the other’s economy and class relations.  Both sides believed the other side was bluffing, and both sides believed that the other’s internal differences and conflicts would lead it to buckle” (134).   He wraps it up by saying that Southern whites didn’t fight for slavery, they fought for a new nation based upon slavery.  Northerners didn’t fight to end slavery, but they did fight to preserve the integrity of the Union.

Question:  Where do you find yourself when it comes to the cause(s) of the Civil War?  Do you find yourself in the fundamentalist camp or with the revisionists?  Why?  Do you think that slavery, economics, or states rights was the primary cause of the war?  Why?

http://raymondpronk.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/civil-war-cause.png

Your answer is due Monday, December 9 by class time.  Minimum of 300 words, please.

Category: Blogs | 78 Comments on Blog #58 – Discuss causes of the Civil War
March 28

Civil War Preservation Trust Essay and Postcard Contest

Go to this link to learn more about the Civil War Preservation Trust’s essay and postcard contest.  Both are due by May 1.

http://www.civilwar.org/education/contests-quizzes/essay-contest/essay-contest.html

For the essay:

Submit essays addressing the theme, Preserving 150 Years of History: 1862-1863, Shifting Tides. 1862 and 1863 were eventful years in the American Civil War – including the Battle of Antietam, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the Gettysburg Address. In your essay incorporate events such as these with the importance of preservation and the study of history.

All Essays must:

* Use the slogan as their title. 
* Discuss preservation. 
* Be authored by only one student, there is no group entry category.
* Be approximately 300 words long.
* Use proper grammar, correct spelling, and consist primarily of the student’s own words.
* Include citations for all quotations. *Plagiarism will disqualify your essay.
* Be sent through e-mail by May 1, 2013.

Essays will be judged for creativity, persuasive quality, clarity, and strength of message.

Submit your entry to:
education@civilwar.org with the subject line: “2013 Essay Contest”
**Please send your essay as an attachment either as a Word or PDF document. Please include your contact information on this document, not just in the e-mail.

For the postcard:

Submit illustrations on postcards with a short note on the back addressing the theme of Preserving 150 Years of History: 1862-1863, Shifting Tides.

Postcards Must:

* Be the correct size – 5 to 6 inches long and 3.5 to 4.25 inches high.
* Fit this year’s theme.
* Include an illustration on one side and a brief note on the other, just as one would write a postcard.
* Be authored by only one student, there is no group entry category.
* Be appropriate for all audiences, not offensive or derogatory
* Be in the Civil War Trust office by May 1, 2013. 

Postcards will be judged for creativity, clarity, and strength of message.

Send your postcard to:

Civil War Trust Education Department
1156 15th St. NW Suite 900
Washington, DC 20005

 

To see last year’s winners in both the postcard and essay contest, go here (remember, you’re in the senior division): http://www.civilwar.org/education/contests-quizzes/essay-contest/2012-essay-contest/2012-essay-postcard-contest.html

 

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December 12

Blog #44 – Most important turning point

This blog asks you to pick which of the three turning points in the Civil War are the most important and why. 

Turning Point #1 — Battle of Antietam – Sept. 17, 1862 — On this day, America suffered more casualties (23,000) than the total casualties of the Revolution, War of 1812, and Mexican War combined.  At stake was the Confederate invasion of Maryland and General George McClellan’s reputation as the next great American general.  McClellan stopped the invasion and Lee turned back.  Britain and France delayed their vital recognition of the Confederacy (which could have aided the cash-strapped rebels and also provided them with much-needed aid).  In addition, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation four days later which completely changed the scope of the war by making it not just about keeping the Union together but also ending slavery.  With the EP in place on January 1, 1863, freed blacks could now join the Union Army and fight for their own freedom.  And lastly, the momentum swung to the Northern side, if just for a little while. 

http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/antietam/maps/antietam-animated-map.html  Antietam animated map. 

 

General George Meade

Turning Point #2 – Battle of Gettysburg – July 1-3, 1863 — After two crushing defeats, the Army of the Potomac (led by General George Meade, a.k.a. the snapping turtle) finally got one in the win column by defeating General Lee and the Confederacy on a hot, sweaty battlefield in eastern Pennsylvania.  Over three days, the Union Army was able to defend their positions from ferocious Confederate assaults and turn the tide of the war.  The largest and deadliest battle on the North American continent (53,000 casualties), this Union victory slammed the door shut on any chance of foreign recognition that the Confederacy had left.  Also, Confederate hero Robert E. Lee never went on a major offensive again afterwards, b/c his army was too crippled and further large scale attacks would have been futile.  Coupled with the victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi, Gettysburg dealt a serious blow to the Confederacy’s hopes of winning this war.  They could not continue to lose 1/3 of their best army every time they took on the Union nor lose valuable commanders and field generals.   For many, this July 4 of 1863 had a special meaning as the Union headed towards victory. 

 

Turning Point #3 – The Election of 1864 – this political battle is considered by James McPherson to be the third turning point of the war because it had still not been decided on the battlefield in the summer of 1864.  Ulysses S. Grant had taken command of all of the Union armies and been expected to bring his pounding style of attack to the eastern theatre of the war (Virginia) like he had done out west in Mississippi and Tennessee.  However, the 4-pronged attack on the Confederacy soon got bogged down in the reality of war and many Americans had expressed their war weariness in many ways.  One of those ways was to support silly peace plans with Jeff Davis that would have ended the war w/o ending slavery. Another way Americans showed their war weariness was by picking Democrat George McClellan to be their presidential nominee.  The Peace Democrats wanted to end the war w/o ending slavery, but McClellan publicly contradicted them by saying he would push for peace through victory – read, war!  Lincoln’s party flirted w/ picking another candidate but never really did that, and by putting Tennessean Andrew Johnson on the ticket as his V.P., Lincoln was trying to be the “Union” candidate.  Luckily for Lincoln (and the country), Union general William T. Sherman captured the pivotal Confederate city of Atlanta in September, and the hits just kept coming.  In October, Union General Sheridan defeated the Confederate army in the Shenandoah Valley.  78% of the Union soldiers voted for Lincoln and only 29% of McClellan’s former army, the Army of the Potomac, voted for their old boss.  Lincoln swept up the electoral college 212 to 21 as well.   This was the final turning point of the war b/c the end of slavery and the Confederacy appeared just to be a matter of time.  Lincoln planned on having a forgiving Reconstruction policy as exemplified in his 2nd Inaugural address (http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html).   If McClellan had won this election, who knew what would have happened?  Would there have been peace after four long bitter years with nothing to show for it except the dead and injured? 

Pick what you think is the most important turning point in the Civil War and explain why in your own words. 

200 words minimum (except for Tamia!  You know how much you have to do) due by class on Thursday, Dec. 13. 

Here’s the closing paragraph of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

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