Civil War Overview

By:Alden Collins, Parker Dison, Bailey Rosenbush, Dylan Yacks

Where it all begins

Lincoln was inaugurated May, 04, 1861 and the south had seceded from the union creating the confederate states of America electing Jefferson Davis as their president. The south was formed of eleven states. When fort Sumter in South Carolina needed supplied Lincoln Respelling the fort might inflame the situation because it was located in a slave-holding state. Yet Lincoln, in his inaugural address, had promised that the Union would not give up control of federal territory, such as Fort Sumter. The fort was resupplied, and Lincoln refused to evacuate it. The Confederates attacked the fort on April 12, 1861. The Civil War had begun, and President Lincoln was thrust into the middle of one of this country's greatest crises.

            The civil war would produce more than 970,000 casualties between the states and approximately 560,000 deaths. The causes of the war, the reasons for the outcome, and even the name of the war itself are still controversy.

Task

            Abraham Lincoln calls you to spy on the south and discover their plots on how to overthrow our union. He’ll give you scouting report he needs filled out to help him win this war. Jefferson Davis will also give you a report to fill out as you go into north to help demolish the north. You will search through

            Journals

                    Maps

                        Biographies

                                    Major war documents

                                                                Prisons

There are hundreds of websites about the U.S. Civil War. Begin with the ones below. Complete a Civil War activity:

Be a War Correspondent. and select one specific battle. Pretend you are a news reporter and submit your report of the event. Or, copy a picture from the site and pretend you participated in the event. You could even enhance the photo with Photoshop and put yourself in the picture.

Analyze a Battle. Pick an important Civil War battle. Trace the major events of the battle. Explain the battle sequence by drawing a map or constructing a diorama. Decide what factor's) were most important in determining the battle's outcome.

Join a Civil War Unit. Select a well-known officer and pretend that you are under their direct command. Describe what it was like to serve under their command. See if you can trace the officer's military service throughout the war.

Select the Top 10 Events. Identify the ten most important events of the Civil War and create a timeline showing when and where they occurred. Get ideas for events from this web quest.

Write a Letter or Journal Entry. Pretend that you received one of the letters. What would you write back? Or write a diary entry for one particular day during the war. Identify who you are. Describe what you think it was like for a person living in a small town, on the farm, or what life in a city was like.

Debate. Decide and debate the issues that caused the Civil War.

Process

·        Choose your task

·        Read through the information below on your task

·        Complete task

·        make a short presentation on your activity

Helpful Links

timeline http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/tl1861.html

http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/

http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/femvets2.html

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/civi

 http://debate.uvm.edu/

Battles

Battle of Gettysburg­- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Battlefield

Battle Gettysburg lasted 3 days and was a big turning point in the war

Battle of Vicksburg- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_vicksburg

Resulted in many casualties as the union captured Vicksburg

Officers

Ulysses s. Grant-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysess_Grant

Grant was one of the unions best officers and was successful in many major battles

William t. Sherman-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman

Sherman was a union general at the battle of Vicksburg and burned Savannah

George McClellan-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McClellan

Very credited north general

Robert e. Lee- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee

Important general in the south one many battles for the south

• More than three million men fought in the war.

• Two percent of the population—more than 620,000—died in it.

• In two days at Shiloh on the banks of the Tennessee River, more Americans fell than in all previous American wars combined.

• During the Battle of Antietam, 12,401 Union men were killed, missing or wounded; double the casualties of D-Day, 82 years later. With a total of 23,000 casualties on both sides, it was the bloodiest single day of the Civil War.

• At Cold Harbor, Va., 7,000 Americans fell in 20 minutes.

• Senator John J. Crittendon of Kentucky had two sons who became major generals during the Civil War: one for the North, one for the South.

• Ulysses S. Grant was not fond of ceremonies or military music. He said he could only recognize two tunes. "One was Yankee Doodle," he grumbled. "The other one wasn’t."

• Missouri sent 39 regiments to fight in the siege of Vicksburg: 17 to the Confederacy and 22 to the Union.

• During the Battle of Antietam, Clara Barton tended the wounded so close to the fighting that a bullet went through her sleeve and killed a man she was treating.

• At the start of the war, the value of all manufactured goods produced in all the Confederate states added up to less than one-fourth of those produced in New York State alone.

• In March 1862, European powers watched in worried fascination as the Monitor and Merrimack battled off Hampton Roads, Va. From then on, after these ironclads opened fire, every other navy on earth was obsolete.

• In 1862, the U.S. Congress authorized the first paper currency, called "greenbacks."

• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., future chief Justice, was wounded three times during the Civil War: in the

chest at Ball’s Bluff, in the back at Antietam and in the heel at Chancellors Ville.

• Confederate Private Henry Stanley fought for the Sixth Arkansas, and was captured at Shiloh, but survived to go to Africa to find Dr. Livingston.

• George Pickett’s doomed infantry charge at Gettysburg was the first time he took his division into combat.

• On July 4, 1863, after 48 days of siege, Confederate General John C. Pemberton surrendered the city of Vicksburg to the Union’s General, Ulysses S. Grant. The Fourth of July was not be celebrated in Vicksburg for another 81 years.

• Disease was the chief killer during the war, taking two men for every one who died of battle wounds.

• North and South, potential recruits were offered awards, or "bounties," for enlisting, as much as $677 in New York. Bounty jumping soon became a profession, as men signed up, then deserted, to enlist again elsewhere. One man repeated the process 32 times before being caught.

• African Americans constituted less than one percent of the northern population, yet by the war’s end made up ten percent of the Union Army. A total of 180,000 black men, more than 85% of those eligible, enlisted.

• In November 1863, President Lincoln was invited to offer a "few appropriate remarks" at the opening of a new Union cemetery at Gettysburg. The main speaker, a celebrated orator from Massachusetts, spoke for nearly two hours. Lincoln offered just 269 words in his Gettysburg Address.

• Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest had 30 horses shot from under him and personally killed 31 men in hand-to-hand combat. "I was a horse ahead at the end," he said.

• The words "In God We Trust" first appeared on a U.S. coin in 1864.

• In 1864, Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to Lieutenant General, a rank previously held by General George Washington, and led the 533,000 men of the Union Army, the largest in the world. Three years later, he was made President of the United States.

• Andersonville Prison in southwest Georgia held 33,000 prisoners in 1864. It was the fifth largest city in the Confederacy.

•By the end of the war, Unionists from every state except South Carolina had sent regiments to fight for the North.

• On November 9, 1863, President Lincoln attended a theater in Washington, D.C., to see "The Marble Heart." An accomplished actor, John Wilkes Booth, was in the cast.

• On March 4, 1865, Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term. Yards away in the crowd was John Wilkes Booth with a pistol in his pocket. His vantage point on the balcony, he said later, offered him "an excellent chance to kill the President, if I had wished."

• On May 13, 1865, a month after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Private John J. Williams of the 34th Indiana became the last man killed in the Civil War, in a battle at Palmito Ranch, Texas. The final skirmish was a Confederate victory.

• Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first black man ever elected to the U.S. Senate. He filled the seat last held by Jefferson Davis.

Conclusion

Thank you for taking the time to go though our web quest. Congrats you have finished this and you are done we hope you learn something