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Battle Cry of Freedom (excerpts)
Battle Cry of Freedom (excerpts)
The single best one-volume history of the Civil War is James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. This pages include snippets and quotes from the entire book. Put the book on your "to-read" list over the summer and use this page to prepare yourself for teaching right now. If you have read the book before, skim through this as you prepare to teach that sectionalism unit.
#US History I#US I Unit 5 Manifest Destiny and Sectionalism#US I Unit 5 Civil War
·homepage.eircom.net·
Battle Cry of Freedom (excerpts)
Lincoln, Stowe, and the "Little Woman/Great War" Story: The Making, and Breaking, of a Great American Anecdote
Lincoln, Stowe, and the "Little Woman/Great War" Story: The Making, and Breaking, of a Great American Anecdote
If debunking the apocryphal from history is more fun that a curmudgeon's cry to "get off my lawn", then add this article to your reading list which shows how the famous Lincoln quote wasn't said in the first place. Maybe Stowe's family was better than Betsy Ross's in building a legacy where there was none.
#President Abraham Lincoln#US I Unit 5 Manifest Destiny and Sectionalism#US I Unit 5 Civil War
·quod.lib.umich.edu·
Lincoln, Stowe, and the "Little Woman/Great War" Story: The Making, and Breaking, of a Great American Anecdote
“Corner Stone” Speech - Alexander Stephens 1861
“Corner Stone” Speech - Alexander Stephens 1861

In this speech the vice president of the Confederate States of America establishes the foundation of the nation he was helping to create. That foundational truth is that "the negro is not equal to the white man" Teachers can cut a couple sentences from this speech or even a paragraph or two because is it easily accessible to high school students. It can also be used to refute any idea that the Civil War was fought over tariffs economic policy.

Scholars of slavery and the Civil War will find here that Stephens supports Lincoln's argument that the founding fathers anticipated the end of slavery.

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
#primary source#US I Unit 5 Manifest Destiny and Sectionalism#US I Unit 5 Civil War
·teachingamericanhistory.org·
“Corner Stone” Speech - Alexander Stephens 1861
History Doesn’t Follow Formulas. Why history can’t be reduced to static… | by Ed Ayers | New American History | Jul, 2020 | Medium
History Doesn’t Follow Formulas. Why history can’t be reduced to static… | by Ed Ayers | New American History | Jul, 2020 | Medium
This is perhaps too long for high school students to read, though just the same it might be worth the effort. It might more easily be adapted by having teachers read it and present a short explanation of it to students. At the very least, this is a "must read" for teachers not only because it describes how the understanding of the Civil War has changed over time, but it shows that the teaching of "how the story is told" is much better for students than just teaching a story
The key element in the equation used to be tariffs, but tariffs were barely mentioned in the fullest debates by the largest slave state in 1861 over whether to secede. A digital transcription of those Virginia debates shows that the word “tariff” appeared only eight times in weeks of debates. Words with the root of “slavery” in them, by contrast, were invoked 1,434 times. Virginia did not secede because it was agrarian, but rather because its economy was based on the buying, selling, and laboring of enslaved people.
The formula that we have taught for nearly a century is wrong. And it is wrong precisely because it is a formula. Formulas violate what history teaches us. Formulas replace people and their acts with pseudo-scientific abstractions such as “industrial” and “agrarian,” or “modern” and “traditional.” Formulas replace context, contingency, and change with fixity and predictability.
#US I Unit 5 Manifest Destiny and Sectionalism#reading#US I Unit 5 Civil War
·medium.com·
History Doesn’t Follow Formulas. Why history can’t be reduced to static… | by Ed Ayers | New American History | Jul, 2020 | Medium