Primary Source Learning: Civil War

Civil War photograph lessons & activities

• Devil in the Details: Examining Visual Material from the Civil War
• The Mathew Brady Bunch
• New Technologies and New Uses
• Using Sources: Civil War Photography Technology & Tricks
• What Do You See?

Learning from the Source lesson plans

• Gettysburg Address Game On
• Civil War Prison Experiences
• Geography & the Civil War
• Gettysburg Address Image Sequencing
• Perspectives in Civil War Song Sheets
• Primary Source Perspectives of the Civil War
• Where Do I Run to? Where Do I Hide?

Guided Primary Source Analyses

• Admiral Farragut Enters Mobile Bay map
• Has the war ruined the country? text/chart
• Jeff Davis Reaping the Harvest engraving/political cartoon

Collection Connections teaching strategies & activities

• Abraham Lincoln Papers
• Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana
• Civil War Maps
• Civil War Soldier in the Wild Cat Regiment
• Poet at Work: Walt Whitman’s Civil War Journals
• Selected Civil War Photographs
• Washington During the Civil War: The Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861-1865

More lesson ideas

• Civil War Photojournalism: A Record of War
• The Civil War Through a Child’s Eye
• The Inside Scoop: Civil War Prison Experiences
• Teaching Now: Integrating Literacy, History & Geography
• Teaching Now: Using Primary Sources with 21st-Century Learners
• What were the challenges to African American citizenship after the Civil War? Teaching with Primary Sources program at the University of California, Davis
• Women in the Civil War: Ladies, Contraband and Spies

Teaching with the Library of Congress activity ideas

Primary source sets & teacher guides

• Abraham Lincoln: Rise to National Prominence
• Civil War Images: Depictions of African Americans in the War Effort
• Civil War Music
• Civil War Photographs: New Technologies and New Uses
• The Civil War: The Nation Moves Towards War, 1850-61
• Civil War & Reconstruction
• Civil War Soldiers’ Portraits: The Liljenquist Family Collection

Related resources

• Civil War primary sources
• Reconstruction guided primary source analyses
  • The Carpet-bagger sheet music
  • The constitutional amendment broadside
  • Strong-Weak Government political cartoon
• Primary Source Learning: Slavery (U.S.)