Wisconsin and The Civil War

Lesson 7: End of The War
A Turning Point for the United States

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Lesson Essential Question:

How did the Civil War end?

How was the civil war a turning point for the United States?

What effects did the war have on Wisconsin?

Where can we go to learn more about our State’s past?

NCSS Standards:
  • Standard 2: Time, Continuity, and Change
  • Standard 5: Individuals, Groups, and Institutions
  • Standard 6: Power, Authority, and Governance
  • Standard 10: Civil Ideals and Practices

MMSD Standards:
  • Students will:
            1.  Identify key events, causes, and effects of a major period in U.S. history
            2.  Describe the struggle in our society for equal rights for all people  

UW Teaching Standards:
  • Standard 3: demonstrates sophisticated curricular knowledge
  • Standard 6: connects school and community

Materials Needed:
  • Book: Malone, B. & Oberle, K. (2008). Wisconsin: Our State, Our History. Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
  • Newspaper article: Loohauis-Bennett, J. (2011, April 2). 150 Years ago, faraway battles drew Wisconsinites. The Journal Sentinel.
  • Text of the Gettysburg Address
  • Document Camera and Projector
  • Wisconsin state map

Objectives:
  • Students will understand how the war came to an end
  • Students will be able to explain the effects that the war had on our state and on our country
  • Students will consider how local resources and sites can be used to learn more about our nation and state’s history

Lesson Context:

Students have been studying the events leading up to the civil war, issues that occurred during the war, and how Wisconsin was affected by it. Now we will begin wrapping up our unit by discussing how the war came to an end as well as how it affected our state and our nation.

Lesson Opening:

Explain to students that the war lasted from 1861-1865 and it resulted in a lot of deaths and injuries. It was especially brutal because it was one nation fighting within itself- sometimes brother fighting against brother. It was significant because it was a war that changed our nation’s history in many significant ways. I will have students look at a map and discuss how the map of the US today is different from the map of the US in 1850 that we looked at in our first lesson. We are now a united nation, and that is due to the Civil War.

Procedures:
  1. We will begin by reading page 136 in Wisconsin: Our State, Our History about how the war ended. We will stop to discuss vocabulary such as Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment
  2. Students will discuss the difference between these two, as well as the long process our country took in providing African American slaves their freedom
  3. After our reading of this page, we will look at a selection of the Gettysburg Address and read it as a class. Students will do a think pair share on their thoughts about what they read.
  4. After our discussion about the conclusion of the war and the aftermath, I will share a current article that I found in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
  5. I will read excerpts from the article titled, 150 Years ago, faraway battles drew Wisconsinites that relate to material we’ve covered in our unit (such as the story of Joshua Glover, Camp Randall, Peter Thomas, Cordelia Harvey, the Iron Brigade, immigrant soldiers, etc.. As I read, I will pause to ask students to share reactions, make comments, or ask questions.
  6. During the reading, I will also pull out some statistics to show students how many men from Wisconsin fought and died in the war- more than 90,000 Wisconsin soldiers from a state population of about 775,000 left to fight. About 12,000 state soldiers would never return.
  7. We will also discuss women’s roles on the home front, as well as how social structure and roles began to change
  8. Our discussion will also focus on how Wisconsin changed because of the war- how did soldiers return to normal life, what new jobs and industries were created, etc.
  9. Lastly, we will read page 137 in our texts about monuments and other historic sites to visit in Wisconsin to learn more about the Civil War. I will point out each location on a Wisconsin state map. (Wade House in Greenbush, Ripon, Milton House, statue of Colonel Heg at the state Capitol, etc.)

Closing:

I will ask students to think about how our state is still impacted by the Civil War even now 150 later. What places do we have in our state or even in our own city that were related to the war that we could go to learn more about our local history? What can you learn from visiting these places?

Assessment:

Students will be informally assessed on their participation in group discussions.