The newly re-elected Abraham Lincoln sought to unite the American people by interpreting the waning conflict as a divine judgment upon both sides of the war. This lesson will examine Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address to determine how he sought to reunite a divided country through a providential interpretation of the Civil War.

With this digital collection, students will use documents to explore the meaning of slavery and emancipation in the North around the time of the Civil War, and understand the context for Lincoln’s own evolving position.

With this digital collection, students will explore the ways that literary culture shaped the meaning of the war for people who lived through it. Students will be asked to answer the following essential questions: 1. What literature was published and read during the Civil War? 2. How did literature shape the meaning of the war? How did writers and readers turn to literature to make sense of the war itself and of the profound changes it brought to the nation? 3. How might reading the literature of the Civil War lead us to think in new ways about American literary history?

Explore the spatial patterns of Native American lands in 1819 and the decrease in size of those lands through the current Native American reservations.

GeoInquiries are designed to be fast and easy-to-use instructional resources that incorporate advanced web mapping technology. Each 15-minute activity in a collection is intended to be presented by the instructor from a single computer/projector classroom arrangement. No installation, fees, or logins are necessary to use these materials and software.

Through this unit, students will understand the events and tensions that fractured the country, and will also know the course of the war and how it came to an end. The Reconstruction unit will begin with the end of the war and its immediate aftermath, including President Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction and his assassination. Students will then examine President Johnson’s plan and how his policies were implemented in the South. Students will also consider the changes in the South brought about by the 13th Amendment and the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Another major topic will be the policies enacted by the Radical Republicans during Congressional Reconstruction. Students will also learn about the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, and examine their impact on freedom and equality for African -Americans. After these social and political changes have been considered, the unit will move onto how Reconstruction came to a close in 1877, and much of the period’s progress was reversed in the following years. To culminate the unit, students will evaluate the successes and failures of the Reconstruction period by considering its enduring legacy.

In this lesson, students examine images of life in the U.S. in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. As they view the images, students will make a list of the problems that the U.S. faced and then share their lists. Students will also review and evaluate the Presidential Reconstruction plan.

Students examine early developments of Reconstruction including the 13th Amendment and the Freedman's Bureau. Students will consider the successes of the Freedman's Bureau as well as the ongoing struggles with labor relations, violence, and Black Codes.

In this lesson, students evaluate the successes and failures of Reconstruction and then create a museum exhibit compiling items they have used during the unit of study.

This lesson focuses on the slave narrative of Solomon Northup, a free black living in the North, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. Slave narratives are autobiographies of former slaves that describe their experiences during enslavement, how they became free, and their lives in freedom. Because slave narratives treat the experience of one person, they raise questions about whether that individual's experiences exceptional.

In this unit, students will learn about the causes of the War of 1812, the significance of the Battle of New Orleans and other major battles, and how the war helped shape American nationalism. Students will demonstrate their learning by correctly analyzing a poem, three songs, two speeches, three photographs/political cartoons, completing a Venn diagram that compares two battles, and by completing a worksheet. Finally, they will construct a drawing with dialogue or a political cartoon that addresses at least one aspect about the legacy of the war.

In this activity students compare and contrast a political cartoon and a letter to the editor from 1862 that describe ordinary soldiers who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.

In this activity students examine sheet music and letters from draft rioters to examine Union attitudes about the military draft during the Civil War.

In this activity students analyze visual and textual evidence about "contraband" African-American slaves during the Civil War era. They compare the roles of African Americans, the Union military, and the policies of the Republican party in emancipating slaves. They determine the extent to which African Americans freed themselves versus the extent to which Abraham Lincoln ended slavery.

This interactive timeline highlights the stories of the women of Vance Birthplace in the mountains of North Carolina. From prehistory to the twentieth century, students can explore each woman's experience of life in the Reems Creek Valley through videos, primary and secondary sources, and graphics.