Explore a gallery of images of drum corps and bands of the Civil War era. Regimental bands consisted mostly of brass and percussion instruments. They served an important purpose during the Civil War by playing at recruitment rallies, boosting morale among soldiers, and playing songs that weary soldiers would march to as they prepared for battle.

This is an interactive map to have that you can pick battles to learn about based on where they are located on the map. It is also helpful to visualize where things are happening.

This lesson activity is to take place in the middle of a Civil War Unit. This activity will take place when the major battles are being disucssed in chronological order. Studetns will have the opportunity to become more familiar with three of the five battles that have been provided for them. This is a digital lesson where each student needs a computer device and headphones. This is not an acutal assessment, but one assignment in the understanding of the Civil War to write a post unit paper.   

Explore images of the battlefield of Antietam. On September 17, 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Maj. General George McClellan faced off in a battlefield near Sharpsburg, Maryland. The battle of Antietam was the single bloodiest day of the Civil War, with 22,720 men killed, wounded, or missing after 12 hours of fighting. The battle was considered a draw from a military perspective, but the Union declared victory. On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all slaves in the south were free.

Explore images of the city, Confederate defenses, and ruins from the battle that took place in Atlanta, Georgia. The City of Atlanta fell to Union forces, commanded by William Tecumseh Sherman, in July of 1864. The fall of Atlanta was a blow to the Confederate Army and a critical victory for the North and Abraham Lincoln, who used the momentum of the win to fuel his reelection campaign.

Explore images taken in Charleston, South Carolina during the Civil War. The first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, on April 12, 1861. Many battles took place in South Carolina during the war, but Charleston suffered particularly, when the Union Army, under commander General William T. Sherman, passed through on its March to the Sea.

View images of the battle of Fort Sumter and ruins of the Fort, which Confederate forces took. The Battle of Fort Sumter took place on April 12, 1861, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Fort Sumter is considered to be the site of the first shots fired during the war. After Abraham Lincoln was elected to the presidency, southern states attempted to secede from the Union in protest over what they saw as a threat to states’ rights, particularly in the opposition the new president and northern states had to slavery.

Explore images of the fallen city of Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. General Ulysses S. Grant tried unsuccessfully to capture Richmond for nearly a year before he took the city on April 2, 1865. The battle would be a crippling defeat for the South, and led to Robert E. Lee's surrender to Grant one week later on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House.

This article looks at the numbers of casualties and death as a result of the civil war. This could be used as a rap up to the war as a transition into the reconstruction era.

This set of lesson plans usages the American Battlefield Trust to evaluate the American Civil War from the beginning to reconstruction

The Civil War (1861-1865) is America’s bloodiest war to date. It cost close to 1,100,000 casualties and claimed over 620,000 lives. These lesson plans and videos are based on History Detectives episodes that examine a variety of artifacts—a weapon, an early photograph, a letter, a piece of pottery—highlighting African-American involvement in the Civil War. They offer students opportunities to research and create paper or interactive biographical posters, delve into the intersection of military and social history, and survey slave art and culture.

Explore images taken from Civil War-era hospitals. The sheer number of wounded and ill soldiers tested the medical community during the Civil War and challenged doctors and nurses to find ways to treat the thousands of injured, sick, and maimed. Homes, churches, and any viable structure near battlefields would be converted into field hospitals. Many soldiers died of diseases during the war, such as dysentery, pneumonia, typhoid and more. Hospitals began to assess and separate the injured into categories, from mortally wounded to treatable and needing surgery. This form of triage is still used today.

View a gallery of images of Confederate and Union Army regiments, troops, and infantry from Pennsylvania to Georgia, Virginia to Massachusetts. From 1861-1865, more than three million men fought in the American Civil War, and over 600,000 lost their lives in battle.

This 3 min video examines some of the technological advancements and how they were used by both sides, until the Union was able to gain the upper hand.

Learn how journalists reported on slavery and military conflict during the Civil War. We'll look at six primary sources from the Civil War and explore the techniques journalists on both sides used to spread the news and their opinions: What role did cartoons and photography play in swaying public sentiment? Who got to report on the news and how did their perspective affect their reporting?

This is a collection of short videos and biographies on Union and Confederate leaders during the Civil War.

In this lesson, students will use one of the major tools of a historian: personal letters. These primary source materials provide firsthand evidence of events and information on the perspective, cognition, values, and attitudes of the person writing the letter. Students will read several letters from individuals who lived during the Civil War and analyze their content. Furthermore, students will formulate a character description of someone who lived during the Civil War and, in pairs of letter-writing correspondents, write one another letters concerning a major event during the war.

Examine how the horrors of the Civil War battlefield forced medicine in America to evolve from a crude practice to a profession grounded in science, in these videos from Mercy Street and The Good Stuff: Time Capsule. Utilizing video and discussion questions, students learn about how medical innovations like the triage system, limb amputations, and general hospitals saved thousands of lives, changed Americans’ expectations regarding healthcare and laid the groundwork for later scientific discoveries of the 19th century. For more resources from Mercy Street, check out the collection page.

This activity shows students how both in the North and in the South, music was used extensively during the Civil War to rally troops and the public. Different versions of familiar songs, in which both sides borrowed each other’s tunes or lyrics, are presented. It was not uncommon for each side to serenade the other, or for battle to stop while an impromptu concert was held. Singing an “altered rendition” of one side’s favorite song was often done to poke fun at the enemy. Students will examine lyrics of “Battle Cry of Freedom” and “Dixie” with versions from both sides, and make conclusions about the lyrics. Student questions provided here can be used for general class discussion or individual assessment. Answers to the questions are included.

This inquiry kit features Library of Congress sources, including songs and photographs, focusing on the music of the American Civil War.