# Civil War "class interaction" Ideas?



## dzc4627 (Apr 23, 2015)

Alright, so a group of 4 people including me are doing an hour and 40 minute presentation in our AP US history class on the civil war. We need some form of "class interaction" and we would be stupid to not incorporate splitting the class up. Apart from that we are kind of clueless as to what we should do. Any good and innovative ideas guys?


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## Jos (Oct 14, 2013)

Dress up and do lots of silly walks


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

Get them to mime the Battle of Gettysburg.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Don't drag in the Charleston Church incident.


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## Guest (Dec 8, 2015)

(Apparent plagiarism of Dr Johnson. Court case pending)


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Andersonville. Rest of the class gets to play the prisoners. 

Bring in a big bathtub and stage the Monitor vs. Virginia. 

More seriously, the 1860 election was a 4-way deal. Each of you gives a brief speech as one of the candidates, have the class role play various political interests (?).


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Dress up your teacher like Abe Lincoln and you and your accomplices like the John Wilkes Booth gang and make him pretend he is sitting in a theater...


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

off the top of my head .... try
1. running dictation (look it up on internet - there's even a youtube video of it) but use a map of a situation instead of a text - the runners have to transfer info back to their partner for them to complete the map
2. true/false statements - devise 6-8 statements that the participants have to sort out into true/false in small groups (you can put some quite tricky or obscure bits on these)
3. jumbled sentences - have statements about the topic where the participants have to re-write them into the correct order
4. jigsaw reading activity - a paragraph that has been cut into sections and they have to put it into the correct order
5. ten differences - give each group two different illustrations - they have to identify ten differences (or similarities) between the pictures
6. act out a picture - give a picture of an event and get the group to start by modelling the people in the picture as a still-life and then to devise a 'what happened next' and act it out
and so on ...!


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

The Union side instituted a draft. If your number came up, you could pay someone to go in your place. Split the class between drafted and paid.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Ukko said:


> The Union side instituted a draft. If your number came up, you could pay someone to go in your place. Split the class between drafted and paid.


More broadly, they could tell the tale of conscription throughout the entire war.

In the beginning, there was one United States Army (one classroom united). Then it splits with secession.

Early in the war, both sides had more volunteers than they thought they needed. The North was hampered by ridiculously short enlistment periods (3 months!). Then everyone realized this war would drag on. Then the Enrollment Act was passed in '63.

Substitutes were a problem. The North conscipted many new immigrants (hold some people in the class back until now?), which lead to draft riots.

The North began to use African-American soldiers, the South debated offering freedom to slaves who would take up arms for Dixie.

I could imagine spending a bit of time on this, maneuvering students around to represent all this. Some "die" off, etc.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

dzc4627 said:


> Alright, so a group of 4 people including me are doing an hour and 40 minute presentation in our AP US history class on the civil war. We need some form of "class interaction" and we would be stupid to not incorporate splitting the class up. Apart from that we are kind of clueless as to what we should do. Any good and innovative ideas guys?


Why not split your own group of four people into two, presenting a case for either side? E.g. one side talking about security abroad, not being willing to wait on a slow abolition process, the constitution being a revered vow as opposed to a compact, etc.; the other side talking about slavery north of the Mason-Dixon line, Massachusetts and other New England states threatening to secede on a number of occasions prior to the war (even as recent as the 1840's) and not being accused of treason for it, the North using it's majority in Congress to impose tariffs on the South, creating an unequal tax burden in a time in which there was no income tax, using those unequally levied taxes primarily to build railroads *in the North*, and so on.

Of special interest should be considerations like the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, Andrew Jackson's Force Bill and the tension between him and South Carolina over nullification, Jeffersonians (e.g. Jefferson Davis, John C. Calhoun, William Rawle) vs Jacksonians (e.g. Daniel Webster, Joseph Story, Abraham Lincoln, William Seward), and Rawle's pro-secession textbook being used at West Point military academy during Davis' time there.

What rights did the states have under the Articles of Confederation? Is there a reasonable limit on how much legislative and executive power the fed should reserve for itself? What does The Federalist have to say about these issues? How much of the population actually owned slaves in the South, and how much variance was there in public attitudes towards it, in the South? What did notable religious presences like the Southern Baptist Convention (of which Jefferson Davis' father Samuel and his brother Joseph were members) have to say about slavery? How was the modern Republican party formed from Jacksonian Democrats, Whigs, Abolitionists, Free-Soilers, and Know-Nothings? What was really said in the Lincoln-Douglass debates and what is the Higher Law doctrine?

Is the class aware that Davis actually had a black son? If the slaves were being abused everywhere, then why did John Brown and his ilk have no success at instigating a servile insurrection? What did Frederick Douglass have to say, and how did the slaves and freedmen on either side of the Mason-Dixon line feel about all of these issues? Does the class appreciate cultural phenomena that came out of this period like Brer Rabbit and Tom Sawyer? Are they aware that the North primarily sealed the deal with their victories in the west over the Mississippi River, e.g. Grant taking Vicksburg?

See how familiar the audience is with Lincoln's number of notable statements to the effect that he would was interested only in preserving the Union, as opposed to freeing the slaves, actually intimating like others did at the time that it might be best to deport the black slave population to Liberia. See what they think of the differences between the Emancipation Proclamation as an executive order to accomplish military ends, and the amendment passed under Johnson making slavery illegal everywhere.

Above all, make the class feel likes it's participating in coming to it's own verdict on history, that there a range of possible opinions instead of the narrow few that are normally proffered to students.



Triplets said:


> Dress up your teacher like Abe Lincoln and you and your accomplices like the John Wilkes Booth gang and make him pretend he is sitting in a theater...


Is there something wrong with me  I've been to Ford's Theater and the room where President Lincoln died, and the whole affair was sickening, but this post of yours had me laughing so hard that I spilled hot coffee in my lap :lol:


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Triplets said:


> Dress up your teacher like Abe Lincoln and you and your accomplices like the John Wilkes Booth gang and make him pretend he is sitting in a theater...


Didn't this happen after the war was officially over?


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

GreenMamba said:


> Andersonville. Rest of the class gets to play the prisoners.
> 
> Bring in a big bathtub and stage the Monitor vs. Virginia.
> 
> More seriously, the 1860 election was a 4-way deal. Each of you gives a brief speech as one of the candidates, have the class role play various political interests (?).


Do you mean Chase, Stantin, Seward, and Lincoln, or are you referring to the general election?


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Lukecash12 said:


> Do you mean Chase, Stantin, Seward, and Lincoln, or are you referring to the general election?


Lincoln, Douglas, Breckinridge, Bell.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

GreenMamba said:


> Lincoln, Douglas, Breckinridge, Bell.


Thanks for clearing that up. I thought you were talking about the primaries.


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## dzc4627 (Apr 23, 2015)

Thanks guys for the ideas! I will be incorporating some. I got more response here than on r/americanhistory! :^)


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Ukko said:


> The Union side instituted a draft. If your number came up, you could pay someone to go in your place. Split the class between drafted and paid.


Oh boy, you could even mention that Theodore Roosevelt's father paid someone to go in his stead. That's a juicy piece of information, and part of what compelled Teddy to quit his place as undersecretary of the Navy and volunteer.


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