TOCWOC - A Civil War Blog

I took my US History I students on a field trip to the Minuteman National Park last Wednesday. Great day. My US History II kids, currently studying the Civil War, were left with my co-teacher, and we decided the show the movie, “Glory,” which I’m pretty sure that anyone reading this post has [...]

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I’m “doing” the battle of Gettysburg with my US History II today. I’ve passed out pictures of Lee, and the kids did a chart of the Eastern Theater battles. A good lesson, but I was little crestfallen when one of the students asked at the end of the lesson, “Lee was on our [...]

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I’ve read and noted the new titles listed by Brett. However with this post I want to recommend some older titles(in some cases over a century old) you may have missed. They aren’t especially obscure, all have been published and discussed since the 19th century.
“Army Life in a Black Regiment.” Thomas Wentworth [...]

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Lectured on John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. They learned the name “John Brown” in connection with Bleeding Kansas last class. This class I passed out a photograph of Brown without identifying him and asked for their impressions. Brown looks fairly grim in all his photos and the responses were predictable. [...]

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Kevin Levin at Civil War Memory has a bitter screed about people going to Antietam and enjoying themselves, damn it. It’s a battlefield! People died! Platitudes are being uttered!
What do you see when you go to a national battlefield? If the NPS is operating it, you can bet its really clean. And [...]

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Each year I face a class of new students who don’t realize(until they meet me) that the American Civil War is a fascinating subject. When you rush at a student waving a yardstick in an reenactment of Preston Brooks’ attack on Charles Sumner, pass around a minie ball, have them copy down the definition [...]

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