Across Five Aprils Newspaper Project

Newspaper Webquest

Introduction:  You and a partner are reporters and editors living in southern Illinois during the Civil War.  This border territory, like Newton in Across Five Aprils, is in a turmoil of conflicting feelings.  Illinois is a Union state, but many people have family and friends in the South.  Many local men have gone off to fight for the Union, but several, like Bill, have left to join the Confederacy.

Task:  As a team, you will research, write, and edit a special edition of your newspaper that focuses on a specific battle mentioned in Across Five Aprils.  In this edition of your paper, you must include at least the following: (1) a news article about the battle (including quotes from soldiers and/or officers); (2) a human interest story (local or national, not directly tied to the war);  (3) a letter to the editor from a local resident, who may be for or against the war (politician, freed slave, soldier, wife, businessman, etc); and (4) graphics, such as political cartoons, maps, and/or photographs.  In addition, you may want to include other articles or features (true to the time period!) common to many newspapers: (obituaries, sports, classified ads, etc.).  The newspaper will be created using a Google doc.  If you do the minimum you can earn at most, a C.  If you do a little more, you can earn a B.  To get an A, your newspaper should be full of good stories, pictures, etc.   Every story, picture, map, etc. must have a live link to the url address so I can see where you got the information.  
Scoring Rubric for Newspaper Project

Process Divide the necessary roles with your partner.  You will need an overall editor as well as reporters for each article.  Decide whether you want to be pro-Union or pro-Confederacy, as this will determine the editorial position of your paper. Pick a battle mentioned in Across Five Aprils.  Use the chapter resources to begin your research. Broaden and deepen your research through general resources and listing of primary documents on the Internet. Write the articles. Find the answers to who, what, when, where, why, and how as necessary. Be sure that your information is accurate - newspaper reporters always check their facts through multiple sources.  Use illustrations to make your story clear and interesting to the reader. Write catchy, concise headlines. Meet your deadlines!  Edit the articles. Publish your paper (Don't forget to share with me!)  Remember that newspapers are printed in columns.  You will need to use the table feature of Google docs to make the columns.

 General Civil War Resources

The American Civil War: The Struggle to Preserve the Union  
Map of the Union & Confederacy
Other Civil War Maps
The Valley of the Shadow Project
The American Civil War Homepage
Vermont in the Civil War
Civil War Terminology
Civil War Quotes
This Week in the Civil War
Financing the Civil War Exhibit at the Museum of American Financial History
Civil War Medicine (brief description plus extensive links with follow up information)

Primary Documents:

 Newspapers

The Historical New York Times Project:  The Civil War Years 
Secession Era Editorials Project at Furman University (newspaper editorials leading up to the Civil War)
"A Tough Story" in the Cleveland Plain Dealer May 1861
Selected Articles-Cleveland, Ohio Newspapers 1861-65
Confederate Calvary desertion notice (1865)

Memoirs

Personal Memoirs by Ulysses S. Grant
Reminiscences of the Civil War by Gen. John B. Gordon
From Manassas to Appomattox by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet (CSA)
Advance and Retreat by Lt. Gen. J. B. Hood (CSA)
The Memoirs, Diary, and Life of Private Jefferson Moses, Company G, 93rd Illinois VolunteersCivil War Memories of Robert C. Cardin, Company B, 16th Tennessee Infantry

Letters

Letters from Ft. Sumter
Diaries, Letters, Recollections 
Photographs and Artwork

Selected Civil War Photographs (searchable index at the Library of Congress)
Valley of the Shadow Images Search (searchable index of photos and illustrations of battles)
Images of Wartime at The American Civil War Homepage
Civil War Cartoons (examples of political cartoons; some are difficult to read)
Civil War Album (modern photographs of battlefields, maps & official reports)
Maps

Civil War Maps (searchable index of historical maps at the Library of Congress)
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection (alphabetical listing of U.S. National Parks & Monuments)
Rare Civil War Map Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries

Miscellaneous (diaries, poems, sermons, legislation, etc.)

Documenting the American South (collection of electronic texts at UNC Chapel Hill)
Documentary Records at The American Civil War Homepage (public and private documents)
Digital Library and Archives at Virginia Tech (scroll down below photo for listing of documents)
Civil War Navies: Official Records (telegrams and reports about the battle at Hampton Roads)
The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion (Commanders' After Action Reports)
Confederate States of America Documents (The Avalon Project at Yale Law School)
Civil War Women On-line Archival Collections at Duke University
Clipart (modern clipart as well as historical line drawings)

Secession Related Documents

The Constitution of the Confederate States of America (1861)
Comparison of USA vs. CSA Constitutions
South Carolina Declaration of Secession ( Dec. 24, 1860)
Texas Ordinance of Secession (Feb. 2, 1861)
Mississippi Declaration of Secession (?)

The links below are intended to be starting places for independent research, not an inclusive look at the Civil War.  Where possible, I have tried to include multiple links for some information to provide a balance of viewpoints, as well as to prepare for those inevitable days when particular websites are down.  Items marked (2) have a second link to another website.  Battle names follow those used in the text, which in general uses Union names.

Chapters 1-6

Attack on Fort Sumter (2)
Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) (2)
Battle of Wilson's Creek
General John Charles Fremont

"Jethro listened with fascination to the new names of men and places.  He heard admiration voiced for a brilliant young officer named McClellan, who had been put in top command of the army in the East.  He became aware of such names as Seward and Chase; he knew who Senator Sumner was and old Thad Stevens, what such names as Wendell Phillips and Henry Ward Beecher stood for, what roles were being played by Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee."

Ulysses S. Grant
Battle of Fort Henry
Battle of Fort Donelson
General Albert Sidney Johnston (CSA)
Battle of Pea Ridge
Battle of Shiloh (Pittsburgh Landing) (2)
General William Tecumseh Sherman   (memoirs of)

Chapters 7-9

General P. G. T Beauregard (CSA)
General Don Carlos Buell
Battle of Corinth
General John Pope
General Philip Sheridan
Battle of Antietam
Battle of Fredricksburg
Battle of Stones River
The Draft in the Civil War and Draft Riots
Desertion  of Eb and Court Martial Records
Letter of Pardon from President Lincoln 

Chapter 10

Battle of Chancellorsville (2)
General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker
General Ambrose Burnside
General William "Old Rosy" Rosecrans
General Braxton Bragg (CSA)
General Pemberton (CSA)
Admiral Foote
General George Meade
Battle of Gettysburg (2)
Battle of Vicksburg (2)
President Lincoln writes "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the Sea." 

Chapter 11

Battle of Chickamauga (2) 
Emancipation Proclamation
General James Longstreet (CSA)
General George Thomas "The Rock of Chickamauga"
Battle of Logan's Crossroads (2)
General Alexander McCook 
General Thomas Crittenden
Gettysburg Address Exhibit and Plain Text Version
Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (Dec. 8, 1863)
General Henry Halleck
Horace Greeley
Battle of the Wilderness (2)

         Battle of Spotsylvania

Battle of Cold Harbor (2)
Siege of Petersburg (2)
Admiral Farragut
Battle of Mobile Bay (2)
Fall of Atlanta
General Early (CSA)
Battle of Cedar Creek (2)
General Hood (CSA)
Battle of Franklin (e-book by John Copley)
Battle of Nashville (2)

Chapter 12

Sherman's March to the Sea (2)
Andersonville Prison
Camp Douglas
General John Schofield
13th Amendment to the Constitution
Surrender at Appomattox
Battle Hymn of the Republic
Assassination of President Lincoln 

Across Five Aprils

Today, we will begin reading the novel "Across Five Aprils", by Irene Hunt.

Across Five Aprils is a historical novel about a boy who grows up during the Civil War. Jethro's family farms in Southern Illinois and is divided about which side of the war to support. Two of his brothers fight for the North and one fights for the South. The remaining family members face trouble from the community because of the brother who went South. When Jethro's father has a heart attack, Jethro has to become the man of the family and the main farmer. He is a sensitive boy and hears of the war through letters, finding out that it is not a pleasant experience. By writing a letter to Abraham Lincoln, his hero, Jethro helps his cousin who deserted the Northern army. By the end of the novel, an enlightened Jethro comes to the realization of the horrors of war.

At the end of each chapter, write a 1 to 2 paragraph summary.

Comparison of North and South

Click on the following link to start lesson:  Quizlet

Test Today!

Click on the following link to take the test:  Causes of the Civil War Test

When finished, go to the following link to explore:  Civil War 150

Causes of the Civil War Games

Tomorrow, you have a test.  Click on the following links to play some games to help you learn about causes of the Civil War:

Hangman

Battleship

Eword game

Causes of the Civil War- matching game

Missouri Compromise and Compromise of 1850 quiz

Kansas Nebraska Act and Dred Scott quiz

Items on tomorrow's test include:
abolition
slavery- chattel
popular sovereignty
Missouri Compromise (1820)
Mexican Cession
Wilmot Proviso
Compromise of 1850
Fugitive Slave Act
Kansas Nebraska Act
Bleeding Kansas
Pottowatomi Creek Massacre
tariff
John Brown
Dred Scott Case
raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia
Stephen A. Douglas
Abraham Lincoln
Democratic Party
Republican Party
secede
Underground Railroad
Harriet Tubman
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Election of 1860
states' rights

Link to an excellent powerpoint over causes of the Civil War:  powerpoint presentation

Slavery in America

Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 solidified the central importance of slavery to the South's economy. By the mid-19th century, America's westward expansion, along with a growing abolition movement in the North, would provoke a great debate over slavery that would tear the nation apart in the bloody American Civil War.

We will begin our study of slavery through the interactive site below:
The Underground Railroad
When finished exploring the site, go to the following link to write a story.  Print it and hand in.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/underground_railroad/tell_story.asp

Slave States vs. Free States

Today you will be given 3 maps and instructions for completing each one.

In the years leading up to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, tensions began to rise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions within the U.S. Congress and across the country. They reached a boiling point after Missouri’s 1819 request for admission to the Union as a slave state, which threatened to upset the delicate balance between slave states and free states. To keep the peace, Congress orchestrated a two-part compromise, granting Missouri’s request but also admitting Maine as a free state. It also passed an amendment that drew an imaginary line across the former Louisiana Territory, establishing a boundary between free and slave regions that remained the law of the land until it was made void by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

Divisions over slavery in territory gained in the Mexican-American (1846-48). War were resolved in the Compromise of 1850. It consisted of laws admitting California as a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with the question of slavery in each to be determined by popular sovereignty, settling a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute in the former's favor, ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and making it easier for southerners to recover fugitive slaves.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was an 1854 bill that mandated "popular sovereignty"--allowing settlers of a territory to decide whether slavery would be allowed within a new state's borders. Proposed by Stephen A. Douglas--Abraham Lincoln's opponent in the influential Lincoln-Douglas debates--the bill overturned the Missouri Compromise's use of latitude as the boundary between slave and free territory. The conflicts that arose between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers in the aftermath of the act's passage led to the period of violence known as Bleeding Kansas, and helped paved the way for the American Civil War (1861-65).