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ED 462 346 SO 033 586

AUTHOR Perry, DouglasTITLE The Civil War as Photographed by Mathew Brady. The

Constitution Community: Civil War and Reconstruction(1850-1870).

INSTITUTION National Archives and Records Administration, Washington,DC

PUB DATE 2001-00-00NOTE 25p.; For related lesson plans, see ED 461 604-607 and ED

461 609-615. Photographic images may not reproduce clearly.AVAILABLE FROM National Archives and Records Administration, 700

Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20408. Tel:866-325-7208 (Toll Free); e-mail: inquire@nara.gov. For fulltext: http://www.nara.gov/education/cc/main.html.

PUB TYPE Guides - Classroom - Teacher (052)EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS *Civil War (United States); *Government Role; *Photographs;

Photography; *Primary Sources; Secondary Education; Slavery;Social Studies

IDENTIFIERS Articles of Confederation; Brady (Mathew); National Civicsand Government Standards; National History Standards;*United States Constitution

ABSTRACTMany historians call the Civil War the central event in U.S.

history. The formation of the U.S. Constitution corrected the autonomy ofindividual states that the Articles of Confederation did not harness. Theyoung country struggled for 75 years to find a graceful balance between thepower of the federal government and that of the states. The states rights andthe slavery issue propelled the country into civil war. Mathew Brady and hiscolleagues used a new medium, photography, to document battlefields, camps,towns, and people touched by the War. No battles were photographed becausethe still primitive technology of photography required that subjects be stillat the moment the camera's shutter snapped. This lesson examines how theCivil War threatened the very purpose of the U.S. Constitution as stated inthe Preamble. The lesson correlates to the National History Standards and tothe National Standards for Civics and Government. It uses 16 Mathew Bradyphotographs taken during the Civil War as the primary sources. The lessonprovides historical background on the sociology of the Civil War,photography, and lists four resources. It offers instruction for implementingsix diverse teaching activities, such as document analysis, a readingassignment and discussion, a writing assignment, research on other Civil Warphotographs, and an extension activity. (Contains a photograph analysisworksheet.) (BT)

Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be madefrom the original document.

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ational Archives and Records Administration

THE CONSTITUTIONCOMMUNITY

Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1870)

The Civil War asPhotographed by Mathew

Brady

By Douglas Perry

National Archives and Records Administration700 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 204081-866-325-7208

http://www.nara.gov/education/classrm.html

2001

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONOffice of Educational Research and Improvement

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC)

4TrThis document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or organizationoriginating it.

0 Minor changes have been made toimprove reproduction quality.

Points of view or opinions stated in thisdocument do not necessarily representofficial OERI position or policy.

The Constitution Community is a partnership between classroom teachers and education specialists from

the National Archives and Records Administration. We are developing lessons and activities that address

constitutional issues, correlate to national academic standards, and encourage the analysis of primary

source documents. The lessons that have been developed are arranged according to historical era.

2BEST COPY AVAILABLE

4.-77TP.P74

J

ational Archives and Records Administration

THE CONSTITUTION COMMUNITY

The Civil Waras Photographed

by Mathew Brady

Constitutional Connection

This lesson illustrates how the Civil War threatened the very purpose of the Constitutionas stated in the Preamble .

This lesson correlates to the National History Standards.

Era 5 -Civil War and Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Standard 2B -Demonstrate understanding of the social experience of the war onthe battlefield and homefront.

This lesson correlates to the National Standards for Civics andGovernment.

Standard III.A.1 -Explain how the U. S. Constitution grants and distributes power tonational and state government and how it seeks to prevent the abuse of power.

Cross-curricular Connections

Share these activities with your history, American studies, and language arts colleagues.

List of Documents

1. Colors of the 23rd New York Infantry..

2. Wilderness, near Chancellorsville, VA.

3. View in Wilderness area of VA .

4. Pontoon across the Rappahannock River, VA, Cavalry colunm .

5. Battery in action at Fredericksburg, VA .

6. Wounded soldiers under trees, Marye's Heights, Fredericksburg, after the battle ofSpotsylvania, 1864 .

7. Wounded soldiers in hospital .

8. Confederate prisoners waiting for transportation, Belle Plain, VA .

9. A company of the 6th Maine Infantry on parade after the battle of Fredericksburg. Attime of the charge across the stone wall at foot of Marye's Heights, General JosephHooker was in command of the Federals and General Fitzhugh Lee in command of theConfederates .

10. Confederate dead behind a stone wall at Fredericksburg, VA. The 6th. Maine Infantrypenetrated the Confederate lines at this point .

11. Aquia Creek and the Fredericksburg Railroad, with a construction corps at work .

12. Battery D, 2nd U. S. Artillery, at Fredericksburg, VA .

13. Pontoon bridge across the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, VA .

14. An interior view of Union breastworks on Little Round Top, Gettysburg, PA .

15. Camp of the 44th New York Infantry near Alexandria, VA .

16. Camp scene showing winter huts and corduroy roads .

Historical Background

Many historians call the Civil War the central event in U.S. history. The formation of theConstitution corrected the autonomy of individual states that the Articles ofConfederation did not harness. Still, the young country struggled for 75 years to find agraceful balance between the power of the federal government and the several states. Therights of states and the issue of slavery propelled the country into civil war. Today,America defines itself from that point forward, as it still seeks a more perfect union andequality for all its citizens.

The sociology of the American Civil War can be viewed through a medium that wascoming of age in the middle of the 19th century: photography. The National Archives andRecords Administration makes available on-line over 6,000 digitized images from theCivil War. Mathew Brady and his associates, most notably Alexander Gardner, GeorgeBarnard, and Timothy O'Sullivan, photographed many battlefields, camps, towns, and

people touched by the war. Their images depict the multiple aspects of the war exceptone crucial element: battle. Photographs show camp life, routines, war preparations, themoments just prior to battle, and the aftermath of battle. The primitive technology ofphotography required that subjects be still at the moment the camera's shutter snapped.Battle scenes are, therefore, missing from the record of history of this era. The study ofwar journals and artifacts has developed a network of people, particularly located on theEast Coast, who perform Civil War re-enactments. Recently, these groups have helpedAmerican filmmakers portray the war in realistic terms in movies like Gettysburg andGlory and in other documentaries on key Civil War battles. Thus, the more moderntechnology of cinematography fills the gap left by photography in recording the battles.

Resources

The Library of Congress has over 1,000 photographs of the Civil War in its AmericanMemory collection. It includes a search engine(http://lcweb2.1oc.gov/ammem/cwphome.html).

McPherson, James. For Cause and Comrade: Why Men Fought in the Civil War . NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1997. (McPherson read over 1,000 letters and 200 diariesof Confederate and Union soldiers to come up with his answers to the book's titlequestion.)

McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era . New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1988. (This is McPherson's Pulitzer prize-winning history of the CivilWar.)

The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War by historianEdward L. Ayers of the University of Virginia allows students to compare and contrast aNorthern town with a Southern one before, during, and after the Civil War.(http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/index.html) .

Teaching Activities

Document Analysis

1. Provide students with historical background on the Civil War era from textbooks,encyclopedias, or supplemental material. Assign at least two photographs for eachstudent to analyze using the Photograph Analysis Worksheet . Next, place students intogroups of four. Arrange them in groups so that two students in each group will haveanalyzed the same photograph. Direct students to compare and contrast their findings andanalyses of the photographs. Once they are familiar with the photographs of the group,ask them to compile a list of adjectives that they think describe the life of a soldier duringthe Civil War.

Class Discussion

2. Around the perimeter of the classroom, place the words that describe the life of asoldier during the Civil War. Intersperse among these words copies of the 16photographs. As the students visit the in-class gallery, guide them in composing somethought-provoking questions for discussion: What motivated these men to put up withsuch difficult circumstances? If there had been television, would the Civil War haveended in 1862? How did soldiers cope with the death of their friends and fellow soldiers?Lead a class discussion using the questions posed by students. A particularly helpful bookas a resource for both teacher and student is James McPherson's For Cause and Comrade. (See list of resources.)

Reading Assignment and Discussion

3. Keep the photos and word lists posted in the classroom while students discuss theirquestions and read literature from the Civil War era. Ask students whether the postedphotographs are similar to or different from the images described in the literature theyread.

Writing Assignment

4. Ask students to select one of the posted photographs and complete one of the followingfour writing assignments based on one of the pictured individuals.

A. Compose an imaginary journal for a Confederate or Union soldier.B. Compose an imaginary letter that a Confederate or Union soldier would send home tofamily or to the local newspaper.C. Compose for a Confederate or Union soldier a fictional obituary that will appear in hishometown newspaper.D. Compose a free-verse poem. Giving students 150-200 lines of poetry from WaltWhitman can provide some simple modeling for their verses.

Research

5. Direct students to the NAIL database to find other photographs that show additionalaspects of war life for "Johnny Reb" or "Billy Yank." Ask them to print out these photosand add them to the classroom gallery. http://www.nara.gov/nara/nail.html

Extension Activity

6. For classes reading Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage while studying theCivil War, discuss with students the realism of photography as practiced by MathewBrady and other photographers with the naturalism of Stephen Crane.

The documents included in this project are from Record Group 111, Records of theOffice of the Chief Signal Officer. They are available online through the National

Archives Information Locator (NAIL) database http://www.nara.gov/nara/nail.html,control numbersNWDNS-111-B-5417NWDNS-111-B-29NWDNS-111-B-5085NWDNS-111-B-508NWDNS-111-B-314NWDNS-111-B-349NWDNS-111-B-286NWDNS-111-B-404NWDNS-111-B-168NWDNS-111-B-514NWDNS-111-B-4877NWDNS-165-SB-31NWDNS-165-SB-32NWDNS-111-B-6357NWDNS-111-B-145NWDNS-111-B-223.NAIL is a searchable database that contains information about a wide variety of NARAholdings across the country. You can use NAIL to search record descriptions bykeywords or topics and retrieve digital copies of selected textual documents,photographs, maps, and sound recordings related to thousands of topics.

This article was written by Douglas Perry, a teacher at Gig Harbor High School in GigHarbor, WA.

ational Archives and Records Administration

Photograph Analysis Worksheet

Step 1. ObservationA. Study the photograph for 2 minutes. Form an overall impression of the photograph andthen examine individual items. Next, divide the photo into quadrants and study eachsection to see what new details become visible.

B. Use the chart below to list people, objects, and activities in the photograph.

PEOPLE OBJECTS ACTIVITIESStep 2. InferenceBased on what you have observed above, list three things you might infer from thisphotograph.

Step 3. QuestionsA. What questions does this photogaph raise in your mind?

B. Where could you find answers to them?

Designed and developed by theEducation Staff, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC 20408.

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