1. Brian Riley Vacaville Unified School District Vacaville, California
Civil War Voices
A Lesson In Historical Empathy
Brian Riley
Vacaville Unified School District
Vacaville, California

2. Historical Empathy
This lesson looks at the lives of soldiers who fought in the Civil War through their own words.
I have chosen passages I believe reveal an accurate representation of the life of a Civil War soldier.
Also, the lesson makes no distinction between Union and Confederate soldiers; although there were some significant differences you can articulate, in general their experiences were close to the same.

3. Objectives:
Students will…
be able to examine primary sources to discover what life was like as a Civil War soldier,
use those primary sources to answer questions about the lives of Civil War soldiers, and
create a display that represents that Civil War soldier experience.

4. Historical Investigative Question
How can the stories, written in their own words, impact our understanding of Civil War soldiers?

5. This lesson asks students to answer three key questions:
Why did men and women fight in the Civil War?
What was their personal experience as soldiers?
How did the war effect them when it was over and they went home?

6. Getting Started

7. Looking at Historical Motivations

8. A Closer Look at The Civil War

12. Voices of The Civil War

13. Analyzing Primary Sources

14. Reconciliation by Walt Whitman, 1866
1 Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
2 Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
3 That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again,
4 and ever again, this soil’d world;
5 For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
6 I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin – I draw near,
7 Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

16. An In-depth Comparison

17. Recognizing Bias

18. Culminating Project