Home Video ProgramsLesson PlansPrimary SourcesMaps and GraphsBios and Events

 

LESSON PLAN: The Causes of Conflict

Video Segments


Objectives

  • To help students understand the relationship between historical causes and their effects and outcomes.

  • To enable students to see how people are directly affected by conflicts occurring in society.


Table of Contents


Connecting to the Past

  1. The Civil War emerged out of deep fractures in the fragile Union. In the 1800s, these rifts split the country along North-South lines. Discuss some of the crises the country had faced earlier in the 1800s. How were they resolved? Review the events that brought about the Civil War.

  2. Review Volume #142, Chapter 6 some of the events that prepared the way for the war. What kind of message did Uncle Tom's Cabin spread? Why was there fighting in Kansas? View the segment about the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision. What was Lincoln's reaction to the decision? Further information is available in Profiles: Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the Glossary: Dred Scott, and Kansas-Nebraska Act.

  3. Discuss the images in the videos of the daily life in the North and the South. These hint at the possibility of North-South conflict by juxtaposing the agricultural South with the industrializing North. When might the difference between agricultural and industrial ways of life create conflict? (Explain to the class that conflict arose when these ways of life began to seriously interfere with each other.) What kinds of political conflicts do the political cartoons illustrate? (Conflicts over power, land, rights, and other political conflicts.)

  4. Discuss the ways in which southerners must have felt threatened by the industrializing North. What aspects of a southerner's life could be unsettled by industry? By machinery? By factories? By the abolition of slavery? By the flow of people to the cities? Have each student write a sentence describing the conflict as he or she sees it. Why were these conflicts deep or serious enough to result in war?

  5. The causes of the Civil War can be understood as deep changes in society. What are some changes students feel today? What are some changes that create conflict? What are some changes that can be constructive or creative? Did the Civil War create opportunities for change or growth? Play Volume #150, Chapter 7, for one view of why some opportunities require work to fully realize them.


Thinking Critically

  1. Explain the terms "bias" and "stereotype" to the class. Tell the class that a biased point of view is one that fails to take alternative perspectives into account. Offer some examples of how images and words can be used to create and express bias. Ask students to volunteer examples of bias or stereotypes familiar to them.

  2. Look at the Political Cartoon. Are the conflicts represented among or between people, governments, or countries? How did the artists characterize the figures in the cartoons and why? How does caricature arrive at truths? What point of view did each artist represent?

    Ask students to draw an image that represents a different perspective on the conflict.

    Ask students to bring one of the political cartoons to life by acting it out. Students will need to work in groups to write the script (or outline) for the performance.

    Ask students to animate one of the political cartoons by developing all or part of it into a comic strip.

  3. Show students the Cotton Production graph. Why was the stability of the South's "Cotton Kingdom" an economic factor in the growing conflict between North and South? Examine the Slave States and Free States map. (Northern opposition to admitting Missouri and, later, Kansas or other territories as slave states, interfered with the South's interest in expanding production in territories suitable for cotton growing.)

  4. The South's cotton production accounted for seven-eighth's of the world's cotton by 1860. It made up more than half of the United States' exports. Cotton traveled north where it was exchanged for finished products themselves headed south; this interdependence was normal but also fragile, given the moral opposition to slavery.

    Discuss the term "interdependence" with the class. Can students think of a single product that does not depend on trade and exchange, on a variety of parts, suppliers, distributors, etc? Have students ask local store owners for examples of interdependence. If students prefer, they might ask others who could provide an explanation of interdependence: a coach or physical education teacher; a musician; a team athlete; a store employee; etc. How many definitions of the term does the class come up with?


Empathizing with Personal Experience

  1. Every day people are affected, sometimes in ways they are unaware of, by national and international events. Listen to the letter from Sullivan Ballou (Volume #142, Chapter 14). How was this man influenced by events of his time? Did he seem to understand what was happening? Have students describe the conflict that Sullivan Ballou was caught up in. Ask them to make a few notes about how the war affected Ballou. How did the war affect his mind? His body? His friends? His family? Ask students for examples of other people who were transformed by the conflict. How were their experiences similar to or different from Sullivan Ballou's?

  2. Discuss some of the events that have been in the headlines recently, and ask students if they can think of ways in which they are being affected directly or indirectly by them. Help students to see the impact on individuals of economic, political, cultural, and other decisions made in their own community, in their country, and in other countries around the world.

  3. Choose a local issue familiar to the class. The issue might be one directly affecting the school. Describe some of the issue's characteristics on the left of the board. In the middle of the board, list its actual or potential impact on the community. On the right side of the board, note the ways in which students will feel its impact.

    Discuss the activity. How could this exercise be repeated with a number of different conflicts? You might have each student research a local, national, or international conflict and repeat this exercise on a sheet of paper.

    Have students look at the Photographs and imagine themselves as one of the characters figured. They could then make a presentation to the class (as individuals, pairs, or groups) in which they role play and explain the effect the war has had on them.

  4. Give each student a sheet of butcher paper or a large piece of construction paper. Tell the class that each student is to design a personal biography or timeline on the paper. Biographies can be told using metaphors, such as a winding road, river, city map, tree, collage, web, etc. They should emphasize the turning points, crises, solutions, and other events critical to their life histories so far.

    Next to each major event, students should write a few descriptive words. Encourage them to be creative; you might also want to join the class and make one of your own. Students should use photographs, markers, newspaper articles, and other materials (souvenirs, memorabilia, etc.) to create their biographies.

    Divide the class into pairs and have students present each other's biographies.

  5. Have students do a personal biography for an individual involved in the Civil War. They may be required to research their individual for biographical information. For anonymous personalities, students might use general information to create a simulated character biography.

    Have students present their biographies of other characters to the class. Ask them to present their biographies in first-person voice. Students should cue up their character on the screen when doing their presentations.


Using What We Know

  1. Review some of the events in Volume #142 that might be considered precursors to the war.

  2. Ask students if the issues at stake for Americans in 1860 are issues alive today. What are some examples of controversial issues today? Choose one that interests the entire class. Discuss it with a view towards airing a variety of opinions. What kinds of questions come up? Does discussion cause any students to become less sure of their opinions?

  3. Using the same issue, do the "point of view" activity described in Thematic Lesson Plan: "Some Things are Worth Fighting For".

    Discuss the activity. What defines controversial issues? Why do people take different sides on an issue? What are some ways in which they express their differences? Who is responsible for resolving conflicts that affect an entire country? Are citizens responsible in any way? Should they be? What are some ways of resolving these kinds of differences?

 

Back to Top of Page