LESSON PLAN: Some Things Are Worth Fighting For
Video Segments
Objectives
- To explore the significance of personal causes.
Table of Contents
- Ask students to describe something they have stood up for. How did students feel about having a cause worth defending? What actions did students take that demonstrated their commitment? Are there any causes or issues students think they should have stood up for but didn't?
- Ask the class to describe what northerners felt they were defending. Southerners? Women? Abolitionists? Slaves and free blacks? Who were some people who tried to get others involved? See Profiles of John Brown, John Caldwell Calhoun, Dorothea Lynde Dix, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Tubman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe for examples.
Each of these figures chose a different way of standing up for his or her own personal cause. Some, like Douglass, Phillips, and Stowe, were writers and speakers, and used the power of the written and spoken word. Others, like Dix and Tubman, set examples through their actions. Brown took a more radical route. The means chosen by these people for expressing their beliefs and values ranged from the ordinary to the extreme.
- Review John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (Volume #142, Chapter 7). Stop the segment before he is put on trial. Debate Brown's raid as a class. Continue the segment through the trial. What was Lincoln's reaction to the raid? How does Frederick Douglass' reaction compare with Lincoln's? What means would your students use to defend an issue? What are examples of different means? Do the ends justify the means?
- Review Volume #146, Chapter 9. What were these soldiers fighting for? Why was joining the Union army at this time especially meaningful for many black soldiers?
What was Frederick Douglass' view of the United States? Why did he want to defend the Union against the Confederacy?
What might slaves have thought about the war? What did they have to gain from a Union victory? Why would many former slaves move northwards after the war was over? What kinds of attitudes might have taken a long time to change in the South?
- Divide the class into groups and have each group role play either southern slave-owners or slaves. Give each group one of the following two sets of questions by writing them on the board. Ask the groups to discuss and write down both their goals and their means of achieving them.
Slave owners - Can you think of ways to preserve your way of life without depending on slavery? What might be some alternatives to slavery? How determined are you to preserve your way of life?
Slaves - Do you think you can achieve freedom while living in the South? What can you do to gain freedom? How determined are you to achieve freedom?
Discuss the activity as a class. How resolute were the groups about achieving their goals? What means did they select to reach their goals?
- Review the Gettysburg Address. What was the public's reaction to Lincoln's speech at the time? Why is it remembered today?
Has anyone in the class heard or seen a president's speech? Ask students what makes or should make a good speech. How are speeches used to explain or build a cause? Do speakers always tell the truth in their speeches?
- Give students copies of the Gettysburg Address. Explain to the class that in the time of the Civil War, many speeches were written for their sound reasoning rather than their sound bites; speeches frequently were longer and more demanding on their listeners than they are today. The Gettysburg Address was notably brief for its time.
Ask students to first identify the word each thinks is the most important word in the speech. Either as a class, or with students in pairs or groups, have them next try to paraphrase the speech. Students might want to begin by constructing an outline of the speech's most important points. Ask students to rewrite the speech in today's English. When they are finished, display students' work on the classroom wall when they are finished and discuss the results.
Students might reword the speech in contemporary English and deliver it to the class. Compare and contrast the differences between students' versions.
- Compare the Gettysburg Address with President Kennedy's "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You" speech. What are the most important and memorable phrases in each? What was each president hoping to communicate? Invite students to write their own versions of a presidential speech, either for the time period of the Civil War or for today.
- Have students enact a presidential debate around issues related to the time of the Civil War. Before beginning, the class should designate a moderator and judges.
- Begin this "point of view" activity before watching The Civil War. Tie a long piece of string across the classroom at a height that students can reach. Write the following statement on the board: "War is an acceptable means to end a conflict if no other means are effective." Ask students to think about the statement and write a response to it on a quarter of a sheet of paper (use index cards, if available.) They should write their names on the other side.
Explain to the class that each end of the string is for those who are very sure of their position, and the center is for those who are unsure. One end of the string is for "War is never an acceptable means of resolving conflict" and the other end is for "War is an acceptable means of resolving conflict." Have each student attach his or her opinion to the string using a paper clip or clothespin so that its position on the string corresponds to how certain he or she feels about it. Invite students to change the positions of their cards throughout the Civil War series, according to the degree to which they have changed their opinions.
Ask students if The Civil War changed how and what they thought about war. How many answered yes? No? Which students moved their positions a lot? Did any students switch sides? Did most students' views become more extreme or more compromising? What caused students to change their positions?
Empathizing with Personal Experience
- If you are using The Civil War in more than one class, you might designate different classes "North" and "South." Have students write letters to classmates on the opposing side. What kinds of commonalities do students see in the experience each side had of the war? Did northerners and southerners alike suffer? Did they believe in their cause yet also have their moments of doubt?
- Divide the class into groups and have each group create and write out a role play based on one of the following scenarios.
- Two sons argue at the dinner table over which side to fight for.
- Mother and father argue over which side their sons should be fighting for.
- Mother and father argue about whether or not their sons should be fighting in the war.
- A family gets into an argument over recruiting blacks into the Union army.
- Should the family help transport slaves along the "underground railroad?"
- Absent from the armies which hunkered down for battle through the years 1861 to 1865 were those men fortunate enough to buy their way out of conscription. In the South, slave-owners with more than twenty slaves were not forced to join the army. Six thousand (inflated) dollars could buy a southern farmer his freedom. In the North, the fee was $300 paid to the government in cash--though it was also possible to buy substitutes. Have students create posters or newspaper ads calling men into service or requesting substitutes.
Explain the conscription acts to the class. Why were soldiers upset with the draft laws? What was the difference between a volunteer soldier and a drafted soldier? What kinds of factors contributed to high desertion rates, and why did many conscripts fail to show up for service? Discuss the importance of morale to an army.
- As a way of showing how people felt about personal causes related to the war, invite students to draw political cartoons. Topics might include: abolition, emancipation, battles and casualties, hygiene and hospital conditions, and states' rights.
- Have students write a journal entry from the point of view of Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, or both, after the fall of Fort Sumter.
- Give each student a large sheet of butcher paper. Divide the class into pairs. Have each student work with his or her partner to first draw an outline (silhouette) of his or her partner on the paper. Next have students write their names vertically inside their silhouettes. Ask them to choose and write adjectives that relate to their sense of honor, responsibility, duty, commitment, etc., and that match each of the horizontal letters.
Review Profiles. Who do your students identify with? What is a hero? Have these conceptions changed? Are soldiers heroes today?
You might have students work in groups to draw a silhouette of a generic hero onto butcher paper. What are these heroes like on the inside? (Add the personality traits of leaders within the silhouette's borders; see other leadership activities in the Thematic Lesson Plan: Leadership.)
- Invite students to make posters or speeches, to design a soap opera, comic strip, or music video, etc., in order to dramatize a cause they feel strongly about. Discuss the projects. How should students choose their audiences? Do the projects communicate their messages well?
- Ask students to give examples of social groups which are supposed to stand up for and defend one another. What are some groups in which members might risk their lives in the process? Which of the examples are most dangerous? Discuss the issue of gang violence. Why do people join gangs? Why do gang members swear not to give each other away? What would happen to a gang as a whole if its members told on one another? What would happen to its individual members? Are there limits to what a person should be willing to defend?
Back to Top of Page