Crossroads: High School Curriculum
Unit VI: "Now We Are Engaged in a Great Civil War": 1848-1880

Lesson 4

Major Concepts

Objectives

Suggested lesson/activities

As President, Abraham Lincoln not only led the Union in the Civil War, but led the Union in the war of ideas and arguments with the Confederacy; after his death, his victory in that war helped make him a beloved national hero and the central figure in American political thought.

Objective: The student will be able to:

Analyze an original document written by Abraham Lincoln in terms of its ideas relative to the Union, the Confederacy, and the Civil War.

Suggested lesson/activities:

1. Distribute a writing of Abraham Lincoln which in some way expresses his ideas about the Union and/or the Confederacy to each student. There are ample original resources available to enable each student to have a different document. Excellent sources include the Library of America edition of Lincoln's Selected Writings (especially volume 2, covering the years 1859-1865) and Andrew Delbanco's The Portable Abraham Lincoln. [Save the Gettysburg Address (1863) and the Second Inaugural Address (1865) for lesson/activity 5 below.]

2. Have students extract key ideas from their documents that express Lincoln's ideas or arguments of positions taken about the Union and the Confederacy.

3. Present the ideas to classmates.

4. Work with the group to compile the major ideas and arguments into a single summary statement.

5. Have all students read the Gettysburg Address (1863) and the Second Inaugural Address (1865). Pursue the same discussion with respect to these two documents.

6. [Recommend for interested students: Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg (1992).]