Introduction

"Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came," said Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address. No one envisioned the changes four years of "remorseless revolution" would bring.

The first "total war" in history, the American Civil War transformed the nation, altering the nature of government and requiring the complete mobilization of human capital and economic resources. On both the home front and the battle front the results were revolutionary. The new photographic medium captured brutal images from the battlefield; the casualties inflicted by new weapons were staggering. Women assumed new responsibilities on farms, and in factories, offices, and hospitals. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation redefined the war. A Union victory meant the nation would no longer be the largest slaveholding country in the world. When the fighting ended, the Union was preserved but at enormous cost. 

How did the war experiences of soldiers and civilians change their outlook? What information was recorded in diaries and letters, what left out? What impact did photographs have on the war effort? What problems in society did the war resolve? What new ones did it create? Web activities and research links will assist you in thinking about these and other questions on the Civil War.

Web Activities 

1.  The Civil War was fought on both the battlefront and the home front. The personal letters and diaries of soldiers and their families were private, intimate, and represented an effort to maintain connection between the two fronts. Public letters, and the envelopes that contained them, served to inform the public of military engagements, encourage patriotism, and remind audiences of the war's human dimension. What historical insights do you think the war letters provide? How would you characterize the changes in outlook that occurred as the reality of total warfare set in? What evidence do you find that the central issues soldiers concerned themselves with were the same whether they wore blue or gray? 

• Explore the three parts of "Civil War Writings: 1861-1865" a student project created for Valley of the Shadow site at the University of Virginia: Genre & Audience, Civil War Writings in Time and Space, and Themes of Letters and Diaries. Read the introduction to the Letters of Peter Boyer (Franklin).  Compare the letter written by James R. McCutchan in 1861 to the letter Peter Boyer wrote his father in 1865. Go to Letters of William Smith Hanger Baylor (Augusta). Examine Baylor's two letters to his wife and the third letter informing her of his death.
• Letters from an Iowa Soldier in the Civil War are part of a collection written by Newton Robert Scott, Private, Company A, of the 36th Infantry, Iowa Volunteers. Go to the "Table of Contents" and select representative letters for study. 
• Go to Images of Battle, a collection of letters from the battlefield written by Union and Confederate Soldiers. Part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Southern Historical Collection, the letters are color coded by the battlefield from which they were written. A companion map connects the letters to their location. Compare the letter from Vicksburg of Union soldier A. J. Withrow to his wife in Iowa with one written by James Munnerlyn, a member of "Jeb" Stuart's cavalry, to his sister in South Carolina. Read John Caldwell's letter to his father and the letter of consolation that followed. 
• For the civilian wartime perspective go to Civilian Strife, then read excerpts from The Journal of Jane Howison Beale, a Fredericksburg resident.

2.  Your task in this activity is to take a virtual excursion of selected Civil War battles. Using the chapter interactive maps as a guide, and drawing from the Web site resources you visit, explore the changing face of battle. What evidence do you find that technology transformed the battlefield and the conditions under which soldiers fought? What story did war photographers tell, as reflected in their photographs? What were the consequences of deteriorating conditions on the home front, noted in activity 1, on the battlefront? 

• Refer frequently to the illustrated, five-part Time Line of The Civil War to track battles and events.
• Tour the following battlefields. As you journey from place to place gathering information, consider the geography, the terrain, and the adversaries' strategic objectives. 
• Manassas National Battlefield
• Shiloh 
• The Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg)
• Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park 
• Gettysburg National Military Park Virtual Tour
• Vicksburgh National Military Park, follow The Campaign for Vicksburg - 1863
• Petersburg National Battlefield - click on "Education" then follow links to Biographies and History. 
• Richmond National Battlefield: Embattled Capital, 1861-1865 
• Appomattox Court House National Historical Park
• Next visit the Selected Civil War Photographs collection at the Library of Congress. Read Taking Photographs at the Time of the Civil War, then use the "Search" or "Browse" function to locate photographs taken at some the battlefields you visited. 
• The man most closely associated with Civil War photography was Matthew Brady. Tour his Portrait Gallery to view additional selections from the Civil War period.

3.  Historians have debated the question of who actually freed the slaves; this exercise will address the questions that surround the topic. What is the "self-emancipation" thesis? What key points do critics dispute? Which slaves did the Emancipation Proclamation free? What was Lincoln's purpose in signing the Proclamation? The following sites will assist you in your responses.

• Go to Chronology of Emancipation during the Civil War at The Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland. The chronology includes many internal links to important primary documents. You need not follow all the internal links, but read materials relating to events in May 1862 and "The Confiscation Acts," August 1861 and July 1862. 
• Visit the National Archives The Emancipation Proclamation to view the original document and read the explanatory text. Note the transcription. 
• For a narrative of events and an illustration of the "First Reading (magnify)," go to The Emancipation Proclamation. 
• Read "The Emancipation Proclamation: An Act of Justice" by John Hope Franklin in Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration, Summer 1993. How does Franklin account for the document's final wording? What was the document's reception? Describe the evolution of commemorative events marking the signing.
• Investigate the Library of Congress exhibit African American Odyssey: The Emancipation Proclamation. 
• Read the description of the David G. Blythe painting, then magnify and study the image. What symbols does Blythe include and why? 

Additional Research Links

Civil War Indexes 
Site indexes for the Civil War are numerous. Among the best are:

• The American Civil War Homepage from the University of Tennessee. The site lists hypertext links to the most useful electronic files about the American Civil War. 
• The United States Civil War Center at Louisiana State University. The site also hosts the Civil War Book Review. 
• The Civil War Preservation Trust History Center and Classroom.
• Jim Epperson's Causes of the Civil War focuses on links to primary documents from the period of the secession crisis. 
• H-CivWar, a member of H-Net Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine, is the H-Net discussion list dealing with the culture and history of the Civil War. You may view the discussion logs to find out what participants have had to say about specific topics. Search the logs by keyword or view the message logs month by month.
• The Hargrett Library Rare Map Collection, The American Civil War, has an extensive list of digitized period maps; includes Gettysburg, Chickamagua, Atlanta.

Leadership 
Consult the indexes noted above for specific individuals.

• The American Memory collection at the Library of Congress presents two exhibitions on Abraham Lincoln: The Abraham Lincoln Papers  and Mr. Lincoln's Virtual Library.  
• The Papers of Jefferson Davis are located at Rice University. The site contains a Chronology, the full text of selected Documents, a Genealogy of the Davis Family, and links to Other Civil War Web Sites. 
• The Apotheosis of Robert E. Lee is part of the Capitol Project by the American Studies Program at the University of Virginia. The site is organized by three representations of Lee:"Virginia's General," "Southern Gentleman," and "National Icon."
• For research on Ulysses S. Grant, visit Candace Scott's Ulysses S. Grant Homepage. Scott provides an extensive, well-illustrated view of Grant's life and work. The site includes a search function. See also the full text of Ulysses Grant Memoirs.  
• Harper's Weekly features two sites with extensive coverage of the 1864 election. See American Political Prints and The Presidential Elections, 1864. Magnify the images to obtain the explanatory text.
• The Lincoln Assassination includes an account of the assassination, a timeline with internal links, and a Gallery of related memorabilia. Various broadsides can be magnified.

Total War

• Research on the southern home front begins with Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut's A Diary from Dixie. Read the Biographical Information  and look at selected images from the List of Illustrations.  (Click on the page numbers for link.)
• 'Our needles are now our weapons' at the Museum of the Confederacy summarizes some of the challenges, dangers, and deprivations southern women (black and white, rich and poor) encountered. 
• Civil War Women at Duke University includes the papers of Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Sarah E. Thompson, and the 36-page diary kept by schoolgirl Alice Williamson.
• For one perspective on the war experience of northern women, go to "How Did White Women Aid Former Slaves during and after the Civil War and What Obstacles Did They Face?" (available at your library). Also see the Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1830-1930  project at University of New York at Binghamton. The site includes the introductory essay and a rich collection of primary documents. View the extensive Documents List. 
• The Fight for Equal Rights: Black Soldiers in the Civil War is part of the "Teaching with documents" project at the National Archives. You need not do the tasks, but use the "Historical Background" section and its internal links to gain insights on the topic.
• Total war demanded the mobilization of economic resources to finance and wage massive campaigns. Explore the varying fiscal strategies undertaken by the Union and Confederate governments at the Tax Museum: The Civil War. 
• Poetry and Music of the Civil War is a collection of songs and poems created by Kathie Fraser from both sides of the Civil War. The site provides a glimpse into Civil War culture and contains both the lyrics and audio files of many songs, as well as commentary on the songs and poems. (The audio files are in MIDI format.) 

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Abolition as a Global Movement

• William Wilberforce led the antislavery campaign in Britain and persuaded Parliament to pass his bill of abolition in 1807. Parliament granted all slaves in the British Empire their freedom with the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act.  Other colonial nations were slower to act; Spain did not end slavery until 1888. 
• In Russia Czar Alexander II emancipated the serfs in 1861. See  Alexander II's Edict of Emancipation. The article makes an interesting comparison with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation issued two years later.