Using the War as a Selling Point: Discovering a Local Community during the Civil War through Ads and Artifacts (Grades 3-5)

Katie Hickey Snyder

Summer Fellowship 2009

To download this lesson in PDF format, click here.

Lesson 2

As a whole group, students examine a Civil War era advertisement from a national primary source: Harpers Weekly. In partnerships, students examine advertisements found in local newspapers that used the Civil War as a selling point to discover what life was like on the home front.

For this lesson, students should be seated in table groups of 4 students.

Procedures

• Using LCD projector, Smart board, or computer lab, show class examples of advertisements from the Civil War era from Harpers; a nationally distributed weekly newspaper established in 1850._ If technology is not readily available, the ads can be Xeroxed and distributed to the class. http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1861/december/civil-war-ads.htm

Although the teacher can choose to use any ad on the page, the ad entitled: _Cloaks! Cloaks! BRODIE_, found in the upper right hand corner of the page is similar to those from the local primary sources.

• As a whole group, fill out the following document analysis. http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/misc/2007/nara/written_document_analysis_worksheet.pdf

• In partnerships (or groups of 3 if necessary) examine an ad found in a local Champaign County newspaper which used the Civil War as a selling point._
  Local Ad 1 - "Good News from the War"
  Local Ad 2 - "Returned from the War!"
  Local Ad 3 - "Peace at Hand!"
  Local Ad 4 - "Glorious News!"
  Local Ad 5 - "War! War!"
  Local Ad 6 - "1000 Volunteers Wanted Immediately!"
  Local Ad 7 - "Forward Movement of the Grant Army!"

• In same partnerships, students fill out the document analysis sheet based on their Civil War ad http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/misc/2007/nara/written_document_analysis_worksheet.pdf

• Each partnership presents their document analysis to other partnership in table group.

Ties to National Primary Source

Tie to a national primary source: Harpers Weekly.

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