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We are adding inquiry-based lessons every week and constantly seeking those that are already out there by others. If you have one to contribute, email us at remedialherstory@gmail.com.
Inquiries are provided in chronological order. Click here for How to Teach with Remedial Herstory Lessons. |
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The Civil War Era: Women Supporters, Soldiers, and Spies
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, -1879, oval, half-lengthportrait. , None. [Between 1850 and 1898] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005687170/.
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Why do American's celebrate Thanksgiving?
Most people are familiar with the myth of Thanksgiving-- few know the woman behind making the holiday nationally celebrated. As the Civil War wrecked havoc on morale, Sarah Josepha Hale petitioned the president to create a women's holiday. 
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.Edmonds, Sarah Emma. Nurse and Spy in the Union Army: The Adventures and Experiences of a Woman in Hospitals, Camps, and Battle-Fields. Hartford: W. S. Williams & Co., 1865.
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Was Sarah Edmonds truthful?
Sarah Edmonds, aka Sarah Edmonson, aka Frank Thompson, was a cross-dressing soldier in the Civil War and we know her story because she wrote about it in her book, linked in full here. In this lesson, students will examine excerpts from the book to determine what it was like to be a cross-dressing soldier and separate fact from hyperbole.
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Lessons from Others
- Gilder Lehrman: The growth of manufacturing in the decades prior to the Civil War transformed the country. The nation experienced the appearance of cities, manufacturing, and a commitment to wage labor at the same time as the expansion of slavery, a national economy connected by modern transportation, and a society and culture that strained to adjust. While most participants in the expanding economy continued to work in agriculture as farmers, planters, and slaves, more and more joined the ranks of labor in the new industries. Many prospered as a result of the changes and rose into an emerging middle class. The Civil War disrupted this but did not stop the shift to an industrial economy from going forward. Rather than halting or even slowing the industrial revolution, the war fueled the change. Women both adjusted and responded to the changes of the nineteenth century. Some reacted by protecting or altering their private lives while others turned to public action; some women wanted to seize the opportunities to revolutionize their own lives while others wanted to hang on to established customs. The lives of women in the nineteenth century in many ways reflected the transformations of the nineteenth century but in other ways demonstrated the resilience of traditional assumptions held the United States. Using the classroom as a historical laboratory, students can use primary and secondary sources to research the history of women in the nineteenth century. The students will be engaged in the craft of historical interpretation; they will be able to identify the assumptions about women before the Civil War and then be able to discover the effects of the war on the history of women in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
- Library of Congress: Students will explore records from the U.S. House of Representatives to discover the story of Harriet Tubman’s Civil War service to the government and her petition to Congress for compensation. Although her service as a nurse, cook, and spy for the federal government is less well known than her work on the Underground Railroad, it was on that basis that she requested a federal pension after the War. Using historical thinking skills, students will examine the evidence of Tubman’s service and assess Congress’s decision to grant her a pension. Despite the endorsements of a number of highly ranked Civil War officials indicating the breadth of her service, Tubman ultimately secured a pension only as a widow of a Civil War veteran, not on the basis of her own service.
- National History Day: Clara Barton (1821-1912) grew up in North Oxford, Massachusetts. She began her career as a teacher at age 15. She moved to Washington, D.C. to work as a clerk at the U.S. Patent Office. As the Civil War broke out, she collected supplies for soldiers. In 1862, the U.S. Army granted her permission to bring food and medical supplies to field hospitals on the front without government support, earning her the nickname, “Angel of the Battlefield.” In 1864, General Benjamin Butler appointed her superintendent of the nurses. Following the war, she established the Bureau of Records of Missing Men of the Armies of the United States, locating over 22,000 missing men and reuniting them with families. In 1869 she traveled to Geneva, Switzerland as member of the the International Committee of the Red Cross. She returned to the United States and founded the American Red Cross in 1881. She remained president of the organization until 1904.
- PBS and DPLA: This collection uses primary sources to explore women in the Civil War. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.
