Group items tagged

Civil War trails embed via Google Earth.

Here is a description of Contextu via Richard Byrne's Free Technology For Teachers posting: Ken Halla, the blogger behind the US History Teachers Blog, has been working on an excellent new site for students of US History. The new site is called ContextU and its purpose is to help students see the greater context for significant events in history. The first iteration of ContextU is focused on the American Civil War. On ContextU students select from a table of contents an event, piece of legislation, or theme to see it in the context of other events, pieces of legislation, and themes leading to the start of the Civil War. Through timelines, Google Maps, diagrams, flow charts, timelines, and text ContextU provides context for each chosen event, piece of legislation, or theme. Students can jump from event to event or from theme to theme by following the hyperlinks within each diagram.

Interactive timeline of Civil War events.

Interactive Portal commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the American Civil War.

Interesting information that is lesser known from the US CIvil War.

"History Animated is a fantastic resource for teachers of US History. The animations will make great supplements to classroom instruction. The animations are a significant improvement over drawing or pointing to places on a map. The site currently features animations on the Pacific War, the Civil War, the Revolutionary War and the Battle of Britain.

Bibliographies of Civil War letters and diaries yet published. It lists over 1,000 published and unpublished items from a variety of sources, including online resources and microform. 

Good discussion starter.

Here is a little tin box with a finger handle, and with a candle socket soldered upon its lid and a loose lid inside containing a piece of flint, a piece of steel, a scorched rag and several splints of wood tipped with sulphur, which is the apparatus for making fire used in our colonial ancestors in Bucks county and from time immemorial by all the so-called civilized people of the work. To make fire thus, four operations are necessary. You must make the spark, retain the spark, then produce the flame and retain the flame. Holding the circlet of steel vertically in your left hand you strike diagonally downward upon its outer edge with the flint so that a spark of percussion flies downward into the tinder, which is a scorched linen rag lying in the box beneath; the latter holds the spark as a smouldering ember, until you touch the spunk or sulphur-tipped splint upon it, whereupon with a little blowing the sulphur takes fire and you have a lighted match with which you light the candle set in the socket in the box lid. Perhaps this is not much to look at, but from a historic point of view it is a thing of such importance that it might be described as the master of human progress from prehistoric time down to 1835, or as visible proof of perhaps the greatest discovery that man ever made.

Footnote.com is a place where original historical documents are combined with social networking in order to create a truly unique experience involving the stories of our past. The Footnote.com collections feature documents, most never before available on the Internet, relating to the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI, WWII, US Presidents, historical newspapers, naturalization documents, and many more. Footnote.com is more than just an online repository for original documents. In addition to hosting millions of records, Footnote supports a community of people who are passionate about a variety of topics relating to history.

The Smithsonian Institution houses an extraordinary array of Civil War artifacts in nearly a dozen of its museums and archives.

"Historyworld's aim is to make world history more easily accessible through interactive narratives and timelines. Written by Bamber Gascoigne, it consists of about 300 narratives ( the alphabetical list runs from Aegean Civilization to Zoroastrianism) and some 10,000 events on searchable timelines."

The Lincoln Archives Digital Project started in 2002 with a simple idea for a vast undertaking: to digitize all federal records that exist from the administration of Abraham Lincoln.  Over 6,000 documents are currently online and over half a million documents are scanned and in the process of being placed online.  People from around the world now have access to the documents of  Abraham Lincoln's administration, including Civil War records.