Park Street School

When lee's army-exhausted, starving, and outnumbered-surrendered at Appomattox, the proceedings went remarkably smoothly. Generals Lee and Grant shook hands and signed articles of surrender, Lee gratefully accepted Grant's offer of rations for his troops, and Grant prevented his men from cheering or firing celebratory salutes. "We did not want to exult over their downfall," he later explained. "The war [was] over. The Rebels [were] our countrymen again." But the fall of the Confederacy meant the invalidation, all at once, of all authority in the South, and order inevitably broke down. In the final segment of his seven-part Atlantic series (see "A Rebel's Recollections" for excerpts from his earlier installments), the former rebel soldier George Cary Eggleston described the chaos of the days following surrender, as marauders robbed, looted, and terrorized the countryside, and no police force, justice system, or municipal government had the authority to keep them in check. He was pleasantly surprised to find that the federal army came to the rescue, helping to reestablish order and "protect all quiet citizens."

In "Late Scenes in Richmond," the war reporter Charles Carleton Coffin explained how the Union had come to shift its aims, especially after General Grant took command. Coffin, who has been called the Ernie Pyle of the Civil War, witnessed and wrote about many of the war's key battles and was close friends with Grant. In this excerpt, he recounted a late-night conversation he'd had with Grant about the general's endgame, and chronicled not only the Confederates' chaotic flight from Richmond on April 2, but also President Lincoln's triumphant visit two days later. 

In the years after the war, Lee would be lionized by the defeated Confederates as the embodiment of all they had fought for and lost. Even a Northerner like Gamaliel Bradford Jr.-a prolific Massachusetts-born writer sometimes called "the dean of American biographers"-took up the tradition, venerating Lee for his chivalry and gentility in the popular 1912 biography Lee the American. In a preview published in the August 1911 Atlantic, Bradford paid tribute to Lee's humility and heroism and to his graceful acceptance of defeat.

Charlotte Forten, an educated young African American woman from a prosperous Philadelphia family, joined the project in 1862, moving to the island of St. Helena, where she served for two years as a teacher of former slaves. While there, she kept a detailed account of her experiences, which she sent to her friend, the activist and poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Deeming her observations worthy of wider attention, he passed them along to The Atlantic's editor, James T. Fields, who published them in two installments in 1864.

A blog that archives letters from 1600s-today. Letters include famous figures (e.g., W.E.B. DuBois) and everyday figures.

Plans and resources for using the film "Gettysburg" to teach about the Civil War.

Students are given a small set of letters and a clue, which they must then use to spell the target word. Words are taken from 1 of 4 popular picture books (users select which picture book they want to use).

Templates/graphic organizers for literacy and the content areas. Published by the International Reading Association.

Links to vocab resources from a 5th grade teacher.

Vocabulary for each grade level. Words are sorted by units. Definitions not provided.

Grade 5: Use with unit 9.

Unit 9 Study Guide: Coordinates, Area, and Volume