|
|
Week Fifteen |
|
Reading
for this week:
- American Promise:
"The Crucible of War."
|
|
|
|
|
Maps related to Civil War |
Discussion
questions:
1. Describe Abraham Lincoln’s approach to the secession crisis when he became president on March 4, 1861.
2. What do the maps to the right (click on them for larger version) tell us about strategies and responses during the Civil War?
3. Identify key reasons why southerners believed they could win the Civil War.
4. Describe why the Civil War was both a modern war and a total war.
5. Describe General Ulysses S. Grant’s approach to defeating the Confederates, which in time fashioned the North’s victory in the war.
6. Why were northern Democrats opposed to turning the Civil War into a war for black liberation? What were their reactions to Lincoln’s inclusion of emancipation in the war goals?
7. Describe the various ways blacks, both in and out of the military, aided in the war and also defined its consequences.
8. Identify three areas in which northern women contributed to the Union war effort.
9. What can the New York draft riots of 1863 tell us about the reaction of some northerners to the new direction of the war by that period?
10. Was Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plan suitable considering the massive toll the Civil War took on American society?