Maryland Public Television has developed an interactive website containing multiple resources for teaching the story of the Underground Railorad. As stated on their website, the site is, “to help Maryland students in Grades 4 and 8 look more closely at Maryland’s people, stories, and events of that surrounded this important effort.” The site contains several interactive maps, timelines, and a neat “Following the Footsteps” section that allows students to make choices for themselves. The site can be found here.

Though the use of spirituals as coded ‘road maps’ for the Underground Railroad is contentious, it can be fruitful to use these ‘documents’ in the classroom as a key to understanding how songs were important in the lives of slaves.

One site that examines the different purposes and meanings of these historical records is Sweet Chariot: The Story of the Spirituals.

The site explores the history of spirituals, reincarnations of these songs in the 20th century Civil Rights movement and includes sound files of the many spirituals.

The ‘Freedom & Equality’ section highlights the use of spirituals as: expressions of protest, sources of inspiration and motivation… both of which are useful in thinking about the psychological aspects of slaves deciding to take the risk of pursuing their own freedom.

I was searching the Brady-Handy Collection on the Library of Congress website and found an interesting picture of Washington D.C. that I wanted to highlight. You can see the Trinity Episcopal church with the US Capital in the background. To see the full image, go here. Seven other images are available in that collection, including one of Lincoln’s funeral.

At CivilWar.com there is some pretty cool features like this interactive map thhat shows where battles occurred during the Civil War.  I am not sure how reliable a lot of the information is, but there is an Archives that has a list of more than 100 online resources for topics related to the Civil War.  While CivilWar.com might not be that useful, the list of other sites is a quick and easy way to find other sources relating to the Civil War.

If you have not visited the Atlantic magazine’s website, you might want to take a look at the free archive of articles published after November 1995. I have not had a chance to look through everything, but I wanted to point out two articles that could be used as a way to start a discussion in class about Abraham Lincoln. Garry Wills discusses President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address in “Lincoln’s Greatest Speech?” (Sept. 1999) while Joshua Wolf Shenk, in “Lincoln’s Great Depression” (Oct. 2005), describes Lincoln in a way that may surprise some students.  Shenk also discusses his conclusions about Lincoln in an interview.

There are several ways to bring history to life for students. Field trips to actual historical sites is a traditional way that teachers accomplish this, however that is limited to historical sites near the school. Several databases and sites provide virtual field trips. Some examples include Lincoln Net, where images and descriptions are provided along with other websites of a similar nature. The House Divided Undergound Railroad Classroom has more interactive field trips using Google Earth and historical maps to recreate events like the Lincoln-Douglas Debates or Harriet Tubman’s journies.

History Now has a great website on Lincoln under its “Interactive History” section. It contains a collection of images from the 1800’s as well as several political cartoons from the time period. What is also great is that each image has a paragraph or two describing the relevance of the image. It is definately worth checking out!

Illinois During the Civil War database has a Teacher’s Tent that has a few lesson plans specifically on the legality of slavery. These lesson plans include standards, but I believe they’re only Illinois state standards.

The Underground Railroad Digital Classroom also provides lesson plans for several levels and also includes standards.

On the Teaching Future Historians site there are several songs from the Antebellum and Civil War era songs that can be downloaded. The songs’ topics range from Tippecanoe to songs supporting (and not supporting) Lincoln. These songs can be used in a lesson reenacting political debates from this era. Several of them are very easy to learn. Personally I’m a fan of “The Lincoln Flag.”

David Plouffe, Democratic Senator Barack Obama’s campaign manager, had an interesting response on Wednesday (6/04) to Republican Senator John McCain’s proposal to hold ten town hall meetings before the November 2008 election. According to the Associated Press, “Plouffe said…the campaign would recommend a less-structured, lengthier exchange more in line with the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates.” See this report for the full story.

Update:
Marc Ambinder, who blogs over at The Atlantic, has posted McCain’s letter and Plouffe’s response.