Written by Kaye Passmore and Amy Trenkle for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Picturing Lincoln is another Picturing America lesson plan. Using art as a medium to teach, students are asked to look at a photograph of Abraham Lincoln and make assessments. Later, students read a short biography of the president before exercising their creative skills in the forms of both poetry and artwork. The lesson plan is suggested for grades six through eight.

While the lesson plan offers an imaginative way for students to learn, one of the suggested extended activities, the interactive image assessment tool, allows students to become active learners. By clicking on various parts of Alexander Gardner’s February 5, 1865 photograph, students learn a fact before being encouraged to jot down any notes or questions they might have. While the activity is meant to be worked individually (with students emailing or printing out their responses), depending on individual class needs it could easily be adapted to be completed in small groups or as a whole.

The University of Iowa’s Digital Library contains a number of different digital projects, including “Iowa Counties Historic Atlases.” One can find almost 100 county atlases published between the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Each county atlas, such as one for Des Moines county, offers different county maps, city maps, a wide variety of illustrations, and historical sketches.

The University of Iowa has a small but interesting digital collection of diaries from children who lived in Iowa from 1860 to the 1900s. Of the eleven diaries that are available, three were written between 1860 and 1870. Even though they are relatively short (only a few pages have been digitized in some cases), the diaries can still provide interesting insights into the children’s experiences. One entry suggests that at least some children were paying attention to the important political issues of their day – Ellery Hancock, who was only about ten years old in 1860, noted on November 6 that Abraham Lincoln had been “elected.” One can learn more about the author through the short biographical sketch on the “document description” page in each diary.

Duke University’s “The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 – 1920” is a great resource for learning more about the early advertising history in the United States. This collection, which has over 9,000 images, is organized into eleven categories – almost all of the advertisements produced before 1870 are in “Broadsides” and “Advertising Ephemera.” Yet there is still a wide variety of material from the Civil War era, as one can find broadsides for political parties (Democrat, Republican) to advertisements for hotels. If you want to find more broadsides from the Civil War, check out the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s collection, which I discussed in a previous post.

Oberlin College has a great digital exhibit on the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue that took place in September 1858. This event represented an important challenge to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, as residents were successful in their efforts to prevent southerners from returning fugitive slave to slavery. Some of the rescuers were arrested and their trial in 1859 attracted national attention. (Read a more detailed account of this event here). The site offers coverage of both the rescue and the trial from three newspapers – Oberlin Evangelist, Cleveland Daily Herald, and the Boston Liberator. A selection of newspaper articles from across the country are also available. Also check out other documents related to the trial, such as Charles Langston’s speech.

Oberlin College has a number of otherdigital exhibits, such as “Oberlin and Women’s Struggle for Equality” and Oberlin and “Struggle for Black Freedom.”

Rice University has created a great online supplement for their 12 volume Papers of Jefferson Davis project. While not all of the papers have been posted online, the site offers a nice selection of material from his entire career. One can read “a listing of the demerits Davis received while” at West Point, a newspaper article that described his speech in May 1849 on the increase in sectional tensions, a speech in July 1860 in support of John Breckinridge’s campaign, a letter to his wife in April 1865, and many other interesting documents. The project plans to add even more material in the future. One should also check out the other resources on the site, including a detailed timeline of Davis’ life and pictures of him and other family members.

“John Bull & Uncle Sam: Four Centuries of British-American Relations” is an interesting exhibit of selected items from the British Library in London and the Library of Congress in Washington DC. The site is organized around several themes, such as “Exploration and Settlement,” “Common Language, Separate Voices,” “From Abolition to Equal Rights,” and “Popular Culture: from Baseball to Rock and Roll.” The material related to the Civil War is spread out among these groups. Some particularly interesting items in this exhibit are a satire on the California Gold Rush (A Goodnatured Hint about California (London, 1849)), a political cartoon on Confederate diplomats’ failure to win recognition as an independent country from the United Kingdom, and a letter from Queen Victoria to Mary Lincoln after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

Utah Digital Newspapers, which is available from the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah, is another great collection of digital newspapers. The project has over thirty newspapers between 1850 and the 1970s. There are three papers from the Civil War Era, all of which were published in Salt Lake County – Desert News (1850-1910), Union Vedette (1863-1867), and the Valley Tan (1858-1860). The complete list of digital newspapers is available here.

While I have noted other digital historic newspaper projects in previous posts, another great collection is available through Missouri Digital Heritage. The site has three newspapers from the Civil War era – Border Star Newspaper (1858-1860), Liberty Tribune (1846-1848, 1852-1867, 1869-1878, 1880, 1882, and 1883), and the St. Louis Christian Advocate (1857 – 1879). The site is easy to navigate and all of the newspapers are available for download as PDF files. Also be sure to check out all of the other digital collections available through Missouri Digital Heritage.

Harvard University’s Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930, which is available through their Open Collections Program, is a great resource that offers interesting primary sources that one cannot easily find elsewhere. This collection offers a wide range of material, including photographs, manuscripts, and books and pamphlets. While the focus is on immigration between 1789 and 1930, there is plenty of information on issues related to the Civil War era. One can browse the collection by theme (including “Immigration, Railroads, and the West” and “Gold Rush”) and topic (including Attitudes Towards Immigrants, Living Conditions, Reasons for Immigration, Working Conditions). Also check out their map collection and links to other digital resources on this subject.