1860 Election

In the next unit on the Civil War, we learned about the election of 1860, and were told to answer the question of,"How were the results of the Election of 1860 representative of the deep divisions over slavery?"  In class, we watched a crash course video on it, and learned that people had many different viewpoints on it.  Abraham Lincoln was a republican who was opposed to slavery, and felt that it should be contained and kept within control.  Stephen A. Douglass was a Northern democrat who believed that the expansion of slavery be decided by popular soverignity.  John Bell, a Constitutional Unionist, wasnted to preserve the Constitution, including slavery.  John C. Breckenridge was a southern democrat who said that all slaves were inferior to whites and that slavery should not be limited anywhere in the U.S. Breckenridge was expected to win the Southern states because slavery was the most popular in the South, and Lincoln was expected to win the North because they were already against slavery, but Lincoln ended up winning the election of 1860. We then analyzed five photographs and used educreations to create a video explaining the election of 1860.

Link to Video Here!

Battles Scavenger Hunt

Who was the ultimate victor in each of the theaters of war: East, West, Naval?
What are some commonalities you can identify in the reasons for the results of the battles? 

In order to learn who was prominent in specific regions of the U.S. During the civil war, we took a look at specific battles that occurred in the eastern region, western region, and in naval battles through a scavenger hunt around the school.  We had to create a google doc. on one of these battles, and write about it, but I wasn't here for this part so I only experienced looking for the QR codes that people posted that have the link to their battle.  Each person in the class has to find the persons number ahead of them and tell them where they were going to hide their QR code, and they wrote it down in their google doc.  After learning about these battles, we were told to answer the essential question of "Who was the ultimate victor in each of the theaters of war:East West, Naval?" And our class created a Padlet (see below)  that had each of our discoveries and interpretations for each theaters dominator.

Created with Padlet

To answer the question on who the dominators were for each theater,  the Union primarily dominated he Western and Naval battles, while the Confederates won a majority of the battles in the east up until the end of the war.  Examples of the Union being victorious in the west were the battles of  Shiloh and Fort Donelson, and naval battles include the battle of Baton Rouge and Vicksburg.  The confederacy won battles in the East such as the battles of Fredericksburg and Bull Run.  Some commonalities that I saw when looking at the results of the battles were things like one side being armed significantly more than the other side, and also the winning side commonly trapped the losers in a situation where they could not escape and were pinned down unable to do anything.  Most of the victories also resulted in surrenders as well, which proves that the battles were completely one-sided fights, and the losers were unprepared.  Also, the attackers one almost every time in these battles, which shows that most of the defenders were unprepared and unready for the attacks.