Civil War Stories

[Christine]

Today I was visiting with my children's high school history teacher; he's always been really interested in my Frederick Aiken research and so I was filling him in on some of the recent updates - the headstone, etc.

I remembered that one of my children told me he had a relative who fought for the Confederacy, so I asked about that. He said that his direct ancestor's cousin was killed at the peach orchard at Gettysburg, but he wasn't sure about many of the other details of his life - he thought he might have been from Missouri, and that he might have been related to Jefferson Davis.

Well, one google search later (what did you all do before google?) and I found that my children's history teacher's relative was Jefferson Davis' nephew! He fought with Barksdale's Mississippians, and his wife was visiting the Davis' at the Confederate White House when Isaac Davis Stamps received a furlough and visited with his uncle and his wife and family. He confided to his wife that he feared he would not survive the next battle.

His wife was still at Richmond when they heard word about the Battle of Gettysburg. Jefferson Davis and Mary Stamps prayed together for the safety of Isaac. But they received word that he had been killed, and Davis was devastated. He pushed through tons of red tape to get Union permission for them to remove his body to be re interred at the Davis Plantation - Rosemont Plantation in Mississippi.

I'm excited for my daughter to be in his class next year when he teaches about the Civil War with this new information about his relative.

I just LOVE making these wonderful historical connections!

[LincolnMan]

Really cool story-thanks for sharing it. Glad to hear that the Civil War is being covered in some schools!

[Rob Wick]

You've got that right, Bill. My niece's high school history teacher told her class that they had already studied that, so he didn't need to cover it. When I asked her who John Wilkes Booth was, she gave me a blank stare.

Best
Rob

[LincolnMan]

Yes, that is the situation in public schools here in Detroit. What was the expression that talked about "being doomed to repeat it?"

[HerbS]

As a retired public school History Teacher from Rochester,NY for 35yrs,I taught the Civil War whether the state liked it or not! I was a dept.chair and went to Albany to help write the Regents exam.I always made sure questions about the Civil War were on the exam.Schools now are so "test"happy that they forgot about our History! I was not a Social Studies Teacher,I was a History Teacher!

[Christine]

Wow, that's sad that some parts of the country gloss over the Civil War. In our schools, they cover it pretty well in basic American History and in AP American History. Our high school has two amazing history teachers, both with passions for teaching and studying history.

[L Verge]

That's wonderful to hear, Christine, because American history has pretty much been wiped out in our local school systems here in Maryland. Herb is right that everyone has to teach to the state exams now and the emphasis is on reading, math and science.

I have practically screamed at teachers that history is a wonderful exercise for developing reading skills, analytical thinking, etc. They look at me as if they don't understand what I'm talking about.

I actually had a class of sixth graders several years ago, while I was still doing school programs at the museum, where not one child in the class knew who Lincoln was - until I mentioned a five-dollar bill. Then the response was from one young man, "Oh yeah, he's the dude on the money." This from children who live within 15 miles of the Lincoln Memorial, Ford's Theatre, and the White House and Capitol.

When it became difficult to get students into Surratt House for field trips, we began moving the mountain to Mohammed. I now have four staff members (one a natural-born teacher) who can take our story into classrooms. We have about three different programs based around the Surratt story and geared to various grade levels.

We also have a large number of special needs students visit because they have to be mainstreamed. They are a joy to work with because we do touchy/feely programs with them using reproduction clothing, replicas of antiques, etc. One facet that they love (even children who visit with parents) is comparing mattresses. My staff has created easy-to-hold pillows stuffed with corn husks, feathers, horsehair, straw, and pine needles. These are passed around for the children to squeeze and smell and decide which would be the most comfortable to sleep on. The corn husks win because they make the loudest noise! To heck with comfort.

Our signature program for grades 4 and up is a PowerPoint presentation on the Lincoln assassination and the role of Mary Surratt - especially the legal issues. Then the class is divided into defense, prosecution, and judges and present their case for and against Mrs. Surratt. Sound familiar, Roger??? Believe it or not, the majority of the time, the lady is found guilty.

We also work with the local, state, and National History Day competitions and are finally seeing our local schools taking an interest in it. For years, I would be helping children from as far away as Oregon and Utah. In fact, the young lady from Utah won her state competition with a great project on The Case of Mary Surratt.

As you can tell, once a teacher-always a teacher. Seeing kids get enthusiastic about history just makes my day! Give me 30 children above 10 adults any day...

[LincolnMan]

My unscientific observation is that a shift in public education in the school system has occurred from teaching comprehensive American history, let's say, to a more narrowed focus on politically correct subjects of the day., So in Detroit, for instance, a student might know something about Rosa Parks (not there is anything wrong with that) but NOTHING about Lincoln. That is pretty much where we are at.

[Rsmyth]

Teachers use every trick at their disposal to get the class interested and then actually learn something. You cannot force feed a disinterested audience. If I were teaching history on an Indian reservation I do not think I would start out teaching about how great a general and warrior Custer was. If I was teaching in a predominantly minority inner city classroom I just may start out teaching about Rosa Parks and why (segregation) what she did was historic. When I have the students attention let them know that this separation of the races reached all the way back to when millions of Blacks in this country were slaves but the country was literally torn in two over this culminating in the worst war this country has ever seen and the abolishment of slavery by Lincoln. What Rosa Parks did was indeed historic but it was not an isolated event. It was the culmination of a series of historic events by historic people that led to that moment.

[LincolnMan]

Rsmyth: what you said is exactly my train of thought on the matter. Unfortunately, there seems to be a "disconnection" in that the link to the past is left unconsidered. To me that is sad and amounts to robbing students of a fuller education.

[HerbS]

My philosophy was,"You have to hook them before you pull them"!--Motivation is the name of the game at any socio-economic level! The job of the teacher is to make History come alive!

[Laurie Verge]

Just one more comment on teaching American history from this old vet: One thing that has occurred over the past forty years (that irked me when my own child was in school) was that there is no idea of continuity and timelines being taught - at least in our local system.

Topics (such as mentioned earlier here - politically correct) are being taught as separate entities without a progressive sense of one thing causing another. I never believed in students having to memorize dates, but it sure helps to teach events in a chronological order so that you can put things in perspective. I suspect that's why people today have no idea that the Revolution came before the Civil War, which came before the Spanish-American, etc.

And, thanks to globilization, our children are taught more about other countries and their history and culture than they are about American history and culture. End of sermon.

[LincolnMan]

Amen, Sister Laurie!

[HerbS]

Laurie,I have to congratulate you.You must have been,"One Hell Of A Teacher"!

[Laurie Verge]

Thank you kind sir. I like to think I was - and still am. The only problem I had was that I was good at controlling middle-schoolers, so I got most of the trouble-makers shoved into my classes when the other teachers couldn't handle them.