Education: Teachers - Curriculum Materials - The Civil War

Wartime Correspondence: An Exchange of Letters

Task:
Students will put themselves in history by researching a major event in the American Civil War and writing letters that might have been exchanged between someone in the war and a friend of family member at home.

Directions:

1) Begin by having students think about what it was like to be personally involved in the Civil War, either in military service or on the homefront. Consider the issues that each group may have faced, for example: loneliness, danger, hunger, cold, fear, wounds, lack of information.

2) Have students work with a partner to take on the identity of two people who might have lived through a major event of the war, one person being in the field and the other at home. They will be exchanging letters that reveal something about the circumstances before, during, and after the event (such as a major battle.)

3) Instruct them to think about the various types of people who would have been affected and their relationships. Let the pair pick the people that they would like to exchange letters between (You can also assign the pair to the students).

Below are some examples:
- A Confederate officer who once served with men he is now fighting to the officer’s mother who has family and friends in the North.
- A sixteen-year-old soldier who has never been away from home to his older sister at home that had to take over the farm when he left.
- A free African American fighting on the Union side to his brother, a clergyman now living in Canada.

4) Once they have chosen the point of view that they will be writing from, its time to do the research about the event you are writing about. They will need to know the basic facts of the event (Who, What, When, Where, How/Why) before you can start writing the letters.

5) Encourage students to create letters that include a date and sense of place. Use descriptive details that evoke sounds, sights, and even smells. Try to explain some of the emotions that you would be experience because of your situation. Keep in mind the lag time between sending and receiving mail. For example, a soldier might write three letters and not receive an answer to any of them for months. Similarly, family members might receive all the letters at once but only long after the battle. Meanwhile, they have been writing letters with no idea of whether the person is alive.

6) After the exchange is complete, have students discuss how this exercise of temporarily assuming a historical identity affected them. Conclude the activity by discussing what role they think letters played during the war.

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