Teaching Notes

Explore this image of President Lincoln on the battlefield in 1862. You can adapt the Teacher's Guide for Analyzing Photographs and Prints to guide student exploration.

• Have students look closely at the photograph
• Ask students to describe what they see in the image.
• Guide inquiry using the following questions:
  • Why was this image taken? Who is the intended audience?
  • Who or what is missing from this image? Why is that significant?
  • Can you think of other images like this one? Where have you seen them?
  • What questions does the photograph help us answer? What questions can it not help us answer?

Photographs popularized during the Civil War only tell us so much about the experiences of those affected by the war. Learn more about photography and the Civil War here. 

Teaching Notes

Some women's stories were told through the media, including political cartoons. Use the Teacher's Guide for Analyzing Political Cartoons to help craft student inquiry. 

• Ask students to describe what they see in the cartoon.
• Guide student inquiry using the following questions:
  • What do you see in this cartoon from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper?
  • What story does this cartoon tell?
  • Who is the intended audience? Intended take-away?
  • What questions does it raise?
  • Who is missing from this cartoon?

Some women's history was not crafted by women, but about women. 

Teaching Notes

Women's histories can often be found in the more intimate memoirs created by women themselves, such as this autobiography by Elizabeth Keckley.

Born enslaved, Elizabeth Keckley (also spelled Keckly), she bought her own and her son’s freedom. She became a dressmaker to the elite women of D.C.—including First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. While primarily seen as a dressmaker, she was also a prominent businesswoman, mother of a Union soldier, organizer, and writer.
Her autobiography, Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (1868), gave an intimate portrait of enslavement and the Lincoln White House. The book was derided as too intimate at its publication, Lincoln’s son, Robert, suppressed the book, and Keckley’s reputation and business suffered. 

In her book,Behind the Scenes, Keckley recalled helping form the Contraband Relief Association (an organization created to aid freed people who flocked to D.C.). Use Project Zero's Unveiling Stories Routine to craft student exploration.

• Have students read this excerpt from Keckley's autobiography and make notes to answer the following questions:
  • What’s the story?
  • What is the human story?
  • What is the world story?
  • What is the new story?
  • What is the untold story?
• Have students share their answers.
• Guide further inquiry using the following questions:
  • How does regarding Keckley as an organizer rather than a dressmaker change our understanding of the Civil War?
  • How do the negative reactions to her autobiography help us better understand primary sources—particularly those written by women?

Teaching Notes

Rose O'Neal Greenhow (1817-1864) was a popular socialite in Washington, DC, and a spy for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Greenhow wrote ciphered (secret code) messages to Confederates and provided information about Union military plans. Confederate President Jefferson Davis credited her with helping the Confederacy win the First Battle of Bull Run (1861). 

Use the Primary Source Analysis Tool from the Library of Congress to prompt students to explore this image.

Depending on the grade level, you can then have students do the same using another photograph of prisoners of war (POWs) during the Civil War such as this image. Use Project Zero's Same and Different Routine to guide student inquiry. 

Teaching Notes

Mary Surratt owned a tavern in southern Maryland and a boarding house on H Street NW in Washington, D.C., a few blocks away from Ford’s Theater. She was a known Confederate sympathizer and her D.C. boarding house served as a meeting place for John Wilkes Booth and his fellow conspirators to plot the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, V.P. Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. After she and other conspirators were found guilty, they were sentenced to death. Mary Surratt became the first woman executed by the U.S. Federal Government in 1865. 

Surratt's image is found on the cover of the official publication for the trial for those complicit in the assassination. Use the Digital Inquiry Group's Historical Thinking Chart to help guide student exploration of this primary source.

• Encourage students to look closely at this image at the front of this publication. 
• Have students answer as many questions as they can under Sourcing, Contextualization, Corroboration, and Close Reading in the chart. Suggested questions include:
  • Who wrote this?
  • Why was it written?
  • When and where was the document created?
  • How might the circumstances in which the document was created affect its content?
  • What claims does the author make?
  • What language (words, phrases, images, symbols) does the author use to persuade the documents audience? 
• After this close reading, ask students: Why would the Military Commission put Mary Surratt on the cover of their official publication of the trial?

Teaching Notes

Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women and a Civil War nurse, gives us two examples of where to find women's stories that may not be likely.

The first it through her publication of Hospital Sketches (1863), which recounted her weeks as a volunteer nurse in the Civil War. Alcott published the book under "L.M. Alcott". You can see the cover of the book here. 

Have students examine both the image of Alcott below and the cover of Hospital Sketches using Project Zero's See Think Wonder Routine to guide inquiry. After completing the routine, ask students:

• Why would Alcott have published as “L.M. Alcott”? What questions does that generate?

Alcott also published the novel Little Women (1868-69) shortly after the civil war. If your students are reading Little Women, you can encourage students to explore the novel as a primary source using the following guiding questions:

• How could we understand Little Women (1868-69) as a Civil War novel?
• How does the novel contribute to our understanding of the Civil War, particularly women’s experiences?

Teaching Notes

Finally, there are some women's stories we think we may know well, but could be explored in more depth. This is often the case for Harriet Tubman.

Use students the Teacher's Guide for Analyzing Photographs and Prints to craft student inquiry while looking at this image. Through exploration, ask students to pay close attention to the photograph caption. What questions does it raise or answer?

In 1863, Tubman took on the role of a scout and organized a group of spies. She recruited enslaved people interested in assisting the Union. Tubman helped Colonel James Montgomery coordinate the Combahee River Raid in South Carolina, which aimed to “harass whites and rescue freed slaves.” The raid was wildly successful; Montgomery’s troops burned down many plantations and freed approximately 750 enslaved people. Many of the formerly enslaved men then opted to join the Union’s fight against the Confederacy. To date, Tubman is recognized as the first woman in US history to both plan and lead a military raid. In June 2021, the Army inducted her into the Military Intelligence Corps.

As well as her military contributions, Tubman moved upstate to Auburn, NY with her second husband Nelson Davis in 1869. There, Tubman founded the Home for the Aged, an institution that provided care for those with "paralysis, epilepsy, and those with vision impairment and blindness." You can find a photograph of Tubman and her family members in Auburn taken some time in the 1890s here. Students can explore this photograph using the same routine above. Additionally, encourage students to think about the following questions:

• What does focusing on Tubman’s life after the Civil War reveal about women’s experiences during the war?
• What does this focus reveal specifically about Black women’s experiences and roles?

Teaching Notes

There are many ways to explore women's stories in the Civil War. To help fill silences in the archive, we encourage students to look holistically at historic events and movements by bringing in different types of sources and asking different questions about them. 

You can find more sources through the Library of Congress and other partners, such as through this Primary Source Set developed by MTSU. 

What new sources will you find to help tell women’s stories? What sources will you analyze differently to find, expose, and fill in the silences in the archives?