The Civil War and the Closing of the Frontier

Below are links to various materials we've created to support students' work on the unit theme: Conflict and Change.

• Unit Bibliography: This is a list of supplementary materials to help you to meet the needs of individual students in your classroom.
• Classroom Activities: To extend instruction, here are some creative activities you can print and use in your classroom.
  • The Mechanics of War (Language Arts/Science/Social Studies)
  • Wartime Correspondence (Language Arts/Social Studies)
• Theme Project Organizer: This is a worksheet you can print and distribute to students to help them track their work on the Theme Project.
• Theme Project Links: Here are Internet resources for students to use while working on the Theme Project.

Here are links to Internet resources that can be used to support instruction of the “Think Like a Geographer” feature for this unit: How Did Technology Change the Grassy Plains?

The American Wind Power Center

Check out the photographs of historic windmills and the brief overview of the impact of windmills on western settlement at this Texas site.

http://www.windmill.com/

The Victoria “Dutch” Windmill

Take a closer look at a historic windmill in Texas. The Victoria “Dutch” windmill is an example of how Texans adapted Old World technologies to a new landscape in their efforts to farm their land. John Lienhard of Radio Station KUHF told the story of the Victoria “Dutch” Windmill on his National Public Radio Show “The Engines of Our Ingenuity.” This site provides a transcript of the story and pictures of the windmill.

http://www.uh.edu/admin/engines/epi537.htm

Here are links to Internet resources that can be used to support instruction of the “Citizenship” feature for this unit: Should You Stand Firm?

The First Wave of Secession

Part of the “Valley of the Shadow” Civil War project, this wonderful site provides a wealth of information about the push of Southern states towards secession, and the attempts of Northern and border states to preserve the Union. The site also offers selections of newspaper articles from the period that register local responses to impending conflict.

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/outlines/secession.html

The Texas Ordinance of Secession

Part of the popular website, Lone Star Junction, this section presents the complete text of the Texas Ordinance of Secession, the document that officially disjoined Texas from the Union in 1861 and led to the its entry into the Confederacy and the Civil War. The site also contains a link to information about the Secession Convention of 1861.

http://www.lsjunction.com/docs/secesson.htm