Earlier this week my class took part in a simulation that required them to advise the President on what to do with the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter. Below is the assignment and the list of documents that they used to construct their essays. The discussion went extremely well. One thing that I will do [...]
Secession
I am putting the finishing touches on my Crisis at Fort Sumter simulation, which my students will work on throughout this week and present next Tuesday. Thanks to those of you who offered suggestions on primary and secondary sources. One of the documents that I am including comes from William Freehling and Craig Simpson’s edited [...]
Time for a little crowdsourcing in preparation for a simulation on Lincoln and Fort Sumter that my students will perform a week from this coming Tuesday. The overall idea is to have my students play the role of cabinet advisers and I, of course, will play Lincoln. Since I only have nine students we should [...]
John Christopher Winsmith was what historian Jason Phillips refers to as a “diehard rebel.” Throughout the war, Winsmith never wavered in his enthusiasm for the cause. He believed that it was incumbent on everyone in the Confederacy to make the necessary sacrifices in the army and on the home front. In letters that routinely characterized [...]
From Mark Vogl: Back on June 28th, 2012 an article here at Nolan Chart reported that the Confederate War College established a clock to help illustrate whether the environment within the United States was favorable to the idea of states seceding from the Union. The original setting of the clock was 6 Pm, the point [...]
Like many of you I am getting a real kick out of reading the secession petitions that are currently flooding the White Houses’s “We the People” website. In fact, it’s actually downright cute. Think about it. Americans from every region of the country requesting that the federal government allow their state to secede. The fire-eaters [...]
A few years ago a screenwriter, Dan Turkewitz, solicited the opinions of all nine Supreme Court justices on their views of the legality of secession. Apparently, Turkewitz was working on a screenplay in which the state of Maine attempts to secede from the United States to join Canada. Only one justice responded and it turned [...]
