High School Lesson Plans
Ninth Grade
Secession in Mississippi
This lesson plan examines secession as a process, not a moment by helping students explore white Mississippians' reaction to the state's potential (and later actual) departure from the Union and the opinions they shared with their governor that reveal their priorities, their beliefs, and their hopes for the future.
Mississippi Governor's Office, Soldiers, and the Military Experience
This lesson plans help students explore the wartime experiences of Mississippi soldiers and their families. They reveal men's frustrations with military discipline, hardships suffered by families with their men absent, and the gradual increase of dissent and desertion across the state.
Native American Sovereignty during the Civil War
This lesson plan demonstrates that multiple interests—beyond North and South, white and Black—were at stake during the war. While Union victory brought emancipation and the end of slavery, the Union also waged war to limit Native sovereignty and this plan helps student understand Native American responses to secession in the South.
Slavery, the Draft, and War in Civil War-Era Mississippi
This lesson plan reveals diverse Mississippians' concerns about the Confederate draft, the larger war, and the instability of the slave system. These forms of wartime dissent within Mississippi challenge the idea that white southerners universally supported the Confederate war effort.
The Emancipation Proclamation-Evolving Freedom in Wartime Mississippi
This lesson plan demonstrates emancipation was a process, not something that happened immediately after President Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation. It is designed to help students contemplate the powerful connection between military service, emancipation, and citizenship and their limits.
Women’s Dissent on the Confederate Home Front
This lesson plan is designed to help students study the impact of military campaigns and other wartime pressures on the Mississippi home front. It reveals that as southern white women were thrust into positions as heads of households, their loyalty to the Confederacy was not absolute.
Rebuilding the South-Early Reconstruction in Mississippi
This lesson plan considers the uneven nature of early Reconstruction policies and emancipation in Mississippi. Reconstruction was a process of advances and setbacks and this plan allows students to analyze the early promises and challenges Reconstruction presented in 1865.
Mississippi Convict Leasing during the American Civil War & Reconstruction
This lesson plan is designed to explore conflict over Black labor during the Reconstruction Era. Convict leasing programs allowed southern states to legally circumvent the Thirteenth Amendment, and these programs demonstrate that although chattel slavery was eliminated, emancipation was not immediate or universal.
Twelfth Grade
Confederate Desertion & the American Civil War
This lesson will introduce students to how Mississippians responded to conscription and most importantly, forms of wartime dissent within Mississippi to challenge the idea that white southerners universally supported the Confederate war effort.
Exploring Data in Digital Editions
Using the data produced by CWRGM, this lesson plan is designed for students to critically engage with digital primary sources and the methods of digital humanities, specifically digital editions. In particular, it pushes students to analyze whose voices are represented in these collections and how? Whose voices are absent and why?
Immigration in the Civil War South
These lesson plans help students explore the experiences of immigrants in Civil War-era Mississippi as they wrestled with their rights as citizens or non-citizens, asked questions about the draft, and faced questions of disloyalty.