Frontier Grant Lesson Plan

Teacher: Pam Danielson Topic: Abraham Lincoln: Was Abraham Lincoln a Great Leader? Lesson Duration: 2 – 4 Days Grade/Subject Matter: 11th Grade/U.S. History Link to Standards: National Standards: II. Time, Continuity, and Change

a. demonstrate an understanding that different people may describe the same event or situation in diverse ways, citing reasons for the differences in views

c. compare and contrast different stories or accounts about past events, people, places, or situations, identifying how they contribute to our understanding of the past;

d. identify and use various sources for reconstructing the past, such as documents, letters, diaries, maps, textbooks, photos, and others;

f. use knowledge of facts and concepts drawn from history, along with elements of historical inquiry, to form decision-making about and action-taking on public issues

V. Individuals, Groups, & Institutions b. give examples of and explain group and institutional influences such as religious beliefs, laws, and peer pressure, on people, events, and elements of culture d. identify and describe examples of tensions between and among individuals, groups, or institutions, and how belonging to more than one group can cause internal conflicts e. identify and describe examples of tensions between and individual’s beliefs and government policies and laws g. show how groups and institutions work to meet individual needs and promote the common good, and identify examples of where they fail to do so.

VI. Power, Authority, & Governance

a. examine the rights and responsibilities of the individual in relation to his or her social group, such as family, peer groups, and school class

b. explain the purpose of government c. give examples of how government does or does not provide for the needs and

wants of people, establish order and security, and manage conflict d. recognize how groups and organizations encourage unity and deal with diversity to maintain order and security f. identify and describe factors that contribute to cooperation and cause disputes within and among groups and nations h. recognize and give examples of the tensions between the wants and needs of individuals and groups, and concepts such as fairness, equity, and justice

X. Civic Ideals & Practices

a. identify key ideals of the United States’ democratic republican form of government, such as individual human dignity, liberty justice, equality, and the rule of law, and discuss their application in specific situations c. locate, access, organize, and apply information about an issue of public concern from multiple points of view g. examine the influence of public opinion on personal decision-making and government policy on public issues; h. explain how public policies and citizen behaviors may or may not reflect the stated ideals of a democratic republican form of government

Guiding/Essential Questions: Objectives: What are the characteristics of a great leader? How do you use primary resources to find answers to questions? The students will learn how to use primary resources. The students will compare and contrast the different viewpoints and ideologies of Lincoln. Learning Activities: 1. Students will discuss the characteristics of a good leader with a partner and then share their ideas with the class. 2. Students will read the background information from Lincoln Bicentennial 3. Model – go through a document E as a class using A.D.A.P.T. strategy for analyzing primary source material

Assessment Method(s): Essay: Was Lincoln a great leader? Materials: Background information from Lincoln Bicentennial Document A: Emancipation Proclamation Document B: Letter to James H. Hackett from Abraham Lincoln, November 2, 1863. Document C: Letter to Major General Hooker Document D: Lincoln Song Document E: The Federal Phoenix political cartoon and background information Document F: Lincoln says, keep fighting!

Author

Who is the author of the document? What is the author’s point of view?

Date

What is the date of the document? What is happening in the United States at this time?

Audience

For whom was the document created? Was it intended for a public or private audience?

Purpose

What is the purpose of the document? What main ideas are conveyed by the author?

Tone

What is the tone employed by the author? Is the tone consistent throughout the document? What powerful words or phrases indicate the tone?

4. Assign documents to groups. Read the documents and complete ADAPT. 5. The groups will share findings with the class 6. Write an essay taking a stand on whether Lincoln was a great leader.

Modifictions/Adaptions Minimize the number of documents to look at. Work with a partner to examine the documents. Possibly allow more time Extensions: Examine Lincoln’s legacy. Technology: Optional: Document viewer or scanned images of the documents projected on the screen.

Background from http://www.lincolnbicentennial.gov/lincolns-life/bio/president/default.aspx?ekmensel=c580fa7b_18_200_btnlink

When Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, secession was an accomplished fact. The lower South had withdrawn from the Union and set up a rival government. The guns roared first at Fort Sumter, turning back Lincoln's relief expedition. Both sides called for troops, more Southern states seceded, and the Nation plunged headlong into civil war.

The fighting went badly at first for the North. Plagued by poor generalship, the Federal army in the East was roundly trounced in 1861 and through most of 1862. George B. McClellan's repulse of Robert E. Lee at Antietam Creek in Maryland was the solitary bright spot. But at

Fredericksburg in late 1862 and at Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863 the North again suffered large-scale and critical defeats.

This was Lincoln's darkest hour. After Antietam, he had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring free all slaves in rebel territory, but words could not substitute for victories. Now Lee was marching northward again. In July the armies clashed at Gettysburg, and Lee retreated with bloody losses. As the North rejoiced, more good news came from the West. Ulysses S. Grant captured the strategic citadel of Vicksburg, splitting the Confederacy. When he broke the siege of Chattanooga two months later, a grateful Lincoln brought him east to command all the Union armies.

In May 1864, while another Union force set out across Georgia, Grant advanced southward, bent on destroying Lee's army. Lee fought desperately in the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania. Casualties mounted, and quick victory seemed as far away as ever.

The summer of 1864 was one of Lincoln's most difficult. Peace negotiations were begun, but collapsed. There was discord in the Cabinet, and in August Lincoln broke with the Radicals in Congress. He soon came to believe that he had no chance of winning reelection.

The tide was slowly turning, though. Two days after the Democrats nominated McClellan for the presidency, Atlanta fell to William T. Sherman and Northern morale soared.

Lincoln won the November election easily, carrying 22 of the 25 participating States.

The war was fast drawing to a close as Lincoln began his second term. Lee was bottled up at Petersburg, Virginia; Sherman's swath of destruction had badly crippled the South. Lincoln's concern now was the reconciliation of the two sections.

In his Second Inaugural Address, he described the war as a visitation from God. Mellowed and deepened by the ordeal, Lincoln pleaded for peace without malice.

On April 9, General Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. Two nights later a torchlight procession was called at the White House. Instead of a victory speech, though, Lincoln gave them his moderate views on reconstruction. It was the last public address of a compassionate man.

On April 14, Abraham and Mary Lincoln attended the theater. While they enjoyed the performance, John Wilkes Booth slipped into the Lincolns’ box, shot the president in the head, leaped onto the stage before a startled audience, and fled into the darkness. Soldiers carried the slumped figure across the street to a boardinghouse and laid him across a bed. Surgeons worked to save Lincoln all night, but he never regained consciousness.

At 7:22 the next morning, Abraham Lincoln died.

Document A: Emancipation Proclamation

Source: Executed and published by F.S. Butler, 1864. Printed by L. Nagel. Entered according to Act of Congress, the year 1864, by F.S. Butler, in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the Northern District of California. The Emancipation Proclamation President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation,

Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the day of the first above mentioned order, and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following to wit: Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana - except the parishes of St. Bernard, Placquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafouvche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans – Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia – except the forty eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth, and which excepted parts are, for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are and henceforward shall be free; and that the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence; unless in necessary self defense; and I recommend to them that in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known that such persons, of suitable condition, will be

received into the armed service of the United States, to garrison foils, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity. I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God Abraham Lincoln

Document B

Letter to James H. Hackett from Abraham Lincoln, November 2, 1863.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/stern-lincoln/letters.html

… I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it. Yours truly, A. Lincoln"

Document C: Letter to Major General Hooker

"I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons. And yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which, I am not quite satisfied with you." [Letter to Joseph Hooker from Lincoln, January 26, 1863.] http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/stern-lincoln/letters.html

Document D: Lincoln Song

My name it is Abe Lincoln, I lead a wretched life, I come from Springfield, Illinois, Me and my dear wife. We brought with us our dear son Bob, To let the people know, That the country I would plunder and rob, Where ever I would go.

When we arrived at New York, The people there were glad, They paid me so much attention, I thought they 'ed drive me mad. There was dinners, balls and parties, And every thing you know, So then to good old Harrisburgh, I did resolve to go.

When I got to that city, I was so much scared, That I'de never get through Baltimore, I was very much afraid. But with my Scotch cap and military cloak, I thought I was all right, And I slipped through that city, 'Bout twelve o'clock at night.

So I fooled the Plug Uglies, As nice as ever could be, For 'till one o'clock the next day, They were gaping and looking for me. But I was snug in Washington, With Seward by my side, And left my wife and my son Bob, On that fated train to ride.

But now here all safe with me, With two hundred thousand men, That run away from Bull Run, And I am afraid they'll do it again. For old General Scott has got the gout, And cant go in the field, And the Generals now in the army, Aint fit a tin sword to wield.

Document E: The Federal Phoenix

The Federal Phoenix – background

Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and use of military tribunals were but two of several unilateral acts that the new president took between the outbreak of the Civil War with the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 and the official convening of a special war session of Congress on July 4 of that year. Without the permission of Congress, Lincoln also declared martial law, greatly increased the size of the Army and Navy, appropriated funds for huge purchases of arms, instituted a naval blockade of Southern ports and issued a series of orders for the military to put down any local efforts to impede the Union as it prepared for what at the time (and not unlike Iraq) was assumed to be a short war.

Much as the Bush administration wrapped some of its controversial actions in legalese and as Lincoln would do with great deliberateness for most of what evolved into an awful four-year conflict, the 16th president termed these actions not as the result of a declaration of civil war but rather the suppression of a rebellion.

Lincoln tried to assuage a wide range of groups who backed the war and favored emancipation of the slaves. He also understood that only Congress was (and is) constitutionally empowered to declare war, while suppression of rebellion was (and is) recognized as an executive function, including the prerogative of setting aside civil procedures such as habeas corpus.

Reaction to Lincoln's constitutional sleight of hand was fast and furious for a people only 70 years removed from the excesses of British rule, and there was widespread outrage that the president was permitting arbitrary arrests and quashing the right to protest the conduct of the war. John Merryman, a pro-South resident of Maryland who recruited soldiers for the Confederate Army, was among those caught in these crosshairs. On May 25, 1861, Merryman was arrested by the military, charged with several treasonous acts and incarcerated in Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor. When his lawyer sought a writ of habeas corpus -- a procedure by which Merryman could be immediately released if his imprisonment was found to not conform to law -- Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that he was being held illegally. Taney issued a writ to Fort McHenry commander George Cadwalader directing him to produce Merryman before the court the next day, but Cadwalader refused on the grounds that Lincoln had authorized the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.

Taney then issued an attachment for Cadwalader's arrest for contempt, but a marshal was unable to enter the fort to serve it. The justice, recognizing the impossibility of enforcing his order, produced the now-famous opinion, Ex parte Merryman, which vigorously defended the power of Congress alone to suspend habeas corpus.

Legal scholars, while recognizing that the Constitution permits suspension of the writ in "cases of rebellion and when the public safety" requires it, have been arguing ever since about who was in the right.

Taney relied on the fact that the right to suspend the writ is in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, which describes congressional duties, while some scholars note that it was placed there merely because the Committee on Style that organized the Constitution could find no other place for it.

But the chief justice did fail to acknowledge that the fate of the nation was indeed at stake. In any event, Congress resolved the ambiguity two years later when it permitted the president the right to suspend the writ while the "rebellion" continued.

Lincoln himself understood the dilemma he had put himself and the Union in, writing to a friend:

"Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? . . . I think that in such a case, to silence the agitator, and save the boy, is not only constitutional, but, withal, a great mercy."

* * * * *

Lincoln authorized military commissions because they had the capacity to act quickly and secretly. As a rationale, he used Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which states that the chief executive is required "to preserve, protect and defend" the right of self-preservation, and Article II, Section 3, which requires him to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

Some 13,000 people were arrested under martial law during the war, including a number of outspoken newspaper editors. The Union Army conducted 4,271 trials by military tribunal, although none was as notorious as that of Clement Laird Vallandigham, the best-known Copperhead of the era, who was to the tribunal system what Merryman was to habeas corpus. Vallandigham, a pro-Confederacy Democratic congressman from Ohio and leading Copperhead, was one of Lincoln's sharpest critics, charging that the president was conducting a "wicked and hazardous experiment" by suspending the writ and taking other sweeping actions without the permission of Congress.

He was arrested by Major General Ambrose E. Burnside on May 5, 1863, as he spoke at a Democratic Party rally in Mt. Vernon, Ohio and taken to Kemper Barracks, the military prison in Cincinnati. He was tried there by a military commission that found him guilty of treasonous acts and sentenced him to imprisonment for the duration of the war.

After being denied a writ of habeas corpus, Vallandigham applied for a writ of certiorari to bring the military tribunal's commission proceedings before the Supreme Court for review. His application was denied in the opinion Ex parte Vallandigham on the grounds that the high court had no jurisdiction over a military tribunal, a marked contrast to three stinging rebukes of the Bush administration by the high court, which

ruled in 2006, 2007 and 2008 that the Military Commissions Act was out of legal bounds because of its suspension of habeas corpus and other kangaroo court trappings.

A year after the Civil War was over, the court revisited the habeas corpus issue in Ex parte Milligan, ruling in the case of Confederate sympathizer Lambdin Milligan that the writ could only be suspended by Congress and then only in a situation where civil courts were not operating. The ruling was adjusted in 1942 in Ex parte Quirin, which distinguished that Milligan had been a civilian whereby the Quirin defendants were German soldiers.

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Document F: Lincoln says, keep fighting! from http://digitalvaults.org

2/1/1865 On February 1, 1865, President Lincoln sent this telegram to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at City Point, Virginia. It encouraged Grant to continue fighting vigorously. Lincoln was about to meet with a Confederate peace delegation at Fort Monroe, Virginia, but he did not want the ongoing peace negotiations to prevent Grant from conducting offensive operations if the situation warranted. National Archives, Records of the Office of the Secretary of War

http://digitalvaults.org/images/assets/000/000/244/244_ml.jpg