Fallen Soldiers: Pre-Visit Lesson

Soldiers' Monument; Gettysburg National Cemetery

NPS Photo

Purpose

The purpose of this pre-visit lesson is to help your students prepare for their Fallen Soldiers student education program at Gettysburg National Military Park. The pre-visit activity is meant to help the teacher stimulate student interest, motivate them for their visit to Gettysburg, and provide a foundation of knowledge upon which the program ranger can build here at the site. It is extremely important, for the success of the on-site program, that the students complete the essential pre-visit activity.


Fallen Soldiers Program Theme: The Soldiers' National Cemetery and the Gettysburg Address are ever present reminders of the horror of war and of man's capacity to endure, overcome and grow from tragic events.

Fallen Soldiers Program Goal: To convey the significance and relevance of the Gettysburg Address and Soldiers' National Cemetery to the students.

 

What To Expect On Your Program:

While your students are attending the ranger-led student education program on the creation and dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery they will be actively engaged for a period of up to two hours.

The following are the major activities with which they will be involved:

• Ranger will lead a discussion of the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg and the need for a dignified and honorable resting place for the thousands of dead soldiers;
• In small groups, the students will identify several soldiers by name, unit and state from facsimiles of artifacts found on these soldiers;
• In small groups, the students will read the personal correspondence of these soldiers and identify significant aspects of their reasons for soldiering;
• In the large group the students will share their soldiers' most important reasons for fighting with the rest of the class;
• The ranger and the class will discuss the reasons why Lincoln came to Gettysburg and the significance of the Gettysburg Address for the Civil War era;
• The class will then be asked to think about, for when they return to the classroom, how the Gettysburg Address transcends time and place.

 

Fallen Soldiers: Previsit Activity

Divide you students into four groups and assign each group one of the primary sources pictured below, each dealing with the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg and the creation of the Soldiers' National Cemetery.

Have each group study each of the documents for several minutes and then have them report to the class what they believe each document is. Working as a class, place each of the documents in chronological order. Which would have come first? Second? and so on. Finally, lead a class discussion on these documents and your students the following questions:

Why was the identification of fallen soldiers so difficult during the Civil War? And why was it so important?

 

 

Detail of S.G. Elliott's 1864 Map of the Gettysburg Battlefield. The "Explanation" or key on the lower right portion identifies the marks on the map, including post-battle burial locations. This detail shows the area around such battlefield landmarks as Little and Big Round Top; Devil's Den; the Wheatfield; and the Peach Orchard. Note the burials to the right of the road on the right-hand-side of map; these were the locations of several field hospitals.

Library of Congress

 

This image, taken in nearby Hanover, PA, in early 1864, documents the removal of soldier remains for re-internment in the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Samuel Weaver, standing on right of image, holding book, and with white beard, oversaw the effort of removing U.S. soldiers from their battlefield graves to the newly-established Soldiers' Cemetery in Gettysburg.

Hanover Historical Society

 

Broadsides, or posters, such as this one appeared in Gettysburg seeking individuals to removed the bodies of soldiers buried across the battlefields of Gettysburg for reburial in the newly established Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg.

NPS

 

Excerpt from Samuel Weaver's "List of Articles," which contains the items found with the bodies of those reburied in the Gettysburg National Cemetery, some of which was used for purposes of identification.

From "Revised Report of the Select Committee Relative to the Soldiers National Cemetery. . . of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania," 1865

 

 

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