Last updated: February 12, 2019
Lesson Plan
Siege and Battle of Corinth
- Grade Level:
- Middle School: Sixth Grade through Eighth Grade
- Subject:
- Social Studies
- Lesson Duration:
- 60 Minutes
- Additional Standards:
- Standard 2A- The student understands how the resources of the Union and Confederacy affected the course of the war.
- Thinking Skills:
- Understanding: Understand the main idea of material heard, viewed, or read. Interpret or summarize the ideas in own words.
Objective
1) To explain why gaining control of the railroads in Corinth was important to both the Union and the Confederacy.
2) To describe the course of the Siege of Corinth and the Battle of Corinth and to evaluate their impact on the course of the Civil War.
3) To describe the fortifications constructed during these engagements and to analyze their importance.
4) To examine the role transportation routes played in the formation of the student's own community.
Background
The tracks still cross in the center of town, and trains still use them, but no one fights over them any more. During the Civil War as many as 300,000 soldiers moved through this tiny town in northeastern Mississippi as the Union and the Confederacy fought to control a critical railroad crossover. The evidence of their presence is everywhere. A reconstructed earthen redoubt commemorates the men in grey who marched with slow and steady steps against its walls and the men in blue who defended it in fierce hand-to-hand combat. And if you look carefully, you can see miles and miles of earthen fortifications, some built to protect the crossover and some to help seize it. These trenches testify to a new kind of warfare that was tested here and would become common before the war ended in 1865.
Preparation
Materials
Procedure