Civil War Project: Site Visit
Because of the many opportunities for site visits for this project, the usual process is reversed: You select a site for a visit and then write an essay about why you selected the site, including your research into events surrounding the site.
Depending on where you live, if you are Virginia, you have many opportunities to visit historic sites about American history. Here are some possibilities:
Go to the National Park Service web site for links to these sites.
See the Civil War section at Sage History
Instructions for Site Visit Projects:
The important thing in completing a site visit project is to visit the site with the intention of learning as much as you can. Before you go to the site try to find something about what happened there from your textbook or from other written or online sources. When you arrive at the site, go to the visitor center pick up a map or guidebook, and if they have a film or other introductory session, it would be good to attend. Listen to what the Park Rangers or guides have to say—most of them are real historians. Take a small notebook with you so you can jot down things that you observe as you go around the site. Take a few photographs, or pick up the literature, postcards, or some other memento. Record the date and time of your visit.
Just for the record, when you submit your report, it would be good to include some evidence of your visit, although I will accept the date of your visit as evidence that you were actually there. Describe what it meant to you, and what your visit did to enhance your understanding of that part of American history.
In the many historic sites which I have visited, I have often been moved by seeing the ground on which important things happened. My visits have included state capitals, many Civil War battlefields, Lexington and Concord and the old North Church in the Boston area, a Russian fort in California, Indian reservations, the Alamo in Texas, Fort Sumter South Carolina, presidential museums, and many other places. It is rare for me not to have received some strong impression from having made such visits. For example, views of Andrew Jackson changed significantly after I visited his home, the Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee.
If you do a virtual visit (acceptable but not as meaningful in most cases) take the same general approach. Be sure to include the URLs you visited for your project.
What you get out of this is what matters. What you tell me about it is less important, but it's part of the course.
Updated May 4, 2005 10:58 PM