Scavenger Hint!! Not For Easter… but Still a Scavenger Hunt!!!

           Last week in history class I learned about 20 different civil war battles and their outcomes. Instead of taking notes on every single battle, my class instead participated in a scavenger hunt. In order to prepare for the scavenger hunt everyone in my class chose one battle to research. Each person then went home and did research on their battle. Everyone then went home and created a google document about the victor, setting , and main reasons for the result of our assigned battle Each person then brought in a sheet of paper with their battle number and a QR code and bit.ly to their google doc. We then too our sheets and posted them all thought the school. We then went on a scavenger hunt! Yay! During the scavenger hunt we copied and pasted the information from each google doc into our evernote accounts. Each google doc told us where we could find the next battle’s sign. After two tiring and sweaty days of scavenging we had notes on every single battle. We then used a Padlet to answer the two essential questions. The first question asked “who was the ultimate victor in each of the Theaters of was: East, West, Naval.” The second essential questions aked, “what are some commonalities you can identify in the reasons for the results of the battles?”

          
          After my class and I created the Padlet I started to notice patterns between the area each battle was fought, and who was the victor. The battles that we studied were fought in one of three different areas. The Western Theater battles were fought in the West, the Eastern battles were fought in the east and on the coast, and the Naval battles were fought in the Atlantic Ocean. My class and I were able to see that the Union dominated battles in the Western Theater. The Battle of Louisiana and the Battle of Shiloh were won by the Union in the Western Theater. We also saw that in the Eastern Theater the Confederacy won most of the early battles such as the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861, but as time passed they started losing battles in the Eastern Theater like the Appomattox Campaign, which occurred in 1865. In the Naval Theater the Union won the majority of battles. Some of these Union victories include the Battle of Fort Henry, and the Surrender of Fort Donelson.

           

            At the end of the lesson I noticed that there were many commonalities between the results of the battles and why they were won. One of the reasons the Union was able to win so many battles was because they had more soldiers. The Union won the Battle of Fort Henry because the Confederates only had 3,000 troops compared to the Union’s 16,000. The Union also had a navy that was already established before the war began. The Confederates had to create a navy and build boats once the war had begun. The Union dominated the Confederates in battles that occurred in the water because they had a navy with more ships and troops. The Union was able to win the Surrender of Fort Donelson because they used one of their fleets of ships to shell the Confederate fort from the Cumberland River. The Union was also able to win many battles because it had more factories and railroads to transport and produce anything. The Confederates won battles with their military tactic of ambush. Many of the military strategy schools were located in the South so the leaders of the Confederate army had extensive knowledge of military tactics. The Confederates also were more driven to win battles because they were defending their way of life.

The Union shelling that took place in the Surrender of Fort Donnelson

             
            The Union had many more advantages than the Confederacy during the Civil War. These advantages were the reason that the Union was able to win the war. Although the Confederates had wise tacticians and the stronger desire to win, they still couldn’t overpower the Union.
Bibliography:
http://www.civilwar.org/hallowed-ground-magazine/winter-2011/images/fort-henry-falls.jpg
Here is our Padlet!

Created with Padlet