Dilemma Discussions

Lessons bring students face to face with historical figures and the decisions that they faced in the 19th century. How did an enslaved person make the decision to escape to freedom? How did a female citizen decide to enter a field hospital to help? These activities forge real and lasting emotional connections between student and subject and encourage them to apply lessons learned to the present.

Virtual Interactive Lessons

Google Slides and PDF Lesson Plans

African Americans and the Confederate Invasion

Explore the Gettysburg Campaign’s effects on the home front, the Confederate military’s capture and enslavement of free Black residents in Pennsylvania, and historical accounts written by and about underrepresented communities.

The Roots of Racism

Explore the foundational nature of race and racism in the grander context of global and United States history, en route to understanding causes of the Civil War and the legacy of issues with which America still deals today.

Virtual Museum Experiences

ThingLink walkthroughs of Museum exhibits

Questions of Faith

Discover the religious debates that played out across the United States before and during the Civil War, as differing interpretations of slavery in the Bible caused churches to split North and South and impacted soldiers’ spiritual lives.

The Seminarians

Consider the personal and theological predicaments that students and staff pondered throughout the Civil War era, when national debates over race, slavery, and sectionalism entered the halls of Gettysburg’s Lutheran Seminary.

**Corroborating Primary Sources**

ThingLink explorations of firsthand historical accounts

Slave Census Map

Explore 18 unique historical links on a map published by the United States Coast Survey in 1861, sold for the benefit of sick and wounded U.S. soldiers during the Civil War, which depicts Southern states based on enslaved populations in their counties according to the 1860 census.

There is a copy of this map gifted by Charles and Carol Hanlon in the Seminary Ridge Museum second-floor gallery.