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Teachers follow in soldiers' footsteps
Teachers, both local and from across the country, learn history by walking area battlefields
Date published: 7/26/2009 By Rob Hedelt THE TEACHERS were doing what they instruct students to do: getting a feel for history by walking the path of those who made it. That's what brought 160 teachers from across the country who specialize in history, social studies and related disciplines to Fredericksburg-area battlefields yesterday to take part in the 2009 Teacher Institute sponsored by the Civil War Preservation Trust. The approach: Immerse teachers in the Civil War in a way that will better help them pass it on to students. Jamie Massey of Claremore, Okla., came to understand the carnage inflicted on Union soldiers trying in vain to get to the stone wall at the foot of Marye's Heights, which gave Confederate units perfect cover in the 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg. Jackie Fleming of Rutland, Vt., eyeballed the actual bullet holes in the Innis House just below that stone wall, and got a kick out of discovering that city resident Martha Stevens, who owned the house, left the damaged siding in place after the war to earn an occasional dollar with the dwelling as a sort of tourist attraction. Taking a walk along Sunken Road, and hearing about the damage done in battles here, Beth Cogswell of Fairfax came to understand some of the far-reaching damage the war did hereabouts. National Park Service guide Randy Washburn, a former Stafford County school principal, told the teachers that the population of Spotsylvania County didn't make it back up to pre-Civil War totals until the late 20th century. He told them that half of the people who fled from Fredericksburg during the war never returned; that 84 buildings were destroyed; and that income in the city plummeted some 70 percent. And that in Stafford, where large numbers of troops bivouacked between battles, soldiers cut so many trees for firewood in some spots that that "you couldn't find one for miles." That sort of information and workshops on a range The eighth-grade social-studies teacher said she faces a special challenge. Her state sent many young men to fight in the war, but those battlefields are far away.
Date published: 7/26/2009
Correcting the Teacher
(posted by
hobbs
, Aug. 1, 2009 1:09 pm)
The last teacher quoted should be aware that (1) There was no Confederacy/Liverpool connection on slavery. Great Britain had outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and abolished slavery in 1833, 18 years before secession of the slave states in this country; (2) Great Britain never extended diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy, and there was no such thing as a "Confederate embassy" in LIverpool. Furthermore, foreign embassies are located in a nation's capital. Other cities have consulates.
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