Scavenger Hunt!!!!

Battle of Cold Harbor 

This week in class, I realized I didn't know my school as well as I thought I did.  Oh, I also learned about the victors of the civil war battles in certain areas of America.  There are three terms to categorize the places, theaters, that the battles took place in: Eastern, the east side, Western, the west side, and Naval, the waters.  To learn about the many battles in the civil war, our class worked together to create a scavenger hunt.  Everyone was responsible for a battle and we had to research certain pieces of information about the battle.  On a google doc, we added all the information, a picture of the battle, and a clue to where the battle after us was located in the school.  We created a QR code with a link to the google doc so that people could access the information through their devices.  The scavenger itself was an adventure throughout the school trying to find the next battle.  Once we had reached all the battles and had taken information from the google docs, we analyzed what we learned on a padlet.  We used the padlet to collaborate answers to the two essential questions: Who bad the ultimate victor in each of the theaters and what are oh one commonalities that can be identified in the reasons for the results of the battles.  

There was pretty much an ultimate winner in the battles in each of the theaters.  In the naval theaters, the Union dominated and defeated the confederates.  This is due to the fact that the union had a navy established before the civil war and they had more troops in the navy.  They had an organized army which gave them a huge advantage in any fight near or in the water. For example, in the battle of Fort Henry, the union was victorious because they had an organized naval army and good strategy.  In the western theater also, the union dominated because many times they used great military tactics and defense methods to fight the confederates.  In many of the battles, the union outnumbered the confederates in number of men and basic supplies like ammunition.  This allowed the union to overpower the confederates in battles like the Chattanooga Campaign and push their invasion deeper into the south.  The eastern theaters were a tug of war of victories between the union and the confederates.  The confederates won a lot of he the battles using surprise tactics.  For instance, in the battle of Chancellorsville, Lee and Jackson's 30,000 confederate troops flanked the right side of the union army while they were still in the woods.  The union army was stunned and even though they were able to kill Jackson, they ended up losing.  

The more we analyzed the victors of battles in the different theaters; we realized that a pattern was showing in the reason of victories.  The union soldiers were more experts in organized warfare.  They also had many advantages.  They had more access to rail roads which helped them transport people and items like food and supplies to different camps and sites.  Also, the Union was already composed of many military men ad had a upper hand in military strategies. The confederates were more definite in their morals in convictions and definitely more riled up.  They mostly stuck to tactics such as ambush that helped them in a lot of battles, but they weren’t enough.  It wasn’t clear in the beginning who would win; in fact, the confederates were winning many of the battles.  With their advantages and strategies though, the union army caught up quickly. 

Created with Padlet

Council on Foreign Relations. Accessed April 10, 2015. http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/coldharbor/cold-harbor-history-articles/10-facts/.