The Document Based Question/essay prompt The Blue and the Gray: New York During the Civil War was prepared in 2012 and the resources have not been updated since that time. For more information about recent legal developments, consult national and state newspapers, legal databases, and your librarian.
The Civil War was a defining moment in United States history. New York played a pivotal role in the war–it supplied more men, money, and materiel than any other state, North or South. The armies fought with newly invented weapons, many of them designed and build mainly in New York City. Technological developments in telegraphy (Western Union was a New York company) allowed war correspondents to speedily submit detailed reports from the battlefield, and newspapers published in New York influenced public opinion not only in this State but nationwide. New photographic processes allowed battlefield photographers, many of whom hailed from New York, to produce the first comprehensive photo-documentation of the war and brought home the reality of carnage and suffering on far away battlefields. With so many soldiers on the front lines, New York women became more involved in life outside the home, foreshadowing the suffrage and equal rights movements that would develop in the decades that followed.
This activity meets the following guidelines of New York State’s Common Core Social Studies Framework (2017):
Below is a list of the 2012 resources, organized by resource type.
The Last Full Measure: Civil War Photographs from the Liljenquist Family Collection
New York in the War of Rebellion, 1861-1865
New York in the Civil War Resources
The Blue and The Gray: Poem
Disunion Series
The Civil War Homefront
What’s Gender Got To Do With It?
Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (Third Geneva Convention, 1949)
Moral Principles vs. Military Necessity: The First Code of Conduct During Warfare, Created by a Civil War-era Prussian Immigrant, Reflected Ambiguities We Struggle With Today
New York’s Andersonville: The Elmira Military Prison Camp
The Lieber Code
New York State’s Civil War: New York’s Regiments of U.S. Colored Troops
Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment
On the Organization of Colored Troops
The Fight for Equal Rights: Black Soldiers in the Civil War
Civil Liberty in Time of War
Military Arrests in New York
Ex parte Merryman and Debates on Civil Liberties During the Civil War
Rebuttal: Abraham Lincoln, Civil Liberties and the New York Connection–The Corning Letter
New York City and the Civil War in 1863
The New York City Draft Riots of 1863
The Volcano Under the City: The Significance of Draft Rioting in New York City and State
Image Citation: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZC4-4166.