Mike Lynaugh has put together a collection of original Civil War photographs on his website Virtual Civil War.

This collection of Civil War photographs will allow your students to view some excellent photos or provide you with some primary sources to display for conversation starters within the classroom. The collection contains a good variety of photos from pictures of dead soldiers, to the White House and even ones of famous leaders of the Civil War.

Classroom ideas:

• Have your students look at a photo and then reflect on what they are seeing or have them describe the situation. This goes back to having them think like historians.
• Have them create a slideshow of related photos and use Voicethread to share the presentation
• Have them pick a particular image and then research more about the clothing, the battle, or location.
• Play detective (CSI) and see what clues they can find by looking with their magnifying glasses (aka, using the Zoom In feature of your photo editor).

While you are on the Virtual Civil War site, check out Mike’s section on Battlefields Today that contains pictures from battlefields across the US including Gettysburg.

So many photos, so little time. 🙂