United States Civil War History Posters
for the social studies classroom, home schoolers, and Civil War scholars.

• more US maps posters

The Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000 casualties, was fought on September 17, 1862 near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Antietam Creek. Also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg, it was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil.

Gettysburg Address

• Lincoln posters
• historic documents posters

Black Civil War Units Poster

• Black Military History posters
• Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865 at Amazon.com

The Red Badge of Courage was a novel set in the Civil War, written 30 years after the struggle by Stephen Crane.

“He suddenly lost concern for himself, and forgot to look at a menacing fate. He became not a man but a member. He felt that something of which he was a part – a regiment, an army, a cause, or a country – was in crisis. He was welded into a common personality which was dominated by a single desire. For some moments he could flee no more than a little finger can commit a revolution from a hand.”

• book cover posters
• color “Red” posters

Uncle Tom's Cabin is an anti-slavery novel by author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, it was a very early protest novel, and instrumental in drawing attention to the injustice of slavery, forcing Christians to examine their beliefs.

The best-selling novel in the world during the 19th century, Uncle Tom's Cabin illustrates the power of “entertainment” to engrain prejudices and sterotype into the psyche of a culture.

Scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., in re-examining Uncle Tom's Cabin, has stated that the book is a “central document in American race relations and a significant moral and political exploration of the character of those relations.”

“No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.” Uncle Tom's Cabin

Oh Captain My Captain was a poem by Walt Whitman, who served as a Civil War battlefield nurse, about the death of Abraham Lincoln.

“Our fearful trip is done; The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won; The post is near, the bells hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; ...”

This poster is illustrated with an advertisement for D.W. Griffith's silent film The Birth of a Nation.

Did you know that Louisa May Alcott also worked as a nurse in the Civil War?

The Battle Hymn of the Republic was a poem by Julia Ward Howe set to a well known camp meeting tune. The same melody was already a popular marching song known as John Brown's Body. Howe's lyrics links the judgment of the wicked with the American Civil War.

Clara Barton
b. 12-25-1821; Oxford, MA
d. 4-13-1912; Glen Echo, MD

Humanitarian Clara Barton was a teacher and nurse who is remembered for her work with wounded in the American Civil War, and organizing the American Red Cross.

John Brown the Martyr, Pub. Currier & Ives, 1870, Giclee Print

John Brown
b. 5-9-1800; Torrington, CT
d. 12-2-1859; Charles Town, VA - executed by hanging

The abolitionist John Brown “advocated and practiced armed insurrection” as a means of abolishing all slavery. He was active in “Bleeding Kansas” in 1856 and the 1859 raid on an arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

He wrote, on the day of his death; “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”

FYI - One of the men killed in the raid was Lewis Sheridan Leary, who was the first husband of poet Langston Hughes grandmother.

• Fiery Vision: The Life and Death of John Brown