Transcription of Video
The Civil War. Indiana and the nation ripped apart. More than six hundred thousand dead, including twenty-five thousand Hoosiers. Although Indiana was part of the Union, Hoosiers fought for the North...and the South. Indiana, and the rest of the country, were deeply divided over slavery.
Indiana's wartime governor, Oliver Morton, was a steadfast Lincoln supporter and helped raise and fund troops for the union army. The intense division of the war left Hoosiers, and all Americans, as still one people, but barely.
The country - once again - is deeply divided. Slavery, and its aftermath, left a legacy of racism that still exists today. How can we resolve our differences with peace and civility? How can we ensure a state, and a nation, with "liberty and justice for all"?
Primary Sources
Article XIII
Prohibiting free blacks in Indiana
Source: Indiana Historical Society
Compelling Question: How should the movement of people between states – and nations – be regulated?
Civil War Recruiting Poster
General Eli Lilly
Source: Eli Lilly Company Archives
Compelling Question: What motivates individuals to join - or oppose - an armed conflict?
Women in the Civil War
Nurse Lucy Higgs Nichols
Source: Carnegie Center
Compelling Question: What obligations does a country have to the men and women who serve in the military?
Indiana Prisoners of War
Pvt. Jackson Brashears
Source: Library of Congress
Compelling Question: What moral and ethical obligations do captors have towards prisoners of war?
Hoosier Troops at War
Battle of Shiloh
Source: Indiana Historical Society
Compelling Question: How can a nation resolve its differences without armed conflict?
How We Remember War
Soldiers and Sailors Monument
Source: Library of Congress
Compelling Question: How do symbols unite or divide us?