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Dutton, 1991
Summary: The life of a Union drummer boy in the Civil War's Andersonville Prison is the focus of Red Cap. Author's notes and acknowledgments provide the reader with some background about prisoners of war and the successful search for traces of the real "Red Cap", Ransom Powell. Historical fiction.
Level: Grades 5 - 8
Themes:
- the cost of war
- human values
- the resilience of the human spirit
ActiviActivities:
1. Prepare a research tool to record the following elements of survival experienced by the drummer boy: discipline, hope, luck, physical. Go through Red Cap and record all relevant data. Repeat this exercise using another fictionalized survival experience: perhaps Robinson Crusoe or Deathwatch. Now compare the two sets of data. Which do you think was the MOST important element of survival for each? The LEAST? Explain your decisions. One group may wish to record and compare the elements of a non-fiction survival experience such as Donn Fendler Lost on a Mountain in Maine or Three Came Home.
2. General Grant refused to exchange war prisoners. One of the results was the existence of many prisons like Andersonville. Why did he do this? What are your reactions to his decision? Research the reasons for General Sherman's "march through Georgia" and the bombing of Hiroshima in World War II. Describe these actions and their results and your personal reactions. How do they compare with General Grant's situation?
3a. Ask a group to write descriptions of Captain Wirz according to their reactions to his behavior in the novel. Have one sub-group read the play The Andersonville Trial and another research the actual trial and sentencing of Captain Henry Wirz and write a description of him using only that information. Compare the descriptions.
3b. Research other war prisons and those responsible for the prison conditions, perhaps German or Japanese prisons during World War II or those in Bosnia during the Yugoslav conflict of 1992-1993. How would they compare specifically with Andersonville and with Captain Wirz? What general conclusions can you draw?
4. An unusual amount of "fraternization", or social mingling between opposing forces, occurred in the Civil War. Soldiers shared or traded tobacco and coffee, swam and sang and played cards together. Describe in detail all accounts of fraternization that you can find in Red Cap. How many reasons can you think of for such behavior? List them in priority order.
5. Research everything you can find about drummer boys in war. Prepare a video modeled on Ken Burns' Civil War, or a hypercard stack, or some other multimedia presentation.
6. Meet with a group of other Red Cap readers, and discuss the factual and fictional aspects of the novel, What items are specific and probably true, what items are broadly true and could logically happen, and what items are probably totally imaginative, added to make the story exciting or personal? What did you learn about the Civil War? What did you learn about a boy named Ransom? Each member of the group should then choose one of the Civil War novels described in resources or one approved by the teacher or librarian, and read it with the above discussion in mind. Take notes based on the structure of that discussion and prepare a presentation to instruct others about the Civil War and about the main character(s) in the book. [One observation could be to look for instances of fraternization in these books and prepare a compilation for the vertical file in the library.]
7. Make a copy of the Andersonville graveyard. (see Sampler) Change the flag on the main headstone to the correct flag. Make the eagle face the war implements instead of the olive branch of peace. [President Truman had the eagle look toward peace.] Some of the headstones represent life support in the prison, others represent potential death. Replace the life support terms with other potential death threats present in the prison. Create a different symbolic chart for the life support terms and add others to be found within the prison. Prepare a presentation using the two charts.
8. Use local and state resources to learn more about how your community was involved in the Civil War. Find at least one primary source. Use The Boys' War as a model to create a presentation. It could be written, or it could be oral, with a narrator connecting the themes and ideas, and role-players quoting letters, newspaper articles, or other documents as examples or to verify the narrator's statements. It could be a computer report, employing a scanner to import documentary evidence.
Resources
The novels annotated below, like Red Cap, strive to picture the everyday lives of youngsters caught up in the Civil War or its aftermath. Reading a variety of these can bring the War to life as no history book can. It can also vivify the history books as students come across incidents and conditions they are now familiar with.
Across Five Aprils . Irene Hunt, Follett, 1964, has become a modem classic - depicting the values that swayed participants on both sides in the Civil War. Uniquely, these differing values are encountered within one family, resulting in brothers joining opposite sides. Research for this book included the author's family letters, records, and conversations with her Civil War veteran grandfather. Patricia Beattv has written two Civil War novels, Charley Skedaddle also about a drummer boy, and Jayhawker, Morrow, 1991. Jayhawker is about a teenage abolitionist and spy. Beatty wrote 12 pages of author's notes to explain her interest in and provide background about the Kansas-Missouri guerilla-style skirmishes between "bushwhackers" and "jayhawkers". Her sources included a Kansan historical society. Charley Skedaddle contains comparable explanations of the realistic aspects of the novel. An autobiographical account provided the basic plot of impulsive volunteering and the all-too-soon disillusionment through experiences of the horrors of war New York Times issues of 1864 furnished authentic settings and activities. Librarians, mappers, and musicians helped with relevant material. Her novel Wait for Me, Watch for Me, Eula Bee. William Morrow, 1978, chronicles Comanche/Kiowa raids and kidnappings of Texas farm families whose men were away serving in the Civil War. Words from "Lorena", a romantic song written in 1857, supply the key to make the plot come full circle. The forts' descriptions come from contemporary accounts, and the native cultures and behaviors and the captives' lives derived from actual accounts as well as histories. Be Ever Hopeful, Hannalee, Morrow, 1988, and Turn Homeward Hannalee, follow a Georgia girl through the war and reconstruction. Documents found in universities provided much of the background material for these novels, which included wartime epidemics of smallpox and post-war martial law.
Jed. , Peter Burchard. Coward-McCann, 1960, is the story of a 16-year-old Yankee soldier who protects a southern family in distress. Background came from letters in the files of a Wisconsin newspaper.
Rifles for Watie, Harold Keith. Harper, 1957, also involves the protection of vulnerable Southerners by young Yankee soldier. He grows to understand the divided loyalties of members of the displaced Cherokee nation as well as his own ambivalence and that of his fellow soldiers and southern blacks. Interviews with Civil War veterans, Union letters and diaries from seven states, and newspaper accounts of an escape from Texas to Fort Gibson provided Keith with a rich historical foundation.
The Muddy Road to Glory by Stephen W. Meader, Harcourt Brace, 1963 is a novel of a Maine 16-year-old, largely based on an historical account of the Twentieth Maine, by John J. Pullen, J. B. Lippincott, 1957. It follows Ben Everett and Joshua Chamberlin and the '20th' through to the end of the war.
Scott O'Dell wrote a fictional account of a Confederate ship, The 290, secretly built as a raider of Yankee shipping. (Houghton Mifflin, 1976) Her short but astoundingly successful life is seen through a boy in her service who revels against his father's slavery practices. The author has added a foreword filled with facts and statistics about the "290".
Shades of Grey by Carolyn Reeder, Avon or Macmillan, 1980, places a Yankee orphan boy in his southern uncle's family. However, his uncle is a pacifist, and his beliefs alienate him from his neighbors and from the boy, whose father was killed in the Civil War. The testing and development of values is the novel's primary concern. Much of the book's core content came from reading first-hand accounts of the war's effect on local citizens which the author found in local Shenandoah museums.
Grandfather's Broadaxe and Other Stories of a Maine Farm Family C. .-\. Stephens, Wi Iliam R. Scott Inc., 1967, is a selection of stories originally published in the Youth's Companion magazine. These stories were a compilation of children's experiences of the times. including orphans of the Civil War.
William 0. Steele's Perilous Road Harcourt. 1968, is another story about a family split between loyalties to the North and South. The inclusion of "local color" through speech, customs, and setting, provide a specific reality for the tensions within this family.
Non-fiction sources annotated below are suitable for both specific and general Civil War information. Some of them were used heavily as resources for the novel listed above.
Bowen, John, Civil War Boys: Everyday Life During the War Between the States Chartwell, 1987. Numerous sketches and photos of Andersonville and other prisons, and narrative regarding prison life.
Bums, Ken, The Civil War, PBS Video and Florentine Films, 1990. This 9 episode series is comprised of a host of primary sources; letters and journals, quotes, music and photographs. The series includes the adventures and reflections of innumerable ordinary citizens involved in the war. Andersonville prison is portrayed in episode 7.
McElroy, John, This was Andersonville Bonanza. 1957. An adult journal. Editor Roy Meredith included and extensive introduction and an appendix that includes primary data regarding General Wirz and his trial, hounds, vaccinations. "raiders". Extensive notes incorporate statistics, definitions, and explanations. Included in the text (pp 118-119) are three long paragraphs describing "Red Cap".
Menger, W. Springer and Shimrack. J. .August, eds., The Civil War Notebook of Coniel Chisholin, a Chronicle of Daily Life in the Union Army 1864-1865. Orion, 1989. Includes many letters, 2 diaries, and helpful intro and appendices.
Murphy, Jim, The Boys' War: Confederate and Union Soldiers Talk about the Civil War . Clarion, 1990. This book has sections on drummer boys, disease, Anderson-ville prison, fraternization, and the commandant of Andersonville, Henry Wirz. It includes photographs of Andersonville, as well as many photos of young war drummers and other involved youngsters.
Ransome, John L., Andersonville Diary also available from Recorded Books. Excerpts from a diary as selected for newspaper publication by its author. Almost parallels Red Cap's experiences in Andersonville. The recording is dynamic.
Robertson, James I. Jr., Civil War.' America Becomes One Nation. Knopf, 1992.
Scott, John Anthony, The Story of America. National Geographic, 1984. A chapter entitled "Mid-Century Crisis" includes a large painting of Andersonville prison and a discussion of the treatment of both Northern and Southern prisoners.
Topert, Annette, ed., The Brothers' War.- Civil War Letters to their Loved Onesftom the Blue and Gray Times. 1988. Photos and letters.
Prepared by Audrey Conant, Wayne School
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