Social Studies

If your government is wrong, should you support it or fight against it?

"No one, except he was there in the prison can form anything like a correct idea of our appearance about this time. We had been in prison nearly five months and our clothing was worn out. A number were entire naked; some would have a ragged shirt and no pants; some had pants and no shirt; another would have shoes and a cap and nothing else. Their flesh was wasted away, leaving the chaffy, weather beaten skin drawn tight over the bones, the hip bones and shoulders standing out. Their faces and exposed parts of their bodies were covered with smoky black soot, from the dense smoke of pitch pine we had hovered over, and our long matted hair was stiff and black with the same substance, which water would have no effect on, and soap was not to be had. I would not attempt to describe the sick and dying, who could now be seen on every side.

Michael Dougherty, who was 16 when he joined the 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry, Diary of a Civil War Hero, p. 43.

Should West Virginia really be a State?

Is West Virginia legal?

Even President Lincoln had doubts about the legality of admitting West Virginia to the Union:

"We can scarcely dispense with the aid of West Virginia in this struggle, much less can we afford to have her against us, in Congress and in the field. Her brave and good men regard her admission into the union as a matter of life and death. They have been true to the union under many severe trials. The division of a state is dreaded as a precedent but a measure expedient by a war is no precedent for times of peace.

"It is said that the admission of West Virginia is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the constitution and secession in favor of the constitution. I believe the admission of West Virginia into the union is expedient."

What other nations have had Civil Wars? What caused them? How were those wars different?

"The Spanish Civil War (1936-39), was a military revolt against the Republican government of Spain, supported by conservative elements within the country. When an initial military coup failed to win control of the entire country, a bloody civil war ensued, fought with great ferocity on both sides. The Nationalists, as the rebels were called, received aid from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The Republicans received aid from the Soviet Union, as well as from International Brigades, a great number of volunteers who came from other European countries and the United States."