US History Classroom at George B. McClellan High School, City of New York, New York, United States of America, August 19, 2015
Teacher: Good morning Class!
Students: Good morning Mr. Stanton.
Teacher: I know school just started yesterday and you're not thinking about history, but does anyone know what happened on this day 150 years ago?
(Complete silence from classroom)
Teacher: On August 19th, 1865, a ceasefire was signed between the US and the Confederacy, ending the War of Secession that had been raging for over four years.
(One student raises his hand)
Will: So did we win?
(A number of other students were curious as well. Mr. Stanton was very disappointed, not so much with Will or the other students, but with the fact that he lived in a society where people who were almost adults never learned about the War of Secession.)
Teacher: No, we didn't win, in fact, our defeat was a crushing blow to national morale for years afterwords. We should have won, but the Confederates got outside help from Europe. If we had won you wouldn't need passports to go on vacation in North Carolina.
(Another Student raises her hand)
Mary: Why were we fighting them?
Teacher: So in 1860 everything that was North of Mexico and South of Canada was part of the United States. In 1860 a man named Abraham Lincoln was elected President and most of the slave-holding states left the nation in protest and formed the Confederacy. But we'll get to that later in the year. Today we'll be learning about the English settlers in Plymouth. I could talk about the War of Secession all class period but you've got to remind me to stay on topic. And no, I wasn't alive during that war, I'm not that old.
(After school was over, Mr. Stanton went home and started gathering documents from Union and Confederate soldiers, generals, and politicians, for the students to analyze for when he would start teaching on the War of Secession in a few months, knowing fully well that most of his students wouldn't read them.)