A general rewrites the lights-out call1. July 1862, a Union camp at Harrison's Landing, Virginia. General Daniel Butterfield does not care for the bugle call that ends the day.2. He reworks an older call into a new one.3. His bugler, Oliver Norton, is the first to sound it.4. Within months both armies are using it.Fact: The call is Taps.
A bed for a soldier on his way home1. A soldier on sick leave steps off a train in a strange city, with no money and nowhere to sleep. 2. A sign over a door: a soldiers' rest. 3. Soup, a cot and a ticket for the next train. Fact: The Sanitary Commission ran soldiers' homes, lodges and rests for traveling and disabled soldiers.
A fair to fill the supply wagons1. A city hall hung with bunting. Tables of quilts, pies and donated goods. 2. Volunteers count the takings at the end of the day. 3. Crates marked for the army roll away on a wagon. Fact: The Sanitary Commission, a private relief agency created in June 1861, held Sanitary Fairs in many cities and raised an estimated 25 million dollars.
A letter home, written in someone else's hand1. An army hospital. A soldier too sick to hold a pen tells a volunteer nurse what to say. 2. She writes it down, word for word. 3. A kitchen table far away, and a family reading. Fact: The nurses of the Sanitary Commission wrote the letters that men dictated to them.
A patent clerk fills a wagon1. Washington, April 1861. Clara Barton, a clerk at the Patent Office, brings food and supplies to soldiers newly arrived from Massachusetts. 2. For a year she collects bandages, lanterns and food. 3. She asks, and keeps asking, for a pass to the front. 4. 1862: the pass comes, and her wagon rolls out. Fact: An army surgeon likened her to an angel, which is where her nickname, the angel of the battlefield, comes from.
A school under an oak tree1. November 1861, near Fort Monroe in Virginia. Mary Peake is asked to teach the children of people who have escaped slavery. 2. Her first classroom is the shade of a big oak. 3. Soon a cottage is found for the classes. 4. Up to fifty children come by day and twenty adults at night. Fact: Virginia law had banned the teaching of enslaved people since 1831.
A telegram goes up in a balloon and comes down a wire1. Washington, June 1861. A balloon named Enterprise rises about 500 feet on a tether, with a telegraph key and an operator aboard. 2. A wire runs down the tether line and across the street. 3. Indoors, a message arrives that was sent from the sky. Fact: The balloonist, Thaddeus Lowe, was made chief aeronaut of the Union Army Balloon Corps.
Counting factories and railroad miles1. The Union's side of the page: 101,000 factories and 20,000 miles of railroad. 2. The Confederacy's side: 21,000 factories and 9,000 miles. 3. A long supply train steaming south. Fact: These are the National Park Service's figures for the two sides.
The news from Fort Sumter reaches a small town1. April 1861. A telegraph key clatters in a small-town office: Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, has been fired on. 2. The next message: the president calls for seventy-five thousand troops. 3. A line of volunteers outside the town hall. Fact: The war began at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.
One porch in a Border State town1. A general store in a Kentucky town, 1861. Kentucky is a slave state that has stayed in the Union. 2. At one end of the porch the talk is for the Union. At the other end it is not. 3. The mail wagon pulls up, and both ends reach for the same newspaper. Fact: Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri were called the Border States.
The telegraph office that hears everything first1. The War Department telegraph office in Washington. A civilian operator sits at the key. 2. Dots and dashes arrive in cipher. 3. He decodes the message for two readers: the president and the Secretary of War. Fact: The Military Telegraph Corps used civilian operators and built 15,389 miles of line during the war.
Who leaves the farm when a farmer enlists1. A farmer hangs up his straw hat and walks down the lane. 2. The field still needs plowing. 3. The rest of the family behind the plow. Fact: Farmers made up 48 percent of civilian occupations in the Union and 69 percent in the Confederacy.
Women run the commission's supply rooms1. A room of long tables: women sorting, counting and packing donated supplies. 2. Some of them go on to army hospitals as nurses, and travel a long way to get there. 3. One of the volunteers, at a small desk after her shift, is a writer. Fact: Louisa May Alcott was among the women who served with the Sanitary Commission.
Camp life 12
A drummer's day from first call to last1. Dawn. The drummer beats the camp awake. 2. All day the drum tells the regiment what comes next. 3. Night. One last pattern, and the camp goes quiet. Fact: Drums were part of an army's signal system, and some drummers were children. John Clem joined a Union regiment unofficially at the age of nine.
A general rewrites the lights-out call1. July 1862, a Union camp at Harrison's Landing, Virginia. General Daniel Butterfield does not care for the bugle call that ends the day. 2. He reworks an older call into a new one. 3. His bugler, Oliver Norton, is the first to sound it. 4. Within months both armies are using it. Fact: The call is Taps.
A general's whiskers get a name1. General Ambrose Burnside: thick side whiskers joined by a mustache, and a clean-shaven chin. 2. People start calling the style burnsides. 3. Over the years the word turns itself around. Fact: Sideburns is a 19th-century twist on burnsides.
A nurse who is also a scout1. Early 1862. Harriet Tubman travels to South Carolina to nurse soldiers and civilians. 2. By day, the hospital. 3. Other days she goes scouting behind the lines and comes back with what she has learned. Fact: During the war she served the United States Army as a spy, scout, nurse and cook.
A recruit signs up under a new name1. A recruiting table. A volunteer with cropped hair and a loose coat signs a man's name. 2. Drill, march, camp. Nobody asks. 3. An army roll, with that name on it among the rest. Fact: Both armies forbade women to enlist, and women who did so took men's names. One estimate of the time counted about four hundred.
An army needs more than soldiers1. A camp at work: a carpenter mends a wagon, and a cook stirs a kettle. 2. A teamster brings in the mules, and a nurse crosses to the hospital tent. 3. On the river, a steamboat pilot at the wheel. Fact: The National Archives lists Black carpenters, cooks, nurses, scouts, steamboat pilots, surgeons and teamsters among those who served the Union.
The inspector with a notebook1. Summer 1861. Thousands of new soldiers in crowded camps. 2. An inspector from the Sanitary Commission walks the rows, writing down what he finds. 3. A stack of reports on a desk in Washington. Fact: By late October 1861 the commission's inspectors had reported on more than four hundred regimental camps.
Mail call in the trenches1. Summer 1863, the Sea Islands of South Carolina. Soldiers in long trenches in the sand. 2. Clara Barton comes down the line with a basket of fresh food. 3. And a bundle of letters. Fact: During the campaign on Morris Island she passed out fresh food and mail to the men in the trenches.
Seven dollars instead of thirteen1. 1863. Men of the 54th Massachusetts enlist on the promise of the same pay as white soldiers, 13 dollars a month. 2. In South Carolina they are told it will be 7. 3. The sums on a slate: 10 dollars with 3 taken off for clothing, against 13 with nothing taken off. 4. June 1864: Congress grants equal pay, and makes it count from the start. Fact: The figures are from the National Archives.
Three ways to eat a cracker called sheet iron1. A square cracker, three inches by three, too hard to bite. 2. Some soldiers break it up and drop it in the morning coffee to soften it. 3. Others pound it to pieces and turn it into a mush. Everybody calls it names. Fact: Soldiers called hardtack sheet iron, tooth dullers and worm castles.
Two armies, two bands and one song1. Late December 1862, Tennessee. Two armies camp about 700 yards apart. 2. One side's band strikes up a tune. 3. The other side's band answers with one of its own. 4. Then one band starts Home, Sweet Home, and the bands on both sides join in. 5. Thousands of soldiers sing it together across the lines. Fact: This was the night before the battle of Stones River.
Who was in the Union Army1. A long column of soldiers, drawn small. 2. A caption counts them: 2,672,341 enlistments. 3. Two groups in the column are picked out: 178,975 African American soldiers and 3,530 Native American troops. Fact: The figures are the National Park Service's.
Turning points 12
A clock, a crowd and one minute to twelve1. December 31, 1862. A crowded church, and a clock. 2. Five minutes to twelve. Nobody speaks. 3. Midnight: it is January 1, 1863, and the Emancipation Proclamation is in effect. Fact: That night was called Freedom's Eve, and watch night services are still held on New Year's Eve.
A harbor pilot sails his family to freedom1. Charleston, about 3 a.m. on May 13, 1862. The officers of the steamer Planter are ashore. Robert Smalls, the enslaved pilot, fires up the boilers. 2. He stops at a wharf for the crew's waiting families. 3. In the captain's straw hat he gives the right whistle signal at each fort. 4. Past the last fort, he steers for the Union blockade. 5. Sixteen people are free. Fact: Smalls was later made captain of the Planter.
A man moves to get away from the war1. 1861. Wilmer McLean's house near Manassas, Virginia, is caught up in the first big battle of the war. 2. He moves his family to a quiet village, Appomattox Court House. 3. April 1865: a messenger knocks at the door. May two generals use the parlor? 4. The war in Virginia ends in his house. Fact: He is supposed to have said that the war began in his front yard and ended in his front parlor.
A picnic with a view of a battle that goes wrong1. July 1861. Congressmen and their families drive out from Washington with picnic baskets to watch what they expect to be an easy win. 2. Hampers open on a hillside far from the field. 3. That evening the road home is jammed with carriages, all in a hurry. Fact: This was the First Battle of Bull Run.
A proclamation that also opens the army1. January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation is signed. 2. One line in it announces that Black men will be accepted into the Army and Navy. 3. A recruiting office with a line out the door. Fact: By the end of the war roughly 179,000 Black men had served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 in the Navy.
Boats on the Combahee River1. June 1863, South Carolina. Union boats move up the Combahee River, and Harriet Tubman, a scout for the army, is with them. 2. People run to the riverbank from the plantations with bundles and children. 3. The boats pull away, crowded to the rails. Fact: More than 700 people left slavery that day.
The first reading in the South1. 1863, Virginia. People gather under the oak where Mary Peake held her first classes. 2. Someone unfolds a paper and begins to read. 3. Faces in the crowd as the words sink in. Fact: The tree is called the Emancipation Oak, for the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in the South.
The numbers tip toward the Union1. July 1861: two armies nearly equal, each under 200,000. 2. 1863: Union soldiers outnumber Confederate soldiers two to one. 3. January 1865: the Union army is about the size it was two years before, over 600,000, and the Confederate army is down to about 200,000. Fact: These are the National Park Service's figures.
The officer who wrote out the surrender1. The same parlor. Grant's military secretary, Ely S. Parker, sits down to write the formal copy of the terms. 2. Parker is a Seneca from New York, and the copy is in his handwriting. 3. Lee shakes his hand. Fact: By Parker's own account he told Lee, "We are all Americans."
The short speech after the long one1. November 19, 1863, Gettysburg. The main speaker, Edward Everett, gives the long oration of the day. 2. The president stands for a few closing remarks. 3. He sits down again before the crowd has settled. Fact: Lincoln spoke for less than two minutes to about 15,000 people.
The terms: go home, and keep your horses1. April 9, 1865. A parlor, two small tables and two generals, Grant and Lee. 2. The terms are written out: the soldiers will go home, not to prison camps. 3. Lee asks one thing more: may the men keep their own horses and mules? Grant will give the order. 4. And 25,000 rations for a hungry army. Fact: The meeting ended with a handshake at about 3 p.m.
Three men reach a fort, and a general will not send them back1. May 1861, Virginia. Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory and James Townsend escape from slavery to Fort Monroe, held by the Union. 2. Their owner sends to demand them back. 3. The commander, General Benjamin Butler, refuses. 4. Within days more people are arriving at the fort, and soon there are hundreds. Fact: Butler's decision of May 27, 1861 became known as the contraband decision.
Aftermath 12
A classroom of all ages1. 1865. A schoolroom with a child, a mother and a grandfather on one bench. 2. All three are on the same page of the same reader. 3. The youngest helps the oldest with a word. Fact: The Freedmen's Bureau, set up on March 3, 1865, ran schools, and freed people had begun schools of their own even before it came.
A four-year search by letter1. A small office. Clara Barton and a wall of pigeonholes stuffed with letters from families. 2. Each asks the same thing: where is he? 3. Lists of names go out, and answers come back. Fact: She set up the Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army and directed a four-year search.
A river pilot buys a house he knows well1. Beaufort, South Carolina. A big house, and behind it the slave cabin where Robert Smalls lived as a boy. 2. 1862: Smalls hands a steamer, the Planter, to the U.S. Navy and is paid prize money. 3. A tax auction in Beaufort. He bids. 4. His family at the front door, with the key. Fact: By January 1864 he owned the house of the man who had once enslaved him.
Fifty years on, a camp of old soldiers1. Gettysburg, the summer of 1913. A city of tents on the old battlefield. 2. 53,407 veterans arrive, about 8,750 of them from the Confederate side. 3. They have come from 46 of the 48 states. 4. Two old men, one from each army, share a bench. Fact: It was the largest reunion of Civil War veterans ever held, on the battle's 50th anniversary.
Flowers on the thirtieth of May1. May 30, 1868. People in towns across the country gather armfuls of spring flowers. 2. They carry them to the soldiers' graves and lay them down. 3. The day gets a name: Decoration Day. Fact: It was proclaimed by John A. Logan, head of a veterans' organization, and became Memorial Day.
From the wheelhouse to the legislature1. Robert Smalls at the wheel of the Planter, in the captain's hat. 2. Smalls in a suit, speaking in the South Carolina legislature. 3. Smalls at a desk in the national legislature. Fact: He served in both during Reconstruction.
Galveston hears it in June1. June 19, 1865. General Gordon Granger arrives in Galveston, Texas, with news: the war is over, and enslaved people are free. 2. A year on: a celebration with big meals and best clothes. 3. Later years: families travel back to Galveston for the day. 4. The 1890s: the day has a name of its own, made of June and nineteenth. Fact: After the war Black communities kept several Emancipation Days. Juneteenth is the one that spread.
The nurse starts something bigger1. Clara Barton with her wagon of supplies, during the war. 2. Years later, another wagon of supplies rolls toward a flood. 3. On its side, a red cross. Fact: She founded the American Red Cross, was its first president and led it for twenty-three years. Disaster relief was her idea.
The secretary gets a new post1. 1865: Ely Parker, the officer who wrote out the terms at Appomattox. 2. 1869: Grant is president, and he has a job for his old secretary. 3. Parker at a new desk, as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Fact: He was the first Native American to hold that post.
Souvenir hunters empty the parlor1. The meeting is over, and the generals have gone. 2. Officers crowd into the parlor and carry off tables, chairs and anything not tied down. 3. The owner protests, with money pressed into his hands. Fact: One general paid 40 dollars for the table Lee had used.
Two days to watch an army walk past1. Washington, May 23, 1865. At 9 a.m. the Army of the Potomac, about 80,000 men, starts down the avenue from Capitol Hill. 2. Crowds, flags and flowers. 3. May 24: 65,000 more, from the armies that fought in the West. 4. They take six hours to pass. Fact: The parade was the Grand Review of the Armies.
The war ends more than once1. April 9, 1865: one Confederate army surrenders at Appomattox. 2. A map with the other armies still marked on it. 3. Week by week the marks come off. Fact: The remaining armies had all surrendered by early June, on terms nearly identical to those of Appomattox.
How it works
These comic book strip ideas for the Civil War are for a class unit on the American war of 1861 to 1865: a letter home, a telegraph office, a drummer's day, a porch in a Border State. None of them asks for a battle scene.
Read the full guide
The war in four parts
Home front is the people who stayed: clerks, teachers, farm families and volunteers. Camp life is the long days between battles. Turning points are the moments that changed the war, told from a wharf, a church or a parlor. Aftermath runs from the spring of 1865 to the reunion of 1913.
Why there are no battle scenes
A turning point is shown by where the news arrives or who writes it down. Each strip says what happened and when, and leaves wounds and weapons out of the panels.
Draw the famous by a hat, a coat or a chair, and give the faces to the ordinary people in the strip.
Put the date in the first caption. The war began in April 1861, and its armies had surrendered by June 1865.
Tell the two armies apart by the color of a coat, and leave flags out of the panels.
Questions and answers
How do you make a comic strip about the Civil War?
Choose one person and one day: a drummer, a telegraph operator, a teacher, a harbor pilot. Show what they did in three or four panels and close on one checked fact.
What can I draw about the Civil War besides battles?
A fair that raised money for the army, a school under an oak tree, a hard cracker that soldiers called sheet iron, two army bands playing one song, and a parade that took two days to pass.
Which states were the Border States?
Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri. The National Park Service counts 2.5 million free inhabitants and 500,000 enslaved people in them.