This set of 5 guided reading play scripts written by Sue Russell provide an overview and background to the American Civil War, plus an insight via ‘the winners and losers’ i.e. two different perspectives; along with events after the war including Reconstruction; and finally an ‘interview’ with the First Ladies of this period and their take on what happened.
Please note: Teaching time of 40 minutes is very approximate, depending on time spent on reading and answering quiz questions.

Play 1 Overview of American Civil War 1861-65
Speakers:
Abraham Lincoln (Union president)
Jefferson Davis (Confederate president)
John Brown (fanatical abolitionist)
John Wilkes Booth (actor & Lincoln’s assassin)
Sojourner Truth (anti-slavery campaigner)
Simon Legree (cruel slave manager - character taken from Uncle Tom’s Cabin)

Play 2: Background to Civil War
Speakers:
John Adams (2nd president)
Thomas Jefferson (3rd president)
Harriet Beecher Stowe (writer of Uncle Tom’s Cabin)
Senator Charles Sumner (Massachusetts senator)
James Buchanan (15th president)
Abraham Lincoln (16th president)

Play 3: Civil War – Winners & Losers
Speakers:
Ulysses S. Grant (18th president)
George B. McClellan (twice appointed – and fired – as commander of Union forces)
Clara Barton (nurse)
General Robert E. Lee (commander of Confederate forces)
Jefferson Davis (Confederate president)
John Wilkes Booth (Lincoln’s assassin)

Play 4 After the Civil War – Reconstruction 1865-1877
Speakers:
Andrew Johnson (17th president)
Thaddeus Stevens (Radical Republican)
Ulysses S. Grant (18th president)
Nathan Bedford Forrest (founder of Ku Klux Klan)
Francis Louis Cardozo (one of the first African Americans to hold political office)
Rutherford B. Hayes (19th president)


Play 5 First Ladies of the Civil War Period
Speakers (5):
Interviewer
Mary Todd Lincoln (wife of Abraham Lincoln)
Varina Howell Davis (wife of Jefferson Davis)
Eliza McCardle Johnson (wife of Andrew Johnson)
Julia Dent Grant (wife of Ulysses Grant)

As with all my Guided Reading Scripts, there are 6 speakers per play script. (For a smaller class size, a script may be dropped or the speakers re-allocated). Each script comes with a quiz - an excellent assessment tool and means of focusing attention on actual learning content. I describe these plays as guided reading materials or readers' theater, as the scripts can be read as opposed to memorized, with no props.
I have written a set of guided reading play scripts to ‘compliment’ every ‘traditional’ class play I have written. The focus of these mini plays is more on reading than performing, which is why I refer to them as ‘Readers Theater’ and I see them as a wonderful classroom resource, delivering the curriculum via role play. I have used this format with classes I have taught and know first-hand how well this innovative form of teaching works. For the complete collection of guided reading play scripts I have written, visit my website www.plays-r-ussell.com

American Civil War Guided Reading Play Scripts by Sue Russell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.