Civil War Simulator Game
By Micah's Learning Resources
Your students run the Union war effort as President Lincoln, from the summer of 1861 to the spring of 1865. They move the armies across a period war map, answer the questions that shaped the war, and when two armies meet they fight the battle themselves on the real battlefield. What the game models: The Union has more than twice the people and most of the factories, and it can still lose. Northern will falls with every defeat and every casualty. If Northern will is under 50 at the 1864 election, the Democrats win and make peace. Recognition risk rises with Confederate victories in the East until Britain and France step in. Confederate will falls as the blockade tightens, as Union armies take the Mississippi, the railroads and the cities, and as battles are won. Drive it to zero and the Confederacy surrenders, the way it really did. Every battle is fought on the real ground: When armies meet, the battle opens on a map of the actual battlefield, across the three real positions of the defender's line, in three phases named for the stages of the real fight. Each phase, students send each corps to a position, around an open end of the line, or into reserve, and point the guns. The ground multiplies the defense: open fields least, woods, ridges and creeks more, stone walls, trenches and forts most. Only so many men can fight on one stretch of ground at once, so piling corps onto a single point gains less and less. Attack one position at a time, as McClellan did at Antietam, and the