Where do you go when you want to learn more about a specific period in history? Do you go to the local library? More likely, do you Google it? In either case you are the one doing the searching. The web site www.historycentral.com provides short introductions to all facets of World and American History, at which point the site shows you a list of links to other, more detailed information on your topic of interest as well as books to read. Other areas of the site include replacement learning pods in lieu of history textbooks, famous primary source documents separated by periods of history, and much more.
This being a Civil War site, I’d like to focus in on the Civil War portion of the site, located under the America’s Wars sub-section in the left hand menu. The major battles of the war are separated out by year, but there are also several other interesting areas of the Civil War portion of the site, including:
- American in the Civil War Period
- Biographies of Union and Confederate Generals
- Economy and the American Civil War
- Naval Chronology of the Civil War
- Black American Contributions to Union Intelligence
Let’s click on the Petersburg link from 1864 and explore a specific campaign. The Petersburg page contains a short essay by site creator Marc Schulman, along with several articles I recognize written by generals and other soldiers who were in various battles of the campaign, though the early part of the Siege of Petersburg isn’t as well represented as it could be. Another link leads to dozens of photographs of the siege.
History Central repeats this process for thousands of events in U.S. and World History, all leading to further avenues of research. If you become interested in a new aspect of history or if you want to teach your children and would like to ease them into the study of a subject, History Central is for you.