Breathing life into history

Photos by ZACHARY KAUFMAN/The Columbian Witness Patrick Muonio, right, uses Tayler Johnson, center, to demonstrate “bucking,” a torture technique used during the Civil War. Matthew John, left, played the role of judge during a mock trial in Beth Doughty’s eighth grade social studies class at Chief Umtuch Middle School in Battle Ground. Doughty travels and attends workshops to better teach her students.

Chief Umtuch eighth-grader Jordan Gonzalez shows how a slave might have held a cotton boll. His teacher, Mike Kleiner, passed out cotton for his students to pick while he lectured on slavery.

After hours of grilling witnesses in the trial of Capt. Henry Wirz, Jeff Points stumbled upon a damning piece of evidence.

"Check it out," he said, handing his co-prosecutor, Mark Tedder, a picture of the 2-pound revolver Capt. Wirz carried as commander of Camp Sumter. The captain had argued he couldn't have carried a weapon, owing to his injured arm.

"It's not very heavy," Points said. "It could help us win our case."

The two eighth-graders are students in Beth Doughty's history class at Chief Umtuch Middle School in Battle Ground, where Doughty has spent years bringing history to life, rather than letting it lie flat in a textbook.

With summer vacation rapidly approaching, Doughty ambitiously turned her classroom into a courtroom for the mock trial of a man who, during the Civil War almost 150 years ago, commanded a Confederate-operated prison camp.

Deviating from the textbook has become routine for Doughty — and in this effort, she's paired up with colleague Michael Kleiner. Recently, the two received prestigious fellowships to study Thomas Jefferson at his historic Monticello home. They intend to write curriculum based on him.

(Jefferson, the third president of the United States and architect of the Declaration of Independence, isn't "just another dead guy," Kleiner says. His personal story is dotted with contradictions relating to slavery).

The educators' goal is to use materials of the time alongside the textbook — for example, radio transcripts, love letters from soldiers, song lyrics and photographs.

Doughty and Kleiner attend workshops at the Education Service District 112, where Matt Karlsen instructs social studies teachers through U.S. Department of Education social studies grants.

Through these grants, Clark County social studies teachers have traveled to Birmingham, Ala., to study Civil Rights and to Montpelier, Va. to study the Constitution; several will fly to Gettysburg in the spring. Closer to home, they have visited the Pearson Air Museum and the Fort Vancouver National Site.

This summer, they'll hear from professors who specialize in the Underground Railroad and the court cases and economics leading up to the Civil War.

The goal, Karlsen says, is to improve a teacher's grasp of history.

"There seem to be many stories about people not enjoying their history classes, but we know that U.S. history has huge potential for being an engaging subject matter," Karlsen said.

"For some students and for some teachers, lecturing works great," he said. "For others, there need to be other approaches."

For example, when Kleiner wanted his students to pay attention to his lecture on the Civil War, he bought a box of cotton bolls from a North Carolinian named Fahey Byrum III.

He figured they'd have something to do with their hands while being able to imagine what the slaves went through.

It worked for Jordan Gonzalez, a 14-year-old with a pierced ear and darting eyes.

"It makes you understand it more because that's what they went through," Jordan said. "It made you understand how hard it was for them. Just being born into a cotton field — that would suck."

Later that week, when Kleiner tried to explain to a visitor Lincoln's motivations preceding the Civil War, Gonzalez interrupted and, picking another cotton boll, walked through the economics of cotton during the Civil War and the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which denied a slave freedom.

Kleiner was taken aback, and pleasantly surprised.

Back in Doughty's class, eighth-graders had to resolve the facts: Were Wirz's actions greatly exaggerated by starved Unionist soldiers who lacked perspective? Men who would have starved no matter what side of the wall they were on? Or was Wirz truly evil incarnate, a man who took perverse pleasure in personally executing some of the camp's cruelties?

No doubt, camp conditions were miserable: Maggots feasted on open wounds, feces contaminated a swamp at the camp's center. The Unionist soldiers from the North were reduced to skeletons, fed only peas, and a little bacon fat and bread scraps if they were lucky.

Preparation for the trial was intense, as the students had signed up for their roles Monday and had to be ready by Thursday. Tedder said that he and Points spent two hours preparing the prosecution's case the night before.

An outsider watching with the sound off might see rows of teens in hoodies, side bangs and chipped nail polish. But turn the volume up, and the intensity was palpable.

"You say the guards ate the same things, but only the prisoners had scurvy, which is caused by lack of fruits and vegetables," Tedder said.

Across the aisle, defense attorney Savannah Sprouse, 13, shot him a cold look.

"That's because the guards were outside the camp," she said.

"So?" Tedder said with the cutting impatience of a seasoned prosecutor. "What's your point?"

By the time he was finished grilling the witnesses, Tedder's hands were shaking; he was nervous, he said.

"It helps us get lots of points of view in the trial," he said. "(Wirz) is the only man ever tried in the Civil War. It really helps because it's interactive, and we're actually doing the trial."

Isolde Raftery: 360-735-4546 or isolde.raftery@columbian.com.