Last week 42 teachers from across the state stood at the foot of a hill in Vicksburg, Miss., and tried to envision the tumultuous scene 148 years earlier when Union soldiers from Wisconsin were ordered to make a nearly impossible frontal attack on the heavily fortified Confederate fort at the top.

"There's nothing quite like standing there and thinking, 'What if my great-great-grandfather was asked to take that hill?' " said UW-Eau Claire history professor Jim Oberly, who noted Eau Claire troops played a key role in the fighting at Vicksburg.

The powerful experience was a highlight of an immersion program, funded by a U.S. Department of Education grant, intended to improve the teaching of American history in public schools.

Cooperative Educational Service Agency 10 received a $1.67 million grant two years ago to conduct the Constructing Liberty program. This is the second year of the triennial program in which staff from the Chippewa Valley Museum and UW-Eau Claire history department offer a summer institute to teach teachers about history.

"The idea is that the more content knowledge teachers have, the better teachers they'll be," said museum editor and program instructor Frank Smoot.

Leading up to this year's three-week summer program, which focused on the period from the Civil War through 1920, teachers spent months reading history books and engaging in online discussion.

The summer institute, which ended last week, involved two weeks of study in Eau Claire followed by a six-day trip including stops at Vicksburg National Military Park; the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn.; and Madison's Forest Hill Cemetery, the final resting place of 240 Union veterans and 140 Confederate soldiers, many of whom once were prisoners of war at the original Camp Randall.

"We will be visiting a lot of cemeteries because there was just so much death in the Civil War," museum director Susan McLeod said, referring to the estimated 620,000 Americans who died in the Battle Between the States. "It makes you wonder how we even ended up with a country."

Visiting historic sites helps teachers make a personal connection to events that no history book could replicate, Oberly said, adding they take photos, make videos and hear stories at the sites.

"Once they're back in the classroom, they do, in effect, teacher show and tell, and I think it gets through to the students. And we hope it lights a fire under students and they want to go to these sites someday," said Oberly, one of the program's lead instructors.

Participants spend a lot of time studying fundamental American documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Gettysburg Address, he said.

Organizers chose Vicksburg as one of the sites to visit because of the connection with Wisconsin troops and its historical significance.

Union commanders knew they couldn't defeat the Confederates until they captured Vicksburg, so when traditional attacks failed, they opted for a siege. For six weeks Union soldiers bombarded the garrison with artillery fire, enduring unbearable heat, until the Confederates finally ran out of food and surrendered on July 4, 1863. It is widely considered one of the turning points of the war.

"There's a statue down in Vicksburg of the Wisconsin Volunteers because they were so important to the war effort," Smoot said.

Even in the Eau Claire portion of the program, museum staff tried to get the teachers out of the classroom as often as possible. They visited several of the city's historical markers, including one designating the old downtown steamboat landing on the Chippewa River where Eau Claire's Company C troops departed for the war.

In a somber moment, the teachers conducted a "Calling of the Dead" ceremony at Buffington Cemetery, in which participants called out the names and units of any Civil War veterans whose graves they saw and then reconvened to sing Civil War songs and read the Gettysburg Address.

"It's a really intense program, and we try to make it as rich an experience as possible for the teachers," McLeod said.

Participants got a sneak peek into the lives of soldiers when a group of Civil War re-enactors from the La Crosse area, dressed in replica wool uniforms, offered presentations on the era's weapons, medicines, uniforms and photography.

They even tried their hand at battle, spending a good portion of an afternoon doing military drills and following that with a mock skirmish, complete with fake rifles and replicas of the Confederate and Union flags of the time, over a fence line in the front yard of the Chippewa Valley Museum.

Gregg Jochimsen, who teaches U.S. history at Chippewa Falls Middle School, said he definitely could envision incorporating some similar re-enactment drilling into his eighth-grade curriculum.

"It's definitely a step up from the textbook," he said.

Terri Hanson, who teaches seventh-grade social studies at Altoona Middle School, played a soldier who was afraid to serve but joined the army to claim the bounty for his family. Her soldier was happy to get shot and lose a leg because at least that meant he was alive and no longer had to fight.

The experience helped her see the human side of the war and made her want to share that with students.

"Students need to know and understand and feel that human aspect to really get history," Hanson said. "I think it will definitely change how I teach."

Marc Lundquist, who teaches American history to eighth-graders at South Middle School, called the Constructing Liberty program outstanding.

It will help him revamp the curriculum and think of new ways to present historical information, he said. He was particularly interested in the road trip.

"To see what I've been teaching all these years is exciting," he said.

Regis High School world history teacher Eric Nelson agreed, saying, "To be able to follow in the footsteps of the 8th Wisconsin and see what they saw and stand on the battlefield they fought on, those experiences make it more real not only for us but for the kids we teach as well."

Melissa Amyotte-Stokes doesn't even teach history, but she believes the program will help her show her North High School English students the connection between history and some of the books they read.

The program is offered free to Wisconsin teachers and enables them to earn graduate credits. In exchange, the Department of Education requires evidence that its grants are achieving their purpose, so local grant recipients have set up tests of history content knowledge for participating teachers and a control group of teachers not in the program.

After last year's program, which focused on American history before the Civil War, Constructing Liberty participants showed a 36 percent gain in history knowledge, McLeod said.

Smoot offered another potential measure of success.

"The teachers really have gotten a tremendous amount of content knowledge in American history," he said, "so I think 15 years down the road, we're going to have better informed adults once the kids grow up."

Lindquist can be reached at 715-833-9209, 800-236-7077 or eric.lindquist@ecpc.com.