Bob Marley: Indian Killer?

This week, our class focused on Buffalo soldiers and the treatment of Native Americans. Our proceedings were pretty much the same as the previous week: we made a class google doc, and watched videos, taking notes on main ideas, people, and vocab within the doc. When then decided upon the essential question of: “During westward expansion, did the impact of federal policy towards buffalo soldiers and native Americans match the intent?”.

First, let’s talk about Buffalo Soldiers. Immortalized to the common Rastafarian through Bob Marley’s hit, Buffalo Soldiers were the black division of the union troops who continued to fight across the country after the civil war. These troops got their name from their hair and spirit, which reminded natives of the noble buffalo. We watched several videos detailing the lives of Natives in their prime. One notable thing about the Natives was their lush childhoods. Life was great in the plains. Major tribes included the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota. The Great Plains had been peacefully divided. Unfortunately, when we mixed these two good things (Buffalo Soldiers and Native Americans), life became very different for some of them.

Though Buffalo Soldiers built up infrastructure, they also destroyed culture, killing tribes such as the Apache, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and Sioux. They brought into the west their concept of total war, in which they destroyed everything according to Sherman’s policies. To wipe out natives, the government ordered the extermination of buffalo and the natives’ horses, making their lives as hard as possible. The natives began to fight back in various wars. In what seemed to be a decisive victory in what is now referred to as “Custer’s Last Stand”, the natives held their own against the American army. However, the government simply flooded the area with troops, and began enforcing many laws to keep the West for themselves. One of these laws was the Dawes act which gave US citizenship to the head of households for American Indian families who became farmers (and left behind their native way of life), but also claimed nearly 90% of reservation space for whites. Extremists such as Henry Pratt claimed that all natives must be exterminated in order for whites to be successful. 

Overall, although the intent of federal policies was ambiguous, the devastation caused by them was undeniable.

Scrambled Carn-Egg-ie

While Mrs. Gallagher began to grade our history papers, we had to take matters into our own hands. We began the unit that would consist of learning material, then writing questions for our final. We were given a weekly plan, and limited guidance. Without Mrs. Gallagher giving us explicit directions, we had to self govern. Certain people came forth as leaders, assigning tasks, while others dedicated themselves as workers. First, as a class we made a Google Doc, and watched overview videos, taking notes in the Doc. We noted main ideas, key people, important events, and essential terms. As a class, we read biographies on John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Finally, we decided on the essential question of "Were the captains of industry a positive or negative impact to the public?".  

Let’s take a closer look at Rockefeller and Carnegie.  John D. Rockefeller was a business mogul in the American petroleum industry who gave millions of his dollars to educations. Rockefeller was once described as the “Greatest business leader in American history”. He graduated from Cleveland High School, and his father was a farmer from New York. It was his father who encouraged him to enter the business world, and he did so, starting Standard Oil in 1870. Rockefeller created a monopoly on fossil fuels in the United States. Though Rockefeller donated large sums of money to various charities, he had a bad public reputation. He was known for his “cutthroat” business tactics, eliminating rival companies and bribing politicians. The public largely believed he was motivated by greed, but he ultimately helped to eradicate Yellow Fever, and gave away 500 million dollars to charity and education.

Andrew Carnegie (Carn-a-gee? Carn-a-jee? Carn-eggy?) was born in Ireland, and immigrated to America. As Aubrey Drake Graham would put it, he “Started from the bottom, now [he’s] here”. Carnegie started as a bobbin boy in a textile mill before working as a telegrapher operator. Carnegie boasts the honor of being among the first operators in country to take messages by sound alone, an impressive feat. Soon, Carnegie was promoted to Superintendent of the Eastern Telegraph Line, and later chose to retire to travel across Europe, expanding his business skills.  A budding steel manufacture, Carnegie took note of the British production system and later employed it in his factories. He invested half his fortune into steel manufacturing, and teamed up with Henry Bessemer, who had introduced the Bessemer process of making steel for cheap. He was then able to produce a higher quality steel at a lower price than his competitors. Carnegie was caught up in controversy when his plan to destroy the Iron and Steelmakers industry, and his workers began a strike. Carnegie was also famous for expanded his company in financial depression while others were downsizing. Finally, as the second richest man in the world, he sold his company to JP Morgan and began his life of philanthropy, making schools and public resources.

I think it’s clear that though people may have seen Rockefeller and Carnegie as money grubbers, they had a positive impact on their society.

Freedom: Top and Bottom

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves of the United States. However, was it him who gave them freedom? We looked into this question over the course of a few classes.  To be specific, the essential questions were: Who 'gave' freedom to enslaved Americans? Did freedom come from above or below? To what extent were Abraham Lincoln's actions influenced by the actions of enslaved Americans? To answer these questions, we examined documents and primary sources regarding where freedom came from, as well as Lincoln's decisions. We also watched a segment of a video discussion the end of slavery in the US. Freedom from Above means it was those who were societal higher (ie. the government) who got the slaves their freedom, and freedom from below means it was the slaves who gained their own freedom.

First, we looked at this image. It shows a romanticized version of the freeing of the slaves. While they slaves were definitely on Lincoln's side, it is unlikely that they worshiped him like this. This picture depicts freedom from above, because it shows Lincoln freeing the slaves.

We then examined some of Lincoln's documents. Lincoln's official position on slavery seemed to be neutral. In an open letter to Horace Greeley, Lincoln discussed the reasons for the civil war. He dismisses the notion the war is about slavery, and reassures the reader that it is to save the union, saying  "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that".  Evidence of Lincoln's personal belief is also in this letter. Lincoln writes "I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

We then viewed a portion of Ken Burns' Civil War to learn about the influence of fugitive slaves.  We learned that as fugitive slaves became more and more of a problem, the government could no longer turn a blind eye to the issue. Furthermore, we learned that Lincoln did fight for abolition early in the war because the North seemed to be in a neutral position regarding equality. We also looked at two documents titled “Documents X and Y”. Both of them give information on a town overrun with fugitive slaves, representing freedom from below.

One obvious example of freedom from above is the emancipation proclamation, in which the government gave the slaves their freedom. The document states: “all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free”. This shows that it was the government who freed the slaves, rather than the slaves freeing themselves. This is freedom from above.

This image is an example of freedom from below.

These fugitive slaves have made themselves known, pushing the issue towards the US Government. Perhaps without the new visibility of this issue, the government would not have freed the slaves, meaning the freedom really came from below.

Though historians view freedom as coming from above and below, I take a more traditional stance and believe it comes nearly solely from above. It was the government who chose whether or not the slaves would be free, and though slaves may have influenced their decision, it was still the decision of the government, not the slaves.

Recently in the news, there has been much talk of the Baltimore riots. Although the oppressed people are not enslaved, they are still attempting to get freedom from below. While I certainly do not condone the action of rioting, it cannot be denied that people in Baltimore want more freedom and Justice, and are taking matters into their own hands.

A Civil War... Scavenger Hunt?

After having nearly completed this blog post, it entirely disappeared, so this is a recreation of the original, a cheap counterfeit of a masterpiece, a second rate imitation of a brilliant piece of writing. My apologies.
To continue our study of the civil war, we held a scavenger hunt. This scavenger hunt brought us through all the major battles of the civil war. The essential questions that would be answered in this hunt were "Who was the ultimate victor in each of the theaters of war: East, West, Naval?" and "What are some commonalities you can identify in the reasons for the results of the battles?" First, each student picked a battle based on a description. We then did some background research to find the name of the battle, and then went into depth. We discovered the victor, dates, location, and theatre of the battle, as well as some details. We then put this information into a Google Doc, and created a QR code and bit.ly link, which they printed out. This is where it gets scavengery. Each battle had a number (I was 16). The students hid their printed QR codes around the school, and told the student with the number below theirs where they hid it, and were in turn given similar information about the battle with the number after theirs. The location of the next battle in the school was placed into the Google Doc alongside the information about the battle, so students could travel from station to station, being told where to go next and copying historical information into Evernote. Much running around the school ensued. 
To answer the essential question, we got back together as a class with our newly compiled knowledge. We each posted our ideas about who dominated each theater to our Padlet.  The class seemed to be in agreement: The Union dominated the western theater, the Confederacy dominated early battles in the eastern theater before the Union fully readied their army and strategies, and finally, the Union dominated naval battles. Some commonalities in reasons for success were the facts that the Union had more resources and troops, but the Confederacy was initially more organized, although this would soon shift, paving the way for a Union victory. 

Election of 1860

The controversial election of 1860 showed the deep divide in America as the Civil war was brewing.  The essential question presented to us was: How were the results of the  Election of 1860 representative of the deep divisions  over slavery? In class, we watched a Crash Course video regarding the Election of 1860, and briefly studied the outcome. In this diagram, we see the outcome of the election based on votes from each state.

As you can see, the northern and western states electorally voted for Abraham Lincoln, an abolitionist, while the south's electoral votes went to Breckenridge, who favored slavery. Stephen Douglas, who won the electoral college only in Missouri, was a proponent of popular sovereignty, which encouraged the citizens of a state to decide whether or not it would be a free state or a slave state. While it makes sense that each candidate would win in the states that they did, the south thought it was unfair that Lincoln won the elections, as he wasn't even on their ballots. How could a man that they didn't know existed become president of the United States? More information about the election and surrounding events can be found in the video below. We then looked at The Civil War in Art to provide images of art from that time period to put into our mini-documentary, below. The art work ranges from portraits to abstract images of the sky, and all fo ti helped to show how the election of 1860 showed the deep divisions slavery had cut into the nation, splitting it into Civil War.

The Civil War infographic

This is an infographic I made about the civil war. The information in it is about which side had the advantage when it came to resources. I chose to include several important statistics in the infographic. The most obvious difference in the North and South's resources was the major poulation difference, illustrated with the chart that show miniature people. The North was at the advantage here, with a far greater population than the South.  The next chart shows railroad mileage. The North had a great deal more railroad mileage than the South, meaning they had better infrastructure and transportation. People, weapons, and goods could be easily distribution throughout the North, giving them another advantage against the South. One area where the South was in the lead was cotton production, as seen in the donut chart. 100% of the country's cotton was produced in the South, giving them a firm grasp on the market. The South intended to halt cotton production in hopes of preventing the Union from getting any, as well as cutting off their foreign markets. They hoped that this would force other country to take their side in the war, but it backfired when the other countries simply purchased cotton elsewhere. Finally, the North had far more industrial workers than the South. This is important because it is the industrial workers that produce guns and ammunition. With more workers, the North could arm its troops far faster than the South, giving them yet another military advantage. The creation of this chart helped me to learn how the Civil War was stacked.

An Enslaved Pachyderm

The low thumping of huge feet. A shrill trumpeting penetrates the air. The musty smell of nature. A gigantic shadow covers you. You feel a massive presence over your shoulder. You try to ignore it but you feel it getting closer, closer. A long trunk is drawing near, wrapping around your body. Hot breathe is on your neck. Don't turn around. You turn around. There's nothing there but you and the vanishing scent of a massive beast. But out of the corner of your eye, you see a short gray tail. That's right. There's an elephant in the room.

Wikipedia defines the phrase "elephant in the room" as "an English metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is either being ignored or going unaddressed". In antebellum America, the issue of slavery is an elephant in the room. The essential question asked "How do we know the debate over slavery was the "elephant in the room" for American politics in the early 19th century?". Although there were certainly conflicts between people supporting and against slavery, it was still an elephant in the room. We know it was the elephant in the room because of the way politicians avoided directly solving the problem, and instead created compromises and acts, rather than giving the people what they wanted.
We started the lesson by learning about the Missouri Compromise, which stated that no territory north of 36 degrees 30 minutes would be a slave state, and made an even eleven slave states and eleven free states. After the gold rush of 1849, California was rapidly populated and wanted to become a free state, but this would upset the balance created by the Missouri Compromise. This conflict led to the five-part compromise. Among other things, it allowed California to be a free state, but also passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which set unfair rules regarding runaway slaves.  We then, as a class, continued on to the Gadsden purchase, Kansas Nebraska Act, the overturning of the Missouri compromise, and "Bleeding Kansas".
We were then split into small groups to create timelines of the events leading up the civil war, and which side each event benefited. Below is our timeline.

Several of these events show that not enough people were talking about slavery, even though it was clearly a huge issue. When the Missouri compromise was overturned, it showed that politicians were no longer concerned with he spread of slavery, and instead wanted to appease angry southerners. The series of events known as "Bleeding Kansas" also shows slavery Elephant status. Bleeding Kansas was a chain reaction of violent events that affected both sides of the issue. When a political issue creates violence and death, it is clear that it is being overlooked by those who are in control of it, and the issue is instead turned over to the people, rather than being discussed in a civilized way. Furthermore, the caning of Charles Sumner shows slavery being the elephant in the room. When Sumner delivered a strongly worded anti-slavery speech, he was attacked by another man on the senate floor. The fact that a senator could not bring up the topic of slavery without being attacked showed that the issue was being avoided at all costs, and even pushed men to violence rather than compromise. While Sumner speech was bold and insulting, it is still ridiculous that he was attacked for bringing the problem to light. The final event that shows the government's indifference to slavery is the Dred Scott decision. In short, an enslaved man named Dred Scott filed a lawsuit against his owner for owning him and his wife while they were in free states. The Scott's lost the supreme court case, and the Dred Scott Decision stated that slaves could not sue, could not gain freedom by living in a free state, and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. This was a step in the wrong direction for congress, who seemed to be tiptoeing around the issue of slavery entirely, as if it was an elephant in the room.

Slavery in the 19th Century

Over the course of a few classes, we began our discussion of slavery leading up to the civil war. In class, we examined slave and cotton data from the 19th century, watched the docudrama "Prince Among Slaves", read about slavery in other parts of the world, specifically Futa Jallon, and read primary source documents concerning the morality of slavery. We had several essential questions: How did slavery become economically entrenched in American society by the early 19th century? How does a system of slavery based on race affect human dignity? What human characteristics does such a system tend to ignore? These three questions cover a lot of difficult issues and time in history.

So how did slavery become economically entrenched in American society by the early nineteenth century? The simple answer is: Cotton, This website provided interesting data comparing the trends of cotton and slavery in 19th century America. Before the invention of the cotton gin, cotton was a insignificant crop, producing only 1.5 million pounds a year in 1790. In 1790, there were 690,00 slaves in the united states, mostly concentrated in the Chesapeake and Carolina areas. With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton production skyrocketed, and in turn, so did slave population. By 1810, cotton production was up to 85 million pounds per year, and the slave population had grown to 1,190,000. Fifty years later, 2.2 billion pounds of cotton were being produced each year, and  3.954.00 people were enslaved in the US. An examination of these two sets of data show a very distinct correlations between cotton production and slavery. Slavery had become entrenched in the American economy through a need for labor to meet increasing demand.

A system of slavery based on race affects human dignity by altogether eliminating it from those who are enslaved. In the informational film "Prince Among Slaves", we see a former prince's status turned into a mockery as he is enslaved and reduced from a powerful man to the lowest of the low. All his dignity is lost when he becomes a slave. Regardless of their position before they were enslaved, all slaves lost their human dignity. Even people who were enslaved in their homeland lost respect when they became American slaves. In Africa, slaves had a much easier job, and had many benefits. In the US, slaves had virtually no rights.


The enslaved Prince as portrayed in "Prince Among Slaves"

What human characteristics does a system of slavery tend to ignore? The very concept of slavery demotes the enslaved to a subhuman level. It ignores the fact that they are human too. By ignoring the humanity of slaves, people could romanticize slavery to forget about the awful thing that it is. In his book Cannibals All", pro-slavery activist George Fitzhugh dared to say "The negro slaves of the south are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in world". Fitzhugh had an idealized view of slavery in which slaves were treated with respect and did light work., In reality this was not the case. Slaves were probably the most unfortunate people in the world. The system of slavery ignores all characteristics of people that make us human.

Women's Reform: Then and Now

The mid-nineteenth century society had mixed reactions to women's demands for equality, but they were largely negative. At the Seneca Falls Convention in July of 1848, women's rights reformers released a document entitled "Declaration of Resolutions and Sentiments". This document, written in the style of the Declaration of Independence, outlined the injustices that women endured., as well as resolutions to society issues and misguided judgments. The "Declaration of Resolutions and Sentiments" cause quite a stir when it was published, the media's reaction was varied.
One of the documented reactions to the Seneca Falls convention was published in the Oneida Whig newspaper. The article did not talk about the convention favorably. The writer's reasoning for not extending women's rights and suffrage was that if they were voting and spending time out of the house, there would be no dinner made. "If our ladies will insist on voting and legislating, where, gentlemen, will be our dinners and our elbows?" This quote illustrates the 19th century view that women belonged in the kitchen, and the writer feared change. The writer of this article was presumably a male, and could not fathom a world where women leave the house and let men fend for themselves. From the perspective of an editorial in the Oneida Whig, the Seneca Falls convention was foolish.
However, not all media reactions were negative. The reaction to Seneca Falls in The National Reformer was generally positive and supporting of women's rights. A quote illustrating this is "There is no means so power for the elevation of any class, as the elective franchise". This is saying that in order to make a certain class of people more important and respected, they must be given the right to vote, and this one of the things that the Seneca Falls convention addressed. Unfortunately, women's suffrage was not achieved for nearly seventy five years.
While women's rights have greatly increased since the mid 19th century, there are still major disadvantages to being a women, and society reacts differently to men and women. As a male, for the most part, I am not affected by societies different reactions to men and women. However, I am acquainted with the female population, and understand that in today's society, they are often seen as the lesser gender.  One of the most obvious examples is the wage gap. In most studies and practical applications, it is noted that women are being paid less than men for the same work. Furthermore, women have a significantly smaller role in politics than men. Jobs, hobbies, and emotions are still defined as being "manly" or "womanly", and this shows that society reacts differently to men and women in the 21st century.

"Poor Drunkard's Child"

""Poor Drunkards Child" Temperance sheet music." American History. ABC-CLIO, 2015. Web. 11 Jan. 2015.

This is the cover of sheet music written during the temperance movement in 1871. The authors, Moses Owen, and C. K. Hawes, were part of the temperance movement, and believed in the limitation of alcohol consumption. The Title of the song is "Poor Drunkards' Child". By putting messages of temperance into entertaining media, people like Owen and Hawes hoped to make temperance more appealing. This document teaches us that there were all sorts of ways that people tried to limit alcohol consumption. This image describes the Temperance Movement as a crusade. "Crusade" is usually used to describe a religious battle, and the authors likely felt very strongly about temperance, and followed the movement religiously.