How US policies did what they were supposed to

During westward expansion, did the impact of federal policy towards the buffalo soldiers and native americans match the intent?

Westward expansion was a period of time in which the US expanded to lands previously unowned, or that had no reason for them to go to. This all changed with the discovery gold. Many policies were adopted in this area, and there was now a great move of people to the west, with one major problem: the area was already greatly populated with Native Americans, and it isn't hard to imagine that the Natives did not want to move. Because of this, much of the Natives were killed and the remaining were moved around by the government very often.

An example of this was the Native American tribe, the Nez Percé. The tribe lived in the areas of what is now Oregon, Washington and Idaho. They were forced off when gold was discovered there, and put on a reservation in what is now Montana. However, after gold was discovered there as well, they were to be moved again. However, some young warriors of the tribe had attacked some white people who moved in before the tribe could move out.

The tribe tried to move to Canada, but were unsuccessful, due to the vast majority of their numbers being killed on their way to Canada by the US army. The remainder returned to Oregon.

Another group heavily effected by these policies were the buffalo soldiers. These were African Americans that were effected by westward expansion. Many African Americans joined after being liberated in the civil war. There name was derived from the facts that their hair reminded people of buffalos, and that they reminded natives of a buffalo spirit.

Buffalo soldiers fought much of a war with native tribes, and also did a lot of hard work to build things out west such as telegram lines and railroads. They, as stated, were also necessary in fighting off native Americans to move. Tribes were forced out after the government passed a bill to make them move, but most were either uninformed, or simply ignored.

Below is a timeline tracking the events of westward expansion

 
All of these were heavily effected by policies drafted by the US. The goals of one were to remove the Native Americans, which it did accomplish. However, it also led to the death of nearly all of the people of certain tribes. It also affected the Buffalo soldiers, as they had a lot to do with building and expanding into the west, and also had to kill much of the Native Americans. As such, the impact of these policies were likely what was intended. It did remove Native Americans from the area where gold was wanted.


Information taken from sources in class, including the image above.

Were the captains of industry even good?

In class, we have been studying the time after the civil war, starting in about 1865 and going through the 20th century. During this time, industry in America was undergoing constant growth. This growth was seen especially in steel production, railroad expansion, and oil companies. Shortly after the civil war, John D. Rockefeller established a small oil company. Over time, this company grew, eventually leading Rockefeller to be one of the wealthiest people of the time. He donated significant amounts of his money back to the public, and yet his workers remained under paid, and were often on strike out of protest. Another example, this time in the steel industry, was Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie believed there were two phases of wealth: Acquiring wealth, then giving back to the community. However, like before, his workers were often on strike. So despite being leaders in growing industry, were these people really all that great?

John D Rockefeller was born into a poor family. He is someone to think about when you think about the 'rags to riches' story. The public had a very poor opinion of him because of the reaches of his company. It was generally thought, and usually true. Below is a political cartoon which depicts Standard Oill, Rockefeller's company, as a monster controlling many government buildings. This help shows the relations Rockefeller had with the public, as most people thought the company controlled parts of the government. So despite donating much of his wealth to charity, the public still did not trust Rockefeller. 

Andrew Carnegie was the owner of the largest steel company of the time. While his relations with te public were better than Rockefeller's, his was still not great. Carnegie, as stated, believed that there were two parts of one's life: acquiring wealth, and then giving it back to the community. For the most part, he did this. And yet, his workes were mostly paid just enough to keep them alive. Below is also a political cartoon, this time depicting Carnegie. It shows Carnegie donating much of his wealth to the public, and yet cutting the wages of his workers. So while he was giving his wealth back to the community, he does not give it tp the people who helped hom get it. Because of this, workers were often on strike, leading to events such as the homestead strike.

The captains of industry were not all bad. If it wasn't for them, then industry would not have grown nearly as much, and there would have less jobs. The only problem was that most of these jobs were bad, and pay was awful. If proper pay was offered, then these jobs would have been much better for everyone involved.

Information from sources given in class.

Freedom from above or below

In class, he have been continuing our discussion on the civil war, our focus being on the freeing of the slaves. We had been specifically discussing whether or not freedom came from above, or below. Meaning, whether freedom came from the slaves revolting or the figures with power who ran the government, and it seems that the government only stepped in to help the slaves after the slaves forced the issue upon them, so freedom came from below.

Abraham Lincoln is largely credited with freeing the slaves. However, if you look at his speeches over time, his emotional attachment to freeing the slaves seems to grow as slaves become more of an issue. While his personal views on slavery was that it shouldn't exist, he only started to stress the issue as it became more of an inconvenience to the war. The original purpose of the war and the point that was stressed was to reunite the union.

The issue that was created by the slaves and why they needed to be addressed was because as the Union army moved through the south, any slaves nearby began to follow them. This raised the question of what to do about them, because the army didn't want to say to go back, and obviously the slaves themselves wouldn't leave. Out of this rose the emancipation proclamation, overriding the effects of the fugitive slave act, officially abolishing slaves in the Union, passing in the senate on April 8th, 1864, getting approval from president Lincoln on February 1st, 1865, and gaining enough support from the states to adopt it on December 6th, 1865.

Because of these things, it makes sense to say that the people forced the issue to be realized by the people with the power to free them. But this isn't the only example of this.  Many issues are forced by the people effected by it, and prime example being what is happening with the riots in Baltimore. While in my opinion this is not the best way to go about things and raising issues, it still does show that it takes an issue to be shown to the people who can fix it before it will be fixed.

A diagram of where the issue was made, made by my group

Specific battles in the civil war

Recently in class, we have been discussing more specific battles in the civil war. There were to essential questions for this unit. Who was the ultimate victor in each of the theaters of war: East, West, Naval? What are some of the commonalities you can identify in the reasons for the results of the battles? To get information on this, we did a scavenger hunt with QR codes that linked to small google docs full of information. My battle, the battle of Chattanooga, can be found at this link: http://bit.ly/1DkJBfT.

Afterwords, we discussed as a class and created a padlet discussing which group won in each theater.

For the first essential question, the union won in naval and western theaters. They had better naval technology allowing them to easily dominate in that theater. They won battles such as the battle of Baton Rouge due to having more resources and again better naval technology.

The union dominated in the western theater as well. The union had an affective army as well as resources beyond what the confederate did. This allowed them to win in battles such as the Chattanooga campaign and others.

However, the Confederates managed to defend rather well against the union in the eastern theater. The union's army lacked leadership it needed to overcome the confederates in this theater. They struggled to find a necessary leader that they needed to overcome the confederates, with new generals being appointed every couple of battles. While the Confederate armies dominated for the first part of the war, Union forces beat them once they found the leadership they needed.


As far as commonalities go, most of them are pretty obvious. In the naval theater, the Union have more advanced ironclads and more of them, too. In the western theater, the Confederate were running out of resources, and the Union took advantage of that. They attacked using the resources the Confederate lacked, and won because of it.

In the eastern theater, things get more complicated. The Confederates tended to win while the Union lacked leader ship. However, over time, as the Union got the appropriate leadership they needed, they began to win battles.

When analyzing the statistics of these battles, it can become rather clear why the Union won, beyond generalized strategies.

A map depicting the strategy of the Chattanooga campaign

Map citation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattanooga_Campaign#/media/File:Chattanooga_Campaign_Nov_24-25.png

The election of 1860

The video above was made by me and 2 other people in class, despite the names not being there properly, therefore I would like to thank Anson H. and Brian B. for working with me on this project. The video is a brief overview of some of the politics during the civil war. It primarily covers the election of 1860 and the states who left the union after losing the election. Fun fact, the states in the south did not even include Lincoln on their ballets, and then after he won, they left the union. Cry babies.

The most one sided war there ever was

During the civil war, there was not an equal playing field. The north, in numbers, won in almost all cases. But beyond that, the south was not terribly wise in their choices. In an infographic below, I tried to depict all the advantages and disadvantages that were in the war. However, I still urge you to do further research as there is quite a fair amount of further information effecting the sides of the war.

ADvantages and DISADVANTAGES for the north and south during the civil war | Create infographics

Slavery is the root of their problems

During the mid 19th century, there was a lot of debate over the stand of slavery in the states. And while a lot of compromises and arguing was to be done to have equal participation from slave states and non-slave states alike, people refused to accept the fact that these debates would be utterly averted if they got rid of slavery. The essential question of the lesson was how slavery was the elephant in the room, meaning how slavery was the root of all the problems people were facing, yet no one wanted to talk about it, or admit that it was a problem. All of the information included below can also be found in a timeline, as well as some other extra information.

It all started with California. Around the 1850s, there was an even amount of states that did and didn't support slavery. However, as the rush to move west started, California wanted to become a state that was anti-slavery. Obviously, the people who supported slavery didn't like this. This led to the compromise of 1850. The compromise, in order for California to enter the union, was called the compromise of 1850, and had 5 clauses. The first is obvious, California becomes a state. Then, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona all become territories to decide their view on slavery later. Texas loses some land to the north, but in return are given some money to pay of debt to Mexico. Washington DC declares that there will be no more selling of slaves in DC, but you can still own slaves. Lastly, there was an amendment called the fugitive slave act, saying that if anyone finds a runaway slave, they have to by law return them.

This last act was infuriating to the north, as it meant no matter what they had to support slavery in some form.

Then there was the Gadsden purchase. This was a small piece of land that connected the south to the new territory, including the states listed above. This was purchased from Mexico to build a railroad connecting the rest of the south to the new territories. This was disliked by the north as now the south had easy access to the new territories. As these territories were fair game as far as slavery goes to both the south and the north, it was unfair to the north for the south to have such easy access to this land.

Then there was the caning of senator Charles Sumner. Sumner was the senator of Massachusetts. He gave a speech to congress iterating his hatred for slavery. After this, Senator Preston of South Carolina beat Sumner with his cane. Surprisingly, this benefited the north more as it helped show how barbaric the south tended to act.

The last piece of information I would like to talk about is the Dred Scott incident. Dred Scott was a slave living in anti-slavery territory. Eventually, he appealed to court saying since he was in a free state, he should be free. Congress' response was no, he was still slave. Not only this, but other things came from this incident. Slaves can not sue, slaves are not free by being in free territory, and the Missouri line, meaning slavery was abolished anywhere north of Missouri, was deemed unconstitutional. This was a big win to the south, and heavily angered the people to the north.

Finally, here is the time line mentioned above.

The oppression of half the world

One of the biggest examples of oppression in history is the ongoing oppression of women throughout time. This injustice on approximately half the population lasted far too long, until change came about in the 19th century. One of the first great examples of call to change this was Seneca Falls, the first convention to call attention to women's rights. During this event, a document known as the Declaration of rights was written, listing most injustices they wanted fixed. This sparked a reaction among the rest of the United States, with people supplying words of support, and mocking words alike.

When analyzing the newspapers of people reporting on the subject, mixed results will be found. Newspapers such as the Northstar were supportive of the act, offering words of praise to the speeches that were written and the people delivering them. there were other newspapers as well that while not quite supportive, were not actively denouncing these woman. Instead they would basically just wish them luck.

However, there were about equal amounts of newspaper that laughed at and mocked the people demanding reform. An example of this is "The Recorder", a newspaper that was based in Syracuse, New York. They listed all the demands of the women in their report, but mocked it, saying it was silly, and that their 'declaration' for 'independence' was preposterous, and that they didn't know what they were talking about. Another example of people laughing at their movement was in the 'Mechanics Advocate'. They say that these conventions are a sorry sight to see, and that they are a waste of time. They say that the women attending these conventions are no doubt doing it at the expense of their more important jobs. They also say that any level-headed woman would know that this is preposterous, and stop what their doing. So while their were people saying yeah, this is a change that needs to happen, there were just as money trying to stop it, and kill the movement.

Now, fast forward to today. While conditions have improved vastly, there is still injustice left. While women have access to just about everything that men do, people see what they are doing differently. People judge men and women's actions completely different from each other. A good source of this is the video posted below. It accurately depicts all the inequality in how society views each gender, and their actions even if they are very similar.

Video depicting society's views of acts in public

Newspaper sources: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trr040.html

The 7th US president

Andrew Jackson is the man on every 20 dollar bill, who's presidential term made one of the biggest impacts out of any. Some of his notable contributions included the spoils system, bank wars, and the Indian Removal. My group worked on a video presenting the key facts from the spoils system. Also, the question we were trying to answer was regarding whether or not Andrew Jackson's term was democratic or not. Below is the video my group put together about the spoils system.

Regarding the other things that Jackson did, the Indian removal and Bank wars were the other defining actions in his term. However both of them still kept a democratic feel to his term. While he did move the Indians and forced them to leave and move, he set aside land for them to move to, as opposed to not caring about what happened to them and just basically casting them out. With bank wars, while his decision to completely uproot the second bank of the United States may have been a poor decision, he still did it thinking about the American public. His goal was to make a more even playing field with he rich and the poor, and therefore benefit the whole of the American public.

Reforming a broken America

Throughout the pas month or so, our class has been focusing on the social reform that occurred in the 19th century. The topics we focused on was the protestant revival, transcendentalism, prison reform, education reform, and temperance. From this we decided to find one more primary source about any of these topics and write about it. Below are excerpts from a document written by Dorethea Dix, a prominent figure in the prison reform movement. Therefore, the document will be heavily bias towards the problems in these places. That is to say, while conditions were horrid, she will write focusing on that. Around the time this was written, the movement was close to just starting. The document was written by Dix in 1843, to the legislature of Massachusetts. This document teaches us about the condition these people had to face, from beatings into obedience, to rooms without heat. It, however, does not truly give a complete picture, as it only is one persons recollection of the events. While her word means a lot, it is still only one person. In the excerpt below, Dix talks about People being chained, and put into cages to keep them still. They were rarely watched by people, and few wanted to remember these people existed. In the author's word choice, she is trying to convince readers of the disgusting conditions these people were in. She words it realistically, with generalizations with the most common problems in these places. She wants people to listen, and feel the pain these people felt.  

          Besides the above, I have seen many who, part of the year, are chained or caged. The use of cages all but universal. Hardly a town but can refer to some not distant period of using them; chains are less common; negligences frequent; willful abuse less frequent than sufferings proceeding from ignorance, or want of consideration. I encountered during the last three months many poor creatures wandering reckless and unprotected through the country. Innumerable accounts have been sent me of persons who had roved away unwatched and unsearched after, and I have heard that responsible persons, controlling the almshouses, have not thought themselves culpable in sending away from their shelter, to cast upon the chances of remote relief, insane men and women. These, left on the highways, unfriended and incompetent to control or direct their own movements, sometimes have found refuge in the hospital, and others have not been traced. But I cannot particularize. In traversing the State, I have found hundreds of insane persons in every variety of circumstance and condition, many whose situation could not and need not be improved; a less number, but that very large, whose lives are the saddest pictures of human suffering and degradation. I give a few illustrations; but description fades before reality. . . .

1. Dorethea Dix, excerpt from  Old South Leaflets, vol. 7, p. 489-519.