A Story Through Pictures: Leading Up To the Civil War

The events leading up to the Civil War, and especially the Election of 1860, are essential pieces of history that are needed to understand what happened during the war. In class, we have been learning about these events, and our task was to create an Educreations video using pictures to explain the events. We found pictures that represented the different events and wrote captions for them to try to cover all of the events leading up to the Civil War. We used pictures about John Brown, Dred Scott, Abraham Lincoln, the Election of 1860, the seceding of many southern states, and the attack on Fort Sumter in our video, and these pictures help to tell the story of the Civil War. We used the pictures from the website The Civil War in Art and we also found 3 other pictures to help complete the story. The essential question was were the results of the Election of 1860 representative of the deep divisions over slavery? Many of the maps and pictures in our video show the deep divisions very clearly, and it is clear that the northern states were all unanimous in voting for Lincoln, whereas the deep southern states all wanted Breckenridge and the middle southern states all wanted Bell. Each state voted for their specific candidate because of their views about slavery; Lincoln believed in no slavery, Bell wanted to preserve the constitution as it is with slavery, and Breckenridge wanted there to be no limits on slavery. The southern states seceded from the Union very close thereafter, and these deep divisions were made clear as Civil War became inevitable. Our Educreations video can be seen below:

Sources:
Dred Scott: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
Election of 1860: http://www.edline.net/files/_CJKPB_/ee553a2c7835765f3745a49013852ec4/Election_of_1860_Lesson_Notes.pdf
The Confederacy: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/lee-jackson-day-and-the-souths-continuing-confederate-fetish/
http://www.civilwarinart.org/exhibits/show/causes/introduction/the-election-of-1860-and-seces

Will It Be the North or Will It Be the South?

Recently we have been learning about the Civil War, but to understand the Civil War you must understand the situations in the north and south leading up to it. I created an infographic using Piktochart explaining the situations in the north and south before the war and how they impacted the war. We read a few sources with statistics in it, and our task was to choose the facts we wanted and represent it visually in our infographic. I chose the specific statistics in my infographic because I thought those facts showed the clear reasons why each side chose their strategy, and why it led to their success or failure in the war. I think these statistics show how much more prepared the north was than the south. The Union led in many more statistics than the Confederacy because the Confederacy really only had their military skill and cotton production as strengths. The north was very organized and had much more money saved. The statistics I chose also display the clear reasons why what the Union did made them so prepared. It can be clearly seen that in the Union the railroads made for better transportation, the factories and many workers made for easier manufacturing of supplies, and the population made for a bigger army. I wanted to organize my infographic into these steps where you can firstly see the statistics, then see why these statistics helped, then see how they contributed to the war strategies, and lastly see the war results. I thought this helped me learn the information because I was trying to organize the information in a way that can be taught. If you can teach something, that means you truly understand it, so by trying to present the information in a way that others can easily learn from, I feel like I benefited and learned as well. I understand better how the situations between the Union and Confederacy before the war eventually led to the Union's Victory because of its preparedness and its domination in many aspects including money, supplies, labor, army, manufacturing, and transportation that the south was lacking. My infographic can be seen below:

The Elephant in the Room

In this unit, we learned about many different decisions made by the government in the 1850’s leading up to the Civil War. The country was divided and each decision stepped closer and closer to war. Slavery had to do with almost every problem, but nobody wanted to deal with it. The government tried to work around it and keep each side satisfied for as long as possible, however the problem finally became too big to ignore any longer. In the decisions made during the 1850’s leading to the Civil War, slavery was the elephant in the room because nobody ever tried to make a decision about slavery; instead they worked around the issue to try to strike a balance with everyone to postpone the problem.

In groups, we made a timeline of all the major events that occurred in which slavery was the elephant in the room, as seen above. For example, the Compromise of 1850 settled 5 major disputes regarding slavery, but it settled them without dealing with the true problem of slavery. If the north was given something, the south had to be given something as well so everything was balanced and everyone was happy. For example, in the compromise, the north wanted California to be a free state. However, the south wasn’t okay with that, so to keep everyone happy the government created the Fugitive Slave Act. The Fugitive Slave Act required all citizens to turn in any slaves that have run away, meaning even in the north runaway slaves were not safe. With both of these put in place, the north and the south were temporarily happy, however it didn’t fix the problem of slavery, it just tried to work around it. Another example is the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The north wanted a railroad going west just like the south, so they made one but the south wasn’t okay with the north gaining the land of Nebraska and Kansas. So, Kansas-Nebraska was declared popular sovereignty to make the southerners happy, and northerners could now move west and increase their trade. Charles Sumner said to the President that with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, "the eminent question (is) now before you, involving the peace of the whole country, with our good name in history forevermore", and Charles wanted to start solving the problem of slavery. But once again, the president didn’t want to touch or upset the problem; he made a temporary solution to postpone the inevitable bigger decision. The John Brown Raid shows the same neglect for the true problem. John  Brown worked to seize weapons to give to slaves so that they would be armed to start a rebellion. However, he and his troops were defeated and he was sentenced to hanging. He was seen as a martyr who died unfairly for a great cause. A song about him states, “They hung him for a traitor, but themselves the traitor crew, His soul is marching on, He’s gonna be a soldier in the army of the Lord,” and this song shows how he became a symbol of fighting for freedom. But the government was just trying to shut him up and stop the whole rebellion from the start. Brown was trying to start fighting for a solution to slavery, but they didn’t want to answer it; they only wanted to move around it. Lastly, the Dred Scott Decision tried to put off the question of slavery when Dred Scott, an enslaved man living in Missouri, filed a lawsuit against his owner. He says that he should be free since he once lived in a place where slavery was illegal. Not only did he lose the case, the government also made some new rules regarding slaves; slaves didn’t have the right to court, enslaved people could not win freedom by living in a free state, and the Missouri Compromise was no longer in effect. The government saw something threatening the balance of the north and south, so they made restrictions so that slaves could not keep upsetting the balance with the law. As shown by all of the events on the timeline, slavery was the problem in the United States but the government refused to make a decision about this elephant in the room to try to push it off for as long as possible and keep everyone satisfied without having to deal with the complicated issue of slavery.

America's Dependability On Slaves and Its Constant Degrading Of the Dignity Of Slaves

Economically, American society became incredibly dependent on slave labor in the 1800’s, which meant America couldn’t afford to get rid of it. During the late 18th century, people had thought that slavery was decreasing and it would soon die out because many slaves had escaped during the French and American revolutions, and many masters were freeing their slaves. However, southern planters were in desperate need of a way to separate the sticky seeds from the cotton that they grew, and Eli Whitney was able to invent a machine to do this. In 1792, he invented the cotton gin, and because cotton became easier to grow and sell, a huge boom in slavery occurred. There was a high demand for slave labor in the south to harvest cotton, and after the cotton gin, the price of slaves doubled. Also, during the first decade of the cotton gin, the slave population grew 33% and during the second decade it grew another 29%. (1) This shows how huge of an impact the cotton gin had on slavery. We also looked at a website that shows maps of how much cotton was produced in the south and how many slaves there were in the south, and it is clear how closely related they are. At the beginning in 1790, there were only 690,000 slaves in the south, however that started to increase rapidly, and by 1830 there were 2 million slaves in the south, 3 times the number in 1790. At its height in 1860, there were 3.954 million slaves. At the same time, the number of pounds of cotton produced per year in 1790 was 1.5 million pounds which grew quickly to an unbelievable 2.28 billion pounds of cotton by 1860. Cotton accounted for less than 7% of the nation’s total export revenue in 1790 making close to nothing, and in only 70 years cotton grew to account for 57% of the total export revenue and it produced $191.8 million. This rapid growth in slaves and cotton show how the cotton gin caused a high need for slaves, and the immense quantity of cotton produced from the slaves made so much money and accounted for so much of the nation’s revenue that America was dependent on it and couldn’t get rid of it; slavery was entrenched.

Simultaneous increase of slavery and cotton- 1830

Simultaneous increase of slavery and cotton- 1860

Slavery took a toll on slaves’ dignity as well as their bodies because they were treated like animals and property. We watched a PBS documentary called A Prince Among Slaves about Abdul Rahman, a prince from Futa Jallon who was captured and made a slave. His story tells about the many ways slaves were treated as less than humans as he goes from being a prince, to being a slave. When he was captured, the ship ride across the sea to Mississippi was inhumane. The conditions were jam packed as if they were animals in a cage and they barely got any food. So many died of starvation and disease but the traders didn’t care about their lives; it was cheaper to lose slaves than to pay for better conditions. Their lives were tossed aside like they weren’t humans. Also, when Abdul was auctioned off, he said he truly felt his dignity being lost because he was examined like an animal and given a price. Once he was sold, his master forced him to have his hair cut off, which was a sign of nobility and manhood in his culture. Normally, a man would fight to the death before he would part with his hair, but his culture and his life choices were taken away and he was considered inferior. Slaves also felt worthless and like they weren’t a part of society because America would celebrate Independence Day even though many people weren’t free. Frederick Douglass, a former slave and abolitionist leader, said in a speech called “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” in 1852, that the American slave feels it is “a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty…(is) mere bombast”. The celebration is hypocritical because so many of the people in America are not free and are considered property, and it makes them feel like they are not human; they are invisibly suffering. There are so many examples from so many slaves’ stories of how much they were treated as less than humans, and it is disturbing to think about today.

In treating slaves as less than humans and trying to suppress them, America ignored many amazing and useful qualities about them. For example, with Abdul, he knew how to grow cotton, read and write, and speak many different languages because he was a prince. He was also a great military leader. And although some of his talents were recognized when he was discovered to be a prince, he never realized his potential and all his useful skills. Many slaves had many useful and unique talents and characteristics that could have been used to help the world and society but instead were overlooked and shot down by slave owners and whites. There are so many individual qualities and potential in every person that can help improve our world, and it is terrible that so many people were not allowed to use these qualities and weren’t treated like humans because of their skin color in the 19th century.

Citations:

(1): Readings adapted from: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent/#documents and http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=6&smtID=2

Women's Rights Movement: Is It Perfect Yet?

In this unit, we have been learning about the problems women faced in the 18th and early 19th centuries and how women's rights movements started being established to protest against them. In the mid- 19th century, women finally started taking a stand and protesting for equal rights. They were tired of being legally under the control of their husbands, not having a right to vote, not being allowed to own property, and not being allowed to attend colleges. They weren’t paid as much as men with the same jobs, and husbands could legally abuse them. Finally, a group of women on July 19, 1848 decided to start doing something about the inequality towards women. It was one of the first organized women’s suffrage gatherings, and it was called the Seneca Falls Convention. It was the first time the right to vote for women was publicly demanded. Many abolitionists were involved in the movement because if slaves were gaining the right to vote, women should be able to vote too. The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was the document that came out of the Seneca Falls Convention. The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was modeled after the Declaration of Independence; it started with a preamble, then listed all of their grievances, and finished with how they would resolve the problem. They demanded to be treated as equals and be given the right to vote. However, the 19th century society reacted in a variety of ways to their demands, and we can see these reactions through many of the different newspapers that were being published at that time. Some people reacted very positively to equality for women. As seen in newspapers such as the National Reformer, many people agreed with the changes. In the National Reformer on August 10, 1848, it says, “We think it the duty of every candid person to hear every proposal for the elevation of our race, and if they fall, let it be for want of argument to substantiate, not from the assaults of fulsome wit or vulgar sarcasm, which too often constitue the weapons of those men who think lightly of the efforts of female philanthropists...it is their right- it is their duty- to throw off such a government.” This shows how many people were very willing to listen to women’s demands and help to make their society more just and equal. If women are having problems or don’t think the government is fair, they should speak up and be heard; in fact it is their duty to bring these problems to light. However, some people were not as willing to listen to women. In the Oneida Whig newspaper on August 1, 1848, it says, “If our ladies will insist on voting and legislating, where, gentlemen, will be our dinners and our elbows?” This quote really shows how many men were very resistant to women’s rights, and how they didn’t want women doing ‘men’s work’. Another newspaper called the Mechanics Advocate in the Female Department said that, “every true-hearted female will instantly feel that it is unwomanly”, and used the statement that Adam came before Eve in the Bible as their logic as to why men are superior. So, although some people were willing to listen to the rights of women, some were not, and stood as obstacles for equality for women.

I think that although women and men are far more equal, society still reacts and stereotypes men and women differently. We watched the Pantene commercial below which displays how men and women are seen differently doing the same things.

I think that many of these stereotypes are still true. The woman trying to work and raise a kid being seen as selfish while it being seen as dedicated for a man is true. I think that women are seen as expected to only focus on raising their kid; that is their job. To have a job as well as a kid is seen as she is being too selfish to give up her job for her child, while men are seen as being a hard worker. Being a woman I do not like or agree with this stereotype, and I think it is unfair that a woman is expected to give up her job but not a man. Also dealing with jobs, I think some jobs are still seen as men’s jobs. I am really interested in engineering and the sciences, however this is a predominantly male field. In my engineering class there are only 5 girls and about 15 boys. There are many more men involved in engineering, and I would be very upset if something stood in the way of my interest in engineering because I am a girl. If something stood in the way of anything I wanted to do just because I am a girl, I would be extremely upset and that would not be fair, so I agree with everything that women’s rights movements were fighting for. Although sexism is much better now than it was in the 19th century, 21st century society still reacts differently to women.

The Temperance Movement: The Encouraging Step Towards a More Equal and Sober Society

Citation: Bloomer, Amelia Jenks, The Lily: Devoted to the Interests of Women (Mount Vernon, Ohio, May 01, 1854), Volume 6, No. 9

http://www.ohiomemory.org/cdm/ref/collection/p267401coll36/id/619

During this unit we have been learning about many different reforms in mid- 19th century United States. One of these reforms was called the Temperance Movement. The Temperance Movement promoted the reduction in alcohol consumption because it was causing lots of violence and social problems. The primary source I researched was Amelia Bloomer’s newspaper The Lily which was a newspaper promoting the Temperance movement and the reduction of alcohol consumption. Being a woman during the mid- 19th century was very tough, and women didn’t have a lot of rights. Also, this was at a time where the alcohol consumption was very high, and women often faced domestic violence at the hands of their drunk husbands. Amelia, being a woman of this time, wanted to inspire people to reduce their alcohol abuse, and also promoted women's rights. She thought women needed to be treated equally. The source I looked at was actual articles from The Lily. The website I got it from was the Ohio History Connection website which is a reliable source, and the website provided the typed text that was written in The Lily, so the source is really The Lily newspaper. This is a primary source because it was written during the time of the event, and it was written by someone who was involved in the movement, so it is a trustworthy source. It is very prominent in Amelia’s writing that she is for the Temperance movement and for women’s rights, and she is trying to convince others in her society to support these things as well. Her writing sympathizes with women who don’t have many rights and face violence, and she uses this pathos to try to persuade others to join the movement. Her newspaper was the first U.S. newspaper edited by women and for women which shows how few women felt they could stand up for themselves in a world with not a lot of women’s rights. Amelia uses facts about the laws regarding women and how drunk husbands abuse them to support her claims about women’s rights and about the Temperance movement.

One idea that Amelia brought up in her newspaper was how once a woman was married, she was legally invisible and was under her husband’s rule. She says, a “woman is deprived of certain natural rights, which ought to be [available] from her existence, and is subjected to certain legal disabilities… the personal liberty, the property, and the children of the wife, are legally, and by consequence, actually controlled by the husband...these usages, which are many and grievous, ought to be thoroughly and speedily redressed”. She used this claim that women didn't have many individual rights to support her work with the Temperance movement. Since husbands had full control over their wives and their wives didn’t have many rights to go against them, husbands could do whatever they wanted. Domestic violence became a big issue. She wrote that there was, “sadness fastened upon the heart of the drunkard's wife!...follow the infuriated drunkard to his miserable home. Listen to his horrid imprecations, witness his brutal violence, his beastly, insensibility which follows. Witness the terror of affrighted innocence, and the deep anguish and despair of her who now wishes only for a grave to hide her and her' suffering babes from this husband and father, this victim of Rum”. I think this is very powerful because it shows how terrifying the drunk husbands could be, and their wives couldn’t do anything about it. If the drunk husbands hurt their wives, “By the common law, which prevails in Ohio, the wife could not bring or maintain an action for an injury done to her own person, but the husband could bring such action without the consent of his wife, the same as for an injury inflicted on his beast...the wife or daughter, being a minor, had not then, and have not now, any redress whatever but through the husband or the father.” The wife could only bring their injuries forward with the consent of their husband, but the husbands could bring about their injuries without the consent of their wives. So, women could not speak about their husband’s domestic violence. The essential question for the Temperance movement was: why was the Temperance Movement able to gain activists from all walks of society? I think Amelia’s newspaper definitely shows how activists from women’s rights movements joined in the Temperance movement because it had a lot to do with women standing up to drunk husbands. However activists from other movements such as abolishing slavery joined the Temperance movement as well because it was a movement that focused on standing up for oneself and one's rights, which encouraged many other activists. Also, drunkenness caused many of the social problems in the mid- 19th century, and many people wanted to get rid of it to help turn their society around and improve the world. Drunkenness caused lots of harsh violence which was what many reform movements were trying to get rid of, and the Temperance movement was promoting just that.

Andrew Jackson: For the People Or Not?

For this unit, we learned about Andrew Jackson, the 7th president of the United States. The essential question for this unit was: is Andrew Jackson's long-standing reputation as “the people’s president” deserved?  Why or why not? Together as a class we watched two videos on the the background of Andrew Jackson, one from Ted- ED and one from Crash Course. We briefly learned background about him such as he was a great military general before he was president, but he was a gambler and a drunk. But more importantly we learned about how though he had many contributions as president, good and bad, his three main contributions were the Bank War, the Spoils System, and the Indian Removal, and there are many different opinions on whether or not he contributed positively or negatively. We started to see how different people can have different opinions on whether or not Jackson was a good, people's president, and we started to think about the essential question. The essential question is also not only something that is important when analyzing Jackson's career, but it is a question we should ask about all leaders. We should keep in mind that our leaders and presidents should be representing the people and their rights. If they are not, they are not a good leader and something must be done. Once we learned some background on Jackson, we split up into 6 groups, with two groups per contribution. Each group had to make a project about either the Bank War, the Spoils System, or the Indian Removal using primary and secondary sources about their topic. My group researched the Indian Removal and we made a Google presentation for our project, as shown below.

As president, Jackson was very concerned with the white man's needs, and at that time a big necessity was land. The native Americans were living on the land as well as Jackson's people, and he thought that he knew what was best for them. He said that Indians and whites cannot live together without fighting, and many Indians are getting killed off. He thought it would be better for them to move west where they could live peacefully and he initially wanted them to voluntarily leave the colonies. However, the Indians refused to move because they felt that they had just as much right to stay there as the whites had, and Jackson resorted to law and harsh treatment to force them out. He forced them to walk the Trail of Tears which moved them west but killed thousands in the process. So, in this case Jackson was only a people's president to the whites, and he had no consideration for the Indians. Jackson also was the first president to bring about the Spoils System. This was a system that valued loyalty over skill when appointing government officials. This was a very unfair system because he wasn’t putting the people with the greatest ability into the best positions, he was only putting people that supported him into the positions. He used the veto more than any other president, and Jackson didn’t care who was put into power as long as they supported him. In this way, he was not a people’s president because he was trying to help himself by hiring his supporters instead of helping the country by hiring the best government officials. Lastly, Jackson started the Bank War that caused a huge economic collapse. Jackson ran for president as a champion of the common man to try to relate to the common citizen, and his main goal was to protect the average man. Jackson believed that the big banks were gaining too much control and could easily take advantage of the average person. He didn’t want the rich people owning the banks to get too much power, and he encouraged smaller businesses. He risked his re-election to veto against the bank, however this ended up causing a terrible economic collapse. In this way, Jackson was a people’s president because he was fighting for the rights and protection of his people and especially of the common man. Jackson was a very controversial man, and it is hard to say for certain whether he was or was not truly a people's president.