Captains and Robbers

The other week in class we learned about the rise of American industry from the 1850's to the 1900's.  In order to learn about this we watched some videos on ABC CLIO, like we did with the Buffalo Soldiers unit.  We then analyzed some primary source documents to further help our understanding of American industry.  After we watched the videos and analyzed the docs, we had to create the essential question for the unit and we came up with; "Should Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller be classified as robber barons or captains of industry?"  Robber barons were seen as corrupt and cruel because they treated their workers horribly.  They also hired private armies to destroy their rivals if they couldn't buy them out.  Captains of industry were considered 'captains' because they were respected, and were leaders of the uninterrupted time period where industry grew rapidly.  After all of this we created 40 questions together that we will use on our History final on June 22nd.

Andrew Carnegie

 Andrew Carnegie was known for the steel production and he learned better ways of steel production by studying in the Bessemer steel production process.  Using this knowledge and more, the U.S.'s steel production surpassed Britain's, with a lot of thanks to Carnegie.  Carnegie used Vertical Integration which gave him complete control of raw materials, transportation, production and all sales.  Andrew Carnegie also adopted the belief of "Gospel of Wealth".  The Gospel of Wealth is the moral obligation to use the wealth that god gave you to help the public, and one way Carnegie did this was by building many schools and libraries.  He built the Carnegie-Mellon University along with the Tuskegee Institution.  Using the definition of robber baron and captain of industry I believe that Andrew Carnegie was a captain of industry because he had good intentions, even though most of the newspapers and public thought differently.  The fact that he believed strongly in the Gospel of Wealth, and the hundreds of libraries he opened makes me say that Carnegie should be classified as a captain of industry.

John D Rockefeller

John D Rockefeller had a very similar life to Andrew Carnegie as he was one of the founders of the Standard Oil company.  After the Civil War ended, he began to buy partners and put all of his money into the company. Shortly after there was a drop in oil prices and Rockefeller took this opportunity to start buying up companies who weren't doing very well.  Although when faced with bigger competitors, he would lower his oil prices so much that the competitors couldn't compete with them.  He would then buy up those companies after they started doing poorly.  He was crazy about oil and always did things to try and be the best company, by keeping production costs really low, and also bribing politicians.  Even though he bribed politicians it didn't make him a bad man, it was simply business.  He used a different practice than Andrew Carnegie used, he used horizontal integration.  This meant that he controlled his oil company, and when he couldn't take over his competitors he worked with them and sort of controlled the prices of that company.  Overall, like Carnegie, Rockefeller didn't have bad or evil intentions and I would classify him as a captain of industry.  He was a great business man and managed to make a big, successful company, but he wasn't cruel and didn't mistreat his workers.

Soldiers and 'Slaves'

This week in class we learned about Buffalo Soldiers and Native Americans. We watched a couple ABC CLIO videos about this and the westward expansion. America sent the Buffalo Soldiers to move the native Americans onto reservations. The cause of this was in 1830, the policy of Indian removal. They removed the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole tribes, and forced them west of the Mississippi River. This later led to war with the native Americans. In this unit we have to answer the essential question, "Did the government have good intentions when enacting policies for westward expansion? In what ways did these policies impact the natives and buffalo soldiers?"

A lot of these policies started because prospectors were trespassing on Native land to search for gold and they demanded protection from the hostile Natives. This started the American Indian wars and later on congress approved the creation of the Buffalo Soldiers, who were six regiments of black soldiers totaling about 1,000. The government created these soldiers primarily to fight in the Indian Wars and do the dirty work that white soldiers didn't want to do. They provided them with old, hand-me-down horses and reused rifles. The government thought that this was a step forward however because they first black soldiers in the U.S. Army. After some time fighting, the government promised the natives the possession of the Dakota territory if they promised to stop fighting. After some leaders refused to go, the government ordered them onto the reservations or they would be considered hostile, and most natives ignored this. It didn’t matter too much because two years after settlers found gold there, the government forced all Indians back onto reservations. Due to all of the changing of policies and moving back and forth, it probably had a very negative impact on the Native American’s for having to keep changing homes, and for the Buffalo Soldiers who kept having to force them back and forth. Some can argue that the government’s intentions were good to reduce conflict between natives and new white settlers in certain areas, but they still weren’t very good policies. Another example of this is the Carlisle Schools idea. Many people thought, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, that it would be a good idea to try and “Americanize” the native american youth. A quote from above the school said, “Kill the Indian in him and save the man.” Believably, this policy was hated by the Native American tribes because it destroyed their culture and beliefs by “Americanizing” them. At the time the government thought they were doing their best to help the Indians and didn’t realize how bad it was. So the government did have good intentions, they thought they were doing the right thing, but it turned out they did the opposite.

In my opinion, I would say that yes the government had good intentions based on their knowledge or what they believed, but it negatively impacted the Native Americans. The Native Americans were forced out of their home, moved place to place, and all by force too. All of that was because of the government’s so-called ‘good intentions’ and policies. Not only did these policies affect the Natives, but also the Buffalo Soldiers because they had to supervise and force all of the Natives out of their homes onto reservations. The Buffalo soldiers didn’t necessarily agree with what they were doing, they might have known how wrong it was, but they had no choice. The American government went from enslaving one race, to basically enslaving another one by forcing them off of their home land, and by trying to destroy their culture.

Above or Below

MIn this unit we learned about the slaves and whether their freedom came from above from Lincoln, or below from themselves.  In order to learn this we first annotated a picture of Lincoln with a slave bowing and kissing his hand.  We had to imagine what each would be saying in this picture.  The next thing we did was look at four different documents from Lincoln and tried to find three things I'm each document.  The goal of the war, the official view on slavery, and Lincoln's personal opinion on slavery.  We did all this to help answer the essential question, 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?

After reading all of the documents, we can answer the essential question.  Their freedom came from below, as shown in the Letter from General Ambrose E. Burnside to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.  This letter states "after the enemy & citizens fled from the
town, were committed by the negroes, before our troops reached the city— They seemed to be wild with excitement and delight" The slaves went into this city and forced themselves upon the soldiers who had to take them in.  They couldn't just send them away, back into slavery, so they had to look after them and feed them which was hard because they didn't have a lot.  This forced the General to request help for this problem to the government, he said "I hope to report to you a definite policy in reference to this matter, and in the mean time shall be glad to receive any instructions upon the subject which you may be disposed to give." This shows how the slaves took it upon themselves to help get their freedom. They forced the government to give them freedom, which proves that their freedom came from below.

My personal opinion on the whole 'from above or below' topic is that if you want change of any kind, it has to come from below.  For example, in track as a freshman no one knew who I was but I was pretty good and I wanted to be on varsity.  So I tried to stand out and talk to the coaches and get them to notice me, and eventually I was put on varsity.  This is just an example, but it works in mostly everything.  If someone wants a change to happen then they need to take it upon themselves to try to change it, or get someone from above to notice them and have them change it, but it will ultimately come from below.

Civil Scavenger Hunt

In this activity we learned about the different theaters in the civil war in a fun way.   We had a scavenger hunt around the school.  The first thing we did was get assigned a certain battle from the civil war and created a Google doc explaining some basic information on it. 

This is a link to our Google Doc: 

                          http://bit.ly/scavengerhunth10

Next we made a poster for the battle and created a QR code to our Google doc with the info on it, and then we hung them up around the school.  Finally we had the scavenger hunt and recorded everything for each battle we found and then created a Padlet that answered the essential questions. Link to the Padlet: https://padlet.com/KerryHawk02/2015ATheaters

The essential questions were, "Who was the ultimate victor in each theaters of war: East, West, Naval?" and "What are some commonalities you can identify in the reasons for the results of the battles?" 

Like our padlet says the victors for each theater are the Union won the west and naval while the Confederates mostly dominated the east.  An example of the Union winning in the west is the Battle of Shiloh.  The Confederates were outnumbered and after two unsuccessful counterattacks, they had to retreat and the Union won.  At the Battle of Baton Rouge the Union started shelling the Confederates and the Confederates ship's engine broke and they couldn't fight back.  A battle that the Confederates did win however is the Battle of Fredericksburg where the Union army suffered about 13,300 casualties, and the battle was ended when the confederates had a successful counterattack.  Secondly, some commonalities we can see with the battles are in the naval battles.  The confederates lost almost all of the naval battles and this is probably due to the outdated weaponry they had.  That combined with the fact that the Union had more funding for the navy caused the Union to win almost every time.

Civil War in Art

In this activity we studied the election of 1860 between Lincoln, Douglas, Breckenridge, and Bell.  The essential question of this activity was: How were the results of the 1860 representative of the deep divisions over slavery?  We first watched a Crash Course video on the election.

After this, we went on to the website Civil War in Art, and we looked at the pictures and read the information on the web page.  http://civilwarinart.org/exhibits/show/causes/introduction/the-election-of-1860-and-seces We then had to make an Educreations video describing the importance of each picture and how they helped us learn the story of the Election and secession.  We also had to look up three other images and use them to further tell the story of the election and what happened at Fort Sumter.  Here is the Educreations that my group and I created:




Sources for our project:

Own Work. Original shapefile downloaded from: Minnesota 
Population Center. National Historical Geographic 
Information System: Version 2.0. Minneapolis, MN: 
University of Minnesota 2011. http://www.nhgis.org

"Causes of the War." The Civil War in Art :
Teaching & Learning Through Chicago 
Collections. Accessed March 19, 2015.

Piktochart

In this unit, we looked at the statistics and strategies of both the North and the South during the Civil War.  The essential question that we had to answer was: How did the differences between North and South effect each region's strategy and success in the Civil War?  We had to make an info graphic to answer this question.  I created to following info graphic on Piktochart.




I chose to add a lot of graphs in my Piktochart because personally, I'm a visual learner, and this helps me to better see the differences between the North and the South.  I chose what I thought were the most important statistics and put them into graphs.  This process helped me understand the different situations between the North and the South because, by creating this info graphic, I had to really look closely at all of the different statistics.  Then by putting them into something visual, I better understood the different situations, and it also made it easier to remember everything.

Elephant in the Room

This unit was about a big problem back in the 19th century, and that was slavery.  The essential question of the unit was, "How do we know the debate over slavery was the 'elephant in the room' for American politics in the early 19th century?"  To answer this question we got into groups in class and made a timeline using the TWL app on the iPad. This is a picture of our project:
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We looked at 8 different events and we organized them into two categories.  On the top of the line it was events that went in favor of the Anti-Slavery group, while the bottom was for events that went in favor of the Pro-Slavery group.

Using the time line and these events, we can clearly see that slavery was in fact, the 'Elephant in the room'.  First of all, the Kansas-Nebraska act was a big controversy because it violated the Missouri Compromise.  It did go in favor of both groups, it would help Chicago's economy and tourism, but more importantly it would allow Anti-Slavery settlers to move west.  However it would also allow the Pro-Slavery group to expand northwards, past the Missouri line.  This was just one of the big events in politics, and it led to an even bigger one.  In 1856, Charles Sumner was reciting his speech and he was calling out Senator Douglas and Senator Butler for creating the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  Butler's cousin, Preston Brooks took great offense at Sumner's speech and he went up on the stage and beat Sumner with a cane.  He almost killed Sumner by beating him and this led to a lot of talk about slavery and its expansion.  This wordle of Sumner's speech shows what his main topics were.
 http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1440275/The_Crima_Against_Kansas/
 This further proves how slavery was the 'elephant in the room.  This next event that happened 1857, was possibly one of the most controversial rulings by the Supreme Court.  The Dred Scott decision was the decision to deny Scott freedom after he had been living in a free state for years.  They ruled that he was still the property of  his owner.  The fact that the Supreme Court ruling was 7-2 helps show that in politics there was still a lot of debate on slavery.  Finally, the last example of how slavery was the 'elephant in the room' of politics is the Lincoln-Douglas debate.  Lincoln and Douglas had a series of 7 debates all about slavery.  Lincoln was anti-slavery and even though he lost the election, he still got a lot more followers for the anti-slavery campaign.  These four events, and more, all prove how the topic of slavery was the 'elephant in the room' for politics in the early 19th century.