Strategy and Statistics of the Civil War

Strategies and success in the civil war: North vs. south | Create infographics

This week we learned about the statistics and strategies of the civil and the advantages both the North and South had. To learn about these statistics we made infographics. An infographic is a visual image such as a chart or diagram used to represent information or data. This infographic really did help me learn about the strategies and statistics of the civil war. Seeing different numbers on a piece of paper than thinking about the how big the difference is and how this could really effect the result of civil war is so much different than having a graph or a pie chart or any of the other tools that you could use in Infogr.am actually show you the different in an easy and understandable way. It helped me see how many more people were in the North compared to the south, but how many more slaves were needed in the South because that was where the only cotton bales were produced. More slaves were needed in the south to be able to produce all of that cotton that was being produced.I also learned that most slaves lived on large plantations and only 10% of slaves lived in the city. And I learned that slaves in different areas may react differently to the war depending on where they were located. Slaves on small plantations because they could be freed, but it is less likely for a slave to be freed on a big plantation.

Sources:

http://www.edline.net/files/_CCBV6_/39d28344c59e45213745a49013852ec4/Railroad_and_Slave_Density_Maps.pdf

http://www.edline.net/files/_CDHeg_/849bf0de56cb0eae3745a49013852ec4/Resources_Pie_Charts.pdf

http://www.edline.net/files/_CCBWZ_/257d654637b0aff83745a49013852ec4/Slavery_by_the_Numbers.pdf

http://www.edline.net/files/_CCBWz_/21e469c533466ada3745a49013852ec4/Strengths_of_the_North_and_the_South_Reading.pdf  

There's an Elephant in the Room?!

Last week in class we discussed how we know the debate over slavery was the “elephant in the room” for American politics in the early 19th century. The phrase “elephant in the room” describes a specific topic that no one cares to address. To learn about this we learned about different people and events from this time period and then made a timeline through the 19th century. The essential question for this week was: How do we know the debate over slavery was the “elephant in the room” for American politics in the early 19th century? The first thing we did it class was go over the Missouri compromise in 1820. The Missouri compromise creates and even split of 11 slave states and 11 Free states. Also, all new territory north of the 36 degrees, 30 minutes latitude line will be free in the future. Then in 1850 California requests to join the union as a free state. Henry Clay anticipates the inevitable controversy of the loss of equality between slave and Free states, so he proposed of five-part compromise. The first part was that Texas would give up the land in dispute, but in return given ten million dollars and the money would be used to pay off its debt to Mexico. In part two the territories of New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Utah would be organized without mention of slavery, they are still not considered states because they are not very populated yet, once they get more populated it will be decided if they are slave and free states. Next in the third part the slave trade would be abolished in the District of Columbia but slavery will still be permitted meaning that people who already have slaves are allowed to keep them but no more slaves are allowed to be purchase in DC. The fourth part it says California would be admitted as a free state. And the final part, part five says to pacify slave-state politicians who would have objected to the imbalance of free and slave states they created another free state, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. It was supposed to help the recovery of fugitive slave. It denies a fugitive slave to a jury a trial. These are only two events from the timeline we made in class. These two events should how there was an “elephant in the room” because even though they are trying to decide which states should be slave and which ones are supposed to be free; the people aren’t discussing how they are going to try to end slavery.

This is the timeline we made in class to show all the even causing the “elephant in the room” for many politicians during the 19th century.

Slavery Increasing

Recently in class we have learned about how slavery was entrenched in American slavery in the early 19th century, how the system of slavery based race affects human dignity and what human characteristics does society tend to ignore. The three essential questions are: How did slavery become entrenched in American society, both economically and politically, by the early 19th century? How does a system of slavery based race affect human dignity? What human characteristics does such a system tend to ignore?

People thought that slavery was going to decrease because as the result of the American and French revolutions many slaves escaped and planned revolts, which made people, believe that slavery going to go away. But, then the cotton gin was invented which was a machine that took the seeds out of the cotton so that it could be woven into threads, this increased production so more slaves were needed to keep up with the supply and demand. During the time when the cotton gin was first invented slaves price almost doubled and the number of slaves in the United States increased by 33 percent. In 1793 short staple cotton was easier to make and there was more demand for it by 1800, the production increased to 85 million pounds; during this time the total slave population in the United States was about 690,000 all located in Virginia and the Carolinas. Then by 1860 the south grew 28.2 million pounds up from about 1.5 million cotton exports produced 191.8 million pounds which is 57 percent of the nation’s total export revenue; as the south was producing more and more cotton the amount of slaves also increased to 3,954,000 throughout the south. Slavery was entrenched in the early 19th century because there was a high demand for cotton so they needed more slaves to produce the cotton increasing the slave population drastically.

One antislavery activist was Frederick Douglass. Frederick was the son of a slave women and an unknown white man, he was born in February of 1818 on Maryland’s eastern shore. As a child he was a slave and he experienced brutal whippings and spending much time cold and hungry. He did teach himself to read and write in defiance of laws while enslaved. He escaped for good at 20 years old and continued to try to make African American lives better. As an active abolitionist, he wrote an abolitionist newspaper called the North Star and wrote his autobiography. He was also known as a powerful speaker in the abolitionist movement.

Here is a picture of Frederick Douglass. We put words from one of his speeches that we felt were powerful to make the portrait come alive.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1539.html

A system of slavery based race affects human dignity. Most people lose their dignity when they were forced into slavery, they become the lowest of the low and they aren’t treated with any respect. They are beaten and starved just because they are slaves; they aren’t really even treated like humans. One human characteristic that society usually overlooks could be that everyone is free and have the same rights. People who are enslaved don’t have the rights to say no to becoming a slave and to be owned by someone, and not being free anymore

People Still React Differently to Women

Recently in class we learned about the women’s reform and how women were treated in mid-19th century society. The essential questions for this topic are: How did mid-19th century society react to women’s demands for equality? Does 21st century society still react differently to men and women?

Women in the mid-19th century were treated much different from men. Women were supposed to stay at home, cook, clean and take care of the kids while the husband would go out and work to get money for their family. Here is a picture of a woman taking care of the children and doing other things that women were expected to do during this time period.

http://www.edline.net/files/_AIGmX_/90f5674f15c6c9f63745a49013852ec4/Activity_8_-_Lesson_Notes.pdf

Some other things that women were expected to do was to educate the girls and teach them how to read because girls typically didn’t go to school because they believe that it is useless to learn things that they wouldn’t actually do, so the girls would stay at home and learn how to cook, clean, sew and many other things. Women would also fix toys and clothes that were broken or ripped and take care of any pets that they had. Women were also treated differently working at the same job as men. If women were going to work really the only job they could get was as a teacher. Women would be paid around 20-30% less than what men would be paid for the same exact job. The mid-19th century did not like the idea of women getting more rights and treated more equal to men because men like to feel superior over women and they were worried that if women started getting more jobs there would be no one at home to cook, clean and take care of the kids.

21st century society does still react differently to men and women but definitely not as much as people reacted back in the mid-19th century society. In the 21st century women do have the same opportunities as men and they get paid the same amount, but a women’s personality can be perceived differently from men which causes society to label women differently than men. Here is a Pantene commercial that shows how society labels women differently from men who both work and are going for the same thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K2kfgW7708&feature=youtu.be

This Pantene commercial does a good job of showing how men and women are perceived and labeled differently today in society. Although 21st century society doesn’t react as strongly to the equality of men and women as in mid-19th century society it is still there and we can find a way to stop it.

A True Story

Robert G. Ingersoll, Out of an Insane Alysum: A Released Patient’s Remarkable Story of Cruel Treatment (New York, March 26, 1880)

These three excerpts come from a document titled Out of an Insane Asylum, describing the very harsh conditions of a mental hospital. The author is Robert G. Ingersoll, was a lawyer, political leader and orator in the early 1900s. Ingersoll had talked to a man name John Carrol and wrote this document about his experience in the Insane Asylum.
The reason for producing this
document was to make people aware of how mentally ill people were treated and
to try to make people act against it to prevent it from happening in the
future. This source seems to be pretty trustworthy because it was published in The New York Times newspaper, which is a newspaper that I have heard
about before. This document was written before the Prison reform which was to
put the mentally insane in hospitals instead of in jails and to care for them
and give them reasonable living quarters. From reading this document, I can
tell that the people who worked at the jails did not treat the mentally ill
nicely and did not give them nice rooms to sleep in. In the excerpt Carrol
tells Ingersoll that one time he wanted to come out of his room and when he
walked out of the room three people attacked him, they beat and kicked him
until he was unconscious. This is just one example of how the patients were
treated at the Insane Asylum. I feel like this document gives me a full picture
of how harshly the mentally ill were treated. This document gives a full
picture because it is very descriptive and explains everything that happens,
but also it is told from the point of view from a person who actually lived in
an Insane Asylum, so we can hear every detail from their torturous life. In the
last paragraph o the excerpt Carrol said that one of his roommates could not
find one of his stockings, the “watcher” got mad and tried to kill the man.
Carrol then says, “While he lay on the floor, Swanson had three violent fits in
succession. When he came to the asylum he was a strong, healthy young man, and
quite inoffensive. In a few weeks he was reduced to almost a skeleton.” This
also shows how the mentally ill were treated. Another thing that this quote
represents what the author is trying to convince. The author is trying to
convince the reader that the mentally ill were beatened almost to the point of
death and were even starved. He proves that when they first come they are very
health but over time they became even sicker. Throughout this document the
author writes in a very serious tone to get the point across of how serious
this situation really was.

He Does not Deserve that Title

Last week in class we learned about Andrew Jackson and how he was involved in the Indian Removal Act by watching videos and reading documents about the Indian Removal. Andrew Jackson was the 17th president of the united states. The Indian Removal act was passed by congress on May 28, 1830, during the time that Andrew Jackson was president. The law authorized the president to negotiate with Indian tribes in the Southern United States for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River. The Indians did not want to leave their territory, they were very peaceful people and never bother anyone, but Andrew Jackson was holding a grudge against the Indians because one of his family members was killed in an Indian war so he wanted them gone. The essential question is: Is Andrew Jackson’s long-standing reputation as “the people’s president” deserved? Why? Why not? After learning about the Indian Removal and how horrible Andrew Jackson treated the Indians, Andrew does not deserve the title “the people’s president”. After watching the videos and taking noted on Andrew Jackson we made a video answering the essential question

Here is the video explaining why Andrew Jackson did not deserve the reputation as “the people’s president”:

The Rise of Democracy

The other day in class we learned about what democracy is and how it rose in the early 1800s in the United states. We did this by looking at some documents and answering the two essential questions: How should we define democracy? and How democratic was the United States in the early 1800s? One document was a picture of people gathered to vote and it showed how different voting was then than it is now. There were also two graphs, one showed the property and tax paying requirements to be able to vote and how the number of states with property requirements went down while the number states in union went up over the years; the other graph showed the method of electing presidents and over the year the number of people able to vote instead of legislatures increased. We had two quotes that were both basically saying that democracy means that anyone has the right to vote but the people were not getting what they wanted and the state was not practicing democracy. Finally we had a document about the Dorr War, which was talking about Dorr and how he organized a convention to frame a new constitution and change the voting laws. He tried to capture the state arsenal and then was arrested. To appease popular resentment the governor pardoned Dorr, and Rhode Island adopted a new constitution.

This is the poster we made in class to show everything that we learned about the Rise of Democracy: