Not All People!

The last lesson's essential question regarded the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson. It posed the question: was he worthy of his title, "The People's President"? The Spoils System, Bank War and Indian Removal were the three topics we learned about in hopes to answer that question. My group was in charge of using Google Slides to teach the class about the first topic: The Spoils System. The Spoils System allowed Andrew Jackson to give government jobs to the people that supported him during the election. This led us to believe that President Jackson was not a president for all the people, only the ones he liked. Looking at Indian Removal, a darker side of Jackson is evident. Native Americans are people, and Jackson dismissed their opinion on his plan to relocate them, which led to ten thousand deaths on the Trail of Tears. The Natives were not even allowed to preform their burying rituals. Again, this looks like a man who is not for all the people. The last event, the Bank War, is an example of Andrew Jackson trying to benefit the poor. During the Bank War, President Jackson vetoed the Second National Bank's power in order to give the poor people a better chance at becoming better off. Although this was done with good intentions, it led to an economic crash the year after Jackson left office. In two out of three cases, Andrew Jackson is not for the people, which leads to the conclusion that his time in office does not grant him the right to the title "The People's President".

Kids In Charge

During the first week of December, History Class was run by the students. There was warning and there were plans for us to follow, but it still felt exciting. I really felt the pressure to meet the deadlines we had set out for ourselves because at the end of class, it was our job to report back to our teacher on what we had done via Google Docs. Our main project during was ironically on early Democracy in America. (I say ironically because the situation we experienced was a bit like an unstable democracy.) Our essential questions were: how should we define democracy and how democratic was the United States in the early 1800s.

Using the internet, we found out the dictionary definition of democracy and then put it in our own words. I said a democracy was a government where all the people in the country participate. In the activator we examined The County Election, a painting done in 1852 by George Caleb Bingham. In the depiction of early voting in Midwest America, there are several examples of questionable goings-on. Firstly, people are casting their ballots while drunk, and then before they can vote they are asked by a judge to swear they have not voted anywhere else. The voters could be lying, and perhaps they have voted in multiple other towns, the system is not yet set up so that it is honest. There is not even a way to tell if the votes are being counted correctly. The painting shows a place that is not a democracy, but instead a poor imitation of one. We looked at four other sources besides the painting to see other perspectives of the early democracy. One was a chart comparing the number of people who met the voting requirement and the number of states in the country over 65 years. The third source was another chart, this time displaying how the states were voting, either by people or legislature. Next was my favorite: two quotes, one from Benjamin Franklin and the other from Norton Townshend which called American Democracy illogical and not actually a democracy. The last source was on the Dorr War, which was a revolt in 1834 led by Thomas Dorr who called for a new constitution and an end to voting restrictions. To prove our knowledge of Early Democracy in America, we poured all our knowledge into a poster, the one seen below.

Pictography 

Bingham, George Caleb. The County Election, 1852. Oil on Canvas. Courtesy of Saint Louis Art Museum and the Early 19th Centry Realism collection on www.kingsacademy.com 

Whatever Needs to Be Done

In History class last week we attempted to understand what makes a nation and to what extent historically people have gone to defend their nation. Then we asked ourselves haw far people should be willing to go for their nation. First, we defined the word nation. The definition my group came up with was using what we had learned previously about nationalism. We said that a nation was a group of people that are bonded by shared language, culture, history, decent, and customs. People in a nation live in a certain area with natural boundaries. The next activity was analyzing a timeline. On the timeline were four events, The Congress of Vienna, Monroe Presidency, Russia shutting off Oregon to trading, and the Latin American Revolutions. The timeline, once fully understood, was a good representation of a nation, the United States, being asked what it is willing to do to defend itself. After the timeline we had more to analyze, three quotes from the Monroe doctrine which were the official rebuttals in response to the advances from other nations. For the last part of the lesson we looked to Italy and Germany to see what they were willing to do in their own defense.

1820 America was a nation. After the Revolutionary War, this country of America met the criteria of our definition of a nation, it shares a main language, has natural boundaries, and the people have similar enough histories. The threats aimed at the U. S. were the events of the timeline above. First it was the Congress of Vienna, ending in 1815. Britain agreed with everything the Congress came up with except the Principle of Intervention. Because of this, Britain proposed that America and Britain create an alliance to protect any colonies in the Americas that might want to revolt against the Holy Alliance’s power of repression. In the Monroe Doctrine, the president gently declines Great Britain’s proposition. This is an example of what America is not willing to do; it will not participate in a just-in-case alliance. The second Event, occurring in 1821 and ending two years later is Russia shutting off the Oregon trade. Russia’s goal was to take complete control over trade between Asia and the Americas. This would partially shut down The United States’ economy. Monroe would not stand for that. “…a full power and instructions have been transmitted to the minister of the United States at St. Petersburg to arrange by amicable negotiation the respective rights and interest of the two nations on the northwest coast of  this continent.” America is not willing to stand by and let their trade routes with Asia disappear, so someone went and had a friendly discussion with Russian officials to find a compromise. The third and last interference with America were the Latin American Revolutions going from 1804 until 1839. It was feared this was the opportunity where the Holy Alliance might stretch its Principle of Intervention across the water. So, out of fear of the disturbance to American peace and safety, Monroe said that the hemispheres should stick to themselves. Regarding the European colonies in the Americas, Monroe planned to do what he already had been, nothing. However, with those countries that like the U. S. had declared their independence, America would work to keep them independent even if it meant getting involved in war.

Over in the German Confederation, Otto Von Bismarck was up to no good. Okay, there was some good in his antics, but they were completely unrestricted and probably broke several laws. First off, Germany must be considered a nation because of its extensive boundaries (Baltic Sea, the Alps and the Russian Empire) and its shared language, German. Bismarck’s main goals were to unify German states and decrease Austrian influence (Austrian was the other big power in Germany at the time). Bismarck was strategic when harming Austria, “We had to avoid wounding Austria too severely; we had to avoid leaving behind in her any unnecessary bitterness of feeling or desire for revenge; we ought rather to reserve the possibility of becoming friends again with our adversary of the moment, and in any case to regard the Austrian state as a piece on the European chessboard.” In order to officially establish a German nation, Bismarck was willing to go to start and fight in a war against France. The Franco-Prussian war brought together Prussian and the other German states (minus Austria) which, when the war ended with Prussian victory, made Prussia the leader of Germany. 

https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/520567782380167168/photo/1

I am probably bias because I am American, but I stand by President Monroe's decisions and believe he made the right choices. I am able to rationalize with his reasoning. I can see how he would have thought he was making the right decisions to decline a British alliance, protect trading routes, and help newly independent countries in the Americas. With Bismarck in Prussia, although I applaud his cunning mind, I think starting a war to become the ruling state of Germany is not worth the risk. I think that when it comes to protecting a nation, people should be on the defensive and not the offensive. There should be no starting of wars, only defense when a war is upon your country. Just-in-case alliances are also a negative, they are asking for trouble. Bringing up Ferguson Missouri again, like in the last post, because of what is happening, people there have been burning American flags. In response to this burning, some people are more outraged by a desecrated flag than what is going on. I would not be and are not one of those people. As a form of protest, this action is not against any laws, just certain moral ones. I am not willing to get overworked about flag desecration when people are dead who should not be.

Works Cited

Message of President James Monroe at the commencement of the first session of the 18th Congress (The Monroe Doctrine), 12/02/1823; Presidential Messages of the 18th Congress, ca. 12/02/1823-ca. 03/03/1825; Record Group 46; Records of the United States Senate, 1789-1990; National Archives.)

 James Harvey Robinson, ed., Readings in European History, 2 Vols., (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1904-1905), II:571-
575; Otto von Bismarck, The Man and Statesman, (New York, 1899), II:48-51
Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton. Prof. Arkenberg has modernized the text.

Blood White and Blue

          For the Latin America Revolutions lesson, the Essential Questions were: why is it necessary to acknowledge human value regardless of race? How are the events in the Latin American Revolutions evidence of this social imperative? This is a very important question to discuss because of all the racism, oppression, discrimination, and persecution that still exists today and will continue to exist in at least the near future. To go about answering the proposed question, we turned to pie. This pie came in the form of a chart. In a pie chart we assigned sectors to the different races that made up Latin America in the years before the revolutions occurred. Then we looked at the social structure. The conclusion after looking at these together was that Latin America had a minority given privileges over the majority. The lesson continued after the class broke into groups to learn about a specific revolution. The revolutions we studied occurred in Mexico, Gran Colombia, and Brazil. Eventually we all learned about these revolutions by regrouping so each group included an "expert" on each revolution. After comparing the timelines that we created, we worked together to answer the essential question. 

Comparing the revolutions, we found commonalities and differences. These similarities were first, each revolution ended around 1830 and second, all the revolts ended with declared independence and a constitution. One difference was that the revolution in Brazil started in the last 1700s, when the other two did not begin to spark until the turn of the century. Another difference noted was that even with their close proximity, all revolts were fought against different oppressors. In response to why it is imperative to acknowledge rights regardless of race, it was obvious. Suppressing people is not a permanent solution. People, especially those repressed, desire representation in their government and the majority, if not everyone, desire to have their basic rights acknowledged. Repressed people do not stay repressed! The three revolutions were fought for the shared goal of independence. After the Brazil revolution, the new Emperor, Pedro, did not have an easy reign. People were suspicious of him, the main reason being that he was not born in Brazil, but instead, he was born in Portugal. Brazilian people wanted a Brazilian Emperor. In Gran Columbia and Mexico the rebels hoped to create their own country, separate from their mother colony, which would allow their people, of their race, to run their own country. The majority requires representation, and in the system depicted by the Casta paintings, representation in government is not attainable for everyone. 

          Racism is still an issue today. Just yesterday, the 24th of November, the news came in that the Police Officer that shot unarmed Michael Brown, six times in total and twice in the head, will not be indicted. Now anger directed at the jury's decision is ravishing the town. People are setting fire to buildings. People are throwing rocks. People are breaking into stores. People are rioting. People are protesting, some peacefully and some violently. Some people are doing nothing. There is tear gas in the air. There is a heavy police presence, including the National Guard. I believe that stereotyping is the problem with these cops shooting and killing these citizens. That is why the new saying is "Hands Up, Don't Shoot". Most people, unfortunately including cops too, see black people as more threatening than white people. In extreme cases, this suspicion leads to unnecessary deaths. Yes, race is still an issue because although these are extreme cases, they still happen, they have happened and they will happen. They are happening now! People deserve to live in a place where they are not constantly worrying for their own safety, fearing for their lives. 

"The problem is not a Ferguson problem; it is an American problem." -Barrack Obama

Liberté, Égailté, Fraternité!

James Buchanan was the president that preceded Abraham Lincoln, and some call him The Worst President Ever. Granted, he was inaugurated during a difficult time, in 1857 half of his country was pro-slavery and the other half wished the horrendous thing to be abolished. When his efforts to maintain peace failed and Southern states seceded, President Buchanan did nothing. He saw that secession was illegal and that going to war to prevent secession was also illegal. For a man that aspired to have a presidency like that of George Washington, he fell very short. From James Buchanan’s failure to unite his nation, it is evident that reaction is an important quality of a leader. President Buchanan and Toussaint L’Ouverture were both leaders. L’Ouverture was born into slavery in the French colony of Saint Domingue, now the western side of Haiti. During the 1780s, Saint Domingue was one of the most profitable colonies in the world, producing forty percent of the world’s sugar and more than half of the world’s coffee. The laborers that created this profit were slaves. About ninety percent of the population of Saint Domingue in 1789 was made up of slaves. By 1789, Toussaint L’Ouverture was a free man and a citizen of France working his way to becoming a leader. L’Ouverture deserves to be remembered. He should be remembered most for his biggest accomplishment: the liberation of the enslaved population of Saint Domingue. He is an abolitionist before he is a military or government leader – from those positions of power he strived to achieve his largest goal of emancipating slaves.

Toussaint L’Ouverture should be remembered as a liberator of slaves. L’Ouverture proves with his actions that the matter of slavery is more important to him than any allegiance. The first slave revolt of Saint Domingue began in 1792 against France, their mother country. The revolution did not end until two years later when the new French government under Robespierre abolished slavery in France and all of its colonies. Now that the multitudes of Saint Domingue plantation workers were no longer enslaved, they were able to happily cease revolting. (Doc A) This peace did not last. By 1795, just a year after Robespierre had come to power, the conservative French Directory took over. It was feared that this new governing party would once again reinstate slavery. Toussaint L’Ouverture responded by writing a letter to The French Directory. In it he stated that Saint Domingue was prepared to fight to maintain its freedom (or liberté as the French say). He writes, “Could men who have enjoyed the benefits of liberty look on calmly while it is taken from them! They bore their chains when they knew no condition of life better than that of slavery. But today when they have left it, if they had a thousand lives, they would rather sacrifice them all rather than be subjected again to slavery…” (Doc B) Now that his people have experienced a life of freedom, they would much rather die than ever be re-enslaved. In the 1801 Saint Domingue Constitution, signed by Toussaint L’Ouverture, the colony finally became a place where slavery would never again exist. The constitution states that: “ All men are born, live and die free and French.” (Doc C) With all his hard work towards this success, L’Ouverture deserves to be remembered as a liberator of the slaves of Saint Domingue.

Another achievement of Toussaint L’Ouverture was his time as the leader of Saint Domingue. It was the same Constitution of Saint Domingue that officially put Toussaint L’Ouverture, a prominent leader during the revolution, in charge of the colony. (Doc C) As the leader of his homeland, unlike President Buchanan, L’Ouverture was not afraid of action. He was prepared to fight France if they re-imposed slavery. In the letter he sent to the French Directory he says, “We have known how to confront danger to out liberty, and we will know how to confront death to preserve it.” (Doc B) When he was not writing threats, L’Ouverture’s time was spent protecting the wealthy economy of the island. He implicated rules that made sure everyone that had once been enslaved was still working and with as much gusto as before they had been freed. In a Proclamation in 1801, just after the constitution had come to pass, he stated that “As soon as a child can walk, he should be employed on the plantation according to his strength in some useful work…” (Doc D) He also had strict punishments put in place. The repercussion for being a vagabond was being arrested by a member of the “gendarmerie”, which was the name for the police force stationed at each plantation. If any plantation was harboring a runaway worker, failing to report them in 24 hours resulted in a week in prison for whoever was harboring them. These rules were set in place to keep the former slaves working and working hard enough that the economy of the rich island did not falter. Unfortunately, after freeing the slaves, Toussaint L’Ouverture created an environment very similar to the one the former slaves were used to being confined to. L’Ouverture used his power as a leader to abolish slavery, but he still needed a way to keep the plantations producing profits so his decisions made him unpopular among the plantation workers. It is important to remember that not all of L’Ouverture’s actions were beneficial to his country.

Toussaint L’Ouverture was a sagacious military leader. In 1798 he defeated British troops who were nervous that the revolutionary ideas would spread to their enslaved colony of Jamaica. (Doc A) Not only good with tactics, L’Ouverture was an expert at rallying his troops. Before Napoleon's army-- who wanted to take control of the colony once again-- landed on Saint Domingue, Toussaint L’Ouverture sang to his troops, “Here come the enslavers of our race…not France, with all her troops of the Rhine, the Alps, the Nile, the Tiber, nor all Europe to help her, can extinguish the soul of Africa.” (Doc F) His troops were about to face the most powerful army in the world, but L’Ouverture was ready to put up a fight. Thanks to the quick mind of the leader of Saint Domingue, there was no town left for the troops to seek shelter or previsions, just smoking ruins. The troops of Saint Domingue had taken off for the mountains, where they would have a large advantage over the European troops who were only trained in traditional fighting and not guerrilla tactics. Toussaint L’Ouverture was playing to the strengths of his army, because they had been taught guerrilla style fighting, so they were able to use their surroundings efficiently. (Doc A) The 31,131 troops of the French, Dutch, and Polish, sent by Napoleon, lost against the mind of Toussaint L’Ouverture and his impressive army. L’Ouverture was a powerful and strategic military leader, but his motivation was to keep slavery from Saint Domingue.

Although Toussaint L’Ouverture was a brave leader and resourceful military commander, he would have wanted to be remembered as a liberator of slaves. His passion lies in that, and his motivation to become a strong leader of Saint Domingue and a brilliantly tactical man was to keep his colony free from bondage. He defeated Napoleon’s army so no one in Saint Domingue would ever again become enslaved. L’Ouverture made sure the economy maintained as stellar as it had been while enslaved so that Saint Domingue could continue to prosper. Both L’Ouverture and Buchanan were disliked; however, L’Ouverture is far more impressive. The Ruler of Saint Domingue was a man of action. The dislike aimed at him stemmed from and action and that is far nobler than President Buchanan, who did nothing when some type of action was necessary. Buchanan left the emancipating to Abraham Lincoln when L’Ouverture set out to do it himself. Toussaint’s grandest accomplishment was slave liberation and that is how we should remember his intricate legacy. 

Works Cited

Document A: Timeline of Abolition in Saint Domingue 
Document B: Letter to the French Directory, November 1797
Document C: Constitution of 1801
Document D: Proclamation, 25 November 1801
Document F: The Battle of Samana 

Don't Pass Me By

These last couple of History classes we have politely been disagreeing with the views of many historians. In Europe in 1830 and 1848 there were waves of revolts, and some historians believe these were failures in the harshest degree. That was not how we saw it. The lesson began with us creating a chart (my group’s chart is on the right) and what I enjoyed about this was the level of freedom we were allowed that I do not usually expect in school. We had to have at least five ticks, one success, one neutral, and one failure, and two in between, and that was all the criteria. We never even went over them, just went straight to using them, and I found that very refreshing. Then, in order to use our charts, we reorganized into new groups and read about a particular European revolution from either 1848 or 1830, mine was the Frankfurt Assembly. Once we comprehended and took notes on our revolution we made surveys to help the rest of the groups learn about the Frankfurt Assembly. The surveys worked out well because the students were allowed the same resources that the creators had used to make the survey.

Making this survey helped to reinforce what I had learned, reading about the Frankfurt Assembly. My revolution began with, like the name suggests, an assembly. The members of this assembly were
Nationalists and Liberals who wished to unite the German states under a constitution. The opponent of this revolution was King Fredrick William IV who was at first a person the Frankfurt Assembly had hoped would help them reach their goals. In the one of the sources we were presented with, a speech of Johann Gustav Droysen, one of the members of the 1848 Frankfurt Assembly, he boils down the point of their assembly to two sentences, "We need a powerful ruling house. Austria's power meant lack of power for us, whereas Prussia desired German unity in order to supply the deficiencies of her own power.” The conclusion of the Frankfurt Assembly was to offer the role of German King to Prussia’s King, Fredrick William IV, but as we already know, things did not go as planned. In a proclamation during 1849, Prussia’s King said, "I am not able to return a favorable reply to the offer of a crown on the part of the German National Assembly [the meeting in Frankfurt], because the assembly has not the right, without the consent of the German government, to bestow the crown which they tended me..." That same year the Assembled Germans dissolved when threatened by the Prussian military. It was members of the middle class who were either inspired by the assembly or ex-members who took to the streets and began the revolt, and Conservatives, like usual, were the ones who stopped the revolutionaries. As punishment, the revolutionaries that were not killed were mostly sent to prison. People who had not been sent to jail left their homeland of Germany, fearing for their safety.

Generalizing the European revolutions of 1830 and 1848, none of them succeeded completely, so it is easy to draw the conclusion that they were all failures. However, looking at the chart we made at the beginning of this lesson, a revolution is not something that either accomplishes everything it sets out to or fails to make any difference at all, there are in-betweens. The French Revolution of 1830 was, for the reign of King Louis Philippe, a temporary success. These 1830 French revolutionaries wanted freedom from the restricting govern of King Charles X's ruling, and they got that, even if it was only for a short time, that taste of change could have helped inspire the next revolution in France in 1848. Louis Philippe was only on the throne because his citizens put him there and he thanked his people by having policies that mostly benefiting the middle class. Another revolution that cannot be classified as a complete failure is the 1848 revolt in Hungary. Again here, the key word is temporary. Louis Kossuth, a Hungarian activist and writer of pamphlets, led a revolt against the government, demanding an end to serfdom, an independent government, and a written document protecting the basic rights of Hungarians. Overwhelmed, the government agreed to the propositions and enacted them, but, when Austrian troops regained control of Prague, it was back to the old unhappy ways. With the revolutions of Hungary, 1830 France, and the Frankfurt Assembly, they had ephemeral successes, however, due to the Principle of Intervention, the revolutionaries never got their way, which is how the Congress of Vienna hoped it would play out.

I Have Power, Let's Keep it That Way

To answer the question: what should people in power do when their power is threatened; we looked to the Congress of Vienna. First, we read a pleasant little paper with elaborate descriptions and pictures that explained what the Congress was and who attended. After a discussion, we watched a dramatization of Napoleon Bonaparte and Metternich discussing France's plea for peace. In this situation it is Napoleon whose power was being threatened. In exchange for peace between France and the rest of Europe, Metternich, a conservative representative of Austria, demands that France returns the original borders before Napoleon’s conquests and ceases his conquests once and for all. When Napoleon was presented with this, his power threatened, he brought Metternich over to his window to boast about his grand army, trying to intimidate the person who dared to encroach upon his power. Napoleon claims his army has regenerated since it's last battle and will destroy Vienna if Austria declares war. Intimidating, yet still trying to encourage his opponent. 

               As history reports, Napoleon Bonaparte lost even with his rebuilt army, and was exiled once more. To protect against future Napoleons, The Congress of Vienna created acts that would prevent further disturbances in government. The Principle of Intervention is one such act which allowed the Great Powers: Russia, Austria, Prussia, Britain and France (which had returned to a monarchy) a special privilege. These countries could send in their armies to any other country struggling to extinguish a revolution. For personal reasons, England refused to take part in this. In the 1820s this principle was taken advantage of by the Austrians, who put down a revolution of Italian nationalists. The Principle of Intervention came in handy again in 1830 and then in 1848 when waves of revolution swept through Europe. The Congress of Vienna has other impressive deeds as well, like 40 years without war between the five Great Powers and the ever necessary extension of European monarchy, long live the King! 

               The Congress of Vienna, just like Napoleon, had a decision to make when their power was threatened. I do not think they made the right decision, but I do understand where they were coming from. The people attending the Congress were not of middle or poor class, so chances are they were mostly Conservatives who wished to preserve their power, and their choices in Vienna display that. They stuck with Monarchies, even though middle and lower class folk were clearly getting fed up with their current governments. If, instead, the Congress of Vienna had resulted in democracies where everyone gets a say in government, a lot of energy and resources could be saved stopping revolutions because they would be pleasing the majority. It would be a miracle if people in power would be willing to sacrifice some of their power and except a change that would benefit the greatest amount of people. 

Outdated Politics

In History we have endeavored to understand and define the three major ideologies of the 19^th century and their influence on political and social actions. Sectioned off into groups, we read sections of an article by Jeffrey Brautigam, describing nationalism, liberalism and conservatism as they were in the 1800s. Liberalism was the topic I worked on.

This is our final one minute creation. Using the information in the reading we defined Liberals as supporters of individual rights and believers that all people had rights straight from God. One funny little fact I found was that the original supporters came from the middle class, which makes sense. The social action that sprouted from Liberalism was reevaluating tradition, like a return of sorts of the Scientific Revolution. Nothing is safe from being questioned anymore, not when Liberals are around. One tradition that the majority of Liberals were against was the old fashioned ways of finding work. Meritocracy was seen as a better way of doing things. In our video we illustrated meritocracy with a cartoon, the stick figure more adept at the job is hired, and the other stick figure, whose father had had the job before him, is sent home sad. The other political influences of Liberals came in the form of governing ideas like Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand and John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government in which he supports the acknowledgement and promotion of individual liberties. Adam Smith and John Locke were thought of as the creators of liberalism. Their ideas sparked others like Thomas Malthus and Jeremy Bentham to write about utilitarianism and economic competition.

Political Liberalism for Dummies. manwithoutqualities. October 23, 2014.

          Nationalism and Conservatism were explained in other the one minute projects in our class. 19^th Century Nationalism sprouted not from two men, like Liberalism, but the actions of one: the conquests of Napoleon. Nationalists believed in making countries where there were people who shared culture, history, and language. These connections, nationalists believed, would protect these countries from being taken over. Politically Nationalism cried out for an end to foreign rule and a beginning of strict policies on foreign expansion. In the social realm, nationalists like Johann Gottlieb Fichte were arguing and writing to be heard. Unlike Nationalists and Liberals, Conservatives were unallied. Conservatives tended to only agree with other conservatives when it came to political matters, and they believed heavily in tradition. Politically, their dream government was medieval, including both aristocracy and the Church. Socially, like every other major ideology at the time, Conservatives wrote and wrote and wrote. Edmund Burke’s work, Reflections the Revolutions in France inspired people like Joseph de Maistre to pick up a pen and spread their ideas of Conservatism. This was all new information for me and after this lesson I feel slightly less ignorant of modern politics, seeing what things were like in the past does help to understand what is going on now. 

Poor is a Problem (With Solutions)

The most recent big event in history class was learning about Marxism with Hershey’s kisses. First, Mrs. Gallagher distributed the chocolates so that most kids had three candies and two kids had ten. Then we were informed we must play rock paper scissors, and the prize for winning was taking a kiss from whomever you beat. This was Capitalism, and capitalism did not treat me well. I was out and sitting down with no candy after just three games. Ten-holders could afford to lose a couple rounds, but I was not one of them. Next, in following with Marxism, we switched to Socialism. Everyone who had more than three kisses had to give back their winnings so that everyone started with an even three. This time we had a choice, to play or not to play rock paper scissors. I chose not to play because last time had ended so poorly, frankly I was happy I had candy any at all. Still, we were not allowed to eat, but that did not stop Mrs. Gallagher from eating a few in front of us, which truthfully, was painful to watch because the chocolate looked really good. The last step in Marxism was Communism. Everyone was back to having three and no one had a chance to increase their number, but we were finally allowed to eat. These three stages let us experience Marxism and the emotions the wealthy and the poor might feel with these changes.

www.derobertisjewelers.com/collections.php?collectionID=8

Then, we learned about another system, Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand. Both Karl Marx's Marxism and The Invisible Hand had a way to help the poor become more stable economically. In Adam Smith’s system, the government would step back from the economy and let it do its own thing, this way Smith figured that the economy would thrive with businesses competing with each other to create the best product for the least amount of money. This healthy competition would allow the poor to have a wider range of things they could afford, which would make the poor are better off.  In the first step of Marxism, Capitalism, the poor can theoretically change their class, but they do still tend to stay poor. Moving on to Socialism, everyone starts out with an even amount, but poor can still exist if they trade unwisely. It is the third step, Communism, which makes being poor obsolete. There are no more poor people because everyone starts with the same amount and everyone continues with the same amount of money and resources.

Before the lesson, I had heard of Marxism before. Even so, I think Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand is the better approach to help the poor because it seems more realistic. To have no government at all is an incomprehensible idea to me, and that is part of Communism. Having a government, but one that does not control the economy is easier for me to grasp. The only downside I see to the Invisible Hand, and the downside pointed out in the video, is it might take a long time before the economy is at a place where it is capable of competing successfully.  

La Contribution du Napoléon

Before starting the next unit in my History class on Atlantic Revolutions, we learned about the man who planted the idea in the people’s minds to revolt, the great Napoleon Bonaparte. What this man did with his power, conquering and conquering, had large impacts on the economic, political and social systems all throughout Europe. Economically, the new French emperor was an overall blessing. Napoleon, using his armies, controlled market prices and allowed for new industry to flourish. He removed trade barriers by building roads and canals. However it is not all pretty, one country that was hurt economically by Bonaparte was Italy. When Napoleon conquered Italy, he stripped it of generous sums of money and beautiful works of art.

19th century Portrait of Bonaparte, Wikimedia Commons

Politically, Bonaparte shook Europe, erasing boundary lines until just Great Britain was outside his control. The French armies managed to abolish the titles of nobility and serfdom. Under Napoleon, Europe became a meritocracy. Napoleon never sat still politically, so he sold the Louisiana Territory which began the American Expansion and doubled the size of America. After reading an online article entitled The Lost Voices of Napoleonic Historians by Thomas J. Vance, it was made clear to me in a quoted passage from William Milligan Sloane that Napoleon taught the European countries his ways. Europe, after playing the victim, managed to learn the tactics Napoleon had used for twenty years against them, and after they started seeing his patterns they were able to hold their own ground again. “…the teacher [Napoleon] began to diminish in success and splendor,” Sloane, 1894. That, in Sloane's mind was the downfall of Napoleon. 

The social structure under Napoleon was beneficial for some and annoying for others. There was a larger majority of rights for a larger majority of people. He made education more accessible. Bonaparte also sent out his armies a third time to end Church privilege. With those two actions, the wider education and the end to privileges of the Church, it seems Napoleon has finally managed to put the Middle Ages to rest. Some Europeans were in awe of Napoleon Bonaparte like Marshal Michel Ney, who served close to him and was greatly benefited whenever Napoleon succeeded. He said about Napoleon’s reign, “the times are gone when the people were governed by suppressing their rights.” Another perspective, less overjoyed with Napoleon was Madame de Staël. She said Napoleon was “to encroach daily upon France’s liberty and Europe’s independence…” As a member of nobility who had most of her power and authority stripped from her, this opinion is easy to understand. 

Something in the Way She Works

The Lowell Mills had a certain attraction that allowed them their success -- always full of young women ready to work. Why mill work? First and most importantly, with this job the girls could do something to help their families financially. Most families during the time of the Lowell Experiment, in the early 1800s were struggling, and would benefit from an extra paycheck. In the documentary shown in class, Daughters of Free Men, Lucy was a farm girl whose father was having trouble admitting he needed his daughter to help him financially. Along with the excitement of paid work, girls like Lucy were drawn to Lowell because it appealed to their sense of adventure. Never before had Lucy been much farther in the world than the extent of her father’s property, but here was a chance for her to explore a new and promising city. Plus, the deal between the factories and the families was that the work was temporary, there was another kind of freedom present: the worker could leave to marry at any time.

Lowell was not all sunshine as it was presented to the families though, like with every big decision, there were downsides to choosing to work at the Lowell Mills. The hushed con about factory work in Lowell was the danger. It was easy to get sick, and hard to recover from illness in the closed in working conditions and tight schedule. Deaths, also, were not uncommon, whether it was from slipping on ice in the winter or being caught in one of the multitude of fast moving machines.

As if working and average of thirteen hours a day and worrying about safety was not enough for these young girls there was society to deal with, a society that did not know how to cope with women as workers. In 19^th century America’s eyes, young, unmarried girls going to work in a factory in a large town under the watch of an unmarried man was very near scandalous and considered a great impropriety. Going to work for the mills, a woman would no longer be seen as pure by the town she lived in. However, when the girls started standing up for things they believed in, they did have outside support. The peaceful protests they held against wage cuts at the factory were met with both the support of some and the anger of others. In the end, the girls got their higher pay and went back to work, which seems like a perfect example of good old fashioned girl power.

Say Hi Darren

This Tuesday was an unusual day. In History my classmates and I went on a tour of a factory museum across an ocean without getting out of our desks, but we were prepared. The previous Friday was spent looking at Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry's website and learning what they had to say about the Industrial Revolution. Then, there was a video for us to watch of Jamie, who works at MOSI, explaining the textile making process in the factories. Occasionally in this video words he was using would pop up on the screen, phrases like Draw Frame and Power Loom, and after the video finished it was our mission to find the definitions of those words. After that, with the time that was left we thought of questions to ask Jamie.

Jamie and his third presentation of the day

Jamie started off talking about the at home system before factory work began, which interested me. This was the first way England produced cotton fabric. Jamie showed us the Hand Loom that would have been in a house, where a man might sit all day pushing at the peddles with his feet and pulling the shuttles with his hands, which sounds rather like playing the organ, but instead of producing music, the outcome was textile. While the father was turning roving to cloth, his wife and children were doing their respectable parts too. Children would use hand cards, shown to us by Darren, Jamie's cameraman, to brush the raw cotton fibers to prepare them for being woven. This brushing aligned the cotton fibers; the goal was to get them as long as possible. The mother's job was taking what the child produced and turning it to woven thread on a spinning wheel which was the last step before the father got his hands on it. As one might imagine, this is an extremely slow production process. However, there was motivation for speed, the more cloth a family produced the more money they would make. Even with that, this motivation was no match for the production speed of a factory, which could produce a bigger and longer cloth than the homes produced in twenty minutes, at home it took weeks.

Talking to an expert was really beneficial. It helped me to understand that this "Industrial Revolution" is more than just a story, and it did in fact happen and there are machines from that era still in working condition that prove it. That reality does not always come across to me even when I am reading a primary source. What I liked about Jamie was he shared interesting facts as well as the informational ones.  I now know that the word "heirloom" comes from this time before the Industrial Revolution in the 18^th century. The family loom would pass from father to son and was usually the most valuable possession the family owned. I also am now aware the Arkwright's Water Frame was most likely not Arkwright’s idea. It was common for factory workers to come up with improvement ideas and then have them stolen by men who could afford to have the ideas patented. The overall experience was a strange one, but I did like it and would enjoy doing it again. 

Broken Children

This past week my history class spent curating during our Industrial Revolution unit. For one week and one week only we, along with the members of our groups, slid into the shoes of museum curators. It was not as hard as I had expected it to be. The first day we examined our sources, two excerpts from primary documents, one chart of the age distribution of workers in a British factory, two drawings of children working in mines, all from the 19^th century and one photograph from an American factory in 1909. Then we took notes on author, date, reason for being created, and what the museum visitor should take away from our six sources. That first day also involved discovering our topic; ours was almost blatantly obvious, being six examples of child labor. The second day we spent creating captions and deciding we would order our sources chronologically. That class we also came up with our title. Our first idea was the ever boring “The History of Child Labor during the Industrial Revolution”, but then after a little prodding from Mrs. Gallagher we rethought it and came up with “Broken Children”. After looking at the finished product up on the wall, I hoped people reading it would walk away knowing more about child labor than when they came and that the design would prove beneficial.  

              The exhibits of my classmates were mostly on inventions during this time (it is not called the industrial revolution for nothing) like the steam engine, the water frame, and the flying shuttle. However, there were two other topics that like ours shined a light on the uglier side of the revolution, one on the filthy living conditions in England during the 1800s and one museum exhibit spoke of slavery during that time.

Intuitive Industrialization and the Lost Childhoods

A recent class activity involved finding and defining a few terms under a given category in a reading on the Industrial Revolution. The overarching question we would soon know the answer to: what was “revolutionary” about industrialization?

My group’s topic was resources. We found that coal was a major energy source when producing iron. Iron itself is also a resource and during the Industrial Revolution Abraham Darby’s experiments lead to a system to purify coal that improved the quality of iron. One use for iron was and still is machine building, which would soon be utilized creating the steam locomotive and steam boat, both invented at this time in the 1800s. Another less crafty resource was capital, or the money British men received by taking part in the slave trade and other money making pass times. Capital, once obtained was usually invested, helping the British economy.  Cotton was the last resource we read about. Imported from India, cotton became very popular at this time, and naturally the British wanted to get in on the production process. Hence, the “pulling out” system is born. The peasants would receive the raw Indian cotton, and after weaving it into threads, they would turn the thread to cloth. The cloth would then be brought to the Artisans who would dye and finish the cloth. The “pulling out” process was extremely time consuming and would eventually be moved to factories with the majority of workers being young children.

James Watt's Steam Engine, from the 1832 Edinburgh Encyclopedia

A second topic that interested me was technology. The steam engine, one of the engines still in use today was invented during the Industrial Revolution. A little while after this incredible invention, Abraham Darby’s improved iron smelting helped to boost the economy with cheaper and more abundant iron. All too soon came the machines that would replace the current “pulling out” cotton process. John Kay’s flying shuttle allowed a single person to weave a wider cloth than before. The second machine, the Spinning Jenny, was able to spin many threads at one time and the third invention, a Water Frame used water to quicken the spinning process. All these machines were presented to the work force before safety regulations and labor laws were set in place so it became common to see children working and to have someone loose a hand or several fingers because of one of these machines. 

Finding Internet Truth

Recently, my tenth grade History class put our internet searching skills to the test, while also refining them by exchanging some “what-works” and “what-doesn’t-work” with our group mates.  

Our first challenge was a Google a Day. When my teacher first introduced it, I had no idea what she was talking about. Is she going to award use for googling daily? Has she been awarded the Google a Day prize herself? Turned out, a few minutes later, that Google a Day is a website, designed for students to test both their speed and accuracy in the realm of Google searching. The website looks more or less like the average Google homepage except that at the bottom is a question. Fittingly, my group’s first question was historical, something about an American freedom document being presented to an English King. Instead of typing in the whole question, we typed in the key words like “freedom document” and “English king” and the first result had the name of the document. Then, we got two more questions and repeated our process and my group finished second, earning us the delightful reward of candy.

The second challenge began innocently enough. We were asked to define Accuracy, Authenticity, and Reliability, three key things to look for when assessing the credibility of a website. I define accuracy as truthful information, and the ability for that information to agree with other sources on the same topic. Authenticity was defined by the whole class as having what something claims to be match its actual purpose, Mrs. Gallagher used the example of the unauthentic martinlutherking.org, which, the average person would expect to teach about the man and wish to spread his messages, but instead horrifically promotes everything Martin Luther King Jr. fought against. And the last word, Reliability, I see as not only the reliability of the information, like Accuracy covers, but also the trustworthiness of the author. Say, if the author of a website about math topics has a degree in math, I would assume that website is very reliable.  

Now that all the website credibility words have been defined, I am brought to the website where we put them to the test, www.zapatopi.net/treeoctopus. Now, this website is full of information on this octopus, including links to videos of them hatching, photographs in color and black and white and anything else you might want except one little thing, the truth. How do I know that this website is spitting lies? Besides my previous knowledge of this website, I know this because of two of the three words above, accuracy and reliability. Testing the reliability and accuracy of the information, I found that the majority of websites on the internet, even the Wikipedia page, that use the phrase “Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus” include the word “hoax”. And that was the end of any suspicions I might have had.

Just Like The Movies

New year, new blog. In this post, I will answer the question: what makes a teacher great. 

The two general requirements of a good teacher are knowing the material they teach, and enjoying teaching. A level up from that, the great teachers, are the ones that connect with the students. From my experience, these great teachers are the ones that have been teaching longer than they like to admit. However, I have seen many movies where the new teacher is the great one, knowing all the students extremely personally and managing to get all the students to pass some big test, when no one else on the faculty thought the students had any chance. Believing in students and having the determination to see them succeed are the best qualities a teacher can have. Those great qualities of teachers shine especially bright, in the cinema and in the tangible world when the students supposedly have no chance, and it seems everyone has given up their cause for lost.

Calvin and Hobbes, strip written by Bill Watterson, picture taken by Brooke Bi

During my first class of History as a sophomore, our class watched a Vlogbrothers video, starring the one and only John Green (even though there is at least one other John Green, a Sasquatch enthusiast). This certain video that we watched was an open letter to students, public school students in particular,  imploring us to give back to the community after we are fully educated. He hopes that public school students, once they are grown, will make his, and everyone else's, life better. For the most part, I agree with him. Public education should be looked at as a way to prepare for the future of the world as well as the futures of the individual students.  However, I hope that thinking does not shadow the value of the students themselves. If the teachers and faculty are always thinking about what is best for the world's future, they might forget to think about what is best for a particular student, but, I believe in most cases, those two things would be the same. As a public school student this year, I have one big goal, among other smaller ones. My main focus this year is trying to keep an open mind. I am aware obtaining this will require a lot of "mental fortitude" and adjustment, but I am ready.