The Reconstruction of the South following the Civil War, and perhaps most influenced by the assassination of Lincoln, which infuriated the Radical Republicans and has largely been seen by most historians as the greatest misfortune to befall the South because now there was vengeance in the eyes of many Northerners, is the topic of this blog. In looking back over Chapter 22, explain the key factors that defined both the successes and failures of Reconstruction. As you determine the specific social, political, and economic factors that one could use to frame an argument about the good and the bad aspects of Reconstruction, consider the question posed in the title of this blog, "Would Lincoln Have Mattered?" That is, would Reconstruction have happened in a fundamentally different way, perhaps better, if Lincoln had not been killed? That, in and of itself, begs a further consideration: what ifluence would Lincoln have had if he had merely been wounded and not died? What if he was mentally crippled from the headshot and survived? What if John Wilkes Booth had been stopped before he even entered the Presidential Balcony at Ford's Theater, and so Lincoln would never have been shot? So, consider the history of Reconstruction as it happened as well as how it might have happened if Lincoln had survived and in what condition.
DUE DATE: Friday, December 7 by midnight. WORD COUNT: 500 words
The growing tensions between the North and the South, especially with the South's insistence on being provided security for the institution and perpetuity of slavery, had created a situation in which compromise was becoming harder and harder to make. The 3/5ths compromise back in 1789 with the Constitution had led to the closing of the African Slave Trade by 1808 by giving the South the voting power to offset that of the North in the House of Representatives. The Missouri Compromise had maintained this balance of voting power by giving a large chunk of northern territory to the slavery interests with the understanding that there would be no more slavery north of the Missouri Compromise Line from that time forward. However, as it became clear that the newly acquired American Southwest was inhospitable to big plantations and therefore slavery, there was renewed efforts by those in the South to get ahold of more northern territory using the persistent threat of secession to force the North to agree since most in the North believed in the Union more than they believed in either States' Rights or the abolition of slavery. Thus, the Compromise of 1850 and then the Kansas-Nebraska Act in which the notion of "popular sovereignty" or "let the people choose" became the means by which Congress could avoid having to make the decision itself. Indeed, many had called into question whether or not Congress had the power at all to legislate on slavery (either for it or against it or anything inbetween)! Finally, in a speech given in Peoria, Illinois in 1854, Abraham Lincoln (who would eventually become President in 1860) made the following point in his debates with Stephen Douglas, the "cheerleader" as it were of "popular sovereignty":
The doctrine of self-government is right - absolute and eternally right - but it has no just application, as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, why in that case, he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government, to say that he too shall not govern himself? When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man, that is more than self-government - that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teachers me that "all men are created equal," and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.
Evaluate Lincoln's argument here and contextualize it with regard to the history of compromises made for the benefit of the South at the expense of the Union and its founding ideas of "We the People" and "All Men Are Created Equal." Show the evolution of Lincoln's point that slavery actually promotes anti-self-government by showing how these several compromises over history up to 1854 lead to the crisis that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was intended to solve.
DUE DATE: Friday, November 30 by midnight. Word Count: 500 words minimum
We have talked in class at great length about the importance of Andrew Jackson not only in his own time but after as well. In so many ways he shaped and defined the America we now have, from the idea that the average person has a place in government to the distrust of centralized banking. He was a man torn by personal loss and driven by personal rage, but also a man who simply did not ever give up on anything. From arming free-blacks in New Orleans in 1815 to forcing the relocation of thousands of Native Americans in 1839, Andrew Jackson is also a man of contradictions that make it nearly impossible to come to a final and perfectly clear portrait of him either in or out of the White House.
Revisit Chapter 13 and the essay on pp.285-86 entitled What Was Jacksonian Democracy? and explain why it is that Jackson is so important to American History. Compose this response as a summation of everything you believe is crucial to know and understand (knowing a fact is different than understanding its importance) about Andrew Jackson and his impact on American History.
You have been tracking the polls and running scenarios for the upcoming Presidential Election next week and have seen how such an election is fundamentally a "numbers game" rather than a straightforward "whoever gets the most votes" thing. The Electoral College was put in place to protect the new Executive Branch from the whims of the People who were not trusted to really know what was actually in their best interests. Thus, there is the Popular Vote and then the Electoral College Vote.
If you were able to actually vote next week, for whom would you vote and why? Make use of what you have so far learned about the first 18 Presidents and the challenges and obstacles that they each faced from 1789 through 1877 as indicated on your Presidents List. Considering the present state of affairs as you understand them, how can the past help you come to a decision about who would make the "best" President for the next four years?
The election of 1824 was fractious to say the least. In a very important way, it was a defining moment in the evolution of our Constitutional democracy because it pitted the old, Eastern Establishment represented by Adams against the new, Western Anti-Establishment represented by Jackson. The stakes for both interets were high, and though Adams would win this first "Bout at the Ballot Box" against Jackson, he would most certainly NOT win the second time around (the election of 1828) because of the unleashing of what we have come to call "Modern Political Campaigning."
Discuss the historical and literary context for what has come to be called "The Corrupt Bargain" that settled this election in the House of Representatives rather than at the ballot box. Make use of the literature of the time to elucidate the American experience of politics at the time to help contextualize the historical information.
DUE DATE: Friday, October 26, 2012 by midnight Word Count: 300 words minimum
The ambitions and competitive natures of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton seem to have directed these two founding fathers into a direct collision with each other. Read the three articles about the duel provided below and reflect on the impact either of these men would have had if the duel would never have been fought. What might have Burr become? What greater impact might Hamilton have made on the country at large? Discuss the lives of these two men and the circumstances that drove them into this duel, then specualte on what each of their lives might have been like had it never happened. Begin with a complex-split introductory paragraph in which you identify three key ideas or themes or factors that A) led to the duel; B) resulted from the duel; or C) were a combination of precipitators and consequences.
DUE DATE: Friday, October 19, 2012 Word Count: 300 word minimum
Discuss the social, political, and economic concerns that George Washington had in his rise to power and prominence in America from his early days to becoming the first President of the United States of America under the Constitution. Be sure to deal with the impact of Shays' Rebellion on his thinking, especially about the need to address the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation that would eventually lead to the creation of an entirely new form of government defined by the Constitution.
DUE DATE: Friday, September 28, 2012 by midnight WORD COUNT: 300 words minimum
Discuss the relations between the Native Americans and the Colonists from the early 1700s through the Revolutionary War and its aftermath by drawing upon the information from your American Pageant textbook (chapters 6, 7, and 8) and from your Norton Anthology (pp. 206-218) with special focus on Pontiac's Speech at Detroit and Red Jacket's Speech to the U.S. Senate and the Declaration of Independence (pp.342-346 Norton Anthology). I am looking to see that you Assert, Prove, and Explain a position on this relationship (was it postive, was it negative, was it inevitable, was it avoidable, etc.). Begin your response with a complex-split introductory thesis.
Discuss the relationship between the Puritans' (Separatists') worldview and the consequences of that worldview as exemplified by the Salem Witchcraft Trials 72 years after they first landed and established their colony of Plymouth. Draw upon information from your American Pageant textbook, from The Crucible, and from the links to additional materials below (since you do not have your Norton Anthology of American Literature, yet, I have included John Winthrop's A Model of Christian Charity below. Remember, The Crucible is not an historic document, it is a dramatization of the historical record, so be careful when you speak about it in your blog post. Remain "accurate" both in terms of history and literature.
DUEDATE: Friday, September 14 by midnight. Minimum Word Count: 300 words
Compare and contrast the settle-ments of Jamestown and Plymouth. Include in your comparison the type of settlement each was, the kinds of settlers that established each, the purposes behind the founding of each, and the relationship each had with the Native Americans closest to each. Include key historical figures so that you do not confuse the one with the other (for instance, Pocahontas and her story is associated with Jamestown, not Plymouth).
Drawing upon examples about the Americas and the various Native Americans from Chapters 1 & 2, contest/take issue with Columbus' claim in his letter to Luis de Santangel of 1493 (see link below) that, in his explorations of the New World, he found "nothing of importance."
Today was a long day at Lowell, Massachussetts, the site of the Bootts Cotton Mill factory complex that was in operation from the early 1820s until 1954. Lowell was the cradle of the American Industrial Revolution, providing the basic blueprint for both labor and owners in the early stages of American Capitalism. The factory floor holds nearly 50 weaving machines, only about 20 of them were in operation so that we could get a sense of the noise that it might have sounded like when all 100 original machines would have been operating.
Remarkable to me was the re-invention of the factory over the course of nearly a century and a half. Today, some parts of the complex have been converted into housing, while other parts have been modernized to provide space for businesses. The Boarding House Commons is a large grass area fronted by a stage for annual concerts. This would have been impossible in the past as the entire area was originally occupied by the boarding houses that the Lowell Girls (the young farming girls from as far away as 200 miles) who were the primary workforce in the 1800s. When I compare the scene at Boott Cotton Mill with analogous delapidated factories strewn around the Bulgarian countryside which are to this day rotting away since the fall of the Soviet Union over 20 years ago, it is remarkable that there is the American re-tasking of industrial space to accomodate the needs of communities and of the economy large and small. Although the Boott complex is profoundly institutional and almost prison-like in appearance, it is a remarkable space nonetheless for how it was used and reused over time, evolving to retain relevance to the community that brought it about.
Here is the raw footage from the factory floor showing the weaving machines at work. You can see the drive trains and axles connected by leather straps spinning, all of this was initially run by water power (hence the canals), then by steam power, and now finally by electricity. Note the vaporizers in the ceiling that are spraying the air to keep the room humid so that the cotton does not dry out and snap as it is manipulated by the machines. Also note the speed with which the thread shuttle is zipping back and forth across the weaving providing the string. Originally, these shuttles were moved across by hand, but with increasing mechanization, they were taken over by a simple spring-loaded gearing mechanism that allowed for far greater speed, up to 55 yards of cloth per day per machine (modern machines are about 1000 times more productive than these!).
Day Two was a most remarkable day. We began at Faneuil Hall (pronounce it like Daniel) which is the famed Town Meeting hall for Boston with a short introductory lecture on all we were about to see by Merril, the National Parks tour leader for old Boston. He articulated the pre-revolutionary period with great enthusiasm and insight, saying things that I had heard a number of times but had never quite fully taken in until his presentation. We then went out onto the former wharf line, which is now all new land with massive development (and which is only yards away from the Hall). You would never think of it unless you saw it that had we been transported back in time a couple of centuries, we would have been standing in Boston Harbor and not on terra firma.
This was very interesting: here is the likely site of the actual Boston Massacre. How no one got run over at the time, I just don't know!!!
Just kidding.
We then marched off to see Paul Revere's house, then off to his statue, all along the way receiving an impressive and detailed history lesson on Boston and the politics and players involved in what was about to happen on the eve of the Tea Party. Also, the house was restored some time ago by a curator who was convinced that no pre-revolutionary homes in Boston were more than two stories tall, so he had the third floor of the house removed to make it look authentic again. Turns out, the third floor was original! Lost forever, now. Great Stuff!
We then regrouped after lunch above Boston Commons across from the Statehouse and in front of the Robert Gould Shaw & the 54th Massachussetts Colored Regiment, whose memorial you would likely mistake for just a bus stop unless you realized that it was what it purported to be. I had imagined this monument situated somewhere and somehow else, but between the history of it apparently being too big to go inside the statehouse and too important to not remind the members of the state legislature about what their responsibilities were, it got put where it got put. Interesting. Also, a couple of weeks beforehand, someone had broken off the sword that Shaw is holding in his right hand pointed down to the ground. The rangers said that it keeps getting vandalized like that! What was also interesting was that the memorial has the men marching southwest out of town along Beacon Street astride Boston Common, and the rangers provided a photo from the 1890s (if believe) showing the surviving troops marching beside the statue but coming back into town northeast up Beacon in front of the memorial. Very cool!
We then trekked off on the Freedom Trail and this was the most remarkable part of the day's journey. Going to be making use of a lot of the information about the African American abolitionist movement staged out of Boston and who the major players were and how they were in so many ways related to one another either by blood or by sentiment/resentment. This is one of the narrow alleys that fugitive slaves and their rescuers used to evade the federal slave catchers who patrolled the streets of Boston in search of runaway slaves. It winds back and through several homes and other passages and ends up in front of the site of the Black Meeting Hall and the home of one of the most important underground railroad rescuers. Even more cool!
After a long flight from Sacramento through Minneapolis to Boston, I spent the day touring around Harvard University and getting myself acquainted with the T Line metro system for Boston. Tomorrow we will be heading into the historical center of Boston for an extensive series of field studies. Today, I want to reflect on the "free day" we had today to just get adjusted and moved into our dormitory rooms at Boston University, and to decide for ourselves what we would like to see and do before the real work begins tomorrow. This was a greatly appreciated day, and as I sit and type out this blog entry this evening, I think about how full this coming week will of necessity be.
Starting with Harvard University was interesting and rewarding because it is, despite all of the whoopla forwarded by other universities later, the oldest institute of higher education in the United States, predating the formation of the United States by 151 years (HU founded in 1638, USA founded in 1789). Although clearly a modern university in many ways, the history of the institution is literally chiseled on the facades of all of the major buildings, whose own date of erection is given in two ways: first in the actual year of completion, and second, in the year in which Harvard University itself existed when that building was completed. It is remarkable to look at a recent building and see that Harvard had already been around for two or more centuries before that building was likely even conceived!
Memorial Hall was opened in 1878, and by that time Harvard University had already been a going concern for 240 years. Memorial Hall is striking in another way, it is much akin to the architecture of Central Europe, in particular that of the cathedrals in Prague, Czech Republic and a number of imperial retreats throughout the countrysides of the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia. It is a towering structure, and its colorful tiled roof is both beautiful and striking for its difference from all of the other buildings around it. It is also in a way out of place, which lends it a degree of beauty and intrigue that a more conventional structure of the time would have sorely lacked.
In wandering around Harvard today, I was struck by the profound diversity of its student body, that like almost all educational institutions in the United States of America, it is a rich collection of everyone from everywhere. The big difference, however, is that here, in this experiment called America, again and again, it is demonstrated that anyone from anywhere can get along with anyone from anywhere else, especially in the rareified pursuit of high education. I think I need to do much more with Harvard University in the AP United States History courses, something more that will begin to impress upon my students the deep and abiding influence that this university has had and continues to have over the American academic psyche. Although in many ways Harvard is much like many of its kin, an expansive place of brick edifice and green space shaded by a plethora of trees, but illuminated by the persistent fire of human curiosity about...well, everything! I think I need to do more to bring forward what is both unique and ubiquitous about this first of American universities, both then and now.
View the video and read the article below and comment in 200 words or more on the following prompt: we began this school year with mythology and examined how modern superheroes are the modern day gods and heroes of ancient and classical myth; although we recognize that there really is no "Superman" who will come sweeping out of the skies at the last minute to save us, nor is there a "Batman" lurking in the shadows watching over us at night, there remains a deep need to feel like a difference can be made in the lives of people. Does Lenny Robinson have it figured out, how to make the superhero super in real sense?
We have been talking about the power and problems associated with Congress over the course of American History, and I have said on a few occassions, "Imagine how less efficient it would be if the size of the House of Representatives got bigger and bigger as it was supposed to instead of being capped at 435 members!" After reading this article, I find myself reconsidering things. Read the article below by Brian Flynn and argue for or against the specific solutions that he suggests (not the general idea to make Congress bigger, but the specific ways that a bigger Congress could be made more efficient through modern technology). Your response needs to be thoughtful and persuasive, not mere ranting or rhetoric. Minimum word count is 500 words and this post is going to be worth 50 points. DUE March 18 by midnight.
As we move further into the 20th century and America's rise to global domination as the singular superpower in world history, it will be important to keep economic concerns in mind. This is a Presidential election year, so there is much that will be said both true and false, both good and bad about any and all candidates and incumbents. One of the most popular refrains is that China owns the United States. Read the following article and then compose a Complex-Split Thesis introductory paragraph for an essay about the article (no, you are not writing the essay, just composing a solid, complex-split thesis introductory paragraph that would start off such an essay). DUE:Thursday,March1bymidnight.
In a developed body paragraph of at least 200 words, defend or refute the claim that the Penny should be eliminated from the American economy. Draw upon the information provided in the article linked below as well as your own experiences with the use or non-use of the 1 cent piece in everyday life. DUE: Tuesday, February 28 by midnight.
Select a stanza from the song, When I Look at the World by U2, and explain what it is talking about in terms of the video and where that stanza occurs in it. It will be important for you to decide before writing your response who it is that is singing it in the video as well as to whom it is being sung. Draw upon what you have learned about Michelangelo and the Renaissance in both English and World History to help develop your commentaries. Minimum expectation is a 200 word, developed body paragraph (click on the picture above to go to the virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel online).
As we discussed in class, we will be focusing on three key Shakespearean plays, though drawing upon many others in our study of The Bard. I provide here the three "trailers" for the film versions of the plays: COMEDY = Much Ado About Nothing
TRAGEDY = The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
After viewing the video in class and perhaps again on your own, compose a developed body paragraph using evidence from the video to explain the initial and then lasting impact that the automobile has had on American history in the both 20th and now the early 21st centuries. Length of the paragraph should be no fewer than 8 sentences following the TS, CD, CM, CM, CD, CM, CM, CS format and word count should be no less than 150 words.
Now that the first semester is over, I need to have you look back and assess the following things for both AP classes: 1) what were your strengths and weaknesses? 2) what were the strengths and weaknesses of the teacher? 3) what changes that were made over the course of the first semester had the best and least impact on you? 4) what changes would you suggest for the future to make the class run more smoothly and productively? As before, I really do need to hear from you ALL on this so that I can improve not only the delivery of the content, but also how I do things in the class so that you, the student, can get the most out of it. Your comments on the Quarter 1 reflection were very helpful, and I hope that I was responsive to the suggestions that you had made and that things improved. Now, please look back again because, like Kramer above, I implore you to help me help you!
Now that the first semester is over, I want you to look back and provide me with a substantial (really think about it and write a lot) reflection on what you see as A) the strengths and weaknesses of the class, B) the strengths and weaknesses of the teacher, and C) the strengths and weaknesses of your own performance. Then, I want you to D) suggest at least TWO changes that you would make, one for me to think about doing, and one for you to do to make this new semester better for yourself. So, that is FOUR (A, B, C, and D) things I want to know. Remember, I am looking for quality and quantity in your response, so make it "good" and make it "long" (but not essay-long!).
I was born and raised in Gridley, California. Earned a BA in English and History at Chico State, an MA in English Literature at Bakersfield State, and have taught overseas as well as throughout California.
