Captains of Industry

   This week in class, it was up to us students to create the essential question for the unit. We divided up into groups, analyze documents, and then come up with the essential question and a total of forty multiple choice questions that will appear on our final exam. During this unit, we are learning about the monopolies in business following the Civil War. Huge businesses arose after the war and in many cases, one company would gain control of an entire industry, creating a monopoly. These monopolies are controversial because they both helped and hurt the economy and the people after the Civil War. We specifically focused on John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie who were both leaders of monopolies. Our class split into groups to cover different parts of this unit. We used sources such as several video clips from ABC Clio which we watched and took notes on. After this, we came together as a class and came up with an essential question. The essential question we came up with is, “How did the actions of monopolistic leaders, such as Rockefeller and Carnegie, affect the common worker?”

John D. Rockefeller was a very competitive man. He eventually became the leader of the oil industry. He became a wealthy man by helping the Union during the Civil War. When oil started being drilled, he saw an opportunity to prosper. He opened up a few oil companies to start pumping oil, and he started buying other competitors around him. When the depression hit, many oil companies around him started to crash, but his was able to stay efficient and strong. He saw this as an opportunity for even more power and was able to expand his company and prosper while others were crumbling. He bought out most of the oil companies in the U.S. and started partnering with intelligent business partners such as Henry Flagler. If he wasn't able to buy a company, he would partner with them so he was still able to regulate prices and gain power. He was able to keep production costs low meaning lower prices for the population. He founded the Standard Oil Company which absorbed almost all of the competing oil companies and was able to negotiate lower shipping prices, stabilizing and lowering oil prices. However, people got nervous about his ruthlessness and having too much power, and they thought he was just making decisions for greed and money. They eventually took it to the Supreme Court where he was forced to disperse his trusts. He gave a lot of his money to charities and donated to education, medicine, and science. He believed strongly in spreading his wealth, and he said in an interview with William Hoster " I believe the power to make money is a gift of God ... to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man". He was able to become one of the wealthiest men in U.S. history because of his monopoly.

   Andrew Carnegie was similar to Rockefeller in that he affected the common workers positively and negatively.  To learn more about Carnegie, we read the“Andrew Carnegie Bio.”  Carnegie was once poor, but then he become one of the wealthiest men in the world, demonstrating a “rags to riches” type of story.  He became wealthy by gaining power in the U.S. steel industry.  He also used vertical integration, which was a system in which a company’s supply chain is controlled by that company.  This allowed him to control raw materials, transportation, and distribution within in the steel industry, managing every stage of the production process from beginning to end.  Similar to Rockefeller, Carnegie was also a philanthropist and he to donated millions of dollars to medicine, education, and science.  He also donated money to create libraries and promote world peace.  Carnegie also demonstrated the idea of gospel of wealth which is defined as the moral obligation to use wealth for public good.  However, although this quality of him was beneficial to the common worker, in the year of 1892 there was homestead strike of Carnegie's homestead mill.  The strike, which we learned about by watching the Homestead Strike Video, revealed Carnegie’s plan to destroy the iron and steel worker’s union, which resulted in a public outcry.  His reputation was ruined by this outcry as seen in the Editorial in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, early August, 1892.  This editorial declares the following about Carnegie, “Three months ago Andrew Carnegie was a man to be envied.  Today he is an object of mingled pity and contempt.  In the estimation of nine-tenths of the thinking people on both sides of the ocean he has not only given the lie to all his ascendants, but confessed a moral coward…”  The Homestead Strike showed how Carnegie negatively affected the common worker.  When the depression hit the United States in 1893, Carnegie used the depression to his advantage and acquired land to connect the steel producing center to the northwest water routes.  This also demonstrates how Carnegie negatively impacted the common worker.

As you can see, the Monopolistic leaders, such as Rockefeller and Carnegie, both hurt and helped the average worker. Both men monopolized their industry so it was very difficult for men already in the oil and steel business to stay afloat. Carnegie hurt his workers during the Homestead Strike, and both he and Rockefeller were later criticized by the public and media. At the same time their monopolies helped better the economy. Although they were said to be people only influenced by greed they continued to donate to charity and help better people's lives.

    

Freedom From Any Direction

  The main focus in class this week was freedom. The essential question for this topic was Who 'gave' freedom to enslaved Americans? Did freedom come from above or below? To what extent were Abraham Lincoln's actions influenced by the actions of enslaved Americans? Freedom from above in this case would mean that the freedom of the slaves would come from those on top of the social pyramid. These people would include officers, government officials and even President Lincoln himself. Freedom from below would include slaves that obtained freedom from their actions alone. In class, we looked at two pictures that could depict freedom from above or below. The pictures are shown below. 

                                             

The picture to the left showing President Lincoln would be considered freedom from above while the picture to the right would be considered freedom from below. We also looked at some documents from Lincoln himself.  In a open letter,  Lincoln says "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."  In this case, freedom would be coming from above, from the most powerful American at the time.  Although Lincoln did not blatantly say that he 100% wanted to free the slaves, he hinted at his opinion. In an 1862 letter from General Ambrose E. Burnside to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, freedom seems to come from below.  Ambrose is telling Stanton about how his city is "being overrun with fugitives from surrounding towns and plantations", who are putting pressure on pro-slave advocates.  The "below" group is seen here taking control of their problems, and provoking a change for themselves. 

In society today we see many instances where freedom comes from below. We see many of these people who are seen as below to get reinforcement from those that are considered above. One example of this is Bruce Jenner and his recent coming out as transgender; he is an Olympic athlete, and a star on various Kardashian reality tv shows. Other transgender people have been fighting and protesting for equality, but now that a more popular and powerful voice has stepped out and represented the community equality is more possible. The story has had incredible coverage all over the place, and Bruce Jenner has become a voice for all transgender people, just like Lincoln became a voice for the enslaved people. 

                                          

Searching for Battles

  This week, my class took part in a activity that taught us about the battles that were fought during the Civil War. Each person in my class was given a battle that we were responsible for making a Google doc for. Everyone's Google doc had to consist of four items; the title of the battle, the victor, the theater, and two bullet points describing the battle. The "theater" simply means where the battle took place; either the eastern theater, western theater, or naval theater (involving any body of water). Once we had all our information gathered, we created QR codes using a qr generator so everyone could access the Google docs. The QR codes were printed out and placed in various spots around the school. Our task was to get the information from each Google doc and paste it on to our Evernote page. At the bottom of each Google doc was a clue as to where the next QR code would be. Once we had all the information from the 20 battles gathered, we came together as a class and created a Padlet on the patterns we found while taking notes of the battles. My classes Padlet can be seen below. 

Created with Padlet

    The essential question of the week was, "Who was the ultimate victor in each of the theaters of war; East, West, or Naval?", and "What are some commonalities you can identify in the reason for the result of battles?" As you can see on the class Padlet, the Union dominated most of the western theater and naval theater while the eastern theater was primarily dominated by the Confederacy.For example, the Confederates were able to dominate the eastern theater because they were well supplied and more composed than the Union. Many battles were won by the Confederates in the eastern theater such as the battles of Fredericksburg and Bull Run. Overall it is shown that the Confederates were well supplied in the east while the Union had ships handy and well composed plans for the west. The Union dominated the naval theater in battles such as the battle of Fort Henry and the battle of Fort Donelson. The Union had ships ready to fight so they were able to dominate the Naval theater. In the Western theater the Union were able to win many battles such as the battle of Shiloh and the battle of Chattanooga. The Union were able to surround and outnumber the Confederates in many battles, which caused them to dominate this theater. 

  The scavenger-hunt activity was probably my favorite activity that we've done all year. It gave my classmates and I the chance to get out of the class and walk around the school rather sitting at a desk. It was also interesting to learn how to create the QR codes because of how easy and fast it was. One downside to this activity was the problems with the WiFi. Some spots in the school didn't have great WiFi so it slowed down the process when we had limited time. The Padlet was also a new experience for many people in my class. Although it was a little disorganized, it was a new way to see my whole class collaborate on an idea. Overall, this weeks activity was surely one of the best ones so far. 

Getting Info with Infographics

  In class we looked at statistics, facts, and strategies of the North and the South during the time of the Civil War. The assignment was to create an infographic to show how the differences between the two effected each strategy and the outcome of the war. In my infographic that is shown below, I also add statistics that helped or harmed different sides of the war. 

The Election that Changed Everthing

   This week, my class learned about the election of 1860. Our essential question for the unit was how were the results of the Election of 1860 representative of the deep divisions over slavery? To answer this question, my class was assigned to make a video using the application Educreations. We first gathered information by watching a Crash Course video by John Green. Next we looked at a map from the class lesson notes on edline. This map showed that Lincoln, who was against slavery and felt as though it should be contained, completely won over the north of the country. The majority of the North, like Lincoln, was against slavery. States between the North and South voted differently. In some states Bell was the popular vote. He wanted to preserve the Union as it is while keeping slavery. Douglas believed that the way slavery should be spread is only if the people decided on it, and the only state he managed to convince was Missouri. Lastly, Breckenridge maintained that slavery should have no limits; he won over the majority of the South. With this information, we gathered pictures from The Civil War in Art page to create our videos. My groups video is below.



The Civil War in Art:
http://www.civilwarinart.org/exhibits/show/causes/introduction/the-election-of-1860-and-seces

Edline Information page:
http://www.edline.net/files/_CJKPB_/ee553a2c7835765f3745a49013852ec4/Election_of_1860_Lesson_Notes.pdf

Other sources found at end of video.Ele

The Elephant in the Room

  Recently, we have been learning about a topic that that goes with the famous phrase, "the elephant in the room". This phrase is a metaphor referring to an obvious truth that is being either unaddressed or ignored. The "elephant in the room" that we are referring to in this unit and in 19th century American politics was slavery. In class we learned about important events and people during this time such as The Compromise of 1850, Bleeding Kansas and the Lincoln-Douglas Debate. My class broke up into groups and gathered some information about these events. From the information we gathered we were able to create the timeline shown below.







We created these timelines using the application RTW Timeline. The first event that we documented was the Compromise of 1850. This compromise was only a temporary solution, to a problem that had no end in sight. The Gadsden Purchase that followed in 1853 worried Northern antislavery advocates because they couldn't get to this new territory as fast as the southerners could to settle it and vote it as either a free or slave state. As a result, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed which allowed Northerners to get to these new territories and settle them by railroad easier than the South could. They wanted to settle and get enough people there to vote them as salve states. The result, "Bleeding Kansas" The Missouri Compromise no longer is relevant considering it isn't being put into affect. The solutions still didn't do the trick.  To follow, Dred Scott thinks he should be free because he and his wife live in a free state, but court rules he is a slave and slaves aren't free or citizens. There was still so much controversy and no solution. This is shown when Charles Sumner makes a fiery anti slavery speech and is later attacked with a cane by Preston Brooks. This proves that slavery is still an ongoing unsolved issue that cause civilized men to resort to violence to show what they believe.

The Growth of Bad from the Growth of Good

   Recently in class, we began to talk about the start slavery in the United States. By looking at the The Spread of Cotton and Slavery Activity, my class was able to see the large increase in the amount of slaves from 1790 to 1860. Around the time of 1790, cotton was economically insignificant crop in the United States. Following the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, cotton became more profitable to grow. Because of this, the demand for cotton grew and it eventually became 57% of the nation's total export revenue. By 1860, the south grew 2.28 billion pounds of cotton which made $191.8 million dollars of revenue. Due to the high demands since 1790, there was a high demand for slave labor to pick the cotton. In 1790 when cotton was economically insignificant, there was approximately 690,000 slaves in the United States. By 1860, the number of slaves increased to roughly 3,954,000 slaves due to the large demand in cotton. The United Sates began to rely on the revenue of cotton being that it was 57% of the nations total export revenue. Slavery therefor became entrenched in the U.S. because of labor needed to keep up with the demand of cotton.

All this increase in cotton manufacturing had very negative affects on African slaves. They were captured from their native countries and were forced onto ships where they would eventually over a long and torturous journey land in the United States. Slaves were then bought and traded and would work in humane conditions. My class was able to get a look into the life of a slave by watching a docudrama titled A Prince Among Slaves. The movie told the story of  Abdul-Rahman, an African prince who was captured in war and was brought to America to be enslaved. We watched as he was stripped of his dignity by many including his master, Thomas Foster. Foster did things like refuse to sell him, beat him viciously and cut his hair which devastated and ripped away Rahman's identity. 

                                                                 Abdul Rahman
                                        http://webfuuta.net/pas/alfa_abdul_rahman.jpg

  While Abdul Rahman's original identity was exposed and he was eventually released as a slave, this is not the same story for many other slaves. Slaves were treated like animals and they were forced to live their lives and raise their families within the borders of their masters land.

 As you can tell slavery was a big part of the 19th century. Without it the growth of cotton and the American economy would not have been so successful. But, with the growth of cotton came the growth of slaves and overlooking human life. All Africans in America, free or enslaved were affected by slavery. People at this time tended to overlook the feelings of the the slaves that made up a large percent of the country. They were thought to be more as working machines rather than people. People never put themselves in the shoes of a slave to imagine being ripped from your family or have to work day till night just so you wouldn't get punished. The dignity of the African American slaves were wounded beyond repair.