Gilded Age- Week 8

During the past week of American Studies, we learned about the Gilded Age and that time period in U.S. history after the end of the Reconstruction Era. The Gilded age was a time period of business and industries in the United States. It was the birth of the idea of "the great American dream", where immigrants would come to the United States in hope to be the next example in the rags to riches stereotypes. We also learned about big influential businessmen, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. It was a coincidence since my main focus for the NHD project is the influence of John D. Rockefeller. We analyzed Carnegie's rags to riches story, starting off very poor, and eventually transforming into a wealthy socialite who controlled the steel industry. We also learned of the monopoly Rockefeller had constructed within the oil business, and how his company was the only major company in the industry. I believe that these two men influenced many different immigrants to come to the United States, but in reality, when they arrived, their conditions were not much better than their status in their home country. It was very rare for someone to emerge successful from the cesspool of immigrants.

Indian Schools -Week 7

In the past week of American Studies, we learned about the hardships the Native Americans went through and all the events that took place during the time period. We studied two documents written by Native children narrating the events that took place in the Indian Schools. Indian Schools were a program that established schools for Native children to board in and learn American culture and values. We had a discussion on whether or not sending them to the schools was acceptable or not. I felt it had both benefits and drawbacks, each corresponding to one of the documents. The first document laid out some benefits to the establishment. It was only temporary, and going there did not necessarily mean you had to lose all of your previous cultures and values, you just had to keep them low for that time being. But, the second narrative highlighted how hard it was for them to adapt to a whole new culture and how they had to obey without any resistance. If the child was willing to learn a new culture and not be punished for resisting, their experience wouldn't be as bad as a Native child who resisted the learning of the new culture and had to experience hardship in their stay.

Poetry and National History Day -Week 6

Over the past week or so in American Studies, we didn't learn much to reflect on, because of the no school days and the National History Day project. I chose John D. Rockefeller for the person for the project. I had chosen him because I was interested on his huge influence on the oil industry and how he had become the richest man in the United States, and still is the richest man ever since inflation had made his worth even more. But since there isn't much to talk about,, I've decided to reflect on our poetry presentation and unit. I found the poetry unit thus far pretty interesting. We studied lots of poems by different authors, such as Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson. I found that I enjoyed Poe's poems better because there seemed to be a story behind each poem. But for the poetry presentation, I chose to do a poem by Emily Dickinson because she had many literary devices, and they seemed easier and better to analyze. I felt that the presentation went pretty well, but there could've been some things I could have added to make it even better. My poem had dealt with fame and corruption of fame. It was a pretty interesting poem

Test and Rebuilding- Week 5

In the past week for American Studies, we took our Unit 1 test and studied the rebuilding of America after the Civil War. I found the test somewhat easy and I felt I knew all the material that was covered. The review session the class before helped a lot with the formats for the compare and contrast portion, and the OPVL portion. I feel that the best part of the test for me were the OPVL and question portions, and the compare and contrast I could've done a bit better and improved my answer to make it more efficient and answer the question better. For the second half of the week, we continued on the history of America and studied the United States and its status after the Civil War. We learned that from that period to around the 1920's, the US was in a severe economic recession, which I found surprising because I had previously thought that time period had somewhat neutral economic standings up until World War I and the Great Depression soon afterwards. We had also learned that a new method, called sharecropping, had replaced plantation systems since slavery was now abolished.Sharecropping was when a landowner rented out his land and in exchange, expected some crops back. This method was almost as bad as slavery since most people couldn't catch up on their due crops. I think the plantation system could've worked better but they would've needed a substitute for the slaves

The Civil War- Week 4

For the previous week in American Studies, we talked more about the United States as it progressed through the 1800's. We discussed America, and the different territories, and how they changed into states as time progressed. We had a big discussion on the Civil War, and the different events that took place to launch it into effect. We talked about the crumbling nation after James Buchanan had left it, and when Abraham Lincoln took office, 7 states had seceded from the Union, prompting Lincoln to start the Civil War, the bloodiest battle in American history. The war had killed 750,000 Americans. In class we discussed two major battles in the Civil War. The Battle of Gettysburg, and the Battle of Cold Harbor. We talked about them in great detail and watched historical representations and reenactments of the battles. We talked about the importance of the location of Gettysburg, and we analyzed some of the battle plans for both sides, I found it interesting how each side planned their attacks and the outcomes of each individual attack and it was helpful to see a visual representation. We also looked into another document, a court case between a slave and the government, The case was not on the issue Dred Scott (a free slave) had brought up, but whether or not Africans had the right to bring cases to court. I found the case extremely interesting, and saw how oppressed blacks truly were. We created an OPVL on the document, which helped me understand the text even more because of the further analyzation.

American and Slavery- Week 3

     During the past week in American Studies, we studied slavery more in depth than we did in the previous week, and we studied the effects slavery had on America as a whole, for example, the Civil War. We watched a documentary about slaves, and freed slaves in the Northern states. The documentary talked about David Walker an African born free. He was an active abolitionist who owned a printing press, helping spread ideas about abolishing slavery. But doing that he had made some enemies and was assassinated. The second person they focused on was Maria Stewart, an African woman who was greatly influenced by the ideas of David Walker. Also in American Studies, we studied the map of the United States, and how it grew over the years due to many different events, leading up to the Civil War. What we studied in American Literature somewhat tied into what we were studying in Studies. We analyzed President Lincoln's second inaugural speech and found relations to some portions of the Bible. We uncovered how he really felt about slavery, and that gave us another perspective to use when talking about opinions on slavery.

Women's Rights - Week 2

           In this past week of American Studies, we learned quite a bit of history on John Adams and his viewpoint on the creation of the Declaration. We viewed a documentary that was quite informative and had lots of details regarding the Declaration and what happened inside of Congress. Another big topic we talked about in class was women's rights. We read a letter that Abigail Adams had sent to her husband, John Adams. In the letter she asked basic questions such as how is the war doing, is everything OK, and things of that fashion. But she also had a few suggestions of her own for the Declaration. She suggested to include women's rights as it was extremely important to society. She believed that without women, that men would go somewhat out of control, and all men could become tyrants if they didn't have a proper women to guide them. This ideal is somewhat similar to the Puritan ideal of man being evil, but also differs in the fact that Puritans did not give women rights at all. Near the end of the week. we read a court case involving a dispute over land and ownership of the land. In class, we got in a discussion about the Americans and how they had to send the Natives out of their home territory and into reservations, and the argument that had popped up was that, was it progress from actually killing all them. I believed it wasn't since the Americans were forced to do it, and if they did kill most of them, there would be a war at hand. And on top of that, 1/3 of the Native population died while traveling to the reservation.

Jefferson and slavery-Week 1

            In American Studies, we read over "Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia", and the text surprised me. After the Declaration of Independence was written is 1776, the Congress had agreed that all men were created equal and all slaves should be emancipated. But Thomas Jefferson's thoughts disagreed with that popular opinion. He believed that blacks should be deported back to Africa after their slave term was over. Jefferson believed that when slaves turned 45 they should be colonized back in Africa. Thomas also supported the notion of slaves being black since they have body characteristics that helped them with the heat and extreme workload. This surprised me because Jefferson had agreed with and written the Declaration of Independence. This led me to believe that maybe some other congressmen also had differing thoughts and just agreed with the popular vote of emancipating slaves. In American Literature class, we also read the text of Equiano, a slave who traveled to Europe and eventually became a European. The text gave us an insight of what slaves went through and gave a standard to compare to when talking about Jefferson. That is one of the many interesting and surprising things we discussed in the American Studies class and I hope to learn and talk about even more interesting texts and ideas