Advantages of the North and South

Recently in Honors History 10 we have been learning about the Civil War and the number behind it. For this particular unit we had to make an infographic to answer the essential question of: how did the differences between the North and the South affect each region’s strategies and success in the war? Each student in my class created their own infographic. We were allowed to choose which facts we put into our infographics.

            For my infographic I started out with the stats behind what percent of slave owners held certain numbers of slaves. I lead off with these particular statistics because they help show why the south was fighting. They were fighting for their way of life. Many slave owners invested tons of money on slaves and without them they would not be able to run their buisnesses. Next, I had a chart, which shows the populations in the north and south. This was included because the north outnumbered the south by such a large amount. Finally, I included a chart of the percent of resources for the north and the percent of resources for the south. This process of creating an infographic helped further by understanding of why the union was able to defeat the confederacy in the Civil War. My personal belief is that numbers don’t lie and the numbers included in my infographic certainly help explain why the north was able to defeat the south.  

            

Was Slavery an Elephant in the Room

            This past week in honors history 10 we learned about how slavery was the “elephant in the room” in the early 19^th century. Dictionary.com defines the phrase “elephant in the room” as, “A difficult situation that is very obvious, but not discussed or addressed.” This definition applies to slavery in the 19^th century because frequently during this time period politicians would come up with new acts and compromises to dance around the topic of slavery. These included the Compromise of 1850, the Gasden Purchase, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott Decision, and the John Brown Raid. We created a timeline with all of these listed events. 

Timeline

Timeline descriptions

           

Politicians for several reasons ignored slavery, but the main reason could have been because slavery was a major factor in the United States economy. Slaves helped produce cotton and cotton was necessary for the textiles in the north. Also, politicians danced around the topic of slavery because they knew it would result in a war, which it eventually did.

Before all of the previously listed events was the Missouri Compromise of 1820. This compromise was created to ensure that slave states and non slave states have equal representation in the senate. Missouri wanted to be a slave state so Maine was listed as a non slave state to maintain equality in senate. Also, the government decided that there could be no slave states above the 36 degree 30 minute latitude line. This compromise shows that the politicians were ignoring the real problem because they just made sure that there was an equal number of slave states and non slave states instead of getting rid of slavery all together.

Bleeding Kansas was the result of the Kansas-Nebraska act. The Kansas-Nebraska act was the act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. This act went essentially repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 because the government decided that the people who occupied these states would be able to vote if they wanted slaves or not. This led to a large amount of anti slavery and pro slavery activists both fighting for their cause in Kansas. Of course fighting erupted between both parties. In his speech “Crime Against Kansas” Hon. Charles Sumner states, “Against this Territory, thus fortunate in position and population, a Crime has been committed which is without example in the records of the Past.” Charles Sumner believed that a crime had been committed against the state of Kansas because the decision to allow a vote for slavery resulted in major bloodshed. This Kansas-Nebraska act shows that slavery was the elephant in the room because politicians decided that instead of getting rid of the problem of slavery they were better off letting the people decide their fate.

Crime Against Kansas Speech

Dred Scott was a man, who was a slave in Missouri, and then his master brought him to Illinois, and Dred was still treated as a slave there. He was unhappy with this because he was being treated as a slave in a state where slavery was not supposed to exist. He took his argument to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Dred Scott’s slave owner. This outraged many people because it essentially meant that slavery could be legal anywhere. This event shows that slavery was the elephant in the room because people knew slavery was wrong but they ignored it to make certain people happy. This quote from the Dred Scott SCOTUS Decision states, “So in this case. As Scott was a slave when taken into the State of Illinois by his owner, and was there held as such, and brought back in that charcter, his staus, as free or slave, depended on the laws of Missouri, and not of Illinois....” This quote shows that the State of Illinois was afraid to make a verdict about slavery so they handed it off to Missouri, which was a slave state.

SCOTUS Decisions

          

  Finally, John Brown was a man who organized a group of 18 men to raid a room of artillery in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. His goal was to capture the guns and arm slaves so they could revolt. Brown was unsuccessful in his attempt and was hanged. People worshipped Brown after this attempt and Marc R. Weston even created a song for him. Brown’s acts show help answer the essential question because if the government just took care of slavery people like John Brown would not have to make wild attempts to stop slavery like this one.

John Brown Song

Disgusting Slavery

            Slavery was a very dark time in the history of The United States. Great amounts of people were tortured, seriously harmed, or killed throughout the history of slavery. Slavery tore apart families and truly was a terrible period of time. In our most recent unit in Honors History we learned a lot about slavery and how it became entrenched in American Society. In class we read three parts from The Founders Constitution. An interesting quote from this was, “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” This quote states that if slaves escape from their state and get to a new state they are not free. Even if the state they escape to is in the north. In all three of these articles the words slave, slave labor, or slavery are never mentioned. This is intriguing because it means that the writers were afraid to use worlds like slave. Sooner or later slavery soon took over life in the southern part of the United States. This started when the textile business began to boom in the north, which lead to an increased need for cotton, which the south had to fulfill.  As the need for cotton rose so did the need for slaves to harvest the cotton. One major problem with some cotton was the small sticky green seeds, which were tangled in a lot of the cotton. These seeds were a major pain to remove. Eli Whitney was a smart young man who saw this problem and engineered a solution. He was the creator of the cotton gin, which made the task of removing the seeds a lot easier. Whitney thought his invention would lessen the need for slaves because there would be less work. Unfortunately his invention did quite the opposite. After the invention of the Cotton Gin the number of slaves in the United States grew by 33%. 70 years after the invention there were four million slaves in the United States. Before Whitney’s invention there were 700,000 slaves in the United States.

Cotton and Slavery 1800

Cotton and Slavery 1860

Link to interactive map

            Slavery may have had a good affect on the United States Economy, however it had a terrible affect on human dignity. For this section of the lesson we watched a movie called Prince Among Slaves. . My group was assigned Abdul Rahman. Abdul Rahman was a prince while he lived in Africa, but once he was kidnapped and brought to the United States he was just another slave. He wasn’t even a person anymore. Abdul’s owner, Tomas Foster, ordered Abdul to cut his hair and had him chained to a tree. This was a man who used to help lead large groups of people and now he doesn’t even have the power to decide what he wants his hair to look like. Abdul Rahman had a lot of talent because of his background as a prince, but it didn’t matter because he was black so to the eyes of Tomas Foster he was only good in the fields. Abdul had no dignity. He had no control over his life, all because of the color of his skin. There was an African American abolitionist named Fredrick Douglass who once said, “What, to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in a year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is constantly the victim.” Douglass was a former slave and through this quote he is showing how disrespectful it is for the white American to just flaunt their freedom on this day when they themselves have slaves.

           

            Another activity we did in class was; we split into groups and each group was assigned a pro or anti slavery advocate. Our group was assigned George Fitzhugh. He was a disgusting man with very poor views on slavery. Fitzhugh believed that slaves were some of the happiest and in a way some of the most freest people on earth.  This is an insane statement because it was so obvious that slaves lived terrible lives and had zero freedom. 

George Fitzhugh

Slavery did not just ignore a couple of human characteristics; it ignored a ton of human characteristics. Slaves could rarely make decisions for themselves. They worked when told to work. They had sex with whom they were told to have sex with. And they ate what they were told to eat. The food these slaves to eat were often in very small portions and were very crudely made. Slaves were tortured and whipped very often. Slaves who were pregnant or sick still had to work their butts off in the fields. Slave owners did not care about their slaves as long as they were still making money. This reasoning caused slave owners to ignore many human rights.

Mapping Pics-http://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US18-03.html

George Fitzhugh Pic -http://thewallmachine.com/files/1351745114.jpg