Last two days of class 11/28 and 11/29

On Wednesday, 11/28, we talked about the election between Abe Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. We watched a short video on a reenactment of the election and it showed how the elections had each candidate give a speech before dinner, then allowed all families to go home and discuss the different candidates, then come back at night and have each man make counter points to the earlier delivered speeches. After watching and talking about the video i learned that Douglas was pretty much all for slavery, and the expansion of it West. I also learned something that i had never known before, and that was that Lincoln didn't necessarily believe all slaves should be free and equal to whites, he supported more of the idea that they should be given natural rights; life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Lincoln thought they should be given those rights but still shouldn't be allowed to be as socially high as the whites were. And today in class we watched a video on the Raid at Harper's Ferry. This was about a man, John Brown, who basically led 21 men into Harper's Ferry in Virginia and eventually his men got either killed, captured, or escaped and he ended up getting hanged. From today's class I learned that one of John Brown's men, an old slave had his ears chopped off and kept as souvenirs by one of the citizens! For somebody to have the hatred to actually do something like that really does amaze me and it goes to show how different times really were back then.  

Last two days of class 11/26 and 11/27

Yesterday, on Monday November 26 we talked about Bloody Kansas and how Kansas developed the nickname. Kansas was a huge state when deciding whether it would be a slave state or not because with that state being either one, it would break the even amount between the two different types of states. It became a popular sovereignty state and both sides basically broke out in violence between each other, eventually causing Kansas to become "Bloody Kansas." And today in class we discussed whether a slave really was a person or not. Of course physically they are obviously a person but society wise they really came down to only being property. people are granted the rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. A slave really doesn't have much of those rights at all. So the conclusion really was that back then slaves couldn't be considered people.

Past two days of class 11/16 and 11/19

On Friday the 16th, we talked about the Slave Law of 1850, and how it basically said that anyone who helped runaway slaves would have to either pay a $1,000 fine or around 6 moths of jail. We then started to read a story that talked about a runaway and a man hiring these people to find the slave. Today in class we talked about the story and the specifics. Then talked about the consequences of the slave law and different scenarios.    

Dred Scott Voicethread

Past two days of class 11/9 and 11/13

On Friday in class we were given a few different handouts on the underground railroad. We read sections of all different textbooks and then wrote about the main points of each, and how they compared to each other. One interesting thing I learned is that the Underground railroad wasn't really an underground railroad at all. It really was just a secretive form of transporting the slaves to the north. And today in class we did a few worksheets dealing with the north and the south, and how they related to each other. We also worked on the the affects of the Missouri Compromise and how that split up the land that both prohibited, and allowed slavery.

30 Day Challenge

For my 30 day challenge, I will give up Facebook and from now until December. I won't check Facebook or even open up my profile for the next 30 days. Facebook isn't a necessity, just something for entertainment and it'll be both interesting and good for me to see if i can avoid it for the next 30 days.