Fact: Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo is a Full Sentence.

After the end of the Civil War, some black Union soldiers found that they wanted to continue fighting, and so they permanently enrolled in the Army, a first for people of color. However, because segregation and racism were still a thing, they were put in the United States Colored Troops. These soldiers, though kept at arm's length from the rest of the country, would eventually earn the name buffalo soldiers. As the 1860s and 1870s rolled around, America started to head out west. Though native Americans had already been moved from their lands by Andrew Jackson during his presidency in the 1830s (I talk about the Trail of Tears back in December), they were once again a target. Although some wanted them simply wiped out, others attempted to assimilate these cultural outsiders into society. As a result, government action varied widely. The essential question we determined was: During westward expansion, did the impact of federal policy towards buffalo soldiers and Native Americans match the intent? The class took notes on videos and primary sources surrounding this topic and congregated them in a single Google Doc to determine the answer to the question.

When it came to the buffalo soldiers, the government's impact didn't match what it meant to accomplish. What it meant to accomplish was likely the superficial inclusion of black troops while in actuality placing them far below any white soldiers. In a sense, they did succeed; the buffalo soldiers went out west, doing tough jobs that no one else was willing to do, while at a disadvantage with low quality supplies. Yet, at the same time, the strength of the buffalo soldiers drew the respect not of whites, but of Native Americans, who gave the the name buffalo soldiers for 1. their resemblance to buffalo in their hair and 2. their fierce fighting spirit like that of a wounded buffalo. It has also earned them a modern legacy of courage and bravery. Superficially, the government at the time accomplished what they wanted in making things rough for the buffalo soldiers, but in the end, the buffalo soldiers left their mark in history.

A map showing the stationing of buffalo soldiers. They
were mostly sent out west, where conditions were rougher.
As a result, buffalo soldiers were often the ones fighting
the Native Americans. Image source: www.wikipedia.org.

A chart showing government policy
on these groups over the years.
Link to enlarge is on the left.

On the other hand, the government ultimately got what it wanted when dealing with the Native Americans out west: getting rid of their cultural presence. General Sherman, back from the Civil War, used his total war tactics on the Native Americans, wiping out the tribes by getting rid of their horses and the buffalo that they relied on. Less annihilitory tactics tried moving the tribes onto reservations, and then attempting to assimilate them into white culture by telling them to farm, in the form of the Dawes Act (1887, excerpts here), which split reservation land into sections for the residents to farm on.  Eventually, things came to a head in 1890 with the Wounded Knee Massacre, ending with more than 150 Sioux killed and ending Native American resistance to white culture. (from this nice little chart here) With the Native Americans out of the way, the U.S. was free to expand westward.

I think the class managed well enough on our own this week. We got through the material a lot quicker because we knew what we were doing, and read in small groups rather than out loud as a class. It's a nice class format that feels more relaxed, but I'm not sure if I'd want it all the time, since the class sometimes had a little inertia in productivity.

(Sidenote: I Always Thought Carnegie Hall Was Named for a Musician)

Rockefeller in 1885. Doesn't
the mustache just scream
"business superpower"?
Image from wikipedia.org.

During the second half of the 19th century, America experienced a period of major economic growth known as the Age of Industry. Most of this was driven by top businessmen who represent some of America's wealthiest men in history, like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. These men, known as captains of industry, gave generously to charity, education, and the public. Yet, these same men were also accused of shady and unethical business practices like bribing politicians, earning some of them the nickname of robber barons. The essential question for this unit, which we came up with as a class, was: Were the captains of industry a positive or negative impact on the public? To learn more, the class watched a series of videos and analyzed some sources surrounding two of the most important and famed captains of industry, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. (Bios for the two: Rockefeller Carnegie)

Andrew Carnegie, leader of the
steel industry and philanthropist.
Image from wikipedia.org.

While I approve of both Rockefeller and Carnegie's ideals and goals, I think their business practices were unethical and ultimately impacted America negatively. Rockefeller ran the Standard Oil Company from Ohio, and eventually became one of the biggest businessmen of the country, all while donating millions of his money to charity and education. How he got to the top, however, was somewhat questionable; one of his business tactics was to drop prices low and take the loss until rivals went out of business, at which point he would drive prices up. This is a very effective business tactic, but I don't approve because it destroyed competition rather than taking part, and created a monopoly on oil. Carnegie falls in a similar boat; a wealthy philanthropist whose workers are paid incredibly little for grueling work is somewhat contradictory. Carnegie, who headed the steel industry, attempted to destroy steelworkers' unions. This partially led to a fiasco known as the Homestead strike. (We watched a video on it here.)

I stand by my opinion, but I think it is important to recognize that captains of industry were actually pretty good people, like donating money to the public because they truly felt that it was a moral imperative for the wealthy to give back. One of them, J. P. Morgan, personally bailed out the government on more than one occasion. But this is not about the character of these men, it is about their effect on America. Low worker wages, shady business practices... They treated America as a whole very well, but screwed over a lot of people in the process.

This unit was somewhat challenging because the class was collaboratively learning without the direction of a teacher; the sources were analyzed, notes were taken, and the essential question was proposed as a class, following the plan that Mrs. Gallagher gave us. Some students started taking leadership roles, and I think that also helped. We were somewhat inefficient in our work because we were getting used to the process, and I think we should be able to improve when we do this again for the next units.

Above, Below, Up Down Left Right

Continuing our unit on the Civil War, our class examined the progression of African American freedom during the time period. The essential questions for this lesson were: 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 indicates that people in positions of power are the ones who brought about change, while freedom from below indicates that the actual group of affected people got up and did something about their situation, bringing about their own change. We looked at 6 different sources and decided if they showed freedom from above or below. On our new whiteboard surfaces, we put the sources in order of what we thought they showed.

The 6 documents, with a brief analysis, are put in order here. The top 4 documents, from Lincoln, can be found here,
while the bottom 2, on African Americans in the Civil War, are found here.

Overall, freedom came from below in this case. Though Lincoln was the one that did the actual freeing part, his documents show a slight reluctance to follow through with this; he takes multiple baby steps before going all out with freeing the slaves. Instead, African Americans forced the issue here, making themselves a visible problem to the Union, who needed to deal with them somehow.

I feel that a similar "freedom from below" situation can easily be seen LGBTQ community. After such a prolonged period of stigma and oppression, it's nice to see them getting some visibility today, like the Bruce Jenner interview in recent news. I'd say this is freedom from below, considering how hard the LGBTQ community has worked the get their message out, especially with some federal governments' reluctance on the subject of gay marriage. The dichotomy of freedom coming from above or below, while not necessarily black or white, is an interesting way to look at any major change in the rights of a group of people.

Sidenote: Chattanooga is a Great Name

The QR code leading to the battle
information on the Chattanooga
Campaign.

To learn about the Civil War battles throughout the course of history, our class did a scavenger hunt. This lesson had two essential questions: Who was the ultimate victor in each the theaters of war: East West, and Naval, and what are some commonalities you can identify in the reasons for the results of the battles? Each student (with a few pairs) received a battle to research and create a short summary of, including the theater, who won, and the reasons why. My battle, the Chattanooga Campaign, can be found here. Each battle then created a bit.ly link and corresponding QR code. Each battle was posted in different spots around the school with the QR code ready for scanning, including the battle information and directions to the next sign. Everyone, equipped with devices, went around taking notes on each battle. Afterwards, we examined this map here which gives many examples of Civil War battles. We then used a Padlet to post our thoughts on who ultimately won in each theater of war. The Padlet is down below.

The North definitively won both the west and naval theaters, but the east theater was a little more back and forth. In the West, the confederacy lacked the supplies to win much, giving the Union the advantage. On the sea, the Union had better equipment and stronger troops, while the confederacy had mishaps like blowing up their own ship. At the beginning, poor leadership in the North gave the South an edge in the East. But after the North took the Mississippi River, splitting the South, and changed leadership from weaker generals like McClellan to strong leaders like Grant and Sherman, the North began to win.

Spoiler: Lincoln Wins

Our class was learning about the Election of 1860, one of the big events that helped spark the Civil War. The essential question was: How were the results of the Election of 1860 representative of the deep divisions over slavery? This presidential race was unusual, in that 4 major candidates ran instead of 2. But what importance does this event hold in U.S. history? To start, we got into small groups and read through this webpage here to learn about the Election of 1860. We took the images that the site used and saved them, taking notes on how each picture fit into the story of the election and its aftermath. We also used Educreations, placing the site's images (and a few that we found on our own) and narrating with our understanding of the Election of 1860.



(technical issues with the title slide and end slide citations. This project was done by myself, Brian Biggio, and Sean Margossian. Sources are below.)

http://www.civilwarinart.org/exhibits/show/causes/introduction/the-election-of-1860-and-seces
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bell_(Tennessee_politician)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1860
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln

(Alternative Title: The Stats and Strats of the Civil War)

The most recent lesson for the class was learning about the sides of the Civil War, their positions and their strategies. The essential question was: How did the differences between the North and South affect each region's strategy and success in the Civil War? The information we got was analyzed and placed into an infographic, using sites and apps like Infogram, Piktochart, and Canva.

I didn't have much of a hard time choosing information to put in the graphic; I put in anything that I thought was interesting, useful, and relevant to the topic, and also was easily represented in the form of a chart or something similar. My two harder choices were on what application I wanted to use. I tested all three choices. Canva is nice, but not really suitable for a vertical infographic like what we needed. Piktochart and Infogram are roughly level, but I ended up choosing Piktochart mostly because I liked its map feature better (which I used in the infographic a lot). My second difficulty was presenting the information in an aesthetically pleasing way. I had a lot of problems with silly things like color palettes- I used blue for the Union and gray for the Confederacy, but it mostly made a dull color palette, and I had problems making it look more exciting. Overall, though, I found the project really cool, and if I need to do a digital project with anything of this sort, I will probably resort to one of these three applications (Canva looks incredibly versatile).

The information presented gives clear insight as to the situations that each side faced at the start of the war. It's fairly obvious that the North has most of the advantages, having more people and resources to work with, but the South also has a few contextual advantages, like being the defensive side of the war and supplying a lot of the world's cotton.

An Elephant in Time

Our class's latest lesson was on the events leading up to the Civil War. The essential question was this: how do we know the debate over slavery was the "elephant in the room" for American politics in the early 19th century? We spent time learning about 8 events and putting them in a timeline, with events in favor of the north and anti-slavery advocates on top, and events in favor of slavery and the south down below. Some events had multiple parts, so there are multiple branching lines from a single dot.

The timeline itself. Events on the top half favor anti-slavery
advocates, the bottom half favors pro-slavery advocates.

This secondary part of the timeline includes descriptions of
the events pictured above.

The answer to the essential question is that politicians, rather than directly facing the dividing issue of slavery, made concessions and compromises on the minor issues that came up, thus skirting around the big issue at hand. The Compromise of 1850 consisted of five parts, some in favor of the north and some in favor of the south, so as to not upset the balance of free vs. slave states in the Senate. But by leaving some territories open to either side in the compromise, legislators set up a race to populate these territories. The Kansas-Nebraska Act shows the result; the north wanted railroad access to western territories to populate those areas with anti-slavery settlers, and so they gave slavery a chance to grow north through those territories in exchange. This directly led to what became known as Bleeding Kansas. The Kansas settlers, torn between free-soil and pro-slavery ideals, became immersed in a near-civil war. Even two capitals were formed; Topeka for free-soil, Lecompton for pro-slavery. And yet, nothing came to stop it because nobody wanted to address the issue. The John Brown raid also shows politicians only taking an issue at face value and not addressing the underlying problem: John Brown, having raided a federal arsenal with the intent of starting a revolt of slaves, gets hanged for treason and nothing else happens, only a rising of tensions between the north and south.

This elephant in the room topic is interesting to see how politicians react to the issues, big and small, and how to recognize an elephant in the room situation and deal with the elephant first and foremost. The RWT Timeline app was fun to use, but fairly limited with a history of crashing. I like these types of activities, but perhaps on a different platform next time.