Let's Hear the Women!

 The Temperance Movement was a reform movement that wanted to reduce alcohol consumption. Many women got involved in this movement who were witnessing the negative effects of alcohol by their husbands who would return to them drunk.  Amelia Bloomer was one reformer from the Temperance movement who published her own newspaper titled "The Lily" is the mid 19th century in order to express her opinions on this matter (as well as other subjects) and get people to join her efforts in temperance. This newspaper is from someone who is involved very much in this movement during the time period.I recently found a copy of one of her papers and selected a few excerpts below. During this time period, you could see many liquor selling places on every block. Alcohol was extremely popular. By this time, people were now starting to drink hard liquor and a lot more of it. This caused men to come home and act wrongly to their wives. Divorce wasn't so popular at this time, so many women were left feeling scared and trapped with their husbands.

The excerpts below are just very small parts to the whole newspaper. The full newspaper can be found  here and gives the reader a complete picture of the event because it has so much good detail and it is coming from Amelia Bloomer from the specific time period. 

In the excerpt above, Amelia Bloomer is trying to engage everyone into this movement. She refers to alcohol as evil and wants to "rid" the land of it. She shows her emotional involvement with this quote. She also shows how she the issues keep growing and becoming more consistent and worse as the time is going on and people are discovering hard liquor. 

I think this excerpt above is evidence to what I mentioned before about how men would come home and abuse their wife. Men had a sense of power of women during this time and Amelia Bloomer wants to let people know that women should not accept being treated harshly when their husbands are under the influence of alcohol. 

This last excerpt really shows how strongly she believes that the issue is mostly men who don't have empathy for their wives or who don't respect or understand their wives. All in all, I think it was the people like Amelia Bloomer who was able to gather people form all walks of society into this movement by her meaningful publications of "The Lily".

Primary Source Citation:
Bloomer, Amelia. The Lily, May 01, 1854. Accessed January 21, 2015.     http://www.ohiomemory.org/cdm/ref/collection/p267401coll36/id/619

What Do You Think?

      

Is Andrew Jackson's long-standing reputation as "the people's president" deserved? Why? Why not?         Andrew Jackson was one of the presidents of the United States. He did many things in order to try and make his country better including putting the spoils system into place, completing the indian removal, and his involvement with the bank war. Taking a closer look at these three events, his reputation as "the people's president" may be questioned. My group in class was given the job to learn about the spoils system. Our project we put together is below.

We learned that the spoils system was put into place by Andrew Jackson that let the people in his campaign have government positions. He did this to bribe people into joining his party. If his friends and followers are getting these high ranking positions just because they support Jackson, then how do we know if they are qualified and fit for the position? Thinking back to the essential question if this makes Jackson the people's president, I would have to say no so much. He is pleasing the people who he is giving positions, but he isn't concerned about what is best for the country and everyone else in it. If he was, then people deserving of their positions would be put into the government jobs.

After sharing our own presentation, it was time to listen to the two other topics. First, the bank war. Andrew Jackson fought against the wealthy because he wanted equal class/ He also wanted to keep small businesses because he feared the big corporations would gain too much power since he saw them as having nothing to lose. He also didn't want the bank to become too powerful because these not elected people were running it and could essentially take control. However, he was warned that failing to agree to the new bank charter would threaten his re election and cause an economic collapse which it did. Does this make Jackson the people's president? I think this is a tough one to choose because Andrew Jackson had the best intentions for his people and wanted to help the middle and lower classes, but in the end people still suffered as a result.

Next, the Indian removal. Basically, Andrew Jackson made five different tribes move out west in order to expand the country by gaining more land. He claimed that the removal of the Indians should be voluntary although they felt like they were being forced. The Indians couldn't leave peacefully, so war and law was used to move them out as peacefully as they could. I think that in this case, his is only being the people's president to the Americans because he was doing good by trying to expand, but he wasn't so nice to the Indians in doing so.

All in all I think this question doesn't have a clear right answer. I believe that Andrew Jackson wanted the best for his people and tried to give them what they wanted. However, he may have not gone about everything the right way. What do you think?

To learn more about Andrew Jackson you can watch this Crash Course video below!

Defining Democracy

 How should we define democracy? How democratic was the US in the early 1800s?

To find the answers to the questions above, my class divided into groups and we analyzed the documents given to us. We looked at the images and charts and noticed how the requirements (mostly of property) for voting right decreased over the years and that instead of legislature being the method of voting, the people were the ones voting. Also the painting we looked at below shows people of different ages and occupations all coming together and all voting. This shows how voting was becoming a right that more people had.  We also read quotes and an article on the Dorr War. We learned form the quotes that even if a man is poor, he could be wiser than a man of wealth in which case he should be allowed to vote. Also, the Dorr War article shows how little violence was involved while trying to become a more democratic country.


 The image above is a picture of the poster my group put together with images of the documents we analyzed with captions we created. We came up with our own definition of democracy which is that democracy is a system of government where the power in vested in the people and through freely elected representatives. Also, we came to the conclusion that in the early 1800s, the US was not very democratic, but as the years progressed, it became a more and more democratic country.