Andrew Jackson Appealing to Voters

Many people wonder why our president Donald Trump was able to get to where he is.  There are multiple terrible crimes that he was charged with, for example, raping a thirteen-year-old, and other multiple charges of sexual assault.  He also actively promotes hate crimes against minorities and also has been completely disrespectful of women and the disabled.  People who did not vote for him often wonder how the American people could have voted for someone so "evil".  A lot of anti - Donald Trump movements highlight these flaws and talk about how someone who is this hateful and may have committed these crimes is not fit to be the president.  This is very similar to how Andrew Jackson was voted into his presidency.  Because of his rivalry with John Quincy Adams, people who sided with J Q Adams liked to highlight all the terrible things Andrew Jackson did, like kill people in duels.  He was also portrayed in propaganda posters as a strong man who killed people, and others said that he committed adultery.  However, because of this, even more people voted for Andrew Jackson, causing him to eventually win the election.  People did not vote for him despite the fact that he killed people and was claimed to have been an adulterer, people voted for him because of it.  People felt that they could relate to Andrew Jackson and his antics because he represented the people of America by doing these bad things.  We can relate this to how Donald Trump was able to become president even though he was charged with many crimes and spreads the hatred of minorities.  A lot of people who live in America like to put the blame on minorities that immigrated to the United States for things such as job availability.  Donald Trump appealed to these people because the people related to him on the hatred of minorities and maybe even some of the crimes that he supposedly committed.   That is why so many people voted for him even though what he represented was hatred of minorities and crimes.

Andrew Jackson and The Inner Conflict of the Nation

              Recently in class we have been discussing about the critical events that lead up to the American Revolutionary war and what had happened afterwards. Through this week, we had been watching multiple documentaries related to the American Revolutionary war and its after affects. With important debates such as Federalist vs. Democratic Republicans lead by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, and the presidency of Andrew Jackson, we got a glimpse of what led up to the eventual divide of the Nation. What I found especially intriguing was the idea of people's representative during Andrew Jacksons' presidential election.

              During the midst of Jackson's first election, he was seen as the face of the common men despite having several controversial and conflicting claims. Such as, his strong believe to support equality and freedom for all but is the biggest slave owner in Tennessee, he detested the elite and rich yet proudly displayed his wealth all through his house to the point the house became a museum after his death. In addition, to add on about his controversy, Jackson was known to hold duels and kill his opponents when they disagreed to his believes. It intrigued me so much that Jackson's actions and his words differed so much yet he was still the most influential figure of the time. From his presidential elections, we could see that the idea of appealing to the people started long before our recent political situations with many solely promising and not taking actions.

              In my opinion, I think that it was because of this popularity that he fed off from that enabled him to make ruthless decisions such as going against the congress and taking down the National Bank causing a economic crisis in America and also ignoring the Supreme Court to enable the Native American movement to the west. The fact that this can still happen in the current 21th century, this leaves me to ponder about whether if it is possible in this day and age to see another instance of this type of governing in America, if not why?

The “Boston Massacre” or The “Boston Misunderstanding”? (Adrienne Mitchel)

It seems as if every other year since fifth grade we have been taught over and over again about the atrocious and horrific Boston Massacre — when the ruthless Brits picked up their rifles and fired an endless torrent of bullets against countless innocent colonists. However, if you look at the details of the situation closer, as we have been in class with an informative documentary, we see information that rebuffs what many of us have been taught for years.

The actual incident happened on March 5, 1770 when a group of colonists challenged British soldiers carrying firearms. As tensions rose and the situation started to get increasingly volatile, the soldiers fired at the unarmed citizens, resulting in only five deaths. So how did this incident become such a staple of American history?

When Samuel Adams asked Paul Revere, a local silversmith, to make an engraving depicting the Boston Massacre, he overdramatized the realities of the situation. Neither Adams nor Revere witnessed the attack, which resulted in major inaccuracies. This piece of art was distributed throughout the colonies, and the graphic depiction of evil Brits murdering a crowd of helpless colonists sparked anger. Essentially, the Boston Massacre became a massive piece of propaganda in the path toward independence.

Although these five lives should not have been taken, in my opinion five deaths aren’t enough to be labeled a massacre. Massacre is defined as “the unnecessary, indiscriminate killing of a large number of human beings or animals, as in barbarous warfare or persecution or for revenge or plunder,” and I wouldn’t consider five deaths to be “a large number of human beings.” What other inaccurate recollections or overdramatized events are in American history?

-Adrienne Mitchel

The Branches of Government and How it works

Recently, we've been watching documentaries about American's history and how it came to be the democratic country it is today with the push and pulls of many conflicts in the past hundreds of years. Many famous presidents, important government figures, those soldiers that put their lives on the line for the countries, all those people that brought out their ideas so we could have the freedom that we have. Of course, the government isn't always just about making decisions regarding wars and making manuals about "How to have a choke-hold on your country 101", it's about the people, what their thoughts are, running the economy properly, keeping citizens safe from terrorists, and etc. In order for the government to run properly and make sure that everything is covered, they have a specific branch system to make sure everything is running smoothly. The 3 main ones that will almost immediately come to mind are the legislative branch, executive branch, and the judicial branch, each doing a different job, but also keeping each other in control, a process called checks and balances. The legislative branch is all about enacting laws. It consists of the senate and the house of representatives. The executive branch is enforcing the laws that the legislative branch makes. This branch includes the president, who is the chief executive, executive officials, departments, and agencies. The judicial branch is about interpreting these laws and making use of these laws for the cases that come to the Supreme Court. It's made of the Supreme Court, which deals with more major issues of the country, and the minor courts scattered across the countries, which deals with every other cases. This is where the system of checks and balances come in. This system allows for each of these branch to make sure that one isn't getting out of hand and lowkey trying to plot the takeover of the president and/or the whole government.
The Constitution and the Amendments also play a major role in the operation of the government as well because the Constitution is all about the most basic laws that have been made and is mostly unchangeable, unless absolutely necessary. That's where the Amendments come in. Currently, there are a total of 17 amendments (say the name! seventeen!) that have been made to the Constitution, mainly changing some details that fit better to society today. There are multiple ways of making an Amendment to the Constitution: 1.Proposed by 2/3 vote of each house of Congress 2. Ratified by 3/4 of state legislature 3. Proposed by Congress at the request of 2/3 of the state legislative or 4. Ratified by 3/4 of the state conventions.

Hamilton and Jefferson: Conflicting Views for a Young Nation, by Kyle Nero

Many Americans say that one of the most important qualities of a great president is the ability to surround him or her self with a strong set of advisors and to use them as a resource.  Among the advisors of our first president, George Washington, two names seem to stand out: Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.  While they did share a common goal of promoting the welfare of the American people, these two men had an infamous rivalry throughout their lives and were seldom able to agree on the path to achieving this goal.  Jefferson's general interests included an abundance of state rights, and a central government that loosely tied these states together.  He also wanted a society built on equality.  Hamilton, on the other hand, desired little rights for the state and a strong central government connecting them.  He believed that society had to have social structures, and different classes separating the people.  His vision for America was a purer Britain.  While their constant contradictions of one another may have caused issues at the time, looking back today we realize that it was the synthesis of their two visions that allowed America to get to where it is now.  Most historians believe that, in the end, it was Hamilton's views that won out in shaping modern day America.  However, it is still very much up to our interpretation which of these two brilliant men really played a bigger role in setting America on its path to become the prosperous nation it is today.

Keeping Warm, by Evan Si

While reading about the creation of new colonies in the textbook, it read as if settlements magically appeared. People would seemingly travel places and magically whip together a colony after a few people die to disease.

In reality, things weren't always so simple. These settlers were landing on an unforgiving wilderness armed with virtually nothing, and had to build a home. From a modern day perspective, it was sort of like Castaway or a real-life Minecraft.
Finding the necessary materials to create a house wasn't easy, let alone creating the house to begin with. The most common form of housing was the timber-frame home, created with "a form of carpentry which [involved] taking large pieces of wood and joining them together with woodworking joints, using mortise-and-tenon construction, without metal construction such as nails. Wooden pegs, bents, braces, and sometimes trusses [were] employed." An example of such a home would be a saltbox home. In general colloquial settings, these are largely just called "log cabins."

But if these homes existed today, home inspectors would say there is absolutely no insulation. The only real insulation was clapboard and some plaster walls. As a result, the homes were frigid, to the point that Thomas Jefferson once complained in a letter that "the ink freezes in my pen." Water in the household regularly froze over, with inefficient fireplaces and cast iron stoves being the only remedy to the cold.

Today, plenty of people still complain about cold weather, but conditions are far better today than they were in colonial times. With technology playing such a major role in today's society, it is often difficult to connect with seventeenth and eighteenth century colonists. Is the individualistic level of hardships and death overlooked in the context of the present, or is it addressed appropriately? Why?


An example of a timber-frame home.

Disease in the New World, by Evan Si

In the first few chapters of the book, disease brought to the New World from the Europeans was discussed. Millions of Native Americans succumbed to a variety of diseases, as can be seen from how the Inca population was decimated from smallpox; over the course of a few years over 60% of the Inca population had died to the disease.

The reason given both in class and in the textbook was a lack of innate protection from new diseases in the Native American people's immune system. But if this is the case, wouldn't Europeans be adversely affected by Native American disease?

The answer is, probably, yes. Among others, the disease syphilis is believed by some scholars to have been introduced to Europe when Columbus returned, having brought it from the New World. 

But as a whole, the impact on Native Americans was much more severe. The reason often given is that Europe simply had more disease vectors, as people lived closer to animals and large mammals not present in the Americas. Moreover, European cities were often less sanitary, and some diseases can only be sustained by a large population that can only be found in Europe. Few places in America harbored this kind of potential for pathogens to spread. 

Nonetheless, these are only partial answers to why disease hurt the Native Americans so severely. There are numerous theories as to the spread of disease between the Old and New Worlds through the Columbian Exchange. Additionally, there are perpetually more questions than answers: why did Native Americans suffer more from the same disease that Europeans were plagued with, even though Native Americans lived in cleaner environments? Was more disease spread to the Americas than vice versa because the Old World was larger than the New World?

So with all this in mind, why did disease act in the way it did?

"God in America": Debating Good vs. Evil (Adrienne Mitchel)

This past week in class we have been focusing on watching a documentary named “God in America.” This documentary has so far encompassed the journey of Christianity from Spain to New Mexico through missionaries, the Puritan faith and the dissension between John Winthrop and Anne Hutchinson, as well as George Whitfield’s entertaining and controversial sermons all across America. What I found most interesting about these three aforementioned cases, however, was the idea of right or wrong and good or evil. In this post, I will only go in depth about the first case I previously mentioned.

In the spread of Christianity from Europe to America, there were two opposing sides - the missionaries and the Pueblo Indians who were native to New Mexico. From the missionaries’ perspectives, the Pueblo Indians would be eternally damned unless the missionaries successfully converted them to Christianity. To these missionaries, Christianity is the true path to salvation because there is only one true God. So from the missionaries’ perspective they were doing the right thing. However, the Pueblo Indians did not want to fully convert to Christianity and forget their cultural religion. From the Pueblo’s perspectives, this was a very fair compromise, as they could still hold onto their heritage and cultural roots while pleasing the missionaries by adapting their religious ways. But when the missionaries’ learned that the Pueblo’s had no intention of fully converting to Christianity, events took a violent turn. Native ceremonies were banned and sacred places of worship were destroyed. Priests became brutal and would beat the Pueblos, and in the priests’ minds, these violent actions were justified, as the Pueblo’s were disobeying God’s words.

Not just in this instance, but throughout history and in the present day we see religion being used as a means of justification for all sorts of actions. Currently, the terrorist group ISIS believes that Allah is urging them to act violently against others and by doing so will reach salvation. This method of justification somewhat parallels the violent actions Spanish missionaries took when the Pueblo Indians wouldn’t fully convert. So in these types of situations, which party is right and which party is wrong? Who is good and who is evil? Is there a limit to how literally we should follow religious texts?

-Adrienne Mitchel

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