Proposals for 4th Quarter.

For research project Leigh, Karissa, Jen and me are staying up for 48 hours to see how sleep deprivation effects us. Local History is about what is put into a person that is from this area.

Civil War: 16 Questions.

1. Were Southern politicians more or less likely to own slaves than other white Southerners?

Yes, they were. Only 38% of White Southerners owned a slave and only 6% of that had twenty or more slaves. Southern politicians on the other hand had a bigger percentage. 68% of State legislators and 83% of delegates to secession conventions owned slaves.

2. Were higher level politicians more likely to own slaves than other politicians?

Yes, country government officials only had 53% of owning slaves while while 83% of delegates to secession conventions owned slaves. Also only 18% of the government officals owned 20 or more slaves while 41% of the delefates to secession owned 20 or more.

3. What do these facts suggest to you about the nature of the Southern political system?

That the richer you are, the more slaves you were able to own. It showed in the table that the higher up you are, the more slaves you owned.

4. How uniform were the proportion of slaves in the population and the proportion of whites owning slave across the South?

There were always more slaves in the state then there were whites owning slaves.It was mostly a 10% in the first four states. In the other states there is no uniformity because the numbers are all over the place.

5. Was there a relationship between the number of slaves in a state's population and whether and when it seceded from the Union?

When I looked at the charts I saw that there were usually more slaves in a population then there were American citizens.

6. What material advantages did the North possess on the eve of the Civil War?

They had advantages in every category. All of the resources that they had, gave them huge advantages in the long run. The railroad advantages helped quite a bit probably, as far as ammunition, and troops. They were able to get troops a lot farther into the battle zone.

7. Do you think material advantages are decisive in the outcome of wars? Why or why not?

Well yeah. Having the power of the materials that the other side doesn't have is a huge advantage. One side being stronger and having the materials to take down the enemy faster and easier is a very good thing. Having the power to take the enemy down easier, I think would let the side with the power be able to make the decisions and determine which way the war should go. They would be able to decide how long the war went on.

8. Why did troop strength peak in 1863?

There is an insufficent amount of data to answer this question.

9. Do you think that the differences in troop strength were responsible for the war's outcome?

I believe that the number of troops for the Union definitely helped in a big way. If the numbers were more even, the outcome of the war may have been way different then and today.

10. How does the cost of the Civil War--in casualties and expense--compare to the cost of other American wars?

The costs are significantly higher. The point that sticks out to me the most is the casualties that took place in the war. The totals of death for the Union was 23 percent, and 24 percent for the Confederacy. That is half the population.

11. Why do you think that the Civil War was so lethal?

I think that it was so lethal because both sides pretty much had pure hatred for each other. All they wanted to do was kill each other. I'm surprised that they didn't wipe out the entire population.

12. What was the radical Republican program for reconstructing the Union?

They wanted the rebels properties should pay the national debt for America. Also that the states should be divided up into military states. Each district will have their own officer to make sure to enforce peace.

13. What were the goals of the radical Republican program?

The goals of the Radical Republican Program included:
They tended to view the Civil War as a crusade against the institution of slavery and supported immediate emancipation.
They advocated enlistment of black soldiers.
They led the fight for ratification of the 13th Amendment.

14. Why was the program unacceptable to President Andrew Johnson?

He didn't like it because the person that gets to be the commanding officer will have complete control over everyone. He becomes the law, and Johnson compared that to having the power of an Absolute Monarch. He said it would put every person down to the lowest low possible.

15. Why do you think the North failed to follow through with policies that would have secured the rights and economic status of the freedmen?

They probably didn't like it because the black men that not to long ago used to be slaves, were now included in higher power. They had to give a large portion of their land to them also. The North went from being the superior ones, to being equal, which I don't believe they liked.

16. What were the major political and social achievements of Reconstruction?

The first is that they made slavery illegal. They denied any former members of the Confederacy the right to be in public office. They made sure that no one could be denied votes based on race, color, or previous servitude.

Native American Questions.

1. Use evidence to describe the economic impact of casino ownership and gambling on Native American tribes.

- The few Indian tribes that have made it big like the "Mashantucket Pequots", have a very nice life. The others though have some of the highest levels of poverty, unemployment and disease. It shows that some of them may be treated different then other Indian tribes.


2. What is the most significant problem of trying to understand the condition of the modern Native American population?

- The most significant problem for the Indian tribes is that they are treated differently by the United States Government. The government uses them as a crutch.

3. In what ways are Native Americans a unique minority group in the United States? Do these reasons seem justified today, or should Native Americans be considered as a "regular" minority group (like African Americans, Asian Americans, women, etc.)?

- They are different as far as beliefs mostly. A lot of tribes still want to live in solitude, hunting their food, raising their young how they believe they should be raised. If they want to still do that the way they have been doing things for many years then they should be entitled to do so.

4. Please find 4 specific examples of the sorts of events generalized in this paragraph. For each specific example, include a hyperlink to a website explaining the specific event, and a summary of that event.

- Making treaties with them - http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/apa1852.asp

- Making wars on them - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars

- Sending them to Oklahoma - http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/oklahoma/index.htm

-Native children to boarding schools - http://www.kporterfield.com/aicttw/articles/boardingschool.html

5. What is meant by the phrase 'diseases of the poor'? What is the relationship between economics and health implied by that phrase?

- It relates the Indian tribes to the Americans that are poor. When you are poor you have more of a chance of getting sick, because of the fact that many probably live on the streets. One other way you could look at it is if the Indian people get lazy, have no ambition to go get a job that could help them go farther in life.

6. Is John McCain correct in his assessment of the treatment of Native Americans? Why?

- He is in a way, but it is not entirely the American public's fault. Some Indians choose to be lazy, and alcoholics. To defend him though, we may not give them the same opportunities as the average White person.

7. Please define each of the following terms in the context of Native American policy:

• removal- To remove the Natives from places that do not have resources like more populated areas do.
  
• allotment- This would be to spread the Natives out in equal distribution to different places.
  
• termination- I guess this is to get rid of the bad Natives.
  
• relocation- This would be to move them to a different place that they would feel better about. Maybe not with White people.
  
• assimilation- To try to let the Natives in and try to incorporate them just like White people.
  
• self determination- This is for the Indian tribes that depend on the BIA, they need to take initiative.
  

8. Finally, give a paragraph summary on what self determination means, and why it either is, or is not, the appropriate policy for Native American people with respect to the Federal government.

- I believe that it is the appropriate policy for the Native American people. Self-Determination as far as the Natives go means that they need to do things on their own. Not to be so dependent on what the American government will give to them.

JFK Letter From My Grandmother.

Grandma,


I wanted to ask you a few questions about what you knew and experienced around the time of JFK being assassinated. It happened on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. He was 45 years old. He was riding through the middle of town when he was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. After the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested within the hour at a movie theatre. The theory is that there was 3 total shots. The first shot missed, but the last two hit Kennedy. Some people say that there was another person that was shooting at Kennedy. Others think it was just Lee Harvey Oswald himself. I want your opinion on whether or not you think there were two people shooting or just one. I would also like to know how that assassination impacted the country.

Thanks for your time,
Nathan Chambers.

This was my experience on the day John F. Kennedy was assasinated. On November 22, 1963 I was a sophomore at Newport High School which had a television in the office. They announced that the President had been shot and a short time later died. Everyone was in total shock. I remember walking home from school and thinking "How could something so terrible happen?" I felt so sad.
For days we watched television. They kept showing the car - the shots being fired - Mrs. Kennedy grabbing for her husband and putting her body over his.
The police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald for this crime. While they were relocating him a man comes out of the crowd and kills Oswald - in a split second - His name was Jack Ruley.
In my opinion more than one person had to be involved. I don't think Lee Harvey Oswald was capable of planning this on his own. Also, if you consider how the bullets hit Kennedy it sounds like a shot came from another direction also. We'll never know the whole story.
This terrible tragedy impacted the country profoundly. The Kennedy's lost their Son - Husband - Father. We lost a good President - Leader - Man. The people lost their trust in America.

Yvonne Pottle

Venn Diagram.

Great Depression

Zinns' Opinion.

The Descision to Use Atomic Weapons
from

A People's War?
Howard Zinn

Still, the vast bulk of the American population was mobilized, in the army, and in civilian life, to fight the war, and the atmosphere of war enveloped more and more Americans. Public opinion polls show large majorities of soldiers favoring the draft for the postwar period. Hatred against the enemy, against the Japanese particularly, became widespread. Racism was clearly at work. Time magazine, reporting the battle of Iwo Jima, said: "The ordinary unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing .. . indicates it." ....
The bombing of Japanese cities continued the strategy of saturation bombing to destroy civilian morale; one nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo took 80,000 lives. And then, on August 6, 1945, came the lone American plane in the sky over Hiroshima, dropping the first atomic bomb, leaving perhaps 100,000 Japanese dead, and tens of thousands more slowly dying from radiation poisoning. Twelve U.S. navy fliers in the Hiroshima city jail were killed in the bombing, a fact that the U.S. government has never officially acknowledged, according to historian Martin Sherwin (A World Destroyed). Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, with perhaps 50,000 killed.
The justification for these atrocities was that this would end the war quickly, making unnecessary an invasion of Japan. Such an invasion would cost a huge number of lives, the government said-a million, according to Secretary of State Byrnes; half a million, Truman claimed was the figure given him by General George Marshall. (When the papers of the Manhattan Project-the project to build the atom bomb- were released years later, they showed that Marshall urged a warning to the Japanese about the bomb, so people could be removed and only military targets hit.) These estimates of invasion losses were not realistic, and seem to have been pulled out of the air to justify bombings which, as their effects became known, horrified more and more people. Japan, by August 1945, was in desperate shape and ready to surrender. New York Times military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote, shortly after the war:

The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position by the time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July 26.
Such then, was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is almost certainly negative.He obviously thinks that we shouldn't have dropped the bombs because they were in such horrible shape. His point I can understand, but America at the time really had no choice but to drop them, we wanted revenge. We can't just sit there after the Pearl Harbor attack. -Nathan Chambers 3/4/10 9:45 AM

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, set up by the War Department in 1944 to study the results of aerial attacks in the war, interviewed hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, and reported just after the war:

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. They would not have surrendered if we didn't drop the bombs? If they just attacked Pearl Harbor, they are not going to just surrender after that? They have to stand their ground. -Nathan Chambers 3/4/10 9:48 AM

But could American leaders have known this in August 1945? The answer is, clearly, yes. The Japanese code had been broken, and Japan's messages were being intercepted. It was known the Japanese had instructed their ambassador in Moscow to work on peace negotiations with the Allies. Japanese leaders had begun talking of surrender a year before this, and the Emperor himself had begun to suggest, in June 1945, that alternatives to fighting to the end be considered. On July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired his ambassador in Moscow: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace.. .." Martin Sherwin, after an exhaustive study of the relevant historical documents, concludes: "Having broken the Japanese code before the war, American Intelligence was able to-and did-relay this message to the President, but it had no effect whatever on efforts to bring the war to a conclusion."
If only the Americans had not insisted on unconditional surrender- that is, if they were willing to accept one condition to the surrender, that the Emperor, a holy figure to the Japanese, remain in place-the Japanese would have agreed to stop the war.
Why did the United States not take that small step to save both American and Japanese lives? Was it because too much money and effort had been invested in the atomic bomb not to drop it?That is probably a big reason why. That is a good opinion I think. -Nathan Chambers 3/4/10 10:17 AM General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, described Truman as a man on a toboggan, the momentum too great to stop it. Or was it, as British scientist P. M. S. Blackett suggested (Fear, War, and the Bomb), that the United States was anxious to drop the bomb before the Russians entered the war against Japan? Most likely because then the United States could say that they were the ones that ended the war with Japan. -Nathan Chambers 3/4/10 10:20 AM
The Russians had secretly agreed (they were officially not at war with Japan) they would come into the war ninety days after the end of the European war. That turned out to be May 8, and so, on August 8, the Russians were due to declare war on Japan, But by then the big bomb had been dropped, and the next day a second one would be dropped on Nagasaki; the Japanese would surrender to the United States, not the Russians, and the United States would be the occupier of postwar Japan. In other words, Blackett says, the dropping of the bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.. .." Blackett is supported by American historian Gar Alperovitz (Atomic Diplomacy), who notes a diary entry for July 28, 1945, by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, describing Secretary of State James F. Byrnes as "most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in."
Truman had said, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians." It was a preposterous statement. Those 100,000 killed in Hiroshima were almost all civilians. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey said in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."
The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able to explain why it was dropped. Was it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb? Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victims of a scientific experiment? Martin Shenvin says that among the Nagasaki dead were probably American prisoners of war. He notes a message of July 31 from Headquarters, U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces, Guam, to the War Department:

Reports prisoner of war sources, not verified by photos, give location of Allied prisoner of war camp one mile north of center of city of Nagasaki. Does this influence the choice of this target for initial Centerboard operation? Request immediate reply.

The reply: "Targets previously assigned for Centerboard remain unchanged."
True, the war then ended quickly. Italy had been defeated a year earlier. Germany had recently surrendered, crushed primarily by the armies of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, aided by the Allied armies on the West. Now Japan surrendered.