Is Greed Good?

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.

Before there was Wolf of Wall Street there was Wall Street? What is Michael Douglas' character Gordan Gecko saying in this classic quote from the movie? Do you agree or disagree with his opinion?

What is the difference between a 'Robber Baron' and a 'Captain of Industry?'  Which is Warren Buffet?  Donald Trump?

Look at the chart: Legacy of the Bushiness Tycoons. Which of these views is most similar to that of Gordan Gecko? (click below to enlarge)

How do the new American Tycoons live up to this legacy?

Of course lets not forget the demise of Augustus Gloop.

Richest People In the World

Who are the 5 richest people in the world today? Sure you can name Bill Gates but what about the rest? How did they make their fortunes? The answers may surprise you.

Why does America continue to be one of the most innovative and richest nations in the world?

Who were the TYCOONS of the late 1800s? In what ways are they similar or different from today's tycoons?

Is Greed Good?  What is the legacy of the Business Tycoons?

Modern Times

Charlie Chaplin, considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular "Little Tramp" character; the man with the toothbrush mustache, bowler hat, bamboo cane, and a funny walk.

Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin's last 'silent' film, was filled with sound effects and was made when everyone else was making 'talkies.' Charlie turns against modern society, the machine age, (The use of sound in films ?) and progress.

Firstly we see him frantically trying to keep up with a production line, tightening bolts. Then he is selected for an experiment with an automatic feeding machine, but various mishaps leads his boss to believe he has gone mad.

The idea of the film was apparently given to Chaplin by a young reporter, who told him about the production line system in Detroit, which was turning its workers into nervous wrecks. In the film, Charlie becomes literally trapped in the machine.

This was one of the films which, because of its political sentiments, convinced the House Un-American Activities Committee that Charles Chaplin was a Communist, a charge he adamantly denied. He left to live in Switzerland, vowing never to return to America.

Discussion Questions

What would Charlie Chaplain think about our technological world today?

Who was Frederick W. Taylor and how did he revolutionize productivity?

Thomas Edison's Shaggy Dog

LISTEN TO THE STORY

"It was back in the fall of eighteen seventy-nine," said the stranger at last, softly. "Back in the village of Menlo Park, New Jersey. I was a boy of nine. A young man we all thought was a wizard had set up a laboratory next door to my home, and there were flashes and crashes inside, and all sorts of scary goings on. The neighborhood children were warned to keep away, not to make any noise that would bother the wizard. "I didn't get to know Edison right off, but his dog Sparky and I got to be steady pals. A dog a whole lot like yours, Sparky was, and we used to wrestle all over the neighborhood. Yes, sir, your dog is the image of Sparky."

1) Would you want to be Edison's Shaggy Dog?

2) What is a 'Shaggy Dog' story?

3) What if dogs are smarter than people?  What have they figured out?

4) What is the moral of the story?

5) How smart are dogs?

The Current War: Edison vs. Tesla

Sure you know about Thomas Edison the Ohio entrepreneur and inventor. But who was the real genius behind many of his inventions?

Starting in the late 1880s, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla were embroiled in a battle now known as the War of the Currents.

Edison developed direct current -- current that runs continually in a single direction, like in a battery or a fuel cell. During the early years of electricity, direct current (shorthanded as DC) was the standard in the U.S.

But there was one problem. Direct current is not easily converted to higher or lower voltages.

Tesla believed that alternating current (or AC) was the solution to this problem. Alternating current reverses direction a certain number of times per second -- 60 in the U.S. -- and can be converted to different voltages relatively easily using a transformer.

Edison, not wanting to lose the royalties he was earning from his direct current patents, began a campaign to discredit alternating current. He spread misinformation saying that alternating current was more dangerous, even going so far as to publicly electrocute stray animals using alternating current to prove his point.

What kind of monster publicly electrocutes his neighbors dogs and cats?

Did Tesla really invent a way to transmit elecrticity wireless for free?

How has Tesla been immortalized in the movies?

Want to build your own 'Tesla Tower?'

Why don't we have wireless energy?

Peculiar Patents

What is this contraption?

The U.S. Constitution states in Article 1, section 8, clause 8 that one purpose of the legislature is:

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries

This is known as the "patent and copyright clause" and states the rationale for a patent system. The government is counting on commerce involving successful inventions, and the infectious inspiration which hopefully will encourage other inventors.

A great many inventions that receive patents never earn their inventors anything. We're not worried about that now. What we want to know is: what makes an invention patentable over those that aren't according to U.S. law?

In short your invention will qualify if it fits one of these five criteria:

1)Process: doing something?
example: toasting bread

2)Machine: something that can do something
example: a pop up toaster

3)Manufactured: something made by man
example: a Pop Tart

4)Composition of Matter: substance made by man
example: snozzberry Pop tart filling

5)New Use: doing something new with something that isn't new.
example: Pop tart as body fragrance?  Toaster as musical instrument?

Now take a look at these peculiar patents and you decide whether they 'cut the mustard.'

Have a great idea for an invention you think would make our lives here at school easier?

Think it could get patented?

Founded in 1973, The National Inventors Hall of Fame meets every year to honor a new group of inventors. To be considered for induction, an inventor must hold a US patent and the invention must have benefited society and advanced science and technology. Inventors in the Hall of Fame include Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright for the airplane, Rudolf Diesel for the internal combustion engine, and more recently Les Paul for the solid body electric guitar. Click here to see the complete list.

Who in our class would we induct?

Cross of Gold

What should the caption of this cartoon be?

The most famous speech in American political history was delivered by William Jennings Bryan on July 9, 1896, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The issue was whether to endorse the free coinage of silver at a ratio of silver to gold of 16 to 1. (This inflationary measure would have increased the amount of money in circulation and aided cash-poor and debt-burdened farmers.) After speeches on the subject by several U.S. Senators, Bryan rose to speak. The thirty-six-year-old former Congressman from Nebraska aspired to be the Democratic nominee for president, and he had been skillfully, but quietly, building support for himself among the delegates. His dramatic speaking style and rhetoric roused the crowd to a frenzy. The response, wrote one reporter, “came like one great burst of artillery.” Men and women screamed and waved their hats and canes. “Some,” wrote another reporter, “like demented things, divested themselves of their coats and flung them high in the air.” The next day the convention nominated Bryan for President on the fifth ballot. The full text of William Jenning Bryan’s famous “Cross of Gold” speech appears below. The audio portion is an excerpt. [Note on the recording: In 1896 recording technology was in its infancy, and recording a political convention would have been impossible. But in the early 20th century, the fame of Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech led him to repeat it numerous times on the Chautauqua lecture circuit where he was an enormously popular speaker. In 1923 (25 years after the original speech), he recorded portions of the speech for Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana. Although the recording does not capture the power and drama of the original address, it does allow us to hear Bryan delivering this famous speech.]


W.J. BRYAN CARRIES ON THE SHOULDERS OF HIS ADMIRERS AFTER HIS ORATION. 
from Harper's Weekly, 18 July, 1896.

You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.

 Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have it until other nations help us, we reply, that instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: 

You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!

William Jennings Bryant would lose to Ohioan William McKinley in one of the most dramatic presidential races in American History, and America would stay on the 'gold standard' more or less for the next 70 years.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Ever since its publication in 1900 Lyman Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been immensely popular, providing the basis for a profitable musical comedy, three movies, and a number of plays. It is an indigenous creation, curiously warm and touching, although no one really knows why.

How did Baum's storybook differ from the 1930's movie?

Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz include treatments of the modern fairy tale  as an allegory or metaphor for the political, economic and social events of America of the 1890s.

In a 1964 article, high school teacher Henry Littlefield outlined an allegory in the book regarding monetary policy. According to this view, for instance, the "Yellow Brick Road" represents the gold standard, and the silver slippers (ruby in the film version) represent the Populist Party's desire to construct a bimetallic standard of both gold and silver in its place.

Dorothy learns that to return home, she must reach the Emerald City, Oz's political center, to speak to the Wizard, representing the President of the United States. While journeying to the Emerald City, she encounters a scarecrow, who represents a farmer; a woodman made of tin, who represents a worker dehumanized by industrialization; and a cowardly lion, who represents William Jennings Bryan, a prominent leader of the Silverite movement. The villains of the story, the Wicked Witch of the West and the Wicked Witch of the East, represent the wealthy railroad and oil barons of the American West and the financial and banking interests of the eastern U.S. respectively.

Baum did not offer any conclusive proof that he intended his novel to be a political allegory and Historian Ranjit S. Dighe wrote that for sixty years after the book's publication, "virtually nobody" had such an interpretation. None-the less the comparisons are compelling.

Do you think Baum's portrayal of the Populists was positive or negative? Why?

What modern day movies could be used as allegories?

Why do you think The Wizard of Oz lives on in Popular culture? What about the story appeals to new and old generations?

Still not convinced? Watch The Secret of Oz for more on the symbolism.

The Dark Side of the Rainbow launched a whole new craze based on the movie. Coincidence, Apophenia, or Synchronicity?

Wonder which character of Oz you are? Take the quiz.

The Real All Americans

Pennsylvania's Carlisle Indian School, founded by Richard Pratt, may have failed to assimilate Native Americans  in society but the school's football team proved their respectability by challenging — and beating — their counterparts in the Ivy Leagues and Military Academies. Although the school shut its doors in 1918, the winning team established Jim Thorpe and coach Glenn "Pop" Warner as two of the best-known names in American sports. It also introduced plays, including the forward pass, that are standard in the game today.

Hear author Sally Jenkins read from her book: The Real All Americans

Pop Warners playbook included more than just the forward pass. His 'hidden ball play' and other 'trick plays' became legendary in football lore.

Watch these 'Trick Plays' and then design one of your own.

Who knows? If its good enough maybe the Brave can use it Friday night.

How did Football, in many ways, became a substitute for war?

What's In a Name?

What is Assimilation?

The drive to assimilate Indians into the mainstream of American life by changing their customs, dress, occupations, language, religion and philosophy has always been an element in Federal-Indian relations. In the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, this assimilationist policy became dominant. A major thrust of assimilation efforts was to educate Indians in American ways. in 1879 the Carlisle Indian Training School was established by a former military officer. Its 'benevolent philosophy' of separating Indian children totally from their Indian environment was supposed to help them not cause harm. Forcing Indians to adopt white ways became the basis for a widescale boarding school movement that eventually removed thousands of Indian children from their cultural settings and families. The motto: 'KILL THE INDIAN, SAVE THE MAN.'

Can you really change a person by cutting their hair or renaming them?

What about a school?

The "Braves," an American Indian warrior, became the symbol of the Talawanda Schools in the 50s after a contest was held to name the newly consolidated district formed by Sommerville, Hanover, Milford, and Oxford. Hannover 5th grader Karen Irwin won with the name 'Tallawanda' because Tallawanda Creek (aka 4 Mile Creek) flowed through the three newly merged townships. After some discussion the second 'l' was dropped and the new High School on Chestnut Street opened in 1956 where it remained for then next half century.

But who was Talawanda?  What did the name mean?

 

Where exactly is the old Talawnda spring & bottle company?

In 2018 the Talawanda school board voted 3-2 to change the high school’s mascot from “Braves” to “Brave” after a meeting lasting more than three hours.

A heated crowd filled the Performing Arts Center at Talawanda High School to listen to the recommendations made to the board by the superintendent-appointed branding committee.

The change responds to complaints that the name and logo currently used by Talawanda are offensive. Many feel that the logo is more of a “caricature,” depiction of what a Native American would look like, and others feel that they are simply honoring Native Americans with the “Braves” name.

Should we be proud to have the 'Brave' as our Mascot or change it to something else?

Battlefield Detectives

George Armstrong Custer, the young Civil War hero turned Indian fighter, was trapped on a desolate ridge overlooking the Little Bighorn River in the territory of Montana. Swarms of well-armed Indians surrounded him. According to legend–and many historians–Custer rallied his vastly outnumbered troops. The desperate 7th Cavalry soldiers shot their horses to make barricades and fought ferociously as hundreds of Indians, led by famed Sioux war chief Crazy Horse, overran the ridge.

But because Custer's men were wiped out before reinforcements arrived, a definitive account of the Little Bighorn battle has eluded historians. The only eye witnesses were the Indians, who had conflicting recollections. And so the legend of "Custer's last stand" began to take shape. "The image of Custer blazing away till the very end with his pistols was an icon of the American West," says John Dorner, chief historian at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.

The lack of reliable accounts has kept the details of the battle a hotly debated topic, and discoveries in recent years have challenged the heart of the legend. "The myth is the gallant, heroic last stand–that the Indians drove him to the killing field, where he fought to the last man and last bullet against overwhelming odds," says Richard Fox, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Dakota.

Fox, who specializes in archaeology, completed an extensive battlefield survey after a 1983 wildfire and revealed evidence that cut to the core of the Custer legend. "My research says the outcome was a function of panic and fear, a very common thing in battle. There was no last stand in the gallant, heroic sense."

So who is telling the truth? You decide.

Hollywood Indians

"A Nation that does not know its history has no future."

What does this saying mean? How has Hollywood stereotyped the Indians in the movies? Why?

How is what happened in history very different than the Hollywood stereotype of the Indians as warriors?

Little House On the Prairie

Little House on the Prairie, a series of eight mostly autobiographical books about Laura Ingalls Wilder's life as a settler on the American prairie, has been a perennial favorite ever since it was first published in 1935.  My second grade teacher started reading it to us.  In the 1970s the TV series with Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon came onto the scene. I watched it as a child, and watched it again with my own children.

Pa, Ma, and the children, Laura and Mary of the prairie. We went with them through all their obstacles, the sickness of Mary, the birth of children, moving to their own farm, the store owner and his family, the teacher at the school, all of the issues and problems that the family, the children and Ma and Pa had together. This was a time in our history when the West was young, the earth was new, the farming good. New lives, new adventures, to share, and this series gives us hope. So much love and kindness in this family, and that won the day, every time.

The Ingalls family were people of their time and place. In the words of Laura June Topolsky writing for The Awl, that meant they were “Manifest Destiny personified.” Even Pa, the adult character who is most sympathetic to the Osage Indians on whose land the Ingalls family are squatting, sees white people as having a right to the land, writes Laura Ingalls scholar Amy Fatzinger. She quotes Laura’s Pa from the text:

1) Why did Laura's family leave Wisconsin to go to Indian Territory?

2) How did the Ingals exemplify Manifest Destiny?

3) How are Indians portrayed in the story? Portrayals of Native American characters in this book and throughout this series have led to some calls for the series to not be taught in schools.  Do you agree?  Why or why not?

4) Why does the story give us hope more than 100 years later?  

5) Would you have wanted to live in the 'Little House on the Prarie?'  What would the opportunities be?  Challenges?

OK Land Rush

Are the best things in life for free? What's the best thing you've ever got for free?

At precisely twelve noon on September 16, 1893 a cannon's boom unleashed the largest land rush America ever saw. Carried by all kinds of transportation - horses, wagons, trains, bicycles or on foot - an estimated 100,000 raced to claim plots of free land in an area of northern Oklahoma Territory known as the Cherokee Strip. There had been a number of previous land rushes in the Territory - but this was the big one.

'As the expectant home-seekers waited with restless patience, the clear, sweet notes of a cavalry bugle rose and hung a moment upon the startled air. It was noon. The last barrier of savagery in the United States was broken down. Moved by the same impulse, each driver lashed his horses furiously; each rider dug his spurs into his willing steed, and each man on foot caught his breath hard and darted forward. A cloud of dust rose where the home-seekers had stood in line, and when it had drifted away before the gentle breeze, the horses and wagons and men were tearing across the open country like fiends. The horsemen had the best of it from the start. It was a fine race for a few minutes, but soon the riders began to spread out like a fan, and by the time they had reached the horizon they were scattered about as far as eye could see. Even the fleetest of the horsemen found upon reaching their chosen localities that men in wagons and men on foot were there before them. As it was clearly impossible for a man on foot to outrun a horseman, the inference is plain that Oklahoma had been entered hours before the appointed time.'    -Harper's Weekly 33 (May 18, 1889): 391-94.

How did the Homestead Act encourage settlement of the new Western frontier?

Who were the real Sooners and why should the Oklahoma football team change their name?

What was appealing about Oklahoma?  Would you want to live there?  Why?

In 1890 the national census concluded there was no longer a square mile of the US that wasn't settled.  According to Historian Frederick Jackson Turner's  'Frontier Thesis' the closing of the American Frontier means the gradual decline of our Democracy.  Do you think the United States needs to continue to expand?  If not why? If so where?

The Golden Spike

Can you spot the differences in these two pictures?

Completing the last link in the First Transcontinental Railroad with a spike of gold was the brainchild of David Hewes, a San Francisco financier and contractor. The spike had been manufactured earlier that year especially for the event by the William T. Garratt Foundry in San Francisco. Two of the sides were engraved with the names of the railroad officers and directors. A special tie of polished California laurel was chosen to complete the line where the spike would be driven. The ceremony was originally to be held on May 8, 1869 (the date actually engraved on the spike), but it was postponed two days because of bad weather and a labor dispute that delayed the arrival of the Union Pacific side of the rail line. On May 10, in anticipation of the ceremony, Union Pacific No. 119 and Central Pacific No. 60 (better known as the Jupiter) locomotives were drawn up face-to-face on Promontory Summit, separated only by the width of a single tie. The golden spike was made of 17.6-karat(73%) copper-alloyed gold, and weighed 14.03 ounces (436 g). It was dropped into a pre-drilled hole in the laurel ceremonial last tie, and gently tapped into place with a silver ceremonial spike maul.

Why was this railroad necessary for the United States' Manifest Destiny?

How would it effect/ change our nation's future?

Why do you suppose Chinese, Irish, and African American workers aren't given more credit for it;s completion?

All Aboard!

Folk music, trains, and railroads would hardly exist in this country without one another. Some of the greatest American folk songs of all time can be traced back to the building of the railroads, the advent of train travel, and, of course, the riding of the rails during the Depression—when working class men and immigrants traveled on trains in search of work.

You may know our nation's railroads were built primarily by African-Americans and immigrants (particularly Irish immigrants). It was grueling work made more tolerable by the presence of music (similarly to the way field calls and African-American folk songs developed out of the slave tradition).

In the case of "I've Been Working on the Railroad," the telling line is "...all the livelong day." These men really did back-breaking work beyond the hours of labor now acceptable in our society.

From Crazy Train to Peace Train, songs about trains are still popular today...

HOW MANY CAN YOU THINK OF?

Transcontinental RR

 Where did you go on your Summer Vacation? If you could have gone anywhere, where would you have traveled? How would you get there? Plane, train, automobile?

I bet that most of you did not take the train. There was a time however when the train was not only the preferred form of transportation in America; IT WAS THE ONLY FORM OF TRANSPORTATION.

As you watch this clip focus on the social and the economic factors that influenced rail travel in the United States.

What challenges did building the Transcontinental Railroad pose?

Oregon Trail

 

Try taking a journey by covered wagon across 2000 miles of plains, rivers, and mountains.  Try!  On the plains, will you slosh through mud and water-filled ruts or will you plod through dust six inches deep?   How will you cross the rivers?   If you have money you might take a ferry if there is one.  Or you could ford the river and hope you and your wagon aren't swallowed alive!  What about supplies?  Well, if you're low on food you can hunt.  You might get a buffalo... you might.  And there are bears in the mountains.  At the Dalles, you can try navigating the Columbia River, but if running the rapids with a makeshift raft makes you queasy, better take the Barlow Road.  If for some reason you don't survive, your wagon burns, or thieves steal your oxen, or you run out of provisions, or you die of cholera-- don't give up!  Try again.

Manifest Destiny

1) What does this famous painting symbolize?  Who painted it?

2) What opportunities and conflicts emerged as Americans moved westward?

3) Which groups depicted in this image were most likely positively affected by westward expansion?

  4) Which were most likely negatively affected?

In Chapter 12 we will discover how westward expansion in the late 1800s affected several groups of people. Many of these groups saw new opportunities for jobs, prosperity, freedom, and land ownership open up before them, while others were denied these same opportunities.  

Home On the Range

“Home on the Range” appears to have been written in 1885 by a group of prospectors in a cabin near Leadville, Colorado. It was popular throughout the Southwest in the 1880s and 1890s and is now recognized as the state song of Kansas.

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam

Where the deer and the antelope play

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

And the skies are not cloudy all day

How often at night when the heavens are bright
I see the light of those flickering stars
Have I laid there amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of love

The red man was pressed from this part of the west

It's not likely he'll ever return

To the banks of Red River where seldom if ever

His flickering campfires still burn

Home, home on the range

Where the deer and the antelope play

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

And the skies are not cloudy all day

1. Do you think the settlement of this region had a more positive effect or a more negative effect on the person or people who wrote this song? How can you tell?

2. Do you think the settlement of this region had the same effect on all the different groups of people who lived there? Why or why not?

Was Roy Rogers, 'King of the Cowboys,' from the West? Does Ohio have a State song?

Here is a picture of my Grammy Ulrey, Roy Rogers, and his famous horse Trigger circa 1943.
Giddy Up!

Reconstruction: Success or Failure?

During the 1870s, more than a dozen African American men, many of whom had been born into slavery, were elected to the U.S. Congress. It was a triumph of our founding ideals of equality, justice, and the pursuit of happiness!

It was a period that ended all too quickly.

When neither candidate in the 1876 presidential election secured enough votes in the Electoral College to be declared winner, a deal was struck. Southern Democrats agreed to back Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes; in exchange, the federal troops who had protected black voters were withdrawn from the South. Just a few years later, the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Bill of 1875. Black voting rights were gradually stripped away, and black representation in Congress faded.

Reconstruction was over, and the Jim Crow era of segregation began.

1) What were the ultimate results of Reconstruction? Do you think it was successful?

2) In what ways were freed people better off?

3) In what ways weren't they?

4) How did the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment advance rights for African Americans?

5) How did Jim Crow and Black Codes reverse them?

Gone With the Wind

Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It tells a story of the American Civil War and Reconstruction era from a white Southern point of view.

The film received ten Academy Awards (eight competitive, two honorary), a record that stood for 20 years.

1) What does the title of the film mean?

2) What challenges did the South face following the Civil War?

3) How would the South rebuild?

4) Was Reconstruction a success or failure?

5) Why is the film controversial today?

Want to watch the rest of the movie?

Plessy vs. Ferguson

Sure you've heard of Homer Simpson;  but who was Homer Plessy?

What were Jim Crow Laws and why was this man not allowed to sit in a 'whites only' railroad car?

This video is about the history of civil rights and Plessy v. Ferguson from 1896. The 14th Amendment is examined as is the case.

How did railcar attendants know Plessy was black?

What was the precedent of 'Separate but Equal?'

With Malice Toward None....

How could a nation torn apart by civil war put itself back together? That was the question facing all Americans in 1865. In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln spoke of healing the wounds on both sides of the conflict:

With malice [hatred] toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

—Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 1865

Reconstruction

Have you ever broken something and tried to put back together again? Was it the same as before? After the North defeated the South in the Civil War, politicians faced the task of putting the divided country back together. There was great debate about how severely the former Confederate states should be punished for leaving the Union. With the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865, it was up to President Andrew Johnson to try to reunite former enemies.

Can you help him re-assemble the pieces?

What does the finished image look like? What can it teach us about Reconstruction?

Reconstruction and 1876: Crash Course US History #22

EXPOSED: Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Cabin

Abraham Lincoln was born in the cabin he built with his own two hands.

Is Fact sometimes stranger than Fiction?

What is the "naughty little secret" at the heart of "good history?"

In Lies Across America, James W. Loewen continues his mission, begun in the award-winning Lies My Teacher Told Me, of overturning the myths and misinformation that too often pass for American history. This is a one-of-a-kind examination of historic sites all over the country where history is literally written on the landscape, including historical markers, monuments, historic houses, forts, and ships.

What do our local historic markers choose to commemorate?

What stories do we wish they'd forget?

The Truth About Abraham Lincoln

"History remembers the battle but forgets the blood."

Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call "Milk Sickness."

"My baby boy..." she whispers before dying.

Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.

When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, "henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose..." Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.

While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.

Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.

Ten score and three years ago, a man was sent to Earth to destroy slavery, unite a broken country and vanquish vicious vampires.

Abraham Lincoln was not only our 16th president, but he was also on a lifelong mission to destroy these undead, blood sucking devils.

But the vampires that the Great Emancipator sets out to destroy are not your teenage sister's sparkly, lovesick, whining vampires.

Early in his life, Lincoln discovered that vampires have been a part of American history since the first European settler hopped off a boat and that the slave trade keeps vampires under control for food.

Lincoln then made a vow: "I hereby resolve to kill every vampire in America."

The future president tried to do just that. He drives stakes into a few of the vampires here. He cuts some of their heads off there. He even lights a few on fire. Up and down the Mississippi, he chops through the undead like he's clearing a forest for some creepy railroad.

At least that's the picture painted by Seth Grahame-Smith in his novel "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."  The book became a best seller and a blockbuster movie in part because it is an interesting cross between fact and fiction.  

But the sad truth is that what most of us know about American History comes from Hollywood.

1) Is Seth Grahame-Smith’s book a Primary or Secondary source?

2) What about the Journal his work is based on? Primary or Secondary?

3) How much of this work is fact?  Fiction?

4) What proof do we have? What proof do we need? Is it credible?

5) Why did we really fight the Civil War?  What was the outcome?

Bill of Rights

Ask Americans what the Constitution’s most important feature is and most will say it’s the guarantees of liberty enshrined in the Bill of Rights. In this episode, Sagal explores the history of the Bill of Rights and addresses several stories — ripped from the headlines — involving freedom of speech, freedom of religion and right to privacy.

4) How is the 'Bill of Rights' so important and unique?

5) Should there be limits to our freedoms? Explain your answer with examples from the video.

Creating the Constitution

Following the Revolutionary War most Americans did not want to return to rule by a monarch, but they did need an effective government. The challenge was deciding how that governtment should be structured.

What was it like in the room where it happened?

Learn more about the Constitution, the compromises, and it's ratification.

The Constitutional Convention opened on May 25, 1787. Delegates from every state but Rhode Island gathered in the room where the Declaration of Independence had been signed 11 years before. Although Congress had instructed them to revise and not replace the Articles of Confederation, many delegates were already convinced that a new constitution was needed. Through months of debate the delegates would work out this plan of government and then set it forth in a document called the Constitution of the United States. 

Imagine you are a delegate to the Convention. Read Chapter 6 Section 4 and then answer these questions on your paper, providing at least 3 reasons from the reading that support your answer:

1) Should we ratify the Constitution? Why/not?

2)What is the proper role of the National Government? 

3)  Would you have been a Federalist or Anti-Federalist? Why? 

What Comes Next? - Hamilton

 

 Preamble Song:  "We the people... In order to form a more perfect Union..."

What are the founding ideals of America found in these documents?

Northwest Ordinance

Declaration of Independence

Articles of Confederation

US Constitution 
Bill of Rights

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