26 Oct
Version by Yo-Yo Ma and Allison Krauss. Because… it’s Yo-Yo Ma and Allison Krauss, y’all, and you should not live your life without hearing this. Wow.
Then here is the version arranged by Aaron Copland in his Appalachian Spring, which is just fantastic. What images are evoked when you listen to this?
26 Oct
Transcendentalism
http://transcendentalism.tamu.edu/— This is your own-stop shop for everything about transcendentalism
Utopianism
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/amana/utopia.htm
http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/utopo-amer.html
http://www.ushistory.org/us/26b.asp
25 Oct
From the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in NYC:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/shak/hd_shak.htm
24 Oct
Chapter 16 Questions
Remember to answer in your own handwriting, in your own words, and fully and completely.
1. What were the specific consequences of the invention of the cotton gin? How did the growth of cotton – the “Cotton Kingdom” lead to the further retrenchment of an aristocratic class in the South? What were the characteristics of this aristocracy?
2. How did the development of the monopolistic plantation system weaken the Southern economy (AND southern society) overall? What was the impact on the soil? In what ways was cotton important economically to both the North and the South?
3. Explain the quote by Emerson on p. 377. What was the intent of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and who wrote it? What was the main theme of Uncle Tom’s cabin—a thing that slaves feared the most?
4. What were the specific impacts of the Cotton Kingdom on the American economy? How did it influence immigration patterns?
5. What were most Southern farmers like, and how did they live? What proportion of the Southern population was slaves, and where did most of them live? Explain how slave ownership was distributed through the population of the South, and why. How did the “mountain whites” feel about slavery, and where were they from?
6. Was slavery always a lifelong condition? Explain. Where was slave conditions the worst, and why?
7. How did Northerners generally feel about free African Americans living among them? Where were free blacks most likely to be? Why does your book call them the “third race?” Where did mixed-race people fit in?
8. How did the jobs slaves were given to do reflect their value? How were slaves motivated to work harder? What exactly were the legal rights that slaves had—or more appropriately, lacked—in the 19th century?
9. What were slave families like? What were slaves’ greatest fear? What was the greatest fear of slaveowners?
10. How did slaves resist the demands and expectations of the slave system? How successful were slave rebellions? What happened aboard the Amistad?
11. How did slaveowners justify their domination of slaves from a philosophical standpoint? How was acceptance of slavery changing throughout the Western world at this time?
12. Create a chart comparing and contrasting the American Colonization Society, the American Anti-Slavery Society, and the Liberty party.
13. Create a chart comparing and contrasting the major abolitionists mentioned in this chapter, including names of their publications. Who was the most and least radical?
14. What happened to abolitionists in the South? When did their movement become practically extinct? How did the abolition movement change after 1830?
15. What specific claims did Ulrich B. Phillips make about slaves in the Varying Viewpoints section?
23 Oct
From our discussion today about patents, trademarks, and copyright, I give you some more coolness: http://twistedsifter.com/2011/08/20-clever-logos-with-hidden-symbolism/
23 Oct
What is satire? What are the uses for satire? What point is Swift trying to make?
Go to this link: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html
22 Oct
In her autobiography, Harriet Hanson Robinson, the wife of a newspaper editor, provided an account of her earlier life as female factory worker (from the age of ten in 1834 to 1848) in the textile Mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. Her account explains some of the family dynamics involved, and lets us see the women as active participants in their own lives – for instance in their strike of 1836.
Questions for Understanding
As you read, consider the following questions:
1. How were women’s economic lives limited in Massachusetts at this time? Be specific.
2. Why did the girls strike? What impact did this have?
In what follows, I shall confine myself to a description of factory life in Lowell, Massachusetts, from 1832 to 1848, since, with that phase of Early Factory Labor in New England, I am the most familiar-because I was a part of it.
In 1832, Lowell was little more than a factory village. Five “corporations” were started, and the cotton mills belonging to them were building. Help was in great demand and stories were told all over the country of the new factory place, and the high wages that were offered to all classes of work-people; stories that reached the ears of mechanics’ and farmers’ sons and gave new life to lonely and dependent women in distant towns and farm-houses …. Troops of young girls came from different parts of New England, and from Canada, and men were employed to collect them at so much a head, and deliver them at the factories.
At the time the Lowell cotton mills were started the caste of the factory girl was the lowest among the employments of women. In England and in France, particularly, great injustice had been done to her real character. She was represented as subjected to influences that must destroy her purity and self-respect. In the eyes of her overseer she was but a brute, a slave, to be beaten, pinched and pushed about. It was to overcome this prejudice that such high wages had been offered to women that they might be induced to become mill-girls, in spite of the opprobrium that still clung to this degrading occupation….
The early mill-girls were of different ages. Some were not over ten years old; a few were in middle life, but the majority were between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. The very young girls were called “doffers.” They “doffed,” or took off, the full bobbins from the spinning-frames, and replaced them with empty ones. These mites worked about fifteen minutes every hour and the rest of the time was their own. When the overseer was kind they were allowed to read, knit, or go outside the mill-yard to play. They were paid two dollars a week. The working hours of all the girls extended from five o’clock in the morning until seven in the evening, with one half-hour each, for breakfast and dinner. Even the doffers were forced to be on duty nearly fourteen hours a day. This was the greatest hardship in the lives of these children. Several years later a ten-hour law was passed, but not until long after some of these little doffers were old enough to appear before the legislative committee on the subject, and plead, by their presence, for a reduction of the hours of labor.
Those of the mill-girls who had homes generally worked from eight to ten months in the year; the rest of the time was spent with parents or friends. A few taught school during the summer months. Their life in the factory was made pleasant to them. In those days there was no need of advocating the doctrine of the proper relation between employer and employed. Help was too valuable to be ill-treated….
The most prevailing incentive to labor was to secure the means of education for some male member of the family. To make a gentleman of a brother or a son, to give him a college education, was the dominant thought in the minds of a great many of the better class of mill-girls. I have known more than one to give every cent of her wages, month after month, to her brother, that he might get the education necessary to enter some profession. I have known a mother to work years in this way for her boy. I have known women to educate young men by their earnings, who were not sons or relatives. There are many men now living who were helped to an education by the wages of the early mill-girls.
It is well to digress here a little, and speak of the influence the possession of money had on the characters of some of these women. We can hardly realize what a change the cotton factory made in the status of the working women. Hitherto woman had always been a money saving rather than a money earning, member of the community. Her labor could command but small return. If she worked out as servant, or “help,” her wages were from 50 cents to $1.00 a week; or, if she went from house to house by the day to spin and weave, or do tailoress work, she could get but 75 cents a week and her meals. As teacher, her services were not in demand, and the arts, the professions, and even the trades and industries, were nearly all closed to her.
As late as 1840 there were only seven vocations outside the home into which the women of New England had entered. At this time woman had no property rights. A widow could be left without her share of her husband’s (or the family) property, an ” incumbrance” to his estate. A father could make his will without reference to his daughter’s share of the inheritance. He usually left her a home on the farm as long as she remained single. A woman was not supposed to be capable of spending her own, or of using other people’s money. In Massachusetts, before 1840, a woman could not, legally, be treasurer of her own sewing society, unless some man were responsible for her. The law took no cognizance of woman as a money-spender. She was a ward, an appendage, a relict. Thus it happened that if a woman did not choose to marry, or, when left a widow, to re-marry, she had no choice but to enter one of the few employments open to her, or to become a burden on the charity of some relative.
One of the first strikes that ever took place in this country was in Lowell in 1836. When it was announced that the wages were to be cut down, great indignation was felt, and it was decided to strike or “turn out” en masse. This was done. The mills were shut down, and the girls went from their several corporations in procession to the grove on Chapel Hill, and listened to incendiary speeches from some early labor reformers.
One of the girls stood on a pump and gave vent to the feelings of her companions in a neat speech, declaring that it was their duty to resist all attempts at cutting down the wages. This was the first time a woman had spoken in public in Lowell, and the event caused surprise and consternation among her audience.
It is hardly necessary to say that, so far as practical results are concerned, this strike did no good. The corporation would not come to terms. The girls were soon tired of holding out, and they went back to their work at the reduced rate of wages. The ill-success of this early attempt at resistance on the part of the wage element seems to have made a precedent for the issue of many succeeding strikes.
Harriet H. Robinson, “Early Factory Labor in New England,” in Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Fourteenth Annual Report (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1883), pp. 380-82, 387-88, 391-92.
Vocabulary for this post:
caste
opprobrium
mites
digress
Hitherto
incumbrance
en masse
grove
incendiary
consternation
21 Oct
Chapter 15 Questions
Remember to answer in your own handwriting, in your own words, and fully and completely.
1. What were the three revolutions that took place in America during the first half of the 19th century, according to your text? What were the characteristics of the “third revolution?”
2. Explain how American religious practices changed during this time period, including explanation of Deism and Unitarianism. How had common religious beliefs changed since the time of the Puritans, especially in terms of diversity?
3. What were the main causes and characteristics of the Second Great Awakening? How did revivalists such as Charles G. Finney influence American religious practice? How did the 2nd Great awakening reshape American religion? Which denominations gained the most membership, and how did class and region play an influence?
4. What were some uniquely American religions that began during this time period? Explain their main beliefs and founders? What link is there to the current presidential election? What did William Miller believe?
5. Why were Mormons often viewed with suspicion by their neighbors?
6. How was education impacted by the 2nd Great Awakening? How did a Webster make a difference? Consider both elementary and collegiate education. How were women impacted?
7. What is the difference between temperance and prohibition (look it up)? What factors led to drives to ban alcohol, and where and when were these drives successful? What organizations sought to limit alcohol consumption?
8. How and why were women involved in these reform movements, and how did their participation echo traditional women’s concerns? What did Dorothea Dix work to reform? In what two areas were women thought to be superior to men? What about rape laws in the US? What reform movement eclipsed the emphasis on women’s rights?
9. What were the main beliefs of the communal living movements? Make a chart outlining some of the main groups, their founders, and their characteristics. Were any of these groups successful? Explain. Which one was the weirdest in your opinion, and why?
10. What changes took place in American medicine during this time (including regarding mental health)? What scientific and philosophical achievements took place during this time?
11. What uniquely American artistic movements were there, and what were they trying to express? Who was the one influential southern writer? Why is Poe different than most of these other writers?
12. Explain the main writers and beliefs of the transcendentalist movement? Was it rationalist? Explain. What were the main points of “On Civil Disobedience” and “Self-Reliance”? What utopian movement was associated with transcendentalism?
13. How did the rising nationalism after 1812 affect American arts and letters (writers)?
17 Oct
Okay, kids in my 1st hour, your 11-13 Test will be over chapters 11-13, but the info about 13 is going to be very basic since you were taking the PSAT during class Wednesday. So I will ask you more simple recall questions from the text such as: After what battle did Texas gain independence? What was William Henry Harrison like? Why did the Anglos in Texas rebel against Mexican rule (Hint- slavery plays a role)? What was the “corrupt bargain?” etc. The terms for chapter 13 would probably be a big helper for study.
I WILL ask you about posts that I put up on the blog over chapters 11-13, though. So make sure you have read or watched them.
17 Oct
Because of the Morgan Affair of 1826, of course. Click and read, or paste into your browser:
http://www.clarioncall.com/gchits/morgan1.html
The thing about history is, sometimes people are just nuts.
The Scoop on History-APUSH and more 
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