Buffalo Soldiers and Native Americans

In class the other day, we learned about the Buffalo soldiers in the American Civil War, and we created the following question about it to answer.  "Were federal policies towards Native Americans and buffalo soldiers intentionally discriminatory or well-intentioned?"  To answer this, we found multiple different examples that clearly add up to a discriminatory outcome.  Federal policies being discriminatory towards these minority groups had a hard hitting effect on the culture and way of life for the Native Americans.  As Americans took up westward expansion, they gave the tribes three choices; they could join American society and conform to it, they could be put on a small designated piece of land to live, or they could choose to fight back, which often resulted in their demise through the American's total war.  If Americans and their policies for dealing with Natives were aimed to help the Natives, they wouldn't have gone and slaughtered men women and children.  Native Americans often tried to negotiate with the U.S. Government to try to get an extension for their removal, but were ultimately turned down and forced off.  Another reason that federal policies were there to discriminate against people is because `many deals and agreements between the Natives and the Americans were broken, and while they were promised things such as some of their land to stay on it was often times only less than 10% of what it was before.  Though the Buffalo soldiers were given many more rights since they gained their freedom, they were still given lower jobs in the military compared to whites, and were forced to do the work that people normally didn't want to do such as telegraphing, mapping, and exterminating Natives.  All in all, federal policies employed by the government ended up discriminating both the Native Americans and the Buffalo Soldiers and created further tension between America and its cultural diversities.  

Buffalo Soldiers of the 25th Infantry Regiment, 1890

Rockefeller and Carnegie Post

In History class this week, we learned about two well known monopolistic leaders named Rockefeller and Carnegie who helped to shape the way that workers were treated.  The essential question we were told to answer was,"How did the actions of monopolistic leaders such as Rockefeller and Carnegie effect the common worker?"  The answer to this question can be found in events such as the Homestead Strike, as well as the actions and results of Rockefeller and Carnegie.

John D. Rockefeller was an entrepreneur who owned one of the largest oil companies called Standard Oil, and he helped to revolutionize the way workers were treated as his company employed thousands of people due to its sheer size.  Rockefeller and created jobs through his business, and this provided people with work, benefitting many. However, overtime Rockefeller developed his business into a monopoly, meaning that he was one of the largest or only businesses in that industry.  This gave him the power to treat his employees worse and worse, though he did give back to the community through philanthropy, which is the giving away of millions of dollars for the advancement of education, medicine, and the sciences in general. Rockefeller founded the General Education Board through this phlanthropy, and he did good for the people because he believed that God gave him the power to make money, so he wanted to use it for the good of others.

Andrew Carnegie, though also a philanthropist, ran into more complications between him and his workers. carnegie used strike breakers against his workers during a notorious strike known as the Homestead strike. Homestead was a steel mill built by Carnegie in 1881, and it was an industrial superpower in the steel industry, but workers of Carnegie went on strike. Carnegie used strike breakers to stop the strike and get the mills up and running again, breaking a promise he made with the workers. Carnegie also had plans to destroy the workers union within his business, and a partner of his used pinkertons to stop the strike, which were basically members of a private military. Carnegie believed that giving back to the community was important, so he gave money to schools, particularly black schools. Both John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie helped to bring about a new age of industry, and with this revolution came unionization and rights for workers, along with better school systems for the general public.

Civil War Battle Scavenger Hunt

The next unit we learned about in the Civil War were the major battles that shaped the future of the war. The essential question from class was, "Who were the ultimate victor In each of the following theaters; East, West, and Naval?" In order to learn about each of these battles, each person from class learned about one battle on their own and created a google doc that gave a summary of the battle which included information such as the theater, the victor, and why the victor won, as well as a hint to where the next QR code could be found. Then each person created a QR code that linked classmates to their Google doc so classmates could get to it. To start off the scavenger hunt,we put up these QR codes around the school, and then everyone went looking for them

The second essential question  from class was,"Who was the ultimate victor" and, "Who won each of the theaters? The first theater we are going to look over is the Naval theater. The Union dominated the Confederacy in the Naval theater, and the reason for this was because the Union had a much larger navy than the Confederacy, and they were able to produce more ships as they had more ports and factories than the Confederacy. The Union forces that had about 16,000 men, while the Confederacy had about 3,000 men, and this huge difference in power caused the Union to dominate in the Naval theater.  In the Eastern theaters, the Confederacy was primarily dominant because they were able to constantly ambush the Union and, a majority of the time, had them outnumbered. An example of this Confederate domination in the Eastern theater was at the second battle of Bull Run when the Confederacy only lost about 8,350 while the Union lost about 13,830 troops;a significant difference. The last theater we learned about was the Western theater, which was owned dominated by the Union because they always outnumbered the Confederates. An example of this Western domination by the Union is in the battle of Vicksburg and the Chattanooga Campaign. Some commonalities I noticed that decided the victor was that the victor usually had a much larger fighting force and had less casualties, and that when the tides were even, the victor had a strategy or advantage to be used against the other.  Overall, the Union was primarily dominant in the Civil War, as they were victorious in 2 out of 3 theaters