Dorothea Dix: Making Asylums More Sane

"Familiarity with suffering, it is said, blunts the sensibilities, and where neglect once finds a footing, other injuries are multiplied. this is not all, for it may justly and strongly be added that, from the deficiency of adequate means to meet the wants of these cases, it has been an absolute impossibility to do justice to this matter. Prisons are not constructed in view of being converted into county hospitals, and almshouses are not founded as receptacles for the insane. And yet, in the face of justice and common sense, wardens are by law compelled to receive, and the masters of almshouses not to refuse, insane and idiotic subjects in all stages of mental disease and privation."

The author of this speech is Dorothea Dix, who was presenting the conditions that she witnessed inside the mental asylums and jails of Massachussetts. Her position on the reform was that she fully believed in it, and believed that prisons and asylums must be separated, and the quality of the asylums must get better. In her speech, she was trying to get the Massachussetts Legislature to agree with her point of view and help to create better quality asylums. This source is very trustworthy because it is a speech that the leader of the movement made. The document does not give a complete picture of the event because it shows Dorothea's side, but does not show how the legislature reacted to her. Dorothea is trying to persuade the legislature to make the asylums better and more safe, and uses examples of the horrible conditions they are currently in to do so. 

American History, s.v. "Dorothea Dix: Report on the Insane (1843)," accessed January 19, 2015. http://americanhistory.abc-clio.com/.

Andrew Jackson- The Peoples President to what people?

Andrew Jackson was the 7th president of the United States, and is known today as "the people's president". Some of his most prominent actions were his work in the bank war, his Indian removal and his use of the soils system. Although he is referred to as the people's president, I personally believe that the majority of his presidential actions were detrimental towards the common man. The essential question for this lesson was: "Is Andrew Jackson's long-standing reputation as "the people's president" deserved? Why? Why not?" I believe that as a whole Jackson does not deserve this reputation, because although he tried to help the people in some cases, he didn't listen to the people. In class, we learned this information by splitting into groups and each going more in depth on a topic, and then doing a presentation on it. My group did a PowerPoint on the Topic of the spoils system.

Jackson believed that the banks had too much power, and because of this power they controlled the economy. When congress voted to renew the bank, Jackson vetoed the law. Some people believed that his veto was putting the people's liberty in danger, but Jackson believed that the banks as they were allowed people who weren't not elected to run the economy. The bank was supporting corporations, which Jackson did not agree with because he thought that they could grow too large, but consumers supported corporations because they thought that they could help the economy. Jacksons intentions with the bank war were good, and he was trying to do what was right for the people. Although not everyone agreed with the way that Jackson was trying to help them, I do believe that this issue shows that Jackson was the people's president. He did what he thought was best with the people's interest in mind.

The next issue of Jacksons presidency was the Indian Removal. In order for more settlers to come to America, he forced Indian tribes to leave their lands against their will and move to the west. This occured during the "Trail of Tears" in 1838. The Indians did not support moving, and wanted to stay in the land of their fathers rather than moving to unknown land. When the Indians were forced to move, thousands died because of the harsh conditions and they were forced to keep moving instead of doing their death rituals. I believe that the issue shows how Andrew Jackson was only "the people's president" to a select few. The Indians had fought for the US in many wars and instead of thanking them for their help Jackson treated them inhumanly, and forced over 100,000 Indians to move against their will.

The last issue that Jackson dealt with was the spoils system. A spoil system is when a political party or leader gives jobs to his supporters after he has won and election. After Jackson won, people who did not support him lost their jobs and were replaced by his supporters, regardless of their skill in the field. The goverment was negatively affected because of this. Jackson decided to give the job of handling the port of New York to Van Buren, a known criminal, and did not listen to people's thoughts against this. Van Burnen ended up leaving the port with over 1 million dollars. I believe that this shows how biased Andrew Jackson was, and he ended up damaging the effectiveness of the goverment in order to give his supporters jobs. He may be viewed as the people's president in his supporters eyes, but for all other citizens he was clearly biased and made decisions without considering how they would effect others.

Democracy in Early 1800 America!

In class, we created posters that depicted how democracy was during the 1800s in America. We based the posters off of our essential question for this lesson, which was: How should we define democracy? How democratic was the United States during the early 1800s? To find out the answers to these questions, we looked at a painting of an election. A flaw that this picture shows is that there was no way to  tell if someone had voted more than once, so they had to take someone's word if they had voted before. Instead of privately casting your vote, you would yell it out and everyone would know who you voted for. Besides black men,men from all walksof life had the ability to vote and no vote counts more because of that persons role in society. The next set of sources that we analyzed were voting charts. It showed how certain requirements for voting changed over time. In 1790, 10 states required that you owned property, but by 1855 barely any states had this requirement. During the same time period, over 20 states joined the union. Something else that changed drastically during this time period is how presidents were elected. In 1816, all states elected their presidents by their legislature, but in 1836, all states except South Carolina elected their president by the people. This shows how the United States were becoming more democratic and giving more people a say in their goverment, instead of just the people in charge. The last reference that we looked at was on the Dorr war, run by Thomas Dorr. He recognized some of the unjust and outdated laws against voting and launched a campaign against them. An example of a law that didn't make sense was in Rhode Island, voting was restricted to men who owned land and their eldest son. Dorr formed a convention to make a new constitution without these laws, but was arrested for treason. Eventually, he was pardoned of this and a new constitution was made. It is clear to see in the early 1800s, democracy in America was full of flaws. But, over the course of only about 30 years, the countries in America began to change their ways to make things more fair for their citizens, and become and democracy that allowed people from all walks of life to vote. Although women and and blacks being aloud to vote was still a long way off, America moved in the right direction during this time period. 

My groups poster on Democracy

Powerful People Threatened: The Congress of Vienna

The congress of Vienna was held to resolve the problems that were currently taking over Europe. All of the countries were concerned by Napoleon, who was threatening to take over nearly all of Europe. The decisions made during the Congress of Vienna were to protect the nations and the people in power. The essential question for this lesson was "What should people in power do when their power is threatened?" To understand what exactly the people in power did to defend themselves, we went deeper into who made up the congress of Vienna and what decisions they made. From watching a video, we learned who Klemens von Metternich was, and his role in the congress of Vienna, as well as his relationship with Napoleon.  We then looked at three problems that Metternich had to face during the congress, and predict what he chose to do, based on the ideologies that Metternich believed in. We then learned what his decision actually was, and why he chose this decision. Finally, we saw the impacts that the Congress of Vienna had on Europe as a whole.


One problem that was handled at the congress of Vienna how to avoid future revolutions from happening. The solution was to set up a system of alliance, called the holy alliance. The Holy Alliance, created by the Russian Czar Alexander said that monarchs have a divine right to rule. It was made up of the four largest powers in Europe, Great Britian, Russia, Prussia and Austria, and gave these powers the right to send their own troops into another country to stop a revolution and restore a monarchy. An example of the Holy Alliance in action is when, in 1820, there was an uprising in Italy and the Austrian army came in and crushed it. The Holy Alliance impacted Europe by successfully crushing revolutions that happened and keeping monarchs in power. The Congress of Vienna as a whole had a very large impact on Europe. Although the reason the Congress was necessary was because of Frances leader, Napoleon, France was not viewed as the enemy, and therefore not punished for Napoleons wrong doings. Napoleon, and Napoleon alone, was punished for what he had done on behalf of his country.With that being said, artwork that was stolen during Napoleons conquest was required to be returned and France was required to pay fines for this.




The Congress of Vienna, in conclusion, was fairly successful, because until 1853 (38 years!) there were no wars between the 5 major military powers of Europe. Personally, I agree with the decisions that the people in power at the Congress of Vienna made, although I do think that they went to somewhat of an extreme to make sure that they would not be harmed, when the people might have benefited more if they focused more on how it would affect all of the people in Europe, and not just the ones in power. I think that the congress's decision to not blame France for what Napoleon did was the most admirable and just decision that was made during the congress. I believe that the congress handled that situation very well, and managed not to blame innocent people, which is something that powerful people sometimes do when trying to preserve their own power. In history, it should be noted that a lot of the time powerful people risk the lives of their people for their own gain, but I believe that the congress of Vienna is a good example of how powerful people can keep their power while still caring for their people.

Klemens von Metternich

the Austrian host of the Congress of Vienna

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Graf_Clemens_Metternich.jpg

Latin American Revolutions: Mexico, Brazil and Gran Colombia

Recently I learned about the Latin American revolutions that occurred in the 1800s, after the successful Haitian revolution. The essential question for this lesson is "Why is it essential to acknowledge human value regardless of race? How are the events in the Latin American Revolutions evidence of this social imperative?" This question is important to think about because many times in the worlds history people have been discriminated against because of their ethnicity and not given equal opportunities in life as those whose differences are only the color of their skin. In class, we separated into groups and each group was given a specific revolution to research more in depth, and my group was given the Mexican Revolution. To understand better how things were in Mexico at this time, we looked at the different ethnicity's that made up Mexico, and created a pie chart to show their populations. By reading about the revolution, we created a timeline of what happened.

This is my groups timeline of the events that happened during the Mexican Revolution:

January 1811 - Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla got captured, and executed.
1820 - Liberals took power in Spain and new government promised reforms.
Early 1821 - Agustin de Iturbine, leader of royal forces, negotiated plan of Iguala with Vicente Guerro.
August 24th 1821 - Spanish Viceroy Juan de O'Donoju signed Treaty of Córdoba.
1822 - No Bourbon monarch to rule Mexico, Iturbine made Emperor 

1823 - leaders Santa Anna and Guaralope Victoria deposed Iturbide and set up republic.

The way that the people of Mexico went about their revolution is very different than the revolutions that happened in Gran Columbia and Brazil. Something that the people chose to do differently was how they fought during the revolution. The Brazilian revolution was completely peaceful, but both the Gran Colombian and Mexican revolutions had violence involved. Another difference is all three revolutions were led by different people. The leader of the Mexican revolution was miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the leader in of the Brazilian revolution was Pedro, and the leader of the revolution in Gran Columbia was Simon Bolivar. A similarity of these revolutions is that they were  all fought in order to receive independence. Also, all of these revolutions occurred in the same time period, in the early 1800s. Another similarity between these revolutions is that they were all fought for independence.

Even though these revolutions took different approaches, all three were similar because race was an issue. The leader of the Brazilian revolution, Pedro, used race against his people, only allowing Portuguese born people and Peninsulars into his cabinet. Because of this, his people begin to like him less. In the Gran Columbian revolution, the leader, Simon Bolivar, brought races together by having them all fight in the army. The goal of his revolution was to end the racial segregation that was created by the current Spanish caste system. Lastly, race played a large role in the Mexican revolution. The leader, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla wanted restore racial equality by ending the Spanish rule over Mexico. All three leaders made race a large part of their revolutions and based their decisions on it, for equality or segregation.

Sometimes in today's world we forget what an immense role race once played on peoples everyday lives. In addition, we live in a place where racism is barely an issue, so we may not realize how some peoples lives are affected everyday by it. In the south, racism is still a work in progress, and unfortunately we are far from racial equality in all of America. Recently, race has been one of the biggest topics in the news, after the events that took place in Ferguson, Missouri. An unarmed black man was killed by a white cop, and the trial concluded that the cop was not guilty of murder. While this is an awful conclusion given the evidence, I believe that it shows how much we have improved as a nation. Not because of the decision, but how people reacted to it, maybe not in the most peaceful ways, but people expressed their dissatisfaction for this racial inequality, something that decades ago would never have happened. I still believe that we, as a country, need a lot of work until racial equality can be a reality. I think that it is important to look at the issue of race in our lives, because innocent people are still being affected by this, and it is not fair. If we ignore the issue, then it will not get any better and more innocent people will have to suffer. Although I believe that each day our country is getting closer to racial equality, and it is nowhere near as extreme and cruel as it used to be, it is still a topic that needs to be addressed and something that must be worked on.

 

                                                    Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Leader of the Mexican Revolution        http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Miguel_Hidalgo_y_Costilla.png

How Should We Remember Toussaint Louverture?

         A great leader is required to have many impressive qualities to be considered great. Abraham Lincoln is remembered for countless qualities that helped him to lead America in the best way possible. One of his more prominent achievements is that liberated the slaves from the southern parts of the United States. A leader whose achievement parallels that of Abraham Lincoln is Toussaint Louverture. Louverture was the ruler of Saint Domingue, but his more impressive accomplishments are what he did for his country as ruler, and even before. He, with the help of his army, was crucial in the liberating of the slaves that took up far more than the majority of the population of Saint Dominuge. He also proved to be an extraordinary military commander, and, although harsh, did an incredible job. Toussaint Louverture should be remembered, not only as the leader of Saint Domingue, but more importantly for his liberation of the slaves and his work as military commander.
              Tousaint Louverture was born a slave, but was eventually given his freedom an and in 1790 he joined a slave revolt in the northern region of Saint Domingue, and in 1792 he was given the title of military commander. In 1794 he changed who he was fighting against. Previously, he had led his troops against the French, but when the french abolished slavery, he began to support them in hopes that it would end slavery in Saint Domingue. After the French revolution ended, Napoleon sent troops to Saint Domingue to reinstate slavery, and Louverture reacted to this by writing a letter to the French directory. In this letter he demanded that the people of Saint Domingure would not be re-enslaved, and if they would continue trying to enforce this, the people would not hesitate to react and fight back. A powerful line from his letter says "Could men who have once enjoyed the benefits of liberty look calmly while it was taken from them." This shows how strong his views were against slavery, and how far he was willing to go to protect his people from ever having to suffer through it again.
           Toussaint Louverture was a military genius that challenged the seemingly invincible Napoleon Bonaparte. Unfortunatley, some of the choices that he made caused the former slaves to distrust him. The entire economy of Saint Dominuge was based on its sugar plantations, which were responsible for 40% of the worlds coffee. The former slaves had worked on these plantations, and to keep the economy afloat, Louverture required that they continue to work at the plantations, this time for pay. In October 1801, rebels revolted against this requirement by massacring a lot of whites. Louverture reacted by forcing some of the rebels to kill themselves and having his nephew executed. Although this is cruel and extreme, it shows how tough Louverture was and how far he was willing to go to do what he believed was in the best interest for the people he was leading. Another example of his military instincts that benefitted his people was, when the French were coming to the city of Samana to re-enslave the people of Saint Domingue, Louverture and his troops burned the city down to prevent them from succeeding. When the French arrived in the city, "they found nothing but smoldering ruins, where once stood splendid cities." Louverture took risks others may have not, but in the end it is clear that he did what was best for his country.
             To have the power to free the slaves and command the military, Toussaint Louverture had to be the ruler of Saint Domingue. As leader he made decisions that created unhappy people, but he believed that they were necessary for the good of the country. An example of this is that he forced the former slaves to continue to work on the plantations they had worked at as slaves. The commission that created Saint Domingues constitution of 1801 was headed by Toussaint Louverture. In the constitution, it promised that all men are free, and plantations should be run as 'families'. His goal in doing this was to motivate his people to be supportive of keeping their positions, explaining the family dynamic as an ideal situation. Four months later, Toussaint Louverture creates a proclamation that goes back on his word. He explains in the proclamation how strict that the plantations should be run, and the extreme consequences for leaving. An example of his extreme views are when he says "as soon as a child can walk, he should be employed on the plantain according to his strength in some useful work…" This is excessive and extreme, and resembles the enslaved Saint Dominuge rather than the new one. Toussaint Louverture was a very important leader, but some of his decisions may not have been the best for his people, and because of this, his leadership of his country isn't as important as his role as liberator of slaves and military commander.
         Toussaint Louverture was an incredible man who should be remembered for his great achievements. Similar to Abraham Lincoln, he liberated the slaves of his country of Saint Dominigue, chaing 500,000 peoples lives for the better. He also commanded a military that held its own against Napoleon, who is believed to be the strongest military genius of all time. Lastly, he was the leader of Saint Domininigue, and although he was forced to make decisions that would not make his people happy, his toughness allowed his leadership skills to shine through. The country of Haiti, formally know as Saint Domingue would be nothing and would have achieved nothing with the fearless Toussaint Louverture.

Revolutions of 1830 and 1848: How successful were they?

For this lesson, the class was split into groups, and each group was given a revolution that for the most part occurred in 1830 or 1848. After doing the proper research for their revolution, each group made a survey monkey, a list of about 10 questions about their revolution for the others in the class to take so that they could learn about it. The essential question for this lesson was "Were the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 really failures  as many historians have concluded?" To help us answer this, we all made scale to measure how much of a failure/success a revolution was. With this, it was easier for us to see where each revolution fell on the scale. From the scale, we only concluded that one of the revolutions was a complete revolution. All other revolutions were either a partial failure or even more of a success.                                                                                                  

My groups revolution was the Deccemberist revolution of 1825. This revolution took place in 1825, and it was against the new Tsar, Tsar Nicholas. After the Tsar Alexanders death, most people assumed that Constantine, the older brother of Alexander I, would take the throne. Constantine did not have any interest in taking the crown, to the peoples dismay. Before Alexander died, the people planned to assassinated him, already unhappy with the government. When he died the hoped that Constantine would take the throne, because his ideals were the same as the people, an he would have run a government that the people would have wanted. Instead, Tsar Nicholas took the throne, someone who felt very strongly about the military, and did not want a democracy or to the people in lower social classes to have any say in the government, creating another horrible government situation for the people. The people wanted to overthrow Tsar Nicholas, put Constantine in the thrown, receive a constitution and stop the serfdom and poverty that was widely occurring in the nation. The revolt happened when the people revolting crowded around guards, and when told to halt by Nicholas they said that they were for Constantine. Hesitantly, Nicholas saw no other choice but to fire on his own people to stop the revolt from continuing. This was the end of the revolution, and since the people received nothing they wanted and were fired on by their leader, this would be considered a complete failure.


The next revolution that happened was the French revolution of 1830. After Louis XVIII died, his brother, Charles X took over the throne. He believed and absolutism, the thing that Louis XVIII was trying so hard to avoid. When he took the throne in 1824, he took away a lot of the peoples rights like limiting the right to vote and restricting the press. The liberals and radicals were not pleased by this, and used violence to get their message across, resulting in Charles X fleeing to England. After this, Louis Philippe became the citizen king, extending suffrage, which is something the french wanted, but only to the upper class, and because of this the bourgeoisie prospered, but the other people of France did not. This revolution would be, in my opinion, considered in the middle of the spectrum because the people did get some of the things the wanted, but other things, like suffrage, were only given to the upper class. France had another revolution again in 1848, just 18 years after the previous. In this revolution the people were upset that Louis Phillipe did not give them enough rights, so they took to the streets in protest. The government set up national workshops so the people of France had more opportunities for jobs, but in June these workshops were shut down being viewed as a waste of money. After the workshop closed a new constitution was created. The constitution gave voting right to all adult man, and created a one house legislature and a president. Louis Napoleon won this election, but soon he took over the title of emperor ending the republic, but still had a lot of support from the people. In my opinion, I view this revolution more as a success than as a failure because the people got things that they wanted, like being able to vote, and having a better economy, even if it was not all that they wanted. Another revolution was the Revolution of Hungarian Independence 1848. In this revolution,  the Austrian empire was ruled by Metternich when a revolt broke out, and when the people supported it Metternich fled. Other places in the empire began wanting freedom as well, and wanted an end to serfdom and a constitution. The government ended up agreeing with these reforms, but unfortunately Austrian troops regained control of Vienna and Prague, and rebels were put in prison executed or exiled. This revolution is closer to a failure than a success, but the people did receive what they were fighting for, if only for a short amount of time. I believe that the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were altogether more of a success than a failure. Even though none of the revolutions ended up getting everything they were fighting for, in most cases they received some things, and their countries in the future would possibly learn from what the people wanted in the past, so even if not at that time, someday the people fighting for revolutions may eventually receive it.