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7th Grade Social Studies
Canada, Mexico, & U.S. History from the Revolution to Reconstruction
Class 133— Uncle Tom, Kansas-Nebraska, & Pottawatomie Massacre
March 30, 2015
Focus: Look at the photograph on page 486. Read the caption entitled “Bleeding Kansas” and answer the question.
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Student Objectives:
1. I will describe the impact of the following events on the growing rift between North and
South:
· Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
· The Kansas-Nebraska Act.
2. I will analyze the troubled life and Presidency of Franklin Pierce.
3. I will reenact John Brown’s role in the Pottawatomie Massacre.
Homework:
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 488-490 (due 4/1)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 491-492 (due 4/6)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 493-495 (due 4/7)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 496-497 (due 4/8)
-Chapter 15 Test Friday 4/10
Handouts:
Jane Pierce letter
I. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
A. Harriet Beecher Stowe
II. Kansas-Nebraska Act
III. President Franklin Pierce
IV. Pottawatomie Massacre
Key terms/ideas/ people/places:
Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin Kansas-Nebraska Act Stephen Douglas
Franklin Pierce Benny Pierce Jane Pierce Border Ruffians Beecher’s Bibles
John Brown Bleeding Kansas Pottawatomie Massacre
By the end of class today, I will be able to answer the following:
What was a Beecher’s Bible? How did they get that nickname?
Why did Douglas push for the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
Why was Kansas known as “Bleeding Kansas?”
Jane Pierce to her dead son Benjamin Pierce
My precious child - I must write to you, altho' you are never to see it or know it - How I long to see you and say something to you as if you were as you always have been (until these last three dreadful weeks) near me. Oh! How precious do those days now seem, my darling boy - and how I should have praised [sic] the days passed with you had I suspected they might be so short - Dear, dear child - I cannot bear to think of that agonizing [sic] time, when I had just seen you all alive to what was passing around and near me, but not near enough - oh had you but been within reach of your dear father - in a moment changed my dear boy bright form into a lifeless one insensible to your parents' agony - But you spirit yourself, my dear one - was not your redeeming savior ready to receive you? Your sweet little brother? Your dear Uncle Lawrence? - but you are beyond my knowledge at once - Ah, I trust in joy, but I would fain have kept you here - I know not how to go on without you - you were my comfort dear - far more than you thought. I was thinking how pleasantly we should go on together when we found ourselves at home again - and I would do everything to make you love me and have confidence in me and bring you along gently and sweetly - Oh! You were indeed "a part of mine and of your father's heart". When I have told you dear boy how much you depended on me, and felt that you could not do without me - I did not say too how much I depended on you and oh! My precious boy how gladly would I recall all that was unreasonable - or hasty - or mistaken in my conduct toward you. I see surely and I did frequently see afterward that I had wronged you - and would have gladly acknowledged it only that I feared it might weaken your confidence in me and perhaps on that account not be as well for you - and now I am at home again dear boy. Oh what anguish was mine on returning without you, and feeling that it must still be so, while I live - to see your little bed that you loved so much - and which I look at many times in the day, and at night feel as if I must see it shape [?] out again and the clothes turned down for you - and unconsciously look in the morning for it and you - and listen for your bright cheerful voice your blithe "good morrow" - and oh! to look around and see your books and everything so connected with you - your dear self - and now on this Sabbath which you loved so much as you said often how I have marked for you each hour with its wonted occupation - and oh to think of you kneeling by me at our evening prayer tonight, dear child - has not the Savior made you His as we so often asked. But now I must kneel alone and beg for strength and support under this crushing sorrow, that the blessed Savior would comfort the heart of your pain stricken Mother - and help me better to bear the burden of your loss which has brought desolation such as I have never (with all my former griefs) known.
Dear precious boy! I have passed through the bitter time of leaving our home, and without my child, my own dear Benny. How did I think of you - dear - in every moment - of all your little parting notes and the many good-byes - and again the ride in those rail cars agonizing to my soul - we went in to the same little saloon as when we went down to Andover the last time - we three then, now only two - but we seemed to see you as when there before - and now we are in Boston, still without ,you, but I fancying what I should do and what I should say to you - continually, and now we must "journey on e'en when grief is sorest" with the whole head sick and the whole heart faint. I will "look to Jesus" (how often I have directed you to him my precious one) and sought his blessing for you and myself - but my son, my dear son, how much I feel my own faults in regard to you - I know that I did not take the right way and should have dealt with you very gently often when I judged hastily and spoke harshly. I can see that I was "unreasonable" and sometimes almost wonder that you loved me at all. God help me now to correct in bitterness my errors when oh! It is too late for you to have the sweet benefit of it - and now this Sabbath evening you will come in fancy before me and I sit close by you, with your hand in mine perhaps, or you will lean against me on the sofa, or as sometimes you did on Sunday evening sit on my lap a little while and we talk together and say hymns and then play and then by and by you go to bed first putting your arms around me and laying your dear head on my shoulder and then you get in your bed and we have our Sabbath night kiss - but to think I can never have another - Oh Benny, I have not valued such a sweet blessing as I ought.
Notes
Class 133— Uncle Tom, Kansas-Nebraska, & Pottawatomie Massacre
March 30, 2015
Harriet Beecher Stowe:
· Might have been able to sway public opinion in European countries
· The book encouraged abolitionists, but enraged Southern slave-owners.
· When Mr. Lincoln first met her, he said, “So, this is the little lady who started the war!”
· She was an abolitionist.
· She had visited plantations in Kentucky.
· She published a novel in March of 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, to highlight the cruelty of slavery. The book featured a wicked overseer, a kindly slave named Uncle Tom, and the injustice he endured. “She made vivid the plight of the slave as a human being held in bondage.”
Kansas-Nebraska Act:
· Kansas and Nebraska need a government so the RR could travel through
o Douglas wants a Trans-Continental RR-wants it to run through Chicago
· Kansas would enter the Union after addressing the slavery issue through popular sovereignty
· The Nebraska Territory would be further subdivided into smaller territories (such as the Dakotas).
· The Compromise of 1820 was repealed. Slavery could exist in the territories.
· Popular sovereignty would prevail. What does that mean?
· Supported by Franklin Pierce (D)
o Will not get nominated for a second term
o Truly viewed as a poor President and one who leaves the country in a mess
o Pro slavery
o Talks of expansion-Cuba, South America (keep Britain out) northerners view this as the expansion of slavery
o Alcoholic
Bleeding Kansas:
· Popular Sovereignty would determine the slave question
o Boarder Ruffians from MO would commit voter fraud. They would say they had the right to vote because they had their wash done in Kansas or buy land for their child who was nine and say he could vote. They also used force to get to the poles.
§ Armed with rifles, Bowie knives, revolvers, and wooden clubs
§ Wore no uniforms and had no officers
o There were 2,900 people able to vote in Kansas, 6,300 votes were cast-pro-slavery forces didn’t have to cheat to win, they outnumbered the free-soilers anyways
· How did the proslavery forces attempt to silence Free Soil voices?
o Legalized slavery, capital offense to assist runaway slave
o Militant organizations form
· Kansas now had two governments-slave and free. Pierce (D) and the Senate (D) recognized the slave government and the House recognized the free-soiler- whole nation is now divided. In essence-the war starts six years before Sumter.
· Sack of the town of Lawrence
· Pottawatomie Massacre
o John Brown and several other anti-slavery members kill and hack-up pro-slavery citizens
· Brown and his sons pass out “Beecher’s Bibles” (i.e., guns-Named for the abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher-Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother) to anti-slavery forces-Sharps rifles were shipped in crates marked bibles, medicine etc.
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7th Grade Social Studies
Canada, Mexico, & U.S. History from the Revolution to Reconstruction
Class 134— Brooks Canes Sumner
March 31, 2015
Focus: Based on the honor system duels can only take place between what kinds of people? How does honor relate to the Brooks-Sumner affair?
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Student Objectives:
1. I will analyze how the Brooks-Sumner affair portrays the intense sectional differences that were dividing the country in the 1850s.
Homework:
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 488-490 (due 4/1)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 3 pgs. 491-492 (due 4/6)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 493-495 (due 4/7)
-Read and outline Chapter 15, Section 4 pgs. 496-497 (due 4/8)
-Chapter 15 Test Friday 4/10
Handouts:
Crime Against Kansas Speech-Charles Sumner
I. Brooks VS. Sumner
Key terms/ideas/ people/places:
Andrew P. Butler Preston Brooks Charles Sumner Lawrence Keit
John J. Crittenden Ambrose S. Murray Honor Edwin B. Morgan
By the end of class today, I will be able to answer the following:
Why did Brooks not duel Sumner?
Why did Brooks beat Sumner?
How did this event increase sectional tension between the North and South?
The Crime Against Kansas: The Apologies for the Crime; The True Remedy
Delivered to the United States Senate, 19-20 May 1856
by
Hon. Charles Sumner
The wickedness which I now begin to expose is immeasurably aggravated by the motive which prompted it. Not in any common lust for power did this uncommon tragedy have its origin. It is the rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of Slavery; and it may be clearly traced to a depraved desire for a new Slave State, hideous offspring of such a crime, in the hope of adding to the power of Slavery in the National Government. Yes, Sir, when the whole world, alike Christian and Turk, is rising up to condemn this wrong, making it a hissing to the nations, here in our Republic, force -- ay, Sir, FORCE -- is openly employed in compelling Kansas to this pollution, and all for the sake of political power. There is the simple fact, which you will vainly attempt to deny, but which in itself presents an essential wickedness that makes other public crimes seem like public virtues.
This enormity, vast beyond comparison, swells to dimensions of crime which the imagination toils in vain to grasp, when it is understood that for this purpose are hazarded the horrors of intestine feud, not only in this distant Territory, but everywhere throughout the country. The muster has begun. The strife is no longer local, but national. Even now, while I speak, portents lower in the horizon, threatening to darken the land, which already palpitates with the mutterings of civil war....
Before entering upon the argument, I must say something of a general character, particularly in response to what has fallen from Senators who have raised themselves to eminence on this floor in championship of human wrong: I mean the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler] and the Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas], who, though unlike as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza[1], yet, like this couple, sally forth together in the same adventure. I regret much to miss the elder Senator from his seat; but the cause against which he has run a tilt, with such ebullition of animosity, demands that the opportunity of exposing him should not be lost; and it is for the cause that I speak. The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him, -- though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight: I mean the harlot Slavery. For her his tongue is always profuse in words. Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition be made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this Senator. The frenzy of Don Quixote in behalf of his wench Dulcinea del Toboso is all surpassed. The asserted rights of Slavery, which shock equality of all kinds, are cloaked by a fantastic claim of equality. If the Slave States cannot enjoy what, in mockery of the great fathers of the Republic, he misnames Equality under the Constitution, -- in other words, the full power in the National Territories to compel fellow-men to unpaid toil, to separate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the auction-block, -- then, Sir, the chivalric Senator will conduct the State of South Carolina out of the Union! Heroic knight! Exalted Senator! A second Moses come for a second exodus!