Adam Berman

8/22/08

U.S. History #1

Natural Rights Pre-Read

Note Take / Note Make
Natural Rights / Why, at this point in history, is it important to study Natural Rights?
READING NOTES
"by discovering the laws of nature humanity could be improved" / How did Jefferson choose which Philosophers to base his writings off of?
Declaration of independence based upon the English Declaration of Rights / Some scholars believe that if everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then at some point, everyone will have their rights violated; that one persons life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness will get in the way of another person's.
Locke wrote that the inalienable rights are life, liberty, and property,nothappiness
revised: property referred to ownership of one's self, which included a right to personal well being
Jefferson uses "pursuit of happiness" which also includes freedom of opportunity as well as the duty to help those in want / if the purpose of government is to protect those rights, then the u.s. government, which is supposed to be the most freedom conscious in the world, has done a poor job at fulfilling its purpose
the purpose of government is to protect those rights of the people / If Jefferson concluded that slavery was wrong at an early age, then why did he own slaves and why did he settle for the 3/5th rule?
Locke allows for the overthrow of a government if the government persecutes people with a long train of abuses / Equality is not yet defined in areas such as sex discrimination and gay rights because, like Jefferson, we cannot find an easy way to do it even though we see that it is wrong. We shouldn't take 89 more years.
Locke's natural rights became the reason for revolution
Jefferson saw no easy way to end slavery, so he did nothing to stop it. Also, he was economically dependent on his slaves. Because he did nothing, slavery existed for another 89 years.
Equality is still not defined for affirmative action, sex discrimination, and gay rights
The Decleration of Independence has no explicit authority on U.S. Law, but has been used as the basis of many of our laws.

Adam Berman

9/9/08

U.S. History

The Industrial Revolution in America

  • Andrew Carnegie
  • Came from Scotland, very poor
  • Started as telegraph errand boy
  • Got a job with the railroads, worked his way up
  • Started his own company making steel
  • Became a monopolist, controlled the steel industry
  • Owned 40% of the steel in America
  • Gave away all of his money, didn't give it to his children
  • Believed everyone in America should start poor
  • Built Carnegie Libraries (several thousand) in return for the town keeping the libraries up
  • Homestead strike, his workers striked, he sent in thugs and then the police arrested the workers
  • Early Industrial
  • Market revolution
  • Beginning in New England
  • Transportation and Resources
  • EerieCanal connected middle of U.S. with the East
  • Railroad as cheap and only took 2 days
  • Coal and Oil (found in PA)
  • Manufacturing
  • Heavy Industry
  • Railroads, skyscrapers
  • needed steel
  • Inventions
  • phone
  • light bulb
  • cities are lit up at night
  • people can work longer
  • more advances over all
  • refrigerated railroad car
  • variety of food
  • food didn't have to be grown close to cities
  • increased health
  • increased height
  • Markets
  • National Markets: you can sell your stuff anywhere in the country
  • Supply becomes much cheaper, demand explodes
  • National Business (Sears, Macy's, etc.)
  • Consumerism: assembly line, people get paid in cash and have to go buy everything
  • advertising becomes a major factor
  • Big Business
  • The economy of scale: the more you produce of something the cheaper it is to produce it
  • Manager
  • New class between the owners and workers, the management class
  • Live in nicer areas, middle class neighborhoods
  • Mergers
  • No rules in business
  • freedom was complete
  • bigger businesses could buy smaller businesses or run the others out of businesses
  • Social Aspects
  • Social Darwinism
  • Rich people are better equipped, make more money, are better people
  • Meritocracy = you will rise to your skill limit
  • nobless oblige = rich people should help out poor people, but it should be their choice

Adam Berman

8/26/08

History #1

Important Times in U.S. History

1774 Beginning of fighting at Lexington and Concord

1776 Declaration of Independence

1781 Articles of Confederation

1787 Constitution is drafted

1789 Constitution is Ratified

1781 Bill of Rights

3/5thsCompromiseArticle 1 Section 3, Every slave counts as 3/5ths of a person for representation purposes

Great Compromise made the House of Representatives, a house based on populations, and the senate, a house equal for each state

Liberal vs. Conservative made the House elected every 2 years and the Senate every 6 years

Slavery Compromise, no law can be made against slavery for 20 years except a tax, and the idea was that in 20 years, we will shut down the slave trade

Do you trust the people to govern?

I do not trust the people to govern for a few simple reasons. First of all, if you look at the choices the people have made over the past 8 years for who they want to be president, it shows that people can easily be influenced by the politics of fear, dissuasion, and corruption. 50% of the people in our country voted for a president who could possibly be the worst president in the history of our country. Many states have overwhelmingly voted to ban gay marriage and further discriminate against people who are different than the majority. Time and time again throughout the history of the world and the history of the United States, the ideas of the minority have been trampled by the majority, often not because they are at all harmful to the majority, but because they are different. Some in the majority stand up for the minority, but as countless genocides tell us, their numbers are far less than those who idly stand by as the mob mentality of the majority overwhelms everything. Do I think that the people should govern? No, I think some people should govern. These people should be beyond reproach, should be above the mob, and should be well educated because heaven forbid we should have an intelligent president.

Why did opponents object to the Constitution?

Opponents believed that the Constitution would give too much power to the ruling people. This country had just been freed fromtyrannicalrule and many feared that a president would seize power and keep the post.

How did supporters of the Constitution defend the new plan of government?

Which quotations do you find most-persuasive - those that argue that the Constitution represented a threat to the liberties of the people and an attempt to impose aristocratic rule or those that argue that the Constitution give expression to republican values?

How did the Declaration ofIndependenceaddress Liberty and Equality? How did the Constitution?

  • Revolution: Things Start to Change
  • Scientific Revolution: Challenge previous ideas
  • 1500+ stays the same
  • 1492: Columbus sails
  • 1517: Reformation begins
  • Martin Luther 95 Thesis
  • 1543: Copernicus and the heliocentric theory
  • 1610-1632: Galileo writes
  • 1600s: Scientific Method
  • 1687: Newton
  • Late 1600s on: Scientific Thought
  • Enlightenment
  • Taking the Scientific Revolutionary ideas and applying them to everything
  • 1651: Hobbes and Leviathan (social contract)
  • 1690: Locke and Natural Rights
  • 1700s: Philosophes and Voltaire
  • 1748: Montesquieu and Separation of Powers
  • 1762: Rousseau and Freedom (social contract)
  • 1764: Beccaria and Justice
  • Justice is required for a good society
  • 1792: Wollstonecraft and rights for women
  • 1700s and on: Belief in individual liberty
  • Revolution: A movement that changes the way in which something is done. Often applied to ideas or to a way of life and can have but does not necessarily require a manifestation in a change of government.
  • Early Americans
  • There used to be many domesticated animals in America up to 12,000 years ago when humans got to America.
  • The most advanced cultures were in Central America, and they weren't that advanced and got conquered easily
  • When Europeans came to America, diseases killed 90% of the population
  • 500 nations
  • Inca
  • Destroyed by a conquistador from Spain named Pizzaro with 200 men. Came to capitol, kidnapped the King, killed the king after they payed ransom, and killed 40,000 in one day
  • Mayans
  • Destroyed by Aztecs
  • Europeans came in the year in the Aztec calender that one of their gods was supposed to come from the east. Europeans allied with many nations and destroyed the Aztecs
  • Cherokee
  • Trail of tears indians, 1/3 died on walk
  • Tried to assimilate, were forced to go to Oklahoma, then oil was discovered and they were moved to Arizona and New Mexico, then silver and uranium was discovered there, and the reserves are shrinking
  • Miwok
  • Reserve is too small to notice
  • Explorers and Contact
  • Columbus
  • 1492
  • Vespuccci
  • Named America after his first name
  • Fruits and Vegetables Exchange
  • horses went to America
  • most fruits and vegetables went to Europe
  • Spain and Portugal/Treaty of Tordesillas
  • Pope drew a line down the middle, and Spain got a ton more because the rest hadn't been discovered yet
  • Disease
  • Wiped out 90% because they had no resistance to the diseases
  • Early Settlements
  • Jamestown
  • 1609 in Virginia
  • First English Settlement
  • Massachusetts Bay Colony
  • 1620
  • Puritans
  • Mayflower
  • Plymouth Rock
  • St. Augustine
  • 1520
  • First permanent European settlement, Spanish
  • John Winthrop
  • "We shall be as a city upon a hill"
  • Means, everyone should be like us
  • William Penn
  • Quaker
  • In charge of Pennsylvania
  • State with religious tolerance
  • Maryland
  • Named after Queen Mary, a Catholic queen
  • The only Catholic colony
  • Leaders were catholic, people were Protestant
  • First set of laws that said you could have any religion you want.

Adam Berman

9/2/08

U.S. History

Reasons to Fights

North / Both / South
For truth / Truth / To stop their culture from being attacked
Getting Rid of Slavery / Religion, God / Succeeding from Tyranny
To maintain unity / Freedom / courage
Didn't think the South had the right to retreat / Was in a war / Purity
Political stability / New territories were being established
afraid of future violence if there were two countries / Black slaves were promised freedom if they fought
Same roots; brotherhood / State's rights, right to decide own destiny
Free soil act: farmers want to be able to provide for themselves / Freed black slaves will steal the jobs of the white farmers
On the offensive for military / expected slavery to end eventually
On the defensive military

Now I am a modest man, but in truth, there is no way that we Confederates would have been able to stay in this great war for so long if it were not for my defense of Virginia. I was offered a high and glamorouspost with the Union, and while I do respect my country, my state will always have my loyalties. It's not that I have a great love of slavery, no I actually think that slavery should be eventually abolished. It's simply that this country was called the United States and the states should not be forced to the will of the Lincoln. I will fight for Virginia, and I will fight for the Confederate States until the end.

I will now read you some of my speech of surrender atAppomatax:

I need not tell the survivors of so many hard fought battles who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result from no distrust of them, but feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss which would have attended the continuation of the contest, I have determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.

Many of my generals wanted to abandon retreat and maintain a guerilla war from the mountains. However, this would merely have prolonged our defeat, and I told them that we must take defeat as honorably as we would want our opponents to do so. While the Confederacy may not last in reality, we can still live for its ideals, and we can live up to the honorable name.

  1. Liberty: Liberty, the essence of being liberated.Liberty is freedom, to be unbounded by constraints.
  2. Equality: Equality is the same treatment and rights for all. What must be emphasized is the same. Treatments that are "equal but separate" or "equal but different" do not fit under the umbrella of equality. Rather under this umbrella are rights and liberties that do not differ based upon who the person is.

Adam Berman

8/28/08

U.S. History #1

Early U.S. Post Revolution

  • Presidents
  • Jefferson and Adams
  • Adams won, Jefferson became vice president
  • They hated each other, yet became friends afterwards and died on the same day
  • Jefferson: "the government that governs best governs least"
  • Adams: "Alien and Sedition acts" made it so that if you said bad things about the government you could go to jail
  • Louisiana Purchase
  • Doubled the size of the U.S.
  • Bought it from Napoleon
  • Marburyv. Madison
  • Supreme Court case
  • Judicial Revue: The supreme court can review any law for its constitutionality
  • Judicial Revue is not in the constitution
  • War of 1812
  • Fought in the United States
  • Only war with a foreign power on U.S. soil
  • British burned WashingtonD.C. to the ground
  • Even the most pro-America people say we "tied" the war of 1812
  • The Market Revolution
  • Beginning of Industrial Revolution
  • Made some people rich, people left farms and went to factories
  • Antebellum Reform
  • Standardized education
  • Prisons were reformed for rehabilitation and not just punishment
  • Abolitionist movement: to abolish slavery
  • Women's rights movements, Seneca Falls convention declared that women were equal to men
  • Andrew Jackson
  • First not-elitestto be president
  • General in the war of 1812
  • Ran for Presidency in 1824 and lost due to "irregularities"
  • 1828 he won and he did a lot of things, such as the Trail of Tears
  • VanBuren, Jackson's campaign manager and future president, created the first political party
  • Created the patronage system: you get someone elected, you get a job
  • Founded the Democrats
  • Opponents became the Whigs
  • Lincoln was the first Republican president, and his election as a Republican sparked the Civil War
  • Manifest Destiny
  • Two trails west, one to Oregon, one to Sacramento
  • Texas wins a war of independence in 1845, and 9 years later, becomes a state
  • 1848, we invade California and invade and conquer Mexico City, we get California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada
  • California was an independent country for 28 days
  • California was always a free state, never had slaves
  • Gold Rush 1849
  • Many of the ships in the San Francisco harbor stayed because the crew jumped ship to dig for gold, and S.F. built over it and it became the MarinaDistrict
  • Religion
  • Great Awakening
  • Predestination: God chooses who's going to go to heaven before you're born
  • Before Great awakening, if you're rich you'll go to heaven
  • 1st amendment, Government will not support a single religion
  • Second Great Awakening
  • Reaction to the Market Revolution
  • Lots of religions festivals and such
  • Missouri Compromise:
  • for each free state there must also be a slave state added
  • free soil must let other states compete
  • The south calls the civil war the "war of northern aggression"