Temperance Movement- Reform Sourcing Blog Post

Claypoole Johnston, David. "The Victim of the Ardent Spirits". 1837-1841. Teachushistory.org

During the time period in which this political cartoon was made (early-mid 19th century), the general public began to notice the affects of excessive drinking not only to the relationships between drinkers and their families, friends, neighbors, etc., but also their health. These realizations lead to the start of the Temperance movement, which consisted of either moderation or full abstinence from alcohol. The spirits depicted in this cartoon are each saying different things regarding the man's health, for instance the spirit at the bottom left is saying, "Just as I expected, the fellow's stomach has set my wheelbarrow on fire.", and another is shown scooping out the victim's brains warns his companion, "Be careful how you dig or you'll startle the fellow's soul, which must not be disturbed until we get the body cleaned out.". At the time, Amelia Bloomer was sharing her opinion that people had the ability to change themselves for the better regarding their use/dependence on alcohol by publishing articles in her newspaper, "The Lily", and activist Neal Dow was the man to turn Maine into the first dry state. As more and more of these types of images and newspaper articles were published, the better the circumstances became for drinkers and the people around them.

Andrew Jackson

In this lesson, the class was split into 6 groups to discuss the essential question, "Is Andrew Jackson's long-standing reputation as "the people's president" deserved? ". To find educated answers to this question, the groups were each assigned one of the 3 major decisions or achievements of Jackson's career; the Bank War, the Spoils System, and my topic, the Indian Removal Act which is more commonly known as the Trail of Tears. The Indian Removal Act was Jackson's decision to move an estimated 100,000 Native Americans off of their native land to present day Oklahoma to make room for white settlers. To make the idea seem less cruel, he claimed they would leave upon their own decision, and that he was doing the Natives a favor by giving them land with resources, and claimed that if they didn't they faced the chances of dying out as other tribes in that area had, and even said that if they left they wouldn't have to abide by American laws. Though they didn't want to be burdened by American Laws, there were even more reasons for them to stay. The land they were being pressed to leave was the land where their ancestors had lived for generations, and they didn't know what the new territory would offer them regarding resources and the customs of their neighbors.

The other two topics, the Spoils System and the Bank War were covered by other groups and discussed in class. The Spoils System was a system in which political parties gave jobs to their supporters, and Jackson believed in it. The Bank War was the result of Jackson disapproving of the way the American bank system worked, and trying to make it more beneficial to the poor. All of these topics give evidence of how he was a peoples' president, though he showed more apprehension towards the poor. Also, regarding the Indian Removal Act, he does show characteristics of a peoples' president, however he only cared about the settlers and not the Indians. 

Though embedding wouldn't work, here is a link to  my group's Google Doc on the Indian Removal Act. It covers all the information referred to in this post and more, in depth.  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1950_cxEBOPB6tK4svRfiv5WiwX25Qslrz84W8lw3pz8/edit#slide=id.p

Democracy in 1800's US

During this lesson, our class was divided into large groups to find our own answers to the questions: "How should we define democracy?", and "How democratic was the U.S. in the early 1800s?". As an answer to the first question, my group and I decided that democracy should be defined as a system of government by whole population or all eligible members of a state, typically through elective representatives. To find the answer to the second question, we looked over a series of documents showing what the United States population had the ability to give their say in, and how big decisions were made in the government. By the end of the activity, it was clear that in the early 1800's, the US was not very democratic at all.

In this poster made by my group and I to back
up our answers to the essential
questions, you can find the documents
 I referred to earlier in the post.