There are many reasons why the South lost the Civil War, but none more than population. The north had 22 million people while the south had only 5 ½ million. The south mobilized 70% of their manpower. The south also lost about half that population to death and permanent injury. By the end of the … Continue reading Class Notes →

Before the 1850s the United States was divided in half with the western half set aside for Native Americans. However, around the mid-1850s Americans began to move west into these lands causing conflict. To settle the conflicts the government decided it was best to isolate Natives on to their own land where they would be … Continue reading Class Notes →

We tend to follow the myth that surrounds the cowboy as a loner and western ranchers as rugged individuals. While there is certainly some truth to that, the cow drives of legend were actually started by eastern entrepreneurs who saw a simple problem of supply and demand, terms we don’t tend to associate with cow … Continue reading Class Notes →

In 1858 the upstart Abraham Lincoln ran against incumbent Stephen Douglas for senator of Illinois. Both were champion orators and the two held a series of debates across the nation. The most important debate was held in Freeport, IL. At Freeport, Lincoln asked Douglas how he could support the idea of popular sovereignty (the idea … Continue reading Class Notes →

One law that helped build the west was the Homestead Act. In order to build towns, they needed population and money and the Homestead Act did both. It brought in new people and those people had to pay property taxes. Homestead basically gave anyone 160 acres of land. You were expected to develop the land, … Continue reading Class Notes →

One area in which the 19th Century was superior to us was in compromises. Whereas today compromise means do what I want, in the 19th Century, especially with Henry Clay there were gains for both sides. A good example of this was the 1850 Compromise. When California had the population required for statehood it opened … Continue reading Class Notes →

In the years after the Civil War, towns and cities in the great plains had to convince settlers to move in. They needed the sale of land to fund the current towns. One way to convince settlement was to create cleaver ads that would convince people of the fertility of these areas. In the Oklahoma … Continue reading Class Notes →

With the growth of abolitionism, southern slave holders found the need to protect slavery more than they ever had before. They used history, religion, and biology to make a defense of slavery, but their most important weapon was paternalism. The idea of paternalism was that slaves were basically children. Just as plantation masters had to … Continue reading Class Notes →

In the Election of 1876, the Democrat candidate Samuel Tilden was one vote shy of winning the Electoral College. The problem was that four states were not being counted because of electoral disputes. Three of those states were in the south, LA, SC and FL (why is it always Florida), and the Democrats had taken … Continue reading Class Notes →

There were several ways in which slaves could protest their enslavement. They could work slowly, pretend illness, break tools, burn down barns or homes, poison food, run away or finally they could revolt. While the consequences grew in severity as the protests did, all forms of protest had negative effects. Even if not caught, most … Continue reading Class Notes →