Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Two Essays


#2

From the years 1800-1850 the nation was full of battles and prosperity. Territorial expansion was a cause in most of the battles, but also gained prosperity for the nation. There were many impacts on national unity between those time periods, but the main impact was territorial expansion. This is true because of the Louisiana Purchase, the purchase of Oregon territory, and the Mexican War.

The Louisiana Purchase was the most important event of President Thomas Jefferson's first Administration. In this transaction, the United States bought 827,987 square miles of land from France for about $15 million. This vast area lay between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian Border. The purchase of this land greatly increased the economic resources of the United States, and cemented the union of the Middle West and the East. Eventually all or parts of 15 states were formed out of the region. When Jefferson became president in March 1801, the Mississippi River formed the western boundary of the United States. The Florida's lay the south, and the Louisiana Territory to the west. Spain owned both these territories.

The first major debate over the issue of territorial expansion arouse when Missouri wanted to join the union as a slave state. Missouri, which was part of the Louisiana Purchase, which was part of the Northwest Ordinance. The Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territories. In 1817, when Missouri applied to the Union as a slave state, the issue of anti slavery vs. pro slavery (North vs. South) came up. Not only will the ordinance be broken, but the balance between slave and free states will be gone. By Missouri’s entrance to the union, there would be more slave states than free states. In December of 1819, Maine applied to become a free state. A compromise was then reached, so that Maine would enter as a free state, while Missouri would enter as a slave state, balancing free and slave states. New territories that would enter above the 36’30’ line had to be free states.
 The Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territories. In 1817, when Missouri applied to the Union as a slave state, the issue of anti slavery vs. pro slavery came up. The Ordinance was broken, and the balance between slave and free states will be gone. By Missouri’s entrance to the union, there were more slave states than free states. 
#1
Far beneath that abyss of conformity, however, resided a dissident ideology, a rebellious teenager listening to Church Berry with a copy of On the Road in his young, naïve hands. This was the ambivalent decade typified by the conformists and the anti-conventionalists, the parents and the youth, the conservative Christian, and the innovative intellectual.
  • The youth of the 1950s represented a desire to stand against something, anything, typically the conformist values of their conventional parents.”
  • Supporting evidence: James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause, Steve McQueen, The Blob, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Cold War, restraints of tradition, sit-ins, Elvis Presley, Byrd Parker, Dave Brubeck.
  • “Fueling this ardent fire were the works of great intellectuals from beatnik poetry (Howl) to anti-conventional literature (Jack Kerouac and André Gide), independent film (John Cussavetes’ (sicShadows and the foreign films of Ingmer (sic) Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard) to cynical philosophy (Jean-Paul Sartes’ existentialism and Camus’ absurdism).”
  • Supporting evidence: other than that included in the sub-thesis statement: self-expression, rebellious generation
  • “Indeed this was a generation fighting for a lost cause, just as their children and grandchildren would. A counterculture, a small revolution in small suburban towns; and as the world turned, the Chuck Berry song finished, the teenage turned a page in On the Road contemplating the cruelties of conformity, convention, something and nothing, again and again, over and over, as history chiseled his place on the tombstone of the 1950s.”









THE BLACK PANTHER

In the late 1960s, black protesters show a new aggressiveness, very diverse from the nonviolence activists originally implemented. In 1966, the Black Panther Party forms in Oakland, California. They created essential breakfast programs, and guns, the group aggressively monitors police actions in the black community, serves the poor and needy, publishes a newspaper, and earns a following. Its founders,Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, present a ten-point program for improving social and economic conditions for African Americans. Soon, their movement spreads to 25 cities across the nation.
As they question and monitor police actions, the Panthers' boldness and militancy make many in the white and the law enforcement communities nervous. Carrying loaded weapons in public is legal in California, where Ronald Reagan is governor. But the Panthers' appearance, fully armed, makes lawmakers rush to ban the practice. In 1969, the F.B.I. names the group the number one threat to the nation's internal security. Some law enforcement officials feel this gives them justification to break the law and destroy the Panther organization.

In Chicago in December 1969, two Black Panther Party leaders are killed in a pre-dawn raid by police acting on information supplied by an FBI informant, William O'Neal. The men, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, are executed and four of the seven other people in the apartment are wounded. All surviving Panthers are charged with assault and attempted murder. Though the police insist they shot in self-defense, a controversy grows when activists present evidence that the sleeping Panthers put up no resistance. Although the police are never tried, the charges against the Panthers are dropped, and later the families of the dead win a $1.8 million settlement from the government..

War by Attrition

     The Vietnam War was very different from any other war the United States  had fought before. Vietnam was divided between the communist  and the “free democratic”. During this war the US troops were being attacked from all around, the US fought in every direction. This is why the Vietnam War became a war of “attrition,”meaning not a fight for land or territory, but a fight for destruction and surrender. The war was to be fought until the communist north surrendered.
        Attrition warfare is a strategy tires the enemy to the point of collapse before finishing them off.  When things weren't working for the United States in Vietnam, they decided to use a war of attrition strategy to eliminate the enemy.  This method of warfare was very successful in the sense that they were killing North Vietnamese troops, but this method also caused many civilian casualties.  For this reason, many protests broke out in the United States.  The protesters argued that American troops were completely taking over the war, when their original goal was to simply help the South Vietnamese army stave off the communist regime of the Viet Cong.  Attrition warfare was one of the many reasons the Vietnam War became a lost cause to the United States.
      Vietnam was the longest war in American history and the most unpopular American war of the 20th century. It resulted in nearly 60,000 American deaths and in an estimated 2 million Vietnamese deaths. Even today, many Americans still ask whether the American effort in Vietnam was a sin, a blunder, a necessary war, or whether it was a noble cause, or an idealistic, if failed, effort to protect the South Vietnamese from totalitarian government.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Truman Political Cartoon

Six months before President Harry S. Truman's dramatic recall of General Douglas MacArthur after the two disagreed about the future course of the Korean War, political cartoonist John Chase ridiculed the president's capacities as a military leader with this caricature of the commander-in- chief dwarfed by his general's outsized hat. In reference to his military success this cartoonist wanted to make truman look like a small child who didn't know what he was doing and all his success was thanks to his general.



MacArthur was during his time considered one of the greatest generals of the twentieth century.  He was acknowledged as a  hero in World War II. This was because of his overseeing in Japan’s surrender on the Battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, and essentially ruled Japan after the war.  He was now in charge of US forces in Korea but wasn’t always following what the Truman administration ordered him to do.  This meeting was set up to make sure everyone was on the same page.This meeting would be called "wake Island and would take place in New York.
After the meeting, Truman then flew to San Francisco and on October 17, 1950, announced the results of his meeting with General MacArthur at the War Memorial Opera House in that city.  The cartoon from October 17 deals with that upcoming speech.
             The consequence of all this was a "nonpolitical" train trip in May to the West Coast and back. On it Truman delivered 76 speeches, many at whistle stops, and the bulk of them extemporaneously. They were plain, earnest talks that expounded his domestic and foreign program, and they created a favorable impression. Indeed, even those Democrats who were considering drafting Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, because of his aura as a war leader, now warmed up to Truman. It is rumored that these speeches were puppeteer by others as represented in the cartoon.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Truman Cold War

Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) was 33rd President of the United States after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in April of 1945. Truman, didn't have a college education he just had a high-school education and had been vice president for just 82 days before Roosevelts death, In a way truman was forced as the president of the United States through the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. Truman is remembered and seen as the least popular presidents in modern American history won a surprising second term by defeating Republican Thomas Dewey in the election of 1948.

The Cold War began under Truman's time in office. As the president came to believe that he must take a hard stance to contain the expansionistic tendencies of the Soviet Union. The president's "Truman Doctrine" committed the United States to a policy of supporting foes of Communism everywhere in the world. Truman's failure to lead the United States to victory in the Korean War led to a severe decline in support for the president's policies among the American people. His loss against Korea was mainly due to the dissuasion of the general in the Korean war.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Dorothea Lange Great Depression



Dorothea Lange was an intelligent, successful women born into a German family. She was born on May 26th of 1895 in New Jersey. In her early life she studied in Columbia University in New York City. Soon after she began working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) as a documentary photographer. She was one of the most prominent and most famous photographers during the great depression. Her pictures demonstrated the true unemployment and homelessness in the recently affected america. Some of her pictures are utilized to 

represent the great depression.

From 1935 to 1940, Lange's photographs made the country realize who were suffering most during the Depression, especially families of migrant farm workers who sought work in California after losing their own farms in states such as Oklahoma and Arkansas.During this time of the Great Depression and The Dust Bowl banks were failing, businesses were closing and many workers became unemployed. Homelessness and unemployment were some of the greater consequences. While many stayed in their farms hoping to survive, others left. The unbearable conditions practically forced approximately three million plain settlers to move out of their farms. Many migrated to neighboring states, towns but also California. The boys above are part of the group known as the Okies, a derogatory term used to refer to Oklahoma residents. The evident issue was the dusters caused by drought, overproduction, lack of education and even advances in technology. The governments responsibility was to aid those in need of helps, especially the farmers. The only possible solution was what those affected did, leave everything behind and move on, maybe to somewhere new.

To the left is one of the most famous images during the great depressionI saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet," said Lange when asked about one of her most famous photographs. "I do not remember how I explained my presence or camera to her, but I do remember she asked no questions. I did not ask her name or history. She told me her age, that she was 32."Lange sent her photographs to newspapers across the country, free of charge. The images she took soon became symbols of the Great Depression.