Andrew Jackson's Reputation Debunked

In class we have been learning about the presidency of Andrew Jackson. The question we were trying to answer was if he was really the "people's president" or not. To find the answer to this question, we slip into six groups with two groups each focusing on one of the three major events during Andrew Jackson's term. They were the Indian removal, the bank wars, and the spoils system. My group had the bank wars. Each group was provided with a couple documents to base presentations off of in which we explained our event and how it answered the main question. My group made a presentation on an app called Chatterpix which can make pictures look like they are talking while you record your voice. We had Andrew Jackson arguing how he was in favor of the people with Daniel Webster who thought the opposite. Jackson was vetoing the Second National Bank because it was highly in favor of the richer class and many of the stocks were owned by foreign powers. He thought it had too much power over the economy. Daniel Webster argued that he was just trying to turn the classes of people against each other and he didn't have the right to shut down the bank. Andrew Jackson was thinking of the common people, who made up the majority of the population, but making rich people seem like more of an enemy. Another time he really just favored the common people was the spoils system. This was a system in which the presidential candidate would offer jobs in government to those who voted for him. Jackson said he was trying to get more people to participate in government, but it was really taking advantage of their need for jobs and representation in government to help him win. He was only thinking of the common people for his votes. The Indian removal showed Jackson going against his reputation of the people's president. No other president had actually forced the Native Americans out of their rightful land until Jackson. He tried to justify it by saying he didn't want the tribe to die out like the other ones in that area and it was their choice to move to the west. In reality, the tribe had been living in peace with surrounding settlers for a while and could live on where they were. Moving out west would mean unfamiliar surroundings and possibly languages for them to have to adjust to. Andrew Jackson tried just to think of the lower class of people but never fully reached out to all the American people. The common people were still let down and taken advantage of, and he completely failed to recognize the Native Americans as people while he forced them out of their rightful land.

Here are links to the videos my group made (it was too big to be one video):
Video 1:http://video.videolicious.com/2cdbf897-669d-4d55-bd5a-d52b36724f9c
Video 2:http://video.videolicious.com/3f32ceda-db13-4e36-a900-ff39f8e62ec8

The Voting Rights Everyone Deserves

In class recently we have been studying the rise of democracy in the United States. We sought to define what exactly democracy is and how well the U.S. in the 1800s stuck to its ideals. Our group first defined democracy to be a system of government in which all the population participates. To find the answer to the second question we analyzed sources about the early 19th century United States. There was a painting showing the voting process and its flaws, charts showing different data, quotes from Benjamin Franklin and Norton Townshend, and a document about the Dorr War. Using the information from these sources, we created an online poster on the website Glogster. We came to the conclusion that the U.S. was not very democratic at the start, but as time went on they got more used to the new kind of system and allowed more people the right to vote.

What We Thought We Left in the Past

The question we have recently thought about in class was why it is essential to regard human value regardless of someone's race and how the Latin American revolutions prove this idea's importance. An issue like race is always relevant in today's society. There will always be people of different race and it's just a natural occurrence we have to deal with. People should not be judged by the color of their skin, yet that seems to be happening a lot even in modern day society. A person's value does not come from their race, it comes from who they are inside. In class, we got into three groups to each learn about a different Latin American Revolution. There was one in Brazil, Gran Columbia, and Mexico and my group was assigned to Gran Columbia. We were given a reading and told to make a timeline for everything that happened in the revolution. Then, each group split up and formed new ones, each with two members from all three previous groups. We shared our timelines with the other people and taught each other about our revolutions and discussed how they were similar and different. The idea of the essential question about the impact of race was a big part of every revolution.

My group's timeline of the revolution of Gran Columbia 

In the second groups we came up with two similarities and two differences between all three Latin American revolutions. They were all against the more powerful European countries that colonized and controlled them. It was always people of the lower class, usually natives of the land, fighting against the higher class. The Brazilian revolution wasn't as violent as the other two and it was against Portugal while the other two were against Spain. The white people of the European countries believed they were more powerful than the natives of the countries because of the differences in colors of their skin. People were organized into many different social classes solely based off of their race. These social classes would determine power and rights which is totally unfair. People were ranked because of what they were born with.
Racism still exists today and sadly probably will for a while. There are people out there who believe they are better than other people because of their appearance. More and more issues have been taking over social media and a very prominent one is of course the whole Ferguson debate. Although this is not the only issue like this that has happened, there have been many other unjustified shootings to happen that were just as bad. There can be many sides to this issue, but no matter what there is definitely racism involved. Our country is basically going back in time to when race was a much bigger issue. It is very important to consider this issue, people will always be judging others from their skin color and it is not right at all. We need to understand that a person is more than what they appear to be.

Reevaluating the Wave of Revolutions

The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 are known to be failures by many historians. In class we questioned if this was really true. We split into groups and each focused on one of the revolutions which were the Decembrist Revolt, France in 1830, France in 1848, Frankfurt Assembly in 1848, and Hungary 1848. There were multiple sources for each revolution telling you all about it. From this information, we created surveys on a website called Survey Monkey containing questions on the most important information to test our classmates after they read through the sources. They had to include the country, date, goals, opponent, outcome, and the reasons for success or failure of the revolution. This would help them remember key information about our revolution and see how well our classmates knew the information.
My group had the French Revolution of 1830. These are the                                                                   sources we used: http://www.edline.net/files/_5YGkl_/a6add73ad2a2c48f3745a4901

3852ec4/France_1830.pdf 

One of the questions from my group's
survey about the July Ordinances

One of the questions about how much of a success
or failure our group's revolution was?

The main goal of the rebels was to basically bring things back to the way they were in 1790. This included more affordable bread, better wages, and extended voting rights. The revolution began because Charles X took the throne after the death of Louis XVIII. Charles believed strongly in absolutism and limited the right to vote and restricted the press. In the July Ordinances, a group of decrees set forward by Charles X, he enforced his power by restricting the people's rights and voice. The poor people of France protested with violence and barricades and eventually took control of Paris which eventually caused Charles X to abdicate the throne and flee to England. After this, Louis Philippe began his rule over France. He was a much better leader and in his proclamation on August 1. 1830 he said that he would bring back the charter that Charles X got rid of in order to enforce the rights of the people. However, he did favor the higher classes of people so the revolution wasn't completely a success. They did not achieve all they wanted from a ruler but they certainly did improve the quality of their country. Here is a link to our survey monkeys (we had to make two to fit all the questions): 1- https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MX7JGS7   2-https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TNG2B8W

The rule of Louis Philippe later sparked another revolution in 1848. They still wanted extended suffrage for the lower class people and they believed the government to be corrupt. It ended up being about in the middle of a success and a failure. Also in 1848, Hungary had an unexpected revolt. The rebels wanted to end serfdom and create a constitution to protect their rights. The Austrian government agreed to these changes but for a short amount of time until they fought back. This revolution was somewhat a failure. It achieved very little. Another revolution that had a different outcome was the Decembrist Revolt in Russia, 1825. This was the least successful of all the revolutions. It started because Nicholas I took over as Tsar but the people wanted Constantine. Nicholas I allowed little rights to the people of Russia and they didn't have a constitution. In the end, the revolt achieved nothing and people were still left without rights and freedom. Overall, none of the revolutions were complete successes and some definitely achieved more than others, but they weren't all complete failures and shouldn't all be talked about as a collective failure. 

Pushing Back France

In class, we recently adressed what people in power should do when their power is threatened. We specifically talked about the Congress of Vienna after the defeat of Napoleon. This was a meeting of representatives from France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Great Britain. The purpose of it was to decide how to distribute land and power and what changes to make from Napoleon's many conquests. Prince Metternich from Austria lead the congress. Metternich and the rest of the representatives had to make some big decisions. We got into groups and predicted what we thought their decisions would be for big questions like how to divide up the land based on their ideals and thoughts about Napoleon.

Prince Klemens von Metternich
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klemens_von_Metternich

The Congress of Vienna set up a balance of power between the countries of Russia, Austria, Prussia, Britain, and France. Each country, except France, would gain their share of land from the area France took over and return France back to its original boundaries before its expansion. This ensured more safety if France ever tried to take over again since it would be one country against the allied countries surrounding it. Along with this, the Kingdom of the Netherlands was created on the border of France as another force against them. These allies saw Napoleon as more of the enemy than the country of France so this settlement was not too harsh on France as whole and just restored it to the way it was without much further punishment.
I think that they did make a good decision with the balance of power. They returned France back to the way it was before and it was fair to have equal shares of power among the countries to help prevent any uprisings. This would ensure peace and not upset anyone because of a lack of power. By having the allied countries surronding France, they were stronger and more secure with less of a threat to their power.There was no war between these five major European powers for a while, but there were many revolutions that started up in that time. One revolution even caused Prince Metternich to lose power and flee Vienna. I think that in certain circumstances, the very powerful should have to give up some of their power if that is what would benefit the people of their country since the country's stability is more important than that of one person who could still get by with a bit less power. In order to prevent revolt, one person cannot gain too much power and control a country just by themself, there has to be fairness.

The Poetry of "Adam Smith"

In the 19th century, there were three main political ideologies that each had different ideas of how to run countries. A big question we addressed in class was how they influenced socials and political action. Our teacher first had us try to define the three ideologies, liberalism, conservatism, and nationalism, in our own words without talking about them at all. Some of us had a basic idea of them. We all then split into groups to each learn about one of the three and becomes "experts" on them. There were two groups per ideology and we would each create a project to explain it to the rest of the class. To make this more fun, we were having a competition with the other groups with the same topic for a more creative presentation. Whoever won got candy so naturally all of us wanted to beat the other group. I thought this was an effective way to have us learn about liberalism, conservatism, and nationalism because it makes it interesting and the unique projects will stick in our minds and help us remember the information. 

Here's our video:

          My group made a presentation about liberalism. We used an app that makes pictures talk and we used a picture of Adam Smith because he was considered to be one of the forefathers of liberalism with his idea of the "invisible hand". Liberals believed that everybody had natural rights and the government should protect their individual liberty. They thought that there was need for reform and change instead of tradition. They wanted to end aristocracy and bring more rights and power to the middle class with a meritocracy. This is how Adam smith's theory is related to liberalism. His system would allow the people of lower ranking to work their way into the economy and their freedom of choice could help them work their way up to achieve higher ranking. However liberals still did not include poor people and didn't give them the right to vote. Liberals also did not want the church to have as much power. For a creative aspect of our project, we had Adam Smith saying a couple haikus talking about liberalism. In the end, our group won and got our candy reward. 

          The other two ideologies were conservatism and nationalism. Conservatism was basically the opposite of liberalism in that they believed in keeping traditionally ways and giving all the power to the church and nobles. They did not like revolutions because they just caused violence and were threats to the power of the nobles. Conservatives wanted to have an aristocracy. This would bring a country's government back to old ways of running it with traditional monarchy. People of the lower classes wouldn't have much of a say in anything and there would be a system of hierarchy formed because of these differences in power again. Governments like this can cause uprisings and revolts. Nationalism was the idea that people should unite based on common characteristics like languages, beliefs, or traditions to take down a foreign monarch or leader of some sort. This would create a lot of alliances between alike countries or groups and make a strong force to go against powerful rulers. 

The Not-So-Little Ruler's Big Impact

Map showing Napoleon's empire at its height in 1812
Source: http://history.howstuffworks.com/
european-history/history-of-europe5.htm

       Napoleon Bonaparte was a prominent military leader and genius in the 18th and 19th centuries.
He worked his way up the rankings and eventually came to rule in France and invaded many other countries including Italy, Spain, and Belgium. While many admired his great skill, he was also a man to be feared due to his strength in military and intelligence. He gained more and more power and in 1804 he even crowned himself emperor. This shows that he became somewhat tyrranical and selfish, wanting all the power of the world to himself. Despite these flaws, Napoleon did help many aspects of France and other European countries under his rule.
          One big impact Napoleon had was the introduction of a meritocracy o France. This is a system in which people are rewarded based on their skills instead of their social classes. This would mean that people in government positions would be qualified and have to work harder to earn more instead of it basically being decided for them. He was also able to establish the Bank of France and balance the budget in France which really helped the poor economy at the time. He created a Napoleonic code for all countries under his rule to follow after. It included going by the system of meritcocracy and also allowed the freedom of religion. One of the officers in Napoleon's army was one of the many people that admired him greatly. His names was Michel Ney and he believed that Napoleon's rule was very beneficial because he gave people a lot of rights and he was the first to do this. He brought on a new age of liberty and better living for citizens without a leader suppressing their rights. He definitely did bring people more rights like the rights to own property and to have an education which was important in the advancement of a country. He also got rid of serfdom and nobility so the very poor people were able to achieve more without being stuck in their social class thus making their lives a lot better. However, much of his impact wasn't necessarily good for the countries he controlled. There were a lot of people that were against Napoleon and wanted to end what they saw as a tyrannical rule. Once he gained more power he did get more controlling and created sort of a monarchy. According to Walter Geer in his book Napoleon the First: An Intimate Biography, he started to feel as if failure was not an option for him and his power could just keep growing. He started to look past the moral values that ruled his countries based upon and thought the only way he could keep is power was to continue to have success and domination. A writer named Madame de Stael was strongly against Napoleon's rule. She believed that he looked past the most important values to rule by and just used force and his own intelligence to control people. To her, he did not have the heart of a leader and just tried to manipulate his citizens and take away their liberties. Napoleon's style of ruling made it impossible for there not to be a lot of different opinions on him even if they seemed to contradict each other. His actions could create a lot of controversy but overall he had a very big impact on most of Europe economically, socially, and politically.