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zatkinsweltman · Joined: 09 May 2010 Posts: 27

Okay so I didn't see a place to post for after reading the primary sources so I decided to make one. Maybe i just missed it but it seems we're supposed to post and I can't find a spot, so all you who can't find a spot can post here. The assignment was as on mycsw:

Please post a well-informed conclusion about the social issues of the war (commonalities, precedents set, patterns revealed, etc.) AND a misinformed conclusion about the social issues of the war. Explain why the well-informed conclusion is, in fact, well-informed (and do the same sort of explaining for the misinformed conclusion). Feel free to respond to each other's posts - but be thoughtful and specific in your critique and/or commentary.

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zatkinsweltman · Joined: 09 May 2010 Posts: 27

My informed cconclusion:
It seems based on the reading that we can conclude that men played the worker who made money, the wife was the provider and the children could be pretty mature at early ages. We can see this in a few of the readings because when the men go away to war the women and/or children are left to fend for themselves, usually unsuccesfully. Although this may be true the wives seemed to be the providers while the men made money. This is shown when the women start a riot at a market and steal the food. This is the first document five: "women had broken into two or three large grocery establishments & were helping themselves...almost every one of them were armed." They were stealing because the war put them in difficult positions financially. Another example of this is when the kid writes to the governor telling him theat his father is at war and his mother is in jail so he has been made to fend for himself and his sisters. He realizes that he is lower in status but I also notice that children seemed to have been more mature than people are today in the US because most children do not have to fend for themselves.

A possible false conclusion:
Based on the reading One may think that blacks only fought for the north. They could say based on the document that talks about how they faced their old masters they all fought for freedom. Although this is true that blacks fought for the north, people can notice that these documents are more or less mainly from the perspective of the Union. It is pretty well known the History is written by the victor. So we don't have quite as much on blacks fighting for the south. We do hear that people were forced to an island to sign on for the confederate side but we don't actually know that some worked willingly for the south. We expect based on the bias that they arer all tortured and don't end up working. Some slaves worked for their master or were too afraid to go against what they knew, but we don't hear about that in these documents, so that may be a incorrect conclusion.

mswartz · Joined: 07 May 2010 Posts: 43

I concluded that socially the civil war was fundamentally about the injustices and lack of power blacks had. It was a brutal and rather chaotic war, with obstacles such as soldiers lacking basic necessities for survival. For example lack of food, proper medical care, and sanitation. A precedent that I found from the text on page 116 was, “that northern blacks volunteered for military service only to have the army turn them away.” I found it completely racist that they didn’t let blacks enlist in the war. A black can do the same, if not a better job, in the military than whites. Was it because the military officers were purely racist and didn’t want to fight alongside black people? Also it seems that if they had black people fighting with them, then their army would be stronger. Douglas summed it up nicely when he said on page 116 “…this is no time to fight only with your white hand, and allow your black hand to remain tied…” This was just one of many examples of the injustices of black people that I concluded from the text.

False:
The aftermath of battles left people happy since they didn’t have to fight anymore and their wait was pleasurable. This is completely false. On page 112 the text says, “ As soldiers waited between battles, they became- dependent on the season- too hot, too cold, or too wet, and almost always bored.” Also soldiers were in pain after battles and had very little medical help. Many were in agony and wished to die by the roadside than continue living.

lstrickman · Joined: 06 May 2010 Posts: 20

One informed conclusion that you could make about the civil war from these readings is that the effect on everyone's lives was huge. Although this is mentioned in our other reading, it was emphasized by these primary sources. Many of the readings spoke about how everyone, including women and children, had to live with many day to day effects of the civil war. Women and children were forced to become the providers for their families, because many of the men were all away fighting. Many people were unable to afford food, such as the family in the source on pg. 105. The riot in Richmond proves that even the people who were not fighting in the war were affected enough the protest. People wrote about the war in all of the local newspapers, and everyone had a say in what was going on.

A misinformed conclusion you might make from these sources is that many figures in authority were trying to help the working class. One instance where this might seem to be true is from the passage about free markets and poor relief on pg. 104. They appeared to be doing this solely for the benefit of poor people. It is also implied in the letter asking for the pardon of Mary Duke, where it says in the text before it that the governor did end up pardoning.

SeraphinaPyle · Joined: 12 May 2010 Posts: 9

One well informed conclusion: Everybody had a stance of the major issue of the Civil War (slavery). Even newspapers were taking a clear cut point of view on the topic. This makes sense because the articles from the newspapers definitely had chosen a side.

Misinformed response: The Civil War solved all of the country's problems and left it better than before. While it is true that the war was a super important event, the aftermath of it was terrible.

malexander · Joined: 07 May 2010 Posts: 20

A presumably correct conclusion about the social issues behind the Civil War could be that one of the main reason why the war was fought was to put an end to the amount off controversy in the court systems and constitution about slavery. And not just in these two, but between the states and the constant battle to maintain a balance of power. From the South's point of view, not only should all the states be slave states, but slaves themselves shouldn't have any power whatsoever. The south's attitude towards slaves is demonstrated on page 85, in Mary Boykin Chesnut's diaries she says "the Negro men on the plantation were found with pistols.I have never seen.. any Negro to show that they knew we had a war on hand." If the South believed slaves to be "stolidly stupid" (also page 85), then of course they would've felt surprised when they began to fight.

A wrong conclusion someone could take from these primary sources is that the Civil War was only fought by and for the issue of slavery. This is to say that the battles were not only between the plantation owners and their slaves. Many of the people who were fighting in the Civil War were fighting because they believed slavery was morally wrong, but also because if the South won and plantations dominated the country, then the poor and working class American would fall.

edalven · Joined: 07 May 2010 Posts: 37

My somewhat informed opinion is this: The prioritizing of individual, local, and regional interests over national goals resulted in a hostile political climate that ultimately escalated to a Civil War. The different lifestyles of North and South formed two opposing groups who were unable to truly find common ground. Each side was dead-set in its ways and could not compromise. In the life of this nation, the war between the states might be known as its identity crisis. America is still young, and will struggle in the future.

I think any claims that the Civil War was a Black and White, Good versus Evil conflict are misinformed. The issues were simply far more complex than that. As I said earlier, it may have been that the lesser of two evils prevailed.

hkwon · Joined: 07 May 2010 Posts: 24

The one of well informed conclusions that I could draw from the readings about civil war is that women started expressing their feelings about policies by physical activity. The typical women of the early nineteenth century generally would be quiet housekeepers especially who were very accommodative to their husband. As the majority number of men was placed in the battlefield, women had to live extremely independent lives by making own money at the clothing factory. The document five written by H. A. Tutweiler says that a large number of armed women had broken into two or three large grocery establishments, & were helping themselves to hams, middlings, butter. The superficial change of women from quiet housekeepers to an armed group was obvious and shocking.

The one of well misinformed conclusions that I could draw form the readings about civil war is that the prevalent ideas of documents are commonly to denounce the cruelty of proslavery mob. This package of readings only has the documents written by the north. At this point, we could probably believe that blaming the mobs is prevalent and agreeable. But it’s wrong. I strongly believe the support for the mob was more prevalent in the South.

shawks · Joined: 12 May 2010 Posts: 12

I learned from the primary sources that many people were suffering in different ways. The soldiers on both sides went days without food and sometimes returned to their families after fighting only to find them starving as well. The slaves fought on the Confederacy sometimes because the South was all they knew even though many masters mistreated them and the government neglected them. As a result, some Union soldiers kidnapped slaves in order to make them fight for the Union instead of the Confederacy. The farmers and workers that had not fought were struggling to pay their debts. The one that had fought did not always earn the money that they had been promised. Everyone was struggling.
At times, people were bias and inaccurate, though. Women were presented in a very sexist way by men in this article. One man described women buying meat for themselves and basically said that they should knlow their place. Also, the poor Irishmen wer fairly accurate about describing how oppressed they were, but they made America sound completely bad. America had a lot to work on, but it was trying to improve.

Eleanore Carson · Joined: 11 May 2010 Posts: 14

So, when i read these i saw a lot talking about how if the men were to go to war then their wives and children would starve without the man there to bring in an income. Document 5 squared and document 6 are proof that the families were starving. The fact that the women had to go and steel food, as well as the young child talking about him and his siblings starving without their mother or father.

The assumption that was false in my point of view was that freed slaves were going to take all of the "white mans jobs". There is plenty of people who will say that this worries them, but i realit most white people did not want to hire a ex-slave (non-white) so most of those jobs were in no danger of going to anyone but the white men.

Annie C · Joined: 07 May 2010 Posts: 20

The one possible assumption that I got from the primary resources is the literary information during civil war swayed people by their bias political aspect.
Idea

The one misinformed assumption might be we stand on the side that we think was correctitude during civil war and judge the big picture of war with our bias veiwpoint.

zaronson · Joined: 07 May 2010 Posts: 17

Well informed: Everyone had different opinions on slavery. News papers used the power of journalism to convey their opinions to the public

Misinformed: Everyone in the south were racist towards blacks and therefore supported slavery.
The North was completely against slavery, not a single racist in all of New England.

georgia.indigo · Joined: 07 May 2010 Posts: 15

These from these primary documents it can be concluded that few people drafted actually fought in the war, most of the actual soldiers hired substitutes. They were poor men fighting in the place of better off men it was the “rich mans war/poor mans fight. (Pg. 8 Cool

”. It can also be concluded that many free African Americans wanted to fight in the war but were rejected at first. Also it was hard for them to fight against the confederation when they had to kill still enslaved African Americans who were fighting in their master’s place. White men on both sides feared African Americans getting any kind of power, but Fredric Douglas asks an important question of these prejudices; saying in his document “Why does the government reject the Negro? Is he not a man? (Pg. 116)”
Lastly many onlookers exaggerated when talking about the riots and number or people participating in them. But they resulted in some awful violence and chaos. Afterward systems were put in place to help the people in most need of food and resources. The regulations for who could and could not receive the benefits of this system were extremely strict

This would be a well-informed conclusion because there is sighting from the documents and attention paid to things written in the margins

A misinformed conclusion:

The African Americans fought for the north and fought as equals. They “stood face to face with their former master…(pg.120)” Soldiers would rather die on the battlefield than in hospitals and more people died in the north. When soldiers returned home they always found their families malnourished. But organizations where put in place to feed all the poor people during and after the war because 5,000 people began a riot.

This is misinformed because it makes sweeping judgments.

sarahislahf · Joined: 11 May 2010 Posts: 21

Informed conclusion:

The origins of the war weren't on battlefields, they began locally with political disharmony translating into riots and newspapers taking sides and class tensions.

Misinformed conclusion:

Any very definitive delineations of who was in the complete right or wrong in the war.

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