Reaction Essay

Being a soldier during WWI would have been absolutely brutal. They had to put up with diseases, wounds and Mother Nature. Plus, they weren’t ever properly taken care of and supplied with enough things to help them prevent all of those things. I could never imagine anything like what they had to go through it is so appalling to me.

Having to deal with living in trenches that are dug below the ground and standing in muddy water anywhere from ankle to thigh high would be horrible. Some soldiers got trench feet and had to have there feet amputated and others got pneumonia. Plus, the mud and rain added an extra 34lbs to a person. That is lot for someone who is slaving away all day fighting and already carrying enough luggage. It’s amazing how they trucked through the mud during one of the rainiest time periods ever where only 18 days there weren’t rain and 11 of them below zero. That’s when frostbite starting kicking in leading to even more amputations. I couldn’t imagine just drinking some rum and chop there goes my leg; that would be the worst thing EVER!

I was disgusted at the fact that rats would sneak up on wounded soldiers and attack and eat their faces off because the soldiers couldn’t defend themselves because they couldn’t move. That was absolutely horrible. And then lice on top of that and having no way to cure it would not be ideal to me, it makes my head itch and my stomach turn just thinking about it.

Then when I read about how some countries came up with little gas bullets that made my head hurt. Suffocating from horrid air or not being able to catch my breath would be the worst way to die I think. But even worse then that would be shell-shock, completely going insane and being terrified of walking on the street and remembering ever little detail of war. I couldn’t deal with that and I have no idea how soldiers deal with it even today.

I can’t believe what it was like to be a soldier and makes me sick to even read about it. I’m not sure what I would do if I ever had to be put in any of those situations. They really had to battle there way through things to survive. I also couldn’t believe that 30% of people who were wounded and died and only less than 1% of people died of sickness. That is amazing that we had no medical attention for wounds and that people die after suffering so much pain. Honestly, I could never handle being a soldier.

LO #26 - Extra Credit

Turner's thesis states that not only the west but the national character had been shaped by the westward movement. Through the struggle to overcome the hazards of the western wilderness had transformed Europeans into tough, inventive, and self-reliant Americans. Many historians have critisized he's thesis and I find that David Weber's is the most valid. He believes that the frontier didn't define the edge of civilizatoin but marked the boundary between diverse cultures. Not that we completely changed people, it is the Europeans who come here with ideas, moving westward didn't change them to "self-reliant" Americans it just helped the same Europeans interact and pick up a little from different cultures.

MLK JR. extra credit

This article was interessting to read. It literally made me feel like they were talking to me. Everybody knows him by "I have a dream...," but like me, we can't go any farther and say what his dream was really about. Today people are quoting him in presidential debates and that's not right, those are his words and need to be remembered by him, me are voting for you not Martin Luther King JR. It also made me think about how he never really was liked and we put him on this pedestal like he is this great popular person but he was really looked down upon. I enjoyed reading this article, we really should remember that his speech was about segregation and not take parts of his speech away from that like the article says.

Was Reconstruction a "Splendid Failure"?

I think that Eric Foner makes a better argument only because he has facts to back him up and not just opinions and what could have happened like LaWanda Cox. Foner says that the Reconstruction was a "Splendid Failure" because it offered African Americans in the South a temporary vision of a free society. It gave African Americans freedoms that they never had and they could get involved in society if they wanted to and they received economic rights.
Even though Foner made a better argument because he had facts to back him up I still think that LaWanda Cox had a better argument to read. Because she didn't have facts it was interesting to see how she thinks things should have been so it kept you hooked more then just reading things that we know happened.
~The reconstruction was a "Splendid Failure" because even though it didn't turn out how we hoped it would, during the times that things were going smooth it was splendid. The country was back together and blacks had their rights and then things went downhill.

Is the Civil War importance over exaggerated???

Its hard to really say that the Civil War has been exaggerated by the historians because we weren't there to see what was going on. In a way I think that it was a little over exaggerated. They make it seem like this huge "life changing" war. Some historians say that the war was this huge war that had to happen or the USA was going to crumble apart and never be what people thought it was going to be. These historians seem to exaggerate the whole deal and made it seem a lot more important then it might have been. Then there are those historians who say that "hey those other historians have really over exaggerated this issue." I think that these historians got away from what was really important during the war and the facts. So I guess i would have to agree with the historians that believe the Civil War has been over exaggerated because even though it was a war that helped bring the USA back together it doesn't have to be flaunted and made into such a big deal as some historians have made it. Many other events just as important have happened but none of them have been expressed so "wowly" by these same historians.

Was the Mexican War an Exercise in American Imperialism?

I have to agree with Ramon Eduardo Ruiz. He says that when conquering Mexico's northern territories, the US waged an aggressive war against Mexico and Mexico never recovered from it. To him, Manifest Destiny showed the racism towards African and Mexican Americans who stood in the way of the White's land. Other factors made Americans think expansion. They were led to believe that the Union gained in stability as the number of states multiplies so they wanted to gain Texas and fight the Mexicans for their land. Ruiz also makes the beset argument because he points out flaws that Graebner had and how it wasn't all Polk's fault that we went to war for more land and states.

Did the Election of 1828 Represent a Democratic Revolt of the People?

I think that the elections did represent a Democratic Revolt of the People, so i agree with Sean Wilentz argument. The campaign "produced a valediction on the faction-ridden jumble of the Era of Bad Feelings." Jackson did abnormal things in his campaign that other candidates normally would do. He had newspapers in several states publish articles about him which helped to make the people more involved. The whole election was a contest of different views in politics, since they all said they were republicans; it was a "great contest". The election contained a lot of new ideas. Jackson had successful techniques in campaigning which made them more "appealing" to vote for. The people didn't exactly revolt, but we did change our ways at viewing things. Even though i agree with Sean Wilentz i think McCormick makes very good points as well. He states that a "new democracy, ignorant, impulsive, irrational" had entered the arena of politics in the Jackson era and has become an unchallenged fact. I think this statement is sort of goes along with the YES statements by Sean Wilentz because it says yes there was a "change" and the people aren't going to argue about it.