The Election of 1860

           The Election of 1860, the stage was set for a grueling political war waged by four candidates vying to become president. The two most opposed and popular candidates were Abraham Lincoln representing the Republican party and Stephen Douglas from the Democratic party. Lincoln, who was against slavery ended up winning the election. Some of the Southern states were none to happy about this and thus seceded from the union.Now, lets look at how the results of the election showed the divisions that slavery caused. Lincoln naturally collected all of the votes from the free states because his motive was to get rid of slavery. Douglas, on the other hand, obtained most of the votes from southern states who were strongly opposed to Lincoln's ideas and wanted to live their lives how they had been. The North and South were already so polarized because of the events leading up to this time which included the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's raid on Harper's ferry and other slavery-based events that we have described in our video below.
       

The Dawn of the Civil War

    An infographic is a representation of data using graphics that is easy to understand. With this in mind I set out to make my infographic as understandable and informative as possible. First, I explored the programs that I could use to make it, I found that Infogram was the perfect tool to help me achieve that.  Infogram has a really user friendly and ergonomic interface that just about anyone can pick up in a matter on minutes. It reminded me of PowerPoint and Excel mashed into one program so it was very familiar to me. I then used the resources provided on edline to  gather the information i thought was most important to answer the essential question. I broke it up into chucks and used graphs and a little bit of text to inform the reader about the topic. Overall I liked creating an infographic because it is easy and conveys your thoughts to the reader in an organized and unique fashion.

North vs. south: A polarized nation | Create infographics

Sources:

http://www.edline.net/pages/Reading_HS/Classes/1415_10212101/Unit_6_-_The_Civil_War/Activity_1_-_Stats___Strategie

http://www.edline.net/files/_CDHeg_/849bf0de56cb0eae3745a49013852ec4/Resources_Pie_Charts.pdf

http://www.edline.net/files/_CCBWz_/21e469c533466ada3745a49013852ec4/Strengths_of_the_North_and_the_South_Reading.pdf

Slavery: the Elephant in the Room

     America in the 1800's was a divided nation even though most people did not realize it. This was because slavery was the elephant in the room in politics. People knew it was a major issue however nobody wanted to directly address it until the problem escalated. In class, we studied all the events leading up to the Civil War which had to do with slavery, and we compiled them into a timeline (below).
     These events show how slavery consumed a majority of decisions which were made by our congress. For example the caning of senator Sumner was anti-slavery because when Preston Brooks hit Sumner with his cane, it showed pro-slavery as violent and unruly, widening the gap in America's politics. On the contrary, an event which favored slavery was Bleeding Kansas. This event refers to the fighting between free soilers, a group who wanted nothing to do with black people, and pro slavery settlers. the two groups fought for control of Kansas, wanting to make it into a free state or slave state respectively. An event which affected both sides of the argument was the famous debate between sen. Lincoln (yes the president) and sen. Douglas. Both political giants faced off and preached their views, Lincoln claiming that the majority shouldn't be able to take away someone's life liberty and pursuit of happiness. Finally, another two-way decision is the Kansas-Nebraska act. This act created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska in which slavery was decided by popular sovereignty in exchange for a northern Trans-Continental railroad.  The benefits for the north was that anti-slave settlers could get out west and settle easier and the benefits for the south were that it abolished the Missouri compromise now making slavery potentially legal in northern states. Overall, slavery was clearly a huge issue in 19th century politics but was not directly discussed in most congress meetings.

timeline

timeline