Sunday, January 31, 2010

Zinn, Ch. 11 - "Robber Barons & Rebels"

APUSH Gang:

This week, read Ch. 11 of Zinn's "A People's History of the United States". The title of this chapter is "Robber Barons and Rebels". Please post your answers to these questions as a comment to this blog by Friday, Feb. 5:

1.) What successes did the labor movement score in the 1880's and 1890's?

2. Why did the Thibodaux workers go on strike? Was the strike successful? What accounts for its success or lack of success?

3. What were the demands of the Tennessee coal miners in 1891?

4. What was Frick's strategy to break the steel workers' union at the Homestead steel plant? Did the plan work? Provide evidence to support your answer.

5. Why were black workers reluctant to support the Pullman strike?


Other assignments for the week:

-You will have a test on Thurs., 2/4, before you leave for Ybor City (if you're going). You will not be able to make up this test if you miss it unless you arrange an after-school appointment; if that is the case, you will have until Thurs., 2/11, to make it up. This test will cover Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, The Rise of Industrial America, Immigration, The Rise of Unions, and Urban America (American Pageant, Ch. 22-25). There are resources for you to use in preparing yourself that you can find on my website.

-DBQ - Immigration (in-class assignment for Mon., 2/1; essay due on Fri., 2/5).

Monday, January 4, 2010

"The Good Ol' Rebel"

Your class was introduced to the Reconstruction of the South on Tues., 1/5. Please click on the YouTube link below to listen to a song written by a former Confederate Army officer after the Civil War:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkZvNadzlik


Lyrics:


Oh, I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am.
And for this Yankee nation I do not give a damn.
I’m glad I fought agin’ her, I only wish we’d won,
And I ain’t asked any pardon for anything I’ve done.

I hates the Yankee nation, and everything they do;
I hates the Declaration of Independence, too.
I hates the glorious Union, ‘tis dripping with our blood;
And I hates the striped banner – I fit [fought] it all I could.


I rode with Robert E. Lee for three years nearabout,
Got wounded in four places and I starved at Point Lookout.
I cotch [caught] the rheumatism a-campin’ in the snow,
But I killed a chance of Yankees, and I’d like to kill some mo’.

Three hundred thousand Yankees is stiff in Southern dust;
We got three hundred thousand before they conquered us.
They died of Southern fever, and Southern steel and shot;
And I wish they were three million instead of what we got.


I can’t take up my musket and fight ‘em now no more,
But I ain’t gonna love ‘em, now that is certain sure.
And I don’t want no pardon for what I was and am,
And I won’t be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.

Oh, I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am.
And for this Yankee nation I do not give a damn.
I’m glad I fought agin’ [against] her, I only wish we’d won,
And I ain’t asked any pardon for anything I’ve done.



•“The Good Old Rebel” was very popular among former Confederate soldiers who disliked the Reconstruction policies of the federal government.

•Many of these former rebels headed west to Texas and Mexico to avoid Reconstruction.

•This song exemplifies the resistance and anger that many Southerners felt toward the policies of Reconstruction.

•Your task in the next few days is to determine why Reconstruction was so opposed in the South, and which side was more to blame for the ultimate failings of Reconstruction, the North or the South.

Questions


•What were three words or phrases that showed the attitude of the rebels in “The Good Old Rebel?”

•Identify three items that the song seems to dislike.

•Identify any events that seem to be significant to the song’s narrator.