Letter to Soldier
When faced with obstacles in life, people rely on their family and friends to give them support and encouragement. Sometimes, family members can seem harsh and unkind, but their intentions are sincerely good. Mothers will always disapprove of their son’s choice in girlfriends, but she will shed tears of joy at the wedding. Fathers will never like their sons-in-law, but they still tell their daughters that they will find the perfect man. Thirty-year old men will always be treated as if they were ten by their mothers. It has been this way for centuries in our society. A letter from a worried mother to her son, a soldier in the Confederate Army, proved this point. While this young man was, by that time’s standard, an adult, his mother still felt the need to keep her child safe.
Aside from the content and ideas relayed in the letter, the document itself is a powerful item from American in history. Reading about a person or event in history is a good experience; a powerful experience, however, is to hold history in your hand and listen to people in their own words. Discovering the story and history behind this letter proved to be even more rewarding than holding and reading the letter itself. Expecting to find a few, uninteresting facts about this Civil War Era, I found that this letter brought to life five southern boys that were thrown off the farm and into battle. The letter also helps to illuminate the way a society lived while it told a story of a mother, her sons, and several friends
On January 6, 1863, a mother sat down and wrote her son a letter. The author of the letter was a forty-five year old woman named Kerney A. Stocks. She was writing to her son, John, who was a soldier in the Civil War. From what she mentioned in the letter, she was a very passionate woman. She made some very blatant remarks concerning her feelings toward her son’s behavior. For example, Mrs. Stocks says, “I feel [sort of] mad this morning because I did not get no letter from you yesterday,” expressing her displeasure to her son. Kerney Stocks was more than likely a middle class woman, since she could read and write.
As the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner and the wife of an assistant to the confederate president, Jefferson Davis, chestnut always found herself surrounded by the wealthy and high-end confederacy’s gentlemen and their views on the civil war. Mary recorded her most significate impressions of the conflict from the begging when the first shot in Charleston South Carolina went off. Mary Chesnut's diary is a glorious and rich with vivid comments on race, genders, wealth status, and power from those who had enough but wanted more within a nation divided Mary Boykin Chesnut was an incredibly intelligent woman, whose wartime experiences brought to live intimate and important details of southern culture. Since its publication in 1905, Chesnut’s diary has become compelling reading. Chesnut’s wartime diary begins when Mary learns of Lincolns election in 1860 later catching more focus when she grew to worry about her husband’s well-being and who was in charge of giving and following Jefferson’s orders without any hesitation. Mary’s carries her persona as a feminist but she seems sad that women are not able to do nothing outside the husband’s hands in one passage
Duncan, Russell, ed. Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992.
Leading up to the year 1981, America had fallen into a period of “stagflation”, a portmanteau for ‘stagnant economy’ and ‘high inflation’. Characterized by high taxes, high unemployment, high interest rates, and low national spirit, America needed to look to something other than Keynesian economics to pull itself out of this low. During the election of 1980, Ronald Reagan’s campaign focused on a new stream of economic policy. His objective was to turn the economy into “a healthy, vigorous, growing economy [which would provide] equal opportunities for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination.” Reagan’s policy, later known as ‘Reaganomics’, entailed a four-point plan which cut taxes, reduced government spending, created anti-inflationary policy, and deregulated certain products. Though ‘Reaganomics’ was successful both at controlling “stagflation” and promoting economic growth, it has and always will be an extremely controversial topic regarding the redistribution of wealth.
In James McPherson’s novel, What They Fought For, a variety of Civil War soldier documents are examined to show the diverse personal beliefs and motives for being involved in the war. McPherson’s sample, “is biased toward genuine fighting soldiers” (McPherson, 17) meaning he discusses what the ordinary soldier fought for. The Confederacy was often viewed as the favorable side because their life style relied on the war; Confederates surrounded their lives with practices like slavery and agriculture, and these practices were at stake during the war. On the other hand, Northerners fought to keep the country together. Although the Civil War was brutal, McPherson presents his research to show the dedication and patriotism of the soldiers that fought and died for a cause.
U.S. Government. "2012 World Oil Consumption." Countries. U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2012. Web. 03 Dec. 2013. .
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” opened the eyes of millions of people worldwide. The book portrayed the brutal life of the black slaves. It went on to sell millions of copies and was given the title “The Greatest Book of the Age”. (pg. 616) It is had been commented that this book had helped “lay the groundwork for the Civil War”, according to Will Kaufman, and is widely regarded to one of the reasons of the Civil War. Langston Hughes refers to this book as a "moral battle cry for freedom." The characters in her book debated the causes of slavery, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the future of freed persons, individualism and racism. The Civil War arose from a combination of causes counting regional conflicts between the Southern and Northern states, economic forces, and humanitarian concerns for the welfare of enslaved people. The four year war opposed one section of the country against each other and nearly rescinded the United States of America. It is no wonder why when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe, he responded that she was “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war” and I would agree with that statement of his. Whether this is true or not, the gush highlights the public linking between Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Civil War.
Blair Jr., Clay (1975). Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott. p. 1072.
His family connection to the Civil War gave him a sense of pride. Modern Americans should remember and memorialize the Civil War by knowing that the event determined what kind of nation the United States would be. The Civil War is the most significant conflict in American history; it had a revolutionary, social, and political impact that continues to be felt today. We were taught the civil war was primarily fought because of slavery but in truth “there were many causes of the civil war, including differences between northern and southern states on the idea of slavery, as well as trade, tariffs, and states rights.”
The criterion for personhood is widely accepted to consist of consciousness (ability to feel pain), reasoning, self-motivation, communication and self-awareness. When Mary Anne Warren states her ideas on this topic she says that it is not imperative that a person meet all of these requirements, the first two would be sufficient. We can be led to believe then that not all human beings will be considered persons. When we apply this criterion to the human beings around us, it’s obvious that most of us are part of the moral community. Although when this criterion is applied to fetuses, they are merely genetic human beings. Fetuses, because they are genetically human, are not included in the moral community and therefore it is not necessary to treat them as if they have moral rights. (Disputed Moral Issues, p.187). This idea is true because being in the moral community goes hand in hand w...
Mary Anne Warren’s “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion” describes her justification that abortion is not a fundamentally wrong action for a mother to undertake. By forming a distinction between being genetically human and being a fully developed “person” and member of the “moral community” that encompasses humanity, Warren argues that it must be proven that fetuses are human beings in the morally relevant sense in order for their termination to be considered morally wrong. Warren’s rationale of defining moral personhood as showcasing a combination of five qualities such as “consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, capacity of communication, and self-awareness” forms the basis of her argument that a fetus displays none of these elements that would justify its classification as a person and member of the morally relevant community (Timmons 386).
...lowed me to step into the early 1800's of America and get a good, solid grip of what a brave woman went through to secure the freedom of her children. I was able to connect with Harriet Jacobs and her life as she was an incredibly venerable woman with a good heart and a bit of a stubborn streak that a lot of people could relate to in one way or another. This book definitely made a large impact on me and I feel like I will carry a majority of it with me for quite a while, in particular the seven years that Jacobs spent in an cramped "attic" in a shed. She was so close to her children, yet wasn't able to do anything for them for all those years except remain quiet and wait for the time to take action so she could keep them safe. This book has maintained the part of an American classic for many reasons and it was an absolute wonderful and enlightening book to read.
Homeschooling offers students a more time efficient education that allows the student to focus on education in which is the sole purpose for school. Homeschooling also gives the teacher a thorough evaluation of a student’s strengths and weaknesses by visually seeing what subjects they excel in and what subjects they are weak in. At this point students can increase their individual progression in each subject. Homeschooling permits control of the environment a student learns in to retain the focus of the student. This will reduce the chances of drug usage, bullying, and violence. Samuel Blumenfeld said this on the importance of homeschooling “The home is a safe haven for the children in a world awash with drugs, sexually transmitted diseases, violence, and moral corruption” (Cindy Mur et al.76). When parents come to realize that the home is the safest place for their children, then will they act as Blumenfeld concludes “I look forward to the day when the public schools will be virtually empty not because we have abolished public education but because the parents will have abandoned it” (Cindy Mur et al.
...nless it was a matter of national security, and she would work to improve its dire state of self deprecation. In the case of family, today’s people are further depreciating the value of such a thing. Disturbing side effects include adultery, fornication, spousal abuse, and rampant amounts of children from unmarried partners. Where Men Win Glory exhibits the influence of family in creating enlightened people and the positive effects it can have on others from being in a loving environment – happiness being one. Finally, change as I explained above is an amazing feat that is life changing. Picture such a movement on a global scale. If one has not perused this book, then one is missing out on life; read this book and interpret your own meanings. Then, I challenge you, as Pat would, to become actively involved in improving yourself. See what happens; you might like it.
The ancient Maya once occupied a vast geographic area in Central America. Their civilization inhabited an area that encompasses Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and parts of the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, as well as Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. "From the third to the ninth century, Maya civilization produced awe-inspiring temples and pyramids, highly accurate calendars, mathematics and hieroglyphics, and a complex social and political order" ("Collapse..." 1). Urban centers were important to the Maya during the Classic period; they offered the Mayans a central place to practice religion.
Are the new standards and expectations the world has for teenagers really creating monsters? The amount of stress that is put on students these days between trying to balance school, homework, extra curricular activities, social lives, sleep and a healthy lifestyle is being considered as a health epidemic (Palmer, 2005). Students are obsessing over getting the grades that are expected of them to please those that push them, and in return, lose sleep and give up other aspects of their lives that are important to them such as time with friends and family as well as activities that they enjoy. The stress that they endure from the pressures of parents, teachers, colleges, and peers have many physical as well as mental effects on every student, some more harmful than others. The extreme pressure on students to get perfect grades so that they will be accepted into a college has diminished the concept of actually learning and has left the art of “finagling the system” in order to succeed in its place (Palmer, 2005). There are many ways that should be implemented in order to reduce the stress on students so that they can thrive because, withoutthem, the school systems will only be creating generations of stressed out, materialistic, and miseducated students (Palmer, 2005).