What I Knew Then vs What I Know Now About the Civil War
What I learned in high school about the Civil War
My junior year of high school I took AP US History, which means I probably read a lot about the Civil War and many events that led to it. Yes, I most likely did, but I don't remember much about it because it was two years ago and my memory is not that great. But I can tell you that I wrote an essay about Abraham Lincoln that I will share with you. My APUSH teacher asked us a question that I will forever remember: "Was Abraham Lincoln an abolitionist?" At this point, I didn't know much about Lincoln, except the standard that you learn in school: he helped abolish slavery. So I took it upon myself to really find out if President Lincoln was really an abolitionist or if he just didn't like slavery but didn't do much about it. Throughout my findings I realized that Lincoln wasn't an abolitionist, but rather a Unionist, and fought more to keep the union together and just kinda happened to end slavery under his term, and that way he was able to keep the union together. I attached the essay in case you want to read it. I ended the essay saying that no, he wasn't a true abolitionist, he himself owned slaves. I also knew the basics like Lincoln was assassinated and that slavery was horrible and the north was vs the south. Basically, I knew the surface of the Civil War, and never truly looked into it.
abeeeebro.odt | |
File Size: | 22 kb |
File Type: | odt |
What I Have Learned so Far in Humcore
I have learned more in the past week of HumCore about the Civil War and events that led to it than I did in high school. The book Frederick Douglass wrote is one of the most emotional ones I have ever read and it makes me question everything in this life. Especially the speech he wrote titled, "What Shall We Do with the Slaves if Emancipated". When I was reading that speech I could see how it parallels to today's world and the things people say about undocumented immigrants and I think, "How did we end up here?" With Professor Fah's lectures I have learned about radical abolitionism and all the newspapers that were created against war. I have really looked into the war as much as I did this past week. To learn about all the people who influenced this movement and those who risked their lives in order to help people who where treated as property is truly amazing. To also learn that the people who helped Douglass free himself from his slave owner were from England and not the people who he worked for in the US. It was also surprising to me that Douglass wasn't keen of Lincoln. I also did not realize that people from the North weren't completely behind ending slavery, a lot of them just wanted to keep the US united. There were so many laws to keep people of color from having rights or anything of the sort and that's just so sad. What's even sadder is that some places are trying to hide everything that happened by making it seem like it was not that bad (like textbooks in Texas) when it was really one of the worst things in this planet.