Electricity and How It affected America

Who invented the light bulb? The most two important people that made the light bulb is Thomas Edison and Joseph Wilson Swan. These two made an invention that changes the whole nation.

In the old days people used gas lamps as a source of light for houses and they also used candles at tables when reading letters, or writing them. Then one day Thomas Edison had bought this place after the stock ticker made him and his company richer. Thomas Edison decided to make the place he bought an invention place. So he hired all this scientists to make an invention that would one day make him famous and they did.

Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan introduced the light bulb in 1879 to America and how it worked. In Joseph Swan In 1850 he began working with carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb. By 1860 he was able to demonstrate a working device but the lack of a adequate supply of electricity resulted in a short lifetime for the bulb and an inefficient source of light. By the mid-1870s better pumps became available, and Swan returned to his experiments. With the help of Charles Stearns, an expert on pumps, in 1878 Swan developed a method of processing that avoided the early bulb blackening. December 1878 a lamp using a skinny rod that was made out of carbon. Between the years 1878 and 1892 the electric light industry was growing in terms of installed lights but shrinking in terms of company competition as both Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse determined to control the industry and its advancement.

A lot of people were having their own doubts at that time. Mr. Roosevelt Wife had a hard time accepting the light bulb because she thought that it would blow up her house. When people were using gas lamps they didn’t know the dangers that came with using them. Sometimes houses would explode because of gas lamps. But when they were actually using the light bulbs then I guess they’re doubts disappeared.

To me Edison didn’t just invent a light bulb, either. He put together what he learned about what electricity with what he knew about gas lights and mixed a whole new system of electric lighting. Edison did it his own way and was well fitted together and he did his way.

Western Migration: How did it affect the Native Americans?

Western Migration: How Did It Affect Native Americans?


Traditionally, when one thinks of the expansion of the American West, the event most likely to come to mind is the California Gold Rush of 1849. Western Migration had such a huge impact on a lot of people including the Native Americans who were forced out of their communities into reservations. The Western Migration also reminded of how like the Native Americans lost their rights during that time.

Beginning in 1618, the head right system offered fifty acres of land to new migrants who promised to raise tobacco or to wealthy sponsors who paid for the passage of a migrant, and fueled a westward flow of land hunters and tobacco farmers. Soon rich aristocrats wanted land too, forcing poor farmers to migrate farther west to get hold of land. While trying to go west people had to stop several times because they encountered with Native Americans who weren’t happy to see us in their territory.


During the 19th century the western expansion of the United States forced a large numbers of Native Americans from enormous areas of their territory, either by forcing them into marginal lands farther and farther west, or by just killing them. President Andrew Jackson, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced the Five Civilized Tribes from the east onto western reservations, primarily to take their land for settlement. The forced migration was marked by great hardship and many deaths. Its route is known as the “Trails of Tears.” Conflicts generally known at the time as "Indian Wars" broke out between U.S. forces and many different tribes. There were several treaties during the 19th centaury, but later were eliminated because for a lot of other reasons. There were also several battles including a victory for the Native Americans at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, and the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee in 1890.

On January 1876 the United States goverments ordered all the remaining Native Americans to move in to reservations. During the 1960s Native Americans were being arrested for teaching their traditional beliefs. These reservations that the Indians were forced into is a huge problem because its has a high rate of unemployment, and poverty. Some states even failed to recognize that they have Native Americans tribes. For example Virginia has no federally recognized tribes, because of the work of one man, Walter Ashby Plecker. In 1912, Plecker became the first registrar of the state's Bureau of Vital Statistics, serving until 1946, a confirmed white supremacist. A law passed by the state's General Assembly recognized only two races, "white" and "colored". Plecker pressured local governments into reclassifying all Native Americans in the state as "colored", leading to massive destruction of records on the state's Native American community. In order to receive federal recognition and the benefits it confers, tribes must prove their continuous existence since 1900s.

I think that the Native Americans were treated just like the African Americans. They were forced to leave their homelands into these reservations that are ruining their lives just like the African Americans were forced to be slaves. The Native Americans had their rights taken away and they got arrested just for trying to teach their old beliefs to their young ones. I don’t think some Native Americans will never forget what a huge impact western migration had on them.

freeman's Bureau

The Freedman’s Bureau
By: Firishta Nisar

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line; in relation of the darker to lighter races of men in Asia, Africa, and America and the islands of the seas. It was this part that caused the civil war.

The Freedman’s Bureau was established in March 3, 1865 after two years of bitter debate. This document was addressed to all matters concerning refugees and freedmen within the states that were under reconstruction. The Bureau was not appropriated a budget of its own, but was instead custom-built as a supplementary of the War Department and depended upon it for funds and staff.

I think the one person who made a big mistake was President Johnson. After the Freedman’s Bureau was issued it never suffered from lack of funding or anything like that. The Bureau had sold or rented lands in the south which had been taken during the civil war. This is the mistake President Johnson had made was he destabilized the Bureau funding by returning all lands to the pre-Civil War owners in 1866. After this point, freed slaves lost access to lands and the Bureau lost its primary source of funding.

A lot people believed that The Freedman’s Bureau made a very small impact, if any, on the freedmen during reconstruction. A few of the reasons for the Bureau's failures as a provider for social welfare are lack of funds, weak organization of the Bureau's internal structure opposition from conservatives, and lack of interest of the Southern community.

Despite the many criticisms, the Freedmen's Bureau did help African-Americans gain access to the rights that they were denied during slavery. The Freedmen's Bureau helped black communities to establish schools and churches. Under slavery, blacks had been denied the right to education and religion. The Bureau monitored the civil authorities in cases that involved African-Americans. Originally, the Freedmen's Bureau conducted its own court of law when it was illegal for a black to testify in court in the majority of Southern states. The labor system of the South had to be completely restructured after the war. Many former slave owners attempted to trick former slaves into entering contracts under the same terms as under the slavery system. The Freedmen's Bureau acted on the behalf of blacks to negotiate fair contracts for labor and property. Freedom offered blacks the opportunity to establish a firm family structure. The Freedmen's Bureau acted as a clearinghouse of information to aide blacks in finding lost relatives and mediated domestic disputes.

Even after the Freedman’s Bureau was issued there came lot violence towards the African Americans stilled face many challenges like lynching, and a group that scared the African American community was the Ku Klux Klan. The activities of the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations were largely responsible for returning the states of Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina to white rule. But the violent methods utilized by the Klan were considered excessive by Forrest, and he ordered the organization to be disbanded in 1869. By that time, in any event, the Klan had virtually disappeared; the goal of restoration to home rule had been achieved throughout the South in the late 1870s.

Even though the Freedman’s Bureau was written the south ignored all the good deeds of the Bureau, and hated its very name with perfect hatred. So after a while theFreedmen's Bureau died, and it’s became the Fifteenth Amendment.

Women Soldiers of the Civil War

Women Soldiers of the Civil War

The War Between the States was also a war between brothers, cousins, friends and neighbors and some of them were women. I use to think women were only supposed to housework like take care of the family, cook, clean, and just do what they are supposed to do. But now I’ve read or heard stories about how women were nurses, sutlers, and as Union and Confederate soldiers, and even spies.

During the civil war there were about 400 women who fought for their country on the Union side and the Confederate. That is totally apart from the thousands who worked as nurses during that time. Many of those 400 women were involved as either spies or messengers, or soldiers. I’ve would learn later that some of the women would either be completely responsible for the outcome of at least one major battle, and in some way at least responsible for several others. I think that women were only involved during the war is for two reasons and that is loyalty to their country, and their beliefs especially concerning about slavery.

The south and north states wouldn’t let women sign up to fight. So only way women could join is to change their names in to masculine names, disguised themselves as men just so they could fight. While recruits on both sides of the conflict were supposedly subject to physical examinations, those tests usually were silly. Most recruiters only looked for visible handicaps, such as deafness, poor eyesight, or lameness. Both armies standardized the medical exams, and those charged with performing them hardly ever ordered recruits to undress.

I would feel sorry for them if they had like cut off their hair, or had to go a camp that was dirty, and who were held prisoners, who also fought and died for their country. It was hard to guess how many women served in the Civil War because they look so much like men. There would be an estimated 250 women who had served during the war. There would be countless battles and cruel killings from both sides that were fighting. Women would accidently get reveled when wounded in battle or by casualty. For an example Mary Owens had enlisted in the army, only to be discovered as a woman when she was wounded in the arm and was sent back home in Pennsylvania. She served 18 months under the alias of John Evans.

The army itself would completely have no regard for women soldiers Union or Confederate. The army would deny women playing in military role in the Civil War. Sarah Edmonds Seelye served two years in Michigan Infantry as “Franklin Thompson.” On April 19, 1863 Sarah deserted the army because she had caught malaria. She had then got married and had kids. But in 1886 she had received a government letter describing to having a faithful service in the ranks. She died in Texas of September 5, 1898.

For the most part women would have to practice how to use a gun and try not to act all girly towards suspicious people. So basically a women who enlisted as a male in the war would have to weeks with out changing their clothes or taking a shower and many refused. The women soldiers learned to be warriors like men. From a historical point of view the woman combatants of 1861 to 1865 were just not ahead of their time; they were ahead of our time.