Blog Assignment #1
1. This articles attempts to broaden the debate about the use of biological warfare in the 18th century and put it into context. The author, Elizabeth Fenn, focuses the majority of her article on Fort Pitt where in 1763 the besieging Indians became infected with smallpox and suffered heavy casualties. The document attempts to present all of the facts of the incident to determine whether or not the British commander in chief in New York Jeffrey Amherst was responsible for deliberately inoculating the enemy Indians. However, she does not attempt to answer the question and instead provides several examples to show that, whether or not Amherst was responsible or his subordinates carried out their own plans without his knowledge, the use of smallpox and other diseases as a means of warfare was by no means confined to the events at Fort Pitt.
2. Fenn uses a variety of sources ranging from personal communications between British officers to diaries of American Presidents. To list them all would be impractical.
3. The author’s main points are that the Fort Pitt incident, although the most notorious example of possible biological warfare, was by no means the only example and that when considering the copious evidence to the fact that even the Indians were capable of such tactics, the happenings at Fort Pitt and the endless debate over who was responsible became just another chapter in the long history of biological warfare.
4. I think that Fenn more than proved her point that biological warfare was prevalent in the 18th century and never less convincingly than when she quoted Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix as recounting an incident where a band of Iroquois poisoned the river near an English camp and killed many of the soldiers (Fenn, 26). This shows that all humans, Indian and English, were capable of such things. This capability was a surprise to even George Washington where in paragraph 33 Fenn quotes him as saying, “The information I received that the enemy intended spreading the Small pox amongst us, I could not suppose them Capable of—I now must give Some Credit to it.”
5. The answer to this question is important to us as we study American history because it highlights one of the darker sides of human interaction and shows exactly who we are as a nation with a history of transgressions against other races that we encounter, a history that requires us to prevent such things as we move forward as leaders in a new world
Blog Assignment #2
1. The article “A Road Closed: Rural Insurgency in Post-Independence Pennsylvania” by Terry Bouton examines the curious road closings by Pennsylvania farmers in the years following the Revolutionary War. His argument is that the road closings were in fact part of a much more intricate form of resistance by the farmers in response to financial suffocation that eventually led to the Whiskey Rebellion and the Fries Rebellion.
2. Bouton’s overall conclusion is that the farmers of the times felt betrayed rather than liberated by the Revolution. He cites many examples, not just the infamous rebellions in the history books but years of seemingly disconnected resistance like the road closings. These long thought isolated incidents in fact represent a minor revolution that never came to fruition.
3. One of the most important primary sources used to support his argument is the Pennsylvania state charter of 1776. The charter explicitly states that the people should be in charge of regulating policies and that never should anyone be sacrificed to benefit others. The farmers must have thought themselves in the midst of the exact same situation as the entire country had been before the Revolution and simply acted in the only true American style of the time, rebellion.
4. Bouton’s article supplements the textbooks presentation of the Economic Crisis by giving a personal account of just how the inability of the government to pay of the war debts impacted the life of daily Americans and how they sought to remedy it. Shay’s rebellion in 1786 and the Whiskey Rebellion are the two most prominent examples of the inevitable consequence what happens when normal people are pushed beyond their limit. Here economy and politics are inexorably linked for, when a government institutes economic policies that place the burden of its financial problems on its own people, that government loses its political standing and must be changed.
5. I found the article well-argued and persuasive because of how Bouton connected the dots of several types of resistance by farmers all over the country and tied those all together under the heading of rebellion against a new government that failed to keep its promises. I found the entire argument thought provoking because it reveals another American Revolution that has never been discussed before. Bouton’s quote that “…similar movements pushing for an alternative kind of democratic society developed…in every state during the postwar decades” entices this notion and is part of an argument that should not be overlooked (Bouton, 33).
BLog #3 Campbell
1. Campbell’s article seeks to explore the inner struggles of morality during the civil war and also challenge the belief that Confederate women were so unlikely to resist as to turn them against the nition of rebellion altogether.
2. Her main points are that an inital despondency was in fact the first step in rededication and first hand encounters with Union troops did more to bring COnfederate women to the cause then the burning of Columbia did to take them away from it. Her conclusion is that, in fact, the women of the SOuth kpet their dignity by picking up their husbands responsibilities and resisting the invaders in their stead. She highlights that in the postWar period women and their contribution were belittled to reestablish order and male dominance.
3. Personal journals from women of the time, including Mary Chestnut, Emma LeConte, and Grace Elmore. She also uses accounts from Union soldiers about their dealings with the women of COlumbia. Also of letters from General Sherman himself.
4. Campbell’s article addresses the ideology of “true womanhood” presented in the textbooks by highlighting their cohesion and sustained motivation in resisting the intruders. The text define women as only afraid of Sherman and trembling before his advances but Campell’s article portrays the women as staunch in their response to the men and even staring them down as they looted their homes. He even addresses how some of the women came to respect Sherman’s men and their treatment of some of the population of Columbia.
5. Campbell incorporates the notions of “true womanwood” and “female honor” into her argument by saying that the women had just as much rite and desire to defend as the men, citing their recgonigiton of the broader goals of war, their view of themselves as political actors, and their mutual hate of an invader that destroyed their homes. Campbell disagrees with Faust’s assertation that woman disillusionment played a role in the defeat becasue he fails to acknowledge that the women had influence beyond just the domestic sphere. Yes I believe Sherman used total war because although he did not harm civilians, he destroyed anything that could be used against him, even transportation lines and homes that could be used to foster enemy soldiers. I think the tactic of the colonists to directly disease the Indian population is an example, prior to the Civil War, that directly affected civilians in a military fashion.
