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Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16^th President of the United States from 1861 until 1865, his assassination.

He grew up in a poor family on the western frontier, so Lincoln was self- educated but however he became a country lawyer, Illinois state legislator in the 1830s, a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives in the 1840s, but he failed twice to be elected to the United States Senate in the 1850s. He was a person who opposed slavery in the United States, and after this, he won the Republican Party nomination and was elected President of the US in 1860.

Lincoln exercised war powers, which included the arrest and detention without judgment of thousands of secessionists. Moreover, his efforts to the slavery abolition included issuing his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, encouraging frontier states to ban slavery and helping get though Congress the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and he did the job in 1865. 

Under his leadership, the Union established a naval blockage that close down the South’s normal trade, took control of the frontier slave states at the beginning of the war and tried to catch the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. Many generals failed and each time that these generals failed, Lincoln replaced another until Grant succeeded in 1865.

He approached to War Democrats and managed his own re-election in the 1864 presidential election. Politically, he fended with patronage; he pitted his opponents and appealed to the American people with the power of oratory.

Lincoln delivered a speech in 1863; it was a symbol of nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty and democracy.  But six days after the delivery of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was killed by John Wilkes Booth. His death was the first murder of  a U.S. president.

Lincoln has been classified by people as one of the three greatest U.S. presidents.

Marta Alcover Ibáñez

Sitting Bull

Hi everyone, I'm gonna tell you some facts of the life of this incredible man, a man that I admire a lot.

Sitting Bull(1831-1890), also known by his Sioux name Tatanka Iyotanka, was a native Amerindian chief of the Sioux's tribe Hunkpapa.

He was born in 1831 near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in Dakota Territory. When he was born he was named Jumping Badger but there is a Sioux tradition by which he was later given one of his father's names, Tȟatȟaŋka Iyotȟaŋka, Sitting Bull in English.

In the Dakota War of 1862 the Sioux killed 600 settlers and soldiers in Minnesota as a response to the bad treatment that the Sioux have received by the gorvernment. Because of that, in 1864 about 2200 American soldiers attacked a Sioux village. The defenders were led by Sitting Bull among others Sioux chiefs. But as a result the Sioux were driven out.
In September of the same year Sitting Bull was shot but the wound wasn't too serious.

During the period 1868–1876, Sitting Bull became the most important of Native American chiefs as most of the chiefs had moved to live in the reservations where they were dependent for subsistence on the US Indian agencies. But Sitting Bull refused to adopt any dependence and he and his warriors lived isolated on the Plains. Every Amerindian tribe which was threatened by the white people asked for Sitting Bull's help, and their people became really numerous.

On June 25, 1876 the Americans attacked the Sitting Bull's camp, the Little Big Horn River, but they didn't know how large the camp was so they were defeated by the Amerindian warriors. Over the next year, the new American military forces pursued the Sioux, forcing many of them to surrender. Sitting Bull refused to surrender and in May 1877 led his band across the border into Saskatchewan, Canada.
But in 1881 hunger and cold forced Sitting Bull and the people who remained with him to surrender.

At first they were recluded as prisoners of war in the Fort Randall but 20 months after they were allowed to come back to to the Standing Rock Agency. But when the Ghost dance took place the American feared it and thought that Sitting Bull was one of the leaders of this Ghost dance. Finally he was killed by a Sioux, their people got angry. As a result 8 policemen and 7 of his supporters died that day.

As time passed, Sitting Bull became a symbol and archetype of Native American resistance movements .

I hope you like the life of this amazing man, a symbol for many people, a hero for a society.

Borja Gil García

Films

Hi everybody!


In class we spoke about this film. I don't know if you have seen it but it is an interesting film.


REVOLUTIONARY ROAD is a story adapted from the novel by Richard Yates. Revolutionary Road is a portrait of an American marriage in 1950s.

Frank and April Wheeler are a special and different couple who will to live their lives based in their ideals. Apparently, they are a happy couple with two children. However, when they move to the suburbs in Connecticut, the Wheelers find themselves becoming what they didn’t expect: people with a routine life like the others. Then, they have to decide if they fight for their dreams or resign themselves.

In this film we can see the different aspects of the 1950s; the age of conformity, in which families became suburban.

You can find more information here:

http://www.revolutionaryroadmovie.com/main.html

JOHN WINTHROP

John Winthrop was born in Groton, Suffolk, England in 1588. He studied law in London but he was persecuted due to his Puritan religious beliefs. Winthrop thought that the Church of England should abbolish bishops and relics of Roman Catholicism. He served as governor of Massachusetts for twelve terms and was considered to be a good leader. However, in 1636 he clashed with Roger Williams and was forced to banish from the colony.

In addition, in 1645 Winthrop became the first president of the Confederation of New England. His book History of New England was published after his death in 1649.

A Model of Christian Charity is a sermon delivered to his fellow Puritans colonists aboard the ship Arbella before landing at Massachusetts Bay Colony. However, it is known because of the phrase ''City upon a Hill'' which became the ideal New England colonists placed upon their capital city (Boston). 

Here you can take a look at the main points of this sermon:

''God has made different classes of men, and, indeed, of all things. All men are not created equal. The reason herof:
In conformity to the rest of the world and demonstrating his wisdom, God created a great variety and differences in his creatures for the persevation of the whole.

The differences give humans the opportunity to manifest the work of the Spirit withhim them.

God made variey any differences so that all men would have a need of one another.'' [...]

Harriet Tubman

Hey guys! I was studing for tomorrow's exam and I thought that it would be interesting to know more about Harriet Tubman. 

Harriet Tubman (Araminta Harriet Ross) was born into slavery in 1819 or 1820, in Dorchester County, Maryland. Given the names of her two parents, both held in slavery, she was of purely African ancestry. She was raised under harsh conditions, and subjected to whippings even as a small child. At the age of 12 she was seriously injured by a blow to the head, inflicted by a white overseer for refusing to assist in tying up a man who had attempted escape.
Tubman was given a piece of paper by a white neighbor with two names, and told how to find the first house on her path to freedom. At the first house she was put into a wagon, covered with a sack, and driven to her next destination. Following the route to Pennsylvania, she initially settled in Philadelphia, where she met William Still, the Philadelphia Stationmaster on the Underground Railroad. With the assistance of Still, and other members of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, she learned about the workings of the UGRR.In 1851 she began relocating members of her family to St. Catharines, (Ontario) Canada West. North Street in St. Catharines remained her base of operations until 1857. There she worked at various activities to save to finance her activities as a Conductor on the UGRR.
After freeing herself from slavery, Harriet Tubman returned to Maryland to rescue other members of her family. In all she is believed to have conducted approximately 300 persons to freedom in the North. 
After the outbreak of the Civil War, Tubman served as a soldier, spy, and a nurse, for a time serving at Fortress Monroe. While guiding a group of black soldiers in South Carolina, she met Nelson Davis, who was ten years her junior. Denied payment for her wartime service, Tubman was forced, after a bruising fight, to ride in a baggage car on her return to Auburn.

Source: http://www.nyhistory.com/harriettubman/life.htm

Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813-1897)

Harriet Ann Jacobs was slave but she could escape from slavery to the north and there wrote her only work, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. It published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, was one of the first autobiographical narratives about the fight for freedom of the slaves and story of the sexual abuse they suffered. She changed all the names of people and cities because she didn’t want to compromise anyone for helping her.

After all, she became an abolitionist speaker and reformer. For a short time Harriet worked in Rochester in New York in Anti-Slavery Office where they became acquainted with Frederick Douglass, Amy Post and other abolitionists.

Harriet died in Washington on 7^th March in 1897.

http://www.harrietjacobs.org/index.html