Sakura: Cherry Blossoms as Living Symbols of Friendship

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In 1912, Japan presented Washington, DC, with 3,000 cherry trees as a gift. This Library of Congress exhibit uses primary sources to explore the history of the trees, the National Cherry Blossom Festival that grew up around them, and Japan/U.S. relations.

Primary sources are divided up by four themes. "Art and Documentation" includes three sources: a letter from Tokyo mayor Yei Theodora Ozaki to First Lady Helen Taft on the gift of the trees, a memo on artwork acquired by botanist Walter Tennyson Swingle in Japan, and a photograph of Swingle and Seisaku Funatsu, one of the group of Japanese experts who cultivated the trees gifted to the U.S.

In "A Special Gift to Washington from the City of Tokyo," visitors can view Swingle's collection of 11 Japanese watercolors depicting different types of cherry trees.

"Cherry Blossoms in Japanese Cultural History" collects 15 pieces of Japanese artwork depicting traditional hanami (flower viewing), as well as two pieces of Western artwork showing Japanese influence. Also included in this section are 12 stereographs of Japan during cherry blossom time, created between 1904 and 1908 for Western audiences.

"Enduring Symbols of Friendship" includes nine sources exploring the place of the cherry trees in Japan/U.S. relations. A 1938 Japanese magazine cover, notes for a 1934 speech by Japanese ambassador Hiroshi Satou, and a photo of children from the Japanese Embassy at the Tidal Basin show pre-World War II peace. Two political cartoons show how quickly the trees became a symbol of DC, and a photograph shows U.S. cherry blossom viewers during World War II. The section also features three photographs from a 2011 photography contest associated with the National Cherry Blossom Festival.

Visitors can also click on "Exhibition Items" to view all 55 primary sources, sortable alphabetically or by theme.

Some sources lack annotations, and existing annotations are sparse. However, this is a unique collection of sources that could be used as jumping-off points for exploring cultural exchange, international relations over time, and DC history.

Puerto Rico Encyclopedia/Enciclopedia de Puerto Rico

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Visitors to this site will find more than 1,000 images and dozens of videos about the history and culture of Puerto Rico. The work of dozens of scholars and contributors, the Puerto Rico Encyclopedia reflects the diverse nature of the island: a U.S. territory, a key location for trade in the Caribbean, a Spanish-speaking entity with its own distinct culture, and a part of a larger Atlantic world. Funded by an endowment from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fundación Angel Ramos, the site is a key product from the Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades. It provides users with all content in both English and Spanish. Educators will find the site easy to navigate and conveniently categorized by themes; within each topic, appropriate subtopics provide an in-depth examination of Puerto Rican culture and history. Of particular interest to U.S. History teachers are the images and information found under History and Archeology. Here, teachers and students can explore a chronological narrative of the island's history and role at specific moments in U.S. and Atlantic history. Other sections worth exploring are Archeology (for its focus on Native American culture), Puerto Rican Diaspora (for its look at Puerto Ricans in the U.S.), and Government (for a detailed history on Puerto Rico's unique status as a free and associated US territory). Educators in other social science courses will also find valuable information related to music, population, health, education, and local government. In all, 15 sections and 71 subsections provide a thorough examination of Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rico Encyclopedia's bilingual presentation also makes it a good site for integrating Hispanic culture into the U.S. History curriculum, as well as helping to bridge curriculum for English Language Learners (ELLs) in the classroom.

Creating a More Perfect Union: 1861-1865

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During the Civil War, the Survey of the Coast found a new purpose—preparing secret reports on the waters along the Atlantic seaboard to improve Union blockades. This website collects and shares materials from the United States Coast Survey, 1861 through 1865.

You can, for example, read any of nine Notes on the Coast of the United States, prepared by the Blockade Strategy Board. These detail sailing conditions and geography for use by Union captains and generals. Summaries, located under the "Documents" heading, cover the process of creating these lengthy reports.

Additional features include a brief biography of Alexander Dallas Bache, U.S. Coast Survey supervisor; an 1861 map showing slave population density; short overviews of some of the other members of the survey team during the Civil War; and a 33-page PDF concerning the history of the Coast Survey between 1843 and 1867. The PDF contains several maps and photographs.

Using the search box on the main page will retrieve Civil War-era maps of cities, camps, works, battlefields, and more.

Roosevelt's Tree Army

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Question

I'm looking for projects in Onondaga and surrounding counties in New York done by the Civilian Conservation Corps or the Works Progress Administration, especially monuments, parks or buildings still in existence.

Answer

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) began in early 1933, under its FDR-appointed director, Robert Fechner, a union leader who had previously been the vice president of the International Association of Machinists. The CCC was a public work relief program for unemployed young men, aged 18-25, who worked on government-owned lands, mostly on natural resource conservation projects. The U.S. Army ran the program, which was therefore sometimes jocularly referred to as “Roosevelt’s Tree Army.” It ended in 1942. The CCC’s Second Corps Area included New York and New Jersey, and in these two states there were 75 camps, most of which resembled rustic World War I Army camps. Some of them were essentially tent towns and were occupied only during the warmer seasons, but others served as winter quarters as well and were constructed of timber buildings and masonry. The enlistees who served in each camp generally came from all over the country. The young men who enlisted from Onondaga County, for example, were transported by train to Fort Dix, New Jersey, where they were given some very basic training before being assigned to CCC camps around the country.

Corps Work in Onondaga County

The CCC, from its winter quarters at Camp 55 on the south side of Upper Green Lake State Park near Fayetteville, worked on the construction of the Green Lakes golf course a half-mile away. The course is still open. The Fayetteville Free Library has an online exhibit about the work of the CCC at Green Lakes State Park, which includes interesting photos of the CCC at work on the park. In Pratt’s Falls County Park, in Manlius, 6 miles southeast of Syracuse, the CCC worked throughout the park on stone retaining walls, roads, trails, buildings, and bridges. In Morgan Hill State Forest the CCC planted millions of conifer trees from seedlings trucked in from the Corps’ tree nursery near Albany. On the Onondaga Reservation, the National Youth Administration and the WPA funded a community center built in 1940 by Indian youth, as well as a model program for training Indians who were then employed as youth camp counselors in the region. Except for the emergency occasioned by a forest fire in October 1935, when 150 CCC men from nearby camps were brought in to help fight the fire, the main CCC did not extend its work into the reservation. Instead, a separate organization—in keeping with the tribe’s sovereignty—called the Indian Emergency Conservation Work Program (IECW), which was renamed the Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division (CCC-ID) in 1937—was run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but with all projects cleared by the tribal council and employing Indian workers. These projects included the development of forest land, clearing brush, the straightening of roads, watershed protection, boundary demarcation, flood control and soil erosion measures, and the construction of drainage ditches between 1935 and 1937.

Corps Work in Other Counties Nearby

Near CCC Camp 15, known as “Cross Clearing Camp,” at Tupper Lake, in Franklin County, the WPA had undertaken a project in 1933-34 to reconstruct the dam on the Lower Racquette River to control the water level. Soon afterward, the CCC had their enlistees clearing rocks, stumps and debris out of the river course to allow navigation on the river and to make it possible to float logs downstream. The site of the Tupper Lake CCC camp is apparently still discernible and directions for finding it are in a 2006 article by Tupper Lake town historian Bill Frenette. A list of other CCC camps in the Adirondacks (and so generally northeast of Onondaga County), is on history researcher Marty Podskoch’s Civilian Conservation Corps Stories website. A CCC camp was established at Gilbert Lake State Park, in the town of New Lisbon, north of Oneonta in Otsego County. Nowadays the park features the New York State Civilian Conservation Corps Museum, one of 12 CCC museums around the country. It displays photos and memorabilia from CCC work at the park and elsewhere. The Corps built many of the park’s 221 campsites and 33 cabins that are still in use today. At Camp 31 at Chittenango Falls State Park, in Madison County, near Cazenovia, the CCC worked on the park’s trails and roads and built the stone facilities and shelters that are still there. At Camp 20 at Selkirk Shores State Park, near Pulaski in Oswego County on Lake Ontario, the CCC cleared trees and brush for public campsites (still open) and created a swimming beach (now closed), reforested conifers, straightened small streams, and cleared the bank of the Salmon River for public access. Also in Oswego County, the WPA and CCC planted conifers in land around Kasoag and built Mosher, Whitney and Long Ponds by constructing small dams. One of the lasting effects of the CCC, which is certainly still "visible" in a sense, not only in rural New York but also throughout the country, was its fostering of a basic kind of conservationist view of America's wilderness areas among its enlistees and their families. As a consequence, it played a strong part in the birth of what we know regard as the environmental movement.

For more information
Bibliography

“CCC Job Army Braves Bitter Winds in Nearby Camps Before Being Ordered Into Warmer Winter Quarters,” Syracuse Herald, November 19, 1933. [On the Chittenango Falls Camp] “Camp 55 CCC Settles Comfortably Into New Quarters, 14 Buildings at Green Lake State Park,” Syracuse Herald, December 20, 1933. “Syracuse and County Youths Enlist for Winter Service at CCC Camps,” Syracuse Herald, November 3, 1933. Laurence Hauptman and Laurence M. Hauptman, The Iroquois and the New Deal. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1988.[book preview]

The Disaster of Innovation

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What was the effect of the cotton gin on slaves?

Answer

Eli Whitney patented his cotton engine, or “gin,” in 1794. A mechanical device to separate cotton fibers from cotton seed, it dramatically lowered the cost of producing cotton fiber. Formerly, workers (usually slaves) had separated the seeds from the lint by hand, painstaking work that required hours of work to produce a pound of lint. By mechanizing the process, the gin could produce more than 50 pounds of lint per day. Cotton fabric, formerly quite expensive due to the high cost of production, became dramatically cheaper, and cotton clothing became commonplace. In the early decades of the 19th century, Southern farmers shifted more and more of their acreage into highly profitable cotton production, and large-scale plantation agriculture became common in the Deep South states of Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. The gin’s effect on the economy and on the lives of the slaves who made up a significant part of that economy was complex. The cotton gin freed slaves from the arthritic labor of separating seeds from the lint by hand. At the same time, the dramatically lowered cost of producing cotton fiber, the corresponding increase in the amount of cotton fabric demanded by textile mills, and the increasing prevalence of large-scale plantation agriculture resulted in a dramatic increase in the demand for more slaves to work those plantations. Overall, the slave population in the South grew from 700,000 before Whitney’s patent to more than three million in 1850—striking evidence of the changing Southern economy and its growing dependence on the slave system to keep the economy running. Cotton cultivation proved especially well-suited to slave labor. A relatively delicate plant, growing and harvesting cotton was a labor-intensive process. On large Southern plantations, much of that labor was provided by slaves working in gangs. Gang labor fit the slave system particularly well: dozens of slaves collected into a work crew could be supervised by a single white overseer, which made for more efficient work. Unlike solitary jobs like shepherding, which made constant supervision of individual slave workers extremely difficult from a practical standpoint, gang labor in the cotton fields allowed one overseer to supervise (and, when necessary, to discipline and punish) large numbers of slaves simultaneously.

Any invention that encouraged the growth and expansion of the institution increased the misery of slaves in the aggregate acutely

On large cotton plantations both the work and the punishments were unremitting and unforgiving. During the height of harvesting season, slaves worked from sunup to sundown; when the moon was full, they worked into the night as well. Slaveowners varied in their reputations for physical violence, but none eschewed punishment completely in the quest to extract more labor from their charges. Beatings and whippings were frequently used to coerce recalcitrant slaves; slaves who resisted labor or attempted to escape were punished with mutilation, sale away from their families, and occasionally death. There is no simple calculus to determine whether and how the cotton gin affected the lives of individual slaves. It is possible that the adoption of the gin made the working hours of a few individual slaves somewhat less difficult. However, given the barbarity of slavery generally—rampant physical and sexual abuse, the separation of families, lives of forced labor in acute deprivation, and the overarching dehumanization that the system enforced—it seems clear that any invention that encouraged the growth and expansion of the institution increased the misery of slaves in the aggregate acutely. Given the cotton gin’s effects on the spread of large-scale cotton agriculture and the resultant growth in the institution of slavery in the first half of the 19th century, it is difficult to portray its introduction as anything other than a disaster from the perspective of enslaved African-Americans.

For more information

Economic History Association. EH.net Hounshell, David. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. Patents as Primary Sources Plantation Agriculture Museum The University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South, 2004.

Bibliography

Gray, Lewis Cecil. History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, vol. 2. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1958. Reidy, Joseph P. From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South, Central Georgia, 1800–1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

TeacherServe

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These three collections of essays, commissioned from distinguished scholars are designed to deepen content knowledge in American history and offer fresh ideas for teaching. Essays include many links to primary source texts in the National Humanities Center’s Toolbox Library. Divining America: Religion in American History features 36 essays, divided into three subcategories: "The 17th and 18th Centuries," "The 19th Century," and "The 20th Century." Topics range from "Native American Religion in Early America" to "The Christian Right," and include Puritanism, the First and Second Great Awakenings, abolitionism, Islam in the U.S., African American Christianity, American Jewish experience, U.S. Roman Catholicism, and Mormonism. Nature Transformed: The Environment in American History features 17 essays, divided into "Native Americans and the Land," "Wilderness and the American Identity," and "The Use of the Land." These focus on the changing ways in which North Americans have related to the natural world and its resources. Topics include, “The Columbian Exchange,” “The Effects of Removal on American Indian Tribes,” “Cities and Suburbs,” and “Environmental Justice for All.” Freedom's Story: Teaching African American Literature and History addresses topics ranging from the early 1600s through to contemporary times. These 20 essays include, “How to Read a Slave Narrative,” “Segregation,” “The Trickster in African American Literature,” “Jazz in African American Literature,” and “The Civil Rights Movement: 1968-2008.” Essays provide an overview of the topic. “Guiding Discussion” offers suggestions on introducing the subject to students, and “Historians Debate” notes secondary sources with varied views on the topic. Notes and additional resources complete each essay.

Mystery Strategy for Elementary Students

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What Is It?

Using the premise of a mystery to solve, elementary students act as history detectives as they explore a historical question and analyze carefully chosen clues to formulate and test hypotheses.

Rationale

This strategy depends on our need to solve mysteries. Students are given an opportunity to be active learners as they solve a historical mystery. This strategy relates to what historians do and the process of historical inquiry. Students must work with evidence, form hypotheses, test those hypotheses, and report their findings.

Goals

The goals of the mystery strategy are to learn to: 1. gather, organize, and process information; 2. formulate and test hypotheses; 3. think creatively and analytically to solve problems; and 4. develop, defend, and present solutions to problems.

Teacher Preparation

1. Choose an topic that contains a mystery such as “Why did the American beaver almost become extinct in the 1840s?” Other examples of appropriate historical mysteries include: “How did flooding in Mississippi in 1931 hinder the Civil Rights Movement?”; “Who really invented the cotton gin?”; and “Was the Boston Massacre really a massacre?”

Data should tease the student without revealing too much.

2. Gather primary and secondary sources that will serve as clues for students such as letters, diary entries, maps, statistical tables, political cartoons, images, artifacts for students to touch (in this case beaver fur or felt), and web articles. These sources should pique students’ interest and provide them with clues that will help them generate theories. For example, if students are given a clue regarding the habitat and species characteristics of the beaver and then also told John Jacob Astor was the wealthiest man in America in 1848 it is hoped they conclude that Astor’s wealth had something to do with the beaver. Maps indicating trade routes should confirm this conclusion. Though they may be encountering names in the clues for the first time, making educated guesses is an essential ingredient to the mystery strategy. Students should not be afraid of making guesses or presenting ideas to the larger group. The learning goal is about what it takes to arrive at a hypothesis rather than ending up with a right answer. 3. Decide student grouping. If using small groups, keep individual needs in mind such as reading levels, ability to work with others, and Individual Education Plans (IEPs). 4. Decide how to present the clues to students (strips of paper within envelopes at stations, single sheets of paper for them to cut apart, etc.). See examples of clues for additional clues. Teachers should read through materials to pull clues that fit students’ needs and abilities.

In the Classroom

1. Students read through clues and sort them according to common elements. Once the clues are sorted, students begin to work on their hypothesis. 2. As students analyze the clues and arrive at a hypothesis, use guiding questions such as, “Tell me how the two things relate” and “What’s your reason for thinking that?” to keep students focused on solving the mystery. Avoid guiding them in a direction. The goal is for students to work with the clues and arrive at their own hypothesis. Students can use the Mystery Writing Guide Worksheet to record ideas. 3. In a whole group, have small groups share their hypotheses and evaluate them. Are they logical based on the clues? Do they make sense? Write group responses on the board so students can track their findings as they move through the evidence. The goal is to test each group hypothesis and arrive at the best conclusion. For example, if one group understands there is a connection between the mountain men and the beaver yet they also think the railroads had a role in the problem, do the clues support or refute these ideas? Remind students they are like historians looking at information to form a hypothesis, test it, and arrive at a conclusion.

Students are asked to think about the process of historical inquiry and how it relates to the steps they followed to arrive at a hypothesis

4. Assign each student a written reflection piece on the content learned and the process used to uncover the mystery. This is the most important part of the mystery strategy and should go beyond merely reporting content. Prompt students with questions such as: What happened in the activity? What things did you do well? Most importantly, ask, Which hypothesis best answers the mystery question? Why?

Common Pitfalls
  • Data should tease the student without revealing too much.
  • Data should hone inference skills.
  • Clues should provide information not an explanation (see Mystery Strategy Clues Worksheet).
Example

Students are presented with the following problem: Why did the American beaver almost become extinct in 1840? Write the question on the board so it is visible throughout the activity. Anticipatory Set: Begin by employing a student’s knowledge of science and ecosystems learned earlier. Give a short presentation about the American Beaver. This would include the fact that beavers maintain dams that create ponds. The water level in these ponds is constant, encouraging the growth of vegetation that supports many other types of animals. The dams also keep summer rains and resulting erosion in check. The presentation could end with figures about the number of beavers estimated to be in North America from European settlement to today (see links below). Students would see a significant decline in the population during exploration and settlement. This decline leads students to the essential question and they can begin working with the clues to make hypotheses. Clues: Clues can be obtained from….

  • images from fashion catalogs from the mid-1800s;
  • real beaver pelt and/or beaver trap, scraps of commercial felt, or images of    beaver fur and hats;
  • short biographical sketches of mountain men such as Kit Carson, John    Liver-Eating Johnston, and William Sublette;
  • Advertisements for beaver products such as top hats and ads from trading    companies seeking hunters. Scroll down through each page for the    aforementioned images.
  • newspaper accounts regarding skirmishes/battles between the Iroquois    Confederation/other tribes in the Great Lakes region in the Beaver Wars;
  • Quotes from all parties involved in the fur trade (Native American chiefs,    trading company owners such as Manuel Lisa, mountain men, etc.)
  • Pictures of people wearing beaver hats;
  • John Jacob Astor.

Be sure to use some visuals! Reflection: Students reflect on the original question by presenting their hypotheses in written form. Along with their response about the disappearance of the beaver, students are asked to think about the process of historical inquiry and how it relates to the steps they followed to arrive at a hypothesis.

Bibliography

American Beavers. Silver, Harvey.F., et. al. Teaching styles & strategies. Trenton, NJ: The Thoughtful Education Press, 1996.