A Few Good Ideas (I Think) for American History; Part II

I THOUGHT A FEW TEACHERS might be able to use these pictures, all from my personal collection. I’m retired, myself. Copy them if you like.

I pedaled a bicycle across the USA in 2007 and again in 2011. Imagine trying to cross this kind of terrain in a wagon.

Above: a view of Tioga Pass, leading into Yosemite National Park. For perspective, there is a large RV (a white speck) above the handle bars of my bicycle on the road you see.

A view a Mountain Man might see; lake near the top of Tioga Pass.

Another view a Mountain Man might see. Morning near Deadville, Colorado, elevation just over 10,000 feet above sea level. (This is my view from my tent, camping near a mountain stream.)

I never thought of this when I was teaching, it might be fun to ask students what last words people spoke when their loved ones drove away, heading west in 1844 or 1849.

I liked to start a discussion of the gold rush by noting a story of the Brazilian gold rush of the 1980's. The big strike began when a tree was uprooted in a storm. Gold nuggets were revealed in the roots.

The rush was on; eventually one miner found a gold nugget the size of a briefcase. (I always went to my desk and pulled my briefcase out and plunked it down. Gold, being dense, is quite heavy, of course. A gold bar the size of a house brick would weigh about fifty pounds. I liked to note that gold was selling for X dollars per ounce. A pound of gold is 12 troy ounces. When I checked today, gold was $1,255.70 per ounce, making a pound of gold worth $15,068.40. Or: a gold brick would be worth $753,420.

If you are not familiar with the story of the S.S. Central America, which sank in 1857, after picking up a load of gold in California, my students were fascinated by that tale. Tommy Thompson, an Ohioan interested in underwater recovery technology, heard about the wreck (off the Atlantic Coast of the United States, located it, and brought up hundreds of millions in gold, gold coins, gold bars, even gold dust.

Fifty million dollars’ went on display earlier this year. I don’t own the picture below; but it might capture student attention.

Many a miner (and there were a few women) headed west to make their fortunes but came home busted or broke.

Miners had a limited menu, one man joked, pretty much bacon and flapjacks, with coffee to wash a meal down. It was said that one miner got so good at flipping his pancakes he could flip one up the chimney of his cabin, run outside, and catch it on the way down.

We used to do a skit on miners in my class. It was always fun to have a few pancakes or frozen waffles and ask one of the students in the skit to demonstrate his flipping skill, behind the back, etc.

Bouncing a frozen waffle off the classroom ceiling was always kind of fun.

You may know Crockett’s story. Running for re-election to Congress, he told the voters, if they didn’t vote for him, they could go to hell and he’d go to Texas.

They didn’t and he went to his doom at the Alamo. I always tried to make it clear to students that they should remember the Alamo, themselves. It stands as an example of a total wipe out, if nothing else.

In the movie, Black Hawk Down, for example, a young soldier, surrounded with his buddies, says, “I feel like we’re at the Alamo.”

Custer’s Last Stand and Thermopylae also work.

Few of my Ohio students had ever driven across the United States. They had no idea how flat Kansas was. I found on a bicycle that I could see grain towers in towns twelve miles away. Met these two young riders heading east, as I was pedaling west.

The sunflower represents Kansas, of course. And that reminds me of poor Alf Landon, absolutely creamed in the 1936 election, with the electoral vote going 523-8 in favor of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Only Vermont and Maine went for the Republican.

Roosevelt ran with John Nance Garner as his vice presidential candidate; I always liked to tell students Garner’s response when offered the second spot on the ticket. The position, he said, “was not worth bucket of warm spit.”

Some say other bodily fluids were mentioned. 

A good question to start a discussion in class was always to ask students to name the three greatest American presidents (according to a survey of American historians). My students usually got Washington and Lincoln right; but FDR usually escaped them. Kennedy was often a response, or Reagan, or Teddy Roosevelt.

I usually explained that historians rated Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Harry Truman as “near greats.”

Too soon to tell about Trump, although this blogger has his own opinion. According to a recent survey of 170 historians, the current occupant of the Oval Office has some room to go up in the polls.

If you are ever talking about trade, I found it ironic that even at Mt. Rushmore, almost everything for sale in the gift shop was made in China or other foreign lands. It was the same with Christmas ornaments in the gift shop at Yosemite National Park, and with the Bobblehead Presidents at Andrew Jackson’s home, The Hermitage.

Yes, indeed. Made in China!

If a modern American tried to argue that he or she practiced the same religion as the Aztecs, would that be covered under the First Amendment?

Okay, stupid joke.

By comparison the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Native Americans can use peyote in their religious ceremonies.

Animal sacrifice? Yes, for some groups that’s also allowed.

Freedom of religion cases can be tricky. In the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision earlier this year, a Colorado baker won his legal battle after claiming his religion taught him gay marriage was sinful. So he shouldn’t have to bake a cake for two gays who wanted to marry. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, following the teachings of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, practiced polygamy for almost fifty years; but lost the right in 1890. On what grounds? 

If a Muslim-American claimed his religion gave him the right to have four wives, and the Quran does, how would courts rule? The Quran predates the U.S. Constitution by more than 1,100 years.

I’d bring these examples up, but I wouldn’t give my opinions at all. I’d only want to get students thinking about how the courts work.

One great rule of thumb, in deciding cases involving the Bill of Rights, was set down by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. He explained, basically: “Your right ends where the other fellow’s nose begins.”

One Native American compared the hunting done by pioneers on lands his people had long claimed to what Boone would think if the Native Americans came to his farm and shot all his cows.

In later years, Boone was often accompanied on hunting trips by his slave, Derry Coburn, both men going armed. That’s an image of slavery that doesn’t quite fit. On one occasion, Boone caught his hand in a big bear trap and couldn’t get loose himself. He staggered back to camp, Coburn helped free his hand, and then went back to cooking dinner, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

On the other hand, an escaped slave named Pompey took part in the attack on Boonseboro 

I don’t own this picture; but Caleb Bingham’s paintings from the 1840s capture a great deal of American life.

What might students notice about this election day in Missouri, c. 1844?

My students (I taught in Loveland, Ohio, a suburb near Cincinnati) were interested in the story of the first professional sports team in U.S. history, the 1869 Red Stockings. These ladies could have watched a game.

That year, the Red Stockings finished the season 65-0. They started strong again in 1870, winning another nineteen games to start the season. In one eight-game stretch the Cincinnati club scored 58, 66, 54, 76, 65, 56, 51 and 63 runs. One unlucky opposing squad was buried 103-8.

Finally, their streak of 84 wins ended with an 11-inning, 8-7 defeat to the Brooklyn Atlantics. That defeat came in part after a fan jumped on the back of a Red’s outfielder as he tried to pick up a ground ball. (Fans in the outfield were often standing just back of the playing field.

I thought this story worked well to force students to think and examine different points of view. John Brown (above) once led a raid on a farm in Missouri, where eleven slaves were held. In the dark of night, the farmer heard commotion and came out on his porch, armed. Brown’s men shot and killed him, loaded the slaves into a wagon and escaped.

Was this murder? What would the farmer’s wife say? What would the slaves say? What might John Brown himself say?

My students never seemed to know what “artillery,” “cavalry” and “infantry” were. I tried to help them figure it out.

(I was a “heroic” desk jockey during my stint in the Marines.)

 

My students never seemed to know what “artillery,” “cavalry” and “infantry” were. I tried to help them figure it out.

(I was a “heroic” desk jockey during my stint in the Marines.)

A draft wheel used during the Civil War to select the names of men bound for service. My students rarely knew how the draft worked.

A good question for discussion: Should all young Americans, at age 18, have to serve two years in the military?

Certainly, the Civil War rule, allowing a rich man to pay for a substitute struck most students as wrong.

I don’t own this painting by Winslow Homer, but loved to use it to humanize the people who fought in the Civil War. Titled “Playing Old Soldier,” I asked students what they thought the man seated was doing.

Faking sick, I believe. Not that any of our students ever fake it to get out of coming to our class.

Compare the technological advance—ironclad warships in 1862—to advances in modern times: drone warfare, robots to enter buildings, night-vision goggles and many more. I used to explain that the United States had battleships that could fire 16-inch shells weighing more than a ton from the Ohio River (assuming you could get a battleship up the river, of course) and hit Loveland.

The range of 24 miles was just about right.

This barn, just off I-71, north of Cincinnati, reflects the owner’s sentiments. Even many of my African Americans students did not know what this symbol could mean.

Immigrants have always rallied to the U.S. flag in time of war. Recruiting Germans after the firing on Ft. Sumter.

Crossing the barren stretches of Nevada by wagon had to be hard. Ask the Donner Party about that. Even today, the main road across the middle of the state is known as “The Loneliest Highway in America.”

From the spot where I took this picture you could turn in all directions and see the same basic scene. Sagebrush and…more sagebrush.

Scenes from Salt Lake City: Monument to the Mormon handcart pioneers, who traveled thousands of miles, pulling all their own possessions.

Model of the main temple (middle), the main temple (above).

Students rarely know there were multiple gold and silver rushes in the West. A gold strike in 1859 led to the founding of a town called Bodie, California (below). Eventually, Bodie could boast of a population of 10,000.

Bodie sits at 8,379 feet above sea level. In winter the snows fall heavily and weather can be brutally cold.

Once the gold ran out, the town slowly lost population. Today it’s a ghost town.

While the town thrived, it is said there was an average of one murder per day. The school teacher was said to carry several pistols and knives to work. The school appears in the picture directly above.

I had good success, after covering the gold rush asking students to write stories about some miner or some other participant, now a ghost.