How Eli Whitney Got His Groove Back!

Eli Whitney is known for basically one thing: inventing the cotton gin. It was a great invention, but perhaps not as good as his other invention that revolutionized the industrial world.

The cotton gin came from an act of kindness from Whitney. While visiting a widow named Mrs. Greene in Georgia, Whitney decided to design an embroidery frame for her. Greene was very impressed by the cleverness of the design and it got her thinking. If Whitney was as clever as he seemed, perhaps he could solve the problem she and other planters faced; cotton was hard to pick and clean and they wanted something to make it easier. Upland cotton, the type that grows in the interior of the south had seeds that stuck to the cotton like Velcro. It was very hard to remove the seeds by hand and a person could only clean about a pound of cotton per day. This made upland cotton basically worthless. Why bother with cotton? Since the industrial revolution in England, production of clothes using cotton became extremely popular, but it was expensive. England didn't have enough cotton to sell it at a decent price yet. The south wanted a way to provide England with the cotton it needed, and grow financially wealthy in the process.

Whitney took a few months to iron out the details but it took him only ten days to invent the cotton gin. The design was extremely simple. You feed cotton in while the teeth catch the cotton seeds and separate them while the cotton is spit out the end, seedless. With this new invention, a person could clean up to 10 pounds of cotton a day. The cotton gin changed everything in the south. Since upland cotton was now easy to seed, southern farmers began to dedicate their whole land to cotton. Tobacco was now out. The U.S. went from selling virtually no cotton to England, to selling 38 million pounds. By the time the civil war was about to start, the south was exporting 920 million pounds of cotton to England in one year. Whitney's invention also changed what people wore all around the earth. Since there was now a large amount of cotton, it went from being an extremely expensive material used in clothes, to being dirt cheap. Now everyone could afford a nice cotton shirt and not have to deal with wool. Not only was wool extremely uncomfortable to wear, but it was also hard to clean, so many people had filthy clothing on most of the time. Cotton was a welcome replacement: comfortable and easy to clean.

Now here comes the dark side of the cotton gin and something that Whitney had not intended. The cotton gin drastically increased the number of slaves people needed to cultivate their land. There is a misconception that the cotton gin helped slaves by eliminating the hand ginning, thus the machine made it so there didn't need to be as many slaves. While it's true that the machine made it easier, it also made it necessary (in the southern farmer's mind) to have more slaves to pick cotton. Slavery was thought to be dying out, and the gin just put it back on its feet. Between 1775 and 1800, the price of a slave dropped from $100 dollars to $50 dollars, which led to speculation from abolitionist that slavery was on the way out. Either it would die a natural death, or it would become so weakened that it would be easy to abolish. The gin came along and increased the number of slaves needed and between 1800 and 1850 the price of a slave went from $50 to as much as $1000. Yikes. Now slavery was deemed integral to the southern economy. This in turn caused many southern leaders to defend the institution of slavery militantly. It was now their goal to defend slavery and even expand it into new territories. Thanks to the cotton gin, the Civil War was now a sure thing.

Whitney had known that the gin would make him a wealthy man. His friend Phineas Miller agreed with that and they became business partners. Miller would provide the money for the gins and Whitney would build them. Things didn't go quite as planned however. There were two main problems with their dreams:
First, just as Whitney had intended, the cotton gin was so simple and easy to make that just about anyone who was good with tools could easily make one. So a lot of planters did, even though doing so violated Whitney's patent.
Secondly, Whitney and Miller were too greedy for their own good. They knew that even if they had enough money to build a gin for each planter, which they didn't, the planters wouldn't have enough money to buy them. So, they planned to set up a network of gins around the south where they would do the ginning in exchange for a share of the cotton they ginned. It happened to be a big share-40% to be exact. That was way more than southern planters were willing to part with and they decided to make a gin themselves, or buy an illegal copycat machine made by competitors.

Then came the rumors: that Whitney himself had stolen the idea for the cotton gin from a Southern inventor; that the copycat gins were actually "improved" models that didn't infringe on Whitney's patents; and, worst of all, that Whitney's machines damaged cotton fibers during the ginning process. The last rumor stuck: By the end of 1795, the English were refusing to buy cotton ginned on Whitney & Miller machines. From that point on, Whitney & Miller couldn't sell a gin for full price.

Whitney and Miller spent years battling the copycats in court and convincing the English textile mills that their cotton was still the best. The stress must of done a number on Miller, as he died from a fever in 1803, at just 39 years old. Whitney kept at it and eventually won his last court fight in 1806. This was a hollow victory since the patent on the gin ran out a year later. Now anybody could make a gin and it would be perfectly legal. So how much did Whitney make from the invention of the cotton gin? Nothing. In fact, historians believe that since he was in so many legal battles he may have lost money. Whitney was down, but he was not out. He was already working on another invention. One that would be better than his last.

Around 1798, it looked as if the U.S. and France were going to go to war. This was a problem because France was the United States' chief maker of muskets. So if there was war, where would the U.S. get it's muskets? Congress ordered that two national armories be started that would have to produce 50,000 muskets in order to fight the French. In four years, they only produced 1,000. This was bad news for the U.S. Congress decided to give the task to private contractors. Let me put this into perspective. Back then, firearms were made by highly skilled artisans who made the entire weapon, crafting each part from scratch and filing and fitting them by hand. Every part was one of a kind. One part made for one gun wouldn't work on another gun. Also, if your gun broke, it could only be repaired by a expert craftsmen. If your gun broke in the middle of a battle, then you might as well chuck it. To add to the problem, people who could make guns and fix them were rare and it took forever to train new ones.

Whitney knew what he had to do. He devised that instead of using one expert craftsman to make an entire gun, he would divide the tasks among several workers of average skill. They'd be easier to train, and easier to replace if they quit. Each worker would learn how to make one part, using high-precision machine tools, designed by Whitney. The tools would be so precise that the parts would be virtually identical to each other. Each part would fit interchangeably into any of the muskets made in Whitney's factory. Once the piece for the musket had been made, assembling them into the finished weapon would be literally a snap. Ready-made interchangeable spare parts would make it possible for any soldier to fix his musket himself.

The government gave Whitney the contract and Whitney had to deliver 10,000 muskets in two years. As we know, the war never came with France, which was probably a good thing since Whitney missed his deadline by eight years. Whitney though was a trusted inventor and so he was able to get advances on his contract. What really helped him get extra time to perfect his system was the demonstration he did for president-elect Jefferson and other high officials in 1801. Dumping a huge pile of interchangeable musket parts onto a table, Whitney invited them to pick pieces form the pile at random and assemble them into complete muskets. For the first time in history, they could.

So, Whitney basically changed the way that guns were manufactured. The parts were easy to assemble, and they didn't need skilled craftsman to make. Whitney used the interchangeable part in many other areas like clothing, furniture, tools, bikes, and just about anything else people could manufacture. Whitney called the process "the American system." Today we call it mass production.

So how did Eli Whitney get his groove back? Well besides inventing something that would eclipse the cotton gin in usefulness, he basically won the war for the north before the war even started. He did this with both of his inventions. The cotton gin caused the south to have a false sense of security. They thought that the north and England needed their cotton, so they wouldn't dare go to war with them or ignore them as a sovereign country. That is exactly what happened though. The north was willing to give up getting huge shipments of cotton to keep the country together, and many planters still sold cotton to the north anyway during the war, though secretly. The planters still had to make money. England had gotten a huge stockpile of cotton, so they wouldn't need cotton for many years, and they could just get it from India if they really wanted to. The English textile workers were also ready and able to go without jobs if it meant the end of slavery in America.

Another hit against the south was their inability to produce anything else but cotton. They focused on it so much that they had little to no industry in the south. The north on the other hand had fourteen times as many textile mills as the south, and way more factories; factories that used "the American system." When war came about, the north had the better arms and more of them, not to mention more people and supplies all around. Though the war lasted four years, the outcome had been sealed for a very long time.

So, Whitney's gin caused slavery to become popular and arguably helped cause the Civil War. Because of that invention though, the south relied to much on cotton and cash crops and did not diversify to have factories and industry, thus dooming them to have less supplies in the Civil War. So, in that way, the cotton gin both caused and helped end the Civil War. Though it wouldn't have been won by the north had the interchangeable part not been invented and given the north such an advantage in arms. Eli Whitney, once you really think about it, had one of the biggest impacts on history. On a side note, the interchangeable part did make Whitney a very wealthy man.

Mother's Day

Hope you remembered to buy some flowers for your mother or at least gave her a call! Mother's Day is the official day to spoil your mom, other than her birthday. If you are like most people, you went out and bought a nice Hallmark card and maybe bought your mom some flowers, or if you live far away you decided that you would give her a call and tell her how much she means to you. Come on people! She gave birth to you! She deserves a little attention! Mother's Day is another one of those holidays that is sort of stuck in limbo, so to speak. It's not Christmas, but it's not a dumb holiday like Missing Sock Memorial Day (May 9th. No, I didn't make it up). It's a holiday that is easy to forget, but you better not, or someone might be a little angry. So how exactly did we come to celebrate Mother's Day?

Celebrations attributed to mothers first began with the Roman celebration of Hilaria, which celebrates Cybele, a being similar to Gaia (the goddess of the earth that Captain Planet was always going on about). A celebration of a being that is "mother of all," is prevalent through ancient societies, however these are not directly connected to our modern Mother's Day.

Our own celebration of mothers, non-deity mothers that is, began shortly after the Civil War. In 1870, Julie Ward Howe wrote the "Mother's Day Proclamation," a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. Besides advocating a day for mothers, it was also tied to Howe's feminist vision that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level. In the years after the Mother's Day Proclamation, Ann Jarvis started five Mother's Day Work Clubs who sought to improve sanitary and health conditions. So Mother's Day basically started as a day to improve women's lives and put them into the forefront. The day became synonymous with the feminist and women's rights movement. After Ann Jarvis' death in 1917, her daughter, Anna Jarvis started a campaign to make Mother's Day an official holiday in the U.S. She achieved her dream in 1914. Little did she know that she had created a monster.

By the 1920's Anna noticed that something was wrong with Mother's Day. It was already terribly commercialized. People went out and bought cards instead of writing their own letters, something Anna considered extremely lazy. The holiday became one of buying things and less about mothers very quickly. Anna became extremely distressed by the level of commercialism attributed to the holiday and spent the rest of her life advocating against the holiday she created. Before her death she wished that she had never even created the day.

Today, Mother's Day is one of the most commercially successful holidays in the U.S. It is now the most popular day to go out to a restaurant. In this way, one could make the argument that along with buying a card, taking a mom to a restaurant is pure laziness and instead you could make her a meal and write her a card. Both show that you are taking time to treat your mother, but what means more to her? This goes against how we Americans think in many ways, but perhaps it is time for us to cast off some of the commercialism that goes into this holiday and do something original for our moms. Make her a meal, write a card, write a poem, take her to a park, or just do something special. Let's put this into perspective:

For Mother's Day, American's spend:

-$2.6 billion on flowers.

-$1.53 billion on gifts like a day at a spa.

-$68 million on greeting cards.

One further statistic is that Mother's Day amounts for almost 8 percent of jewelry store's annual revenue.

Some make the argument that Mother's Day would not have lasted had businesses not promoted it so much. Though it may be true, it's awfully sad that we as a society cannot take a day out of the year to truly spend time with our mothers instead of spending our money on things that perhaps our mother's don't need.

J.E.B. Stuart

Full Name: James Ewell Brown Stuart

Position: Cavalry General in the Confederate States Army

Bio:
Stuart had a mastery of reconnaissance and a great knowledge of using cavalry in support of offensive operations. Jeb, as he was often called by friends, was the major cavalry force of the CSA (Confederate States Army). Stuart was the very incarnation of a cavalier. He loved war's panoply and glory and even wore the clothes of one; red-lined gray cape, yellow sash, hat cocked to the side with a ostrich plume, and red flower in his lapel. Stuart was eager, undaunted, and brave, but also fun-loving.

"A graduate of West Point Class of 1854, the Virginian saw hard service on the western frontier and by 1861 was one of the most experienced Indian fighters in the Regular Army. Severely wounded in a battle with the Southern Cheyennes, Lieutenant Stuart's gallantry had early brought him to the attention of Robert E. Lee." Stuart also participated in the quelling of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, where he served as Lee's aid in 1859.

Stuart was one of those generals that was all about glory. He enjoyed warfare and believed in fighting for the Southern cause. His thirst for glory and wholehearted confidence in his hard-riding troopers at times led him into perilous situations. Two such situations are Brandy Station and Gettysburg. At Brandy Station, thinking that he could easily cross the Rappahanok and raid the Union troops led to disaster when Union Major General Joseph Hooker interpreted Stuart's prescense and sent a total of 11,000 men, 8,000 of which were cavalrymen, to spoil Stuart's raid. The battle ended up in a draw, but the surprise it had on Stuart and his men put a dent in his reputation. Not only that, but it showed that the Union cavalry was getting better. For the first part of the war, Stuart had taken advantage of the fact that the South had much more experienced cavalrymen and horseflesh. As the war dragged on, the Union started to slowly use better cavalry commanders.

Stuart's next mistake, and perhaps his biggest, came when Lee was moving the Army of Northern Virginia north through the Shenandoah Valley. Though this is disputed by historians, Lee gave orders to Stuart to march north with the army, use part of his force to guard the mountain passes that came before the Patomac, then cross the river and screen the right flank of Ewell's Second Corps. Instead of taking a straight shot near the mountains, Stuart took his three best brigades between the Union troops and Washington D.C., then link up with Ewell's troops. This was in an effort to bypass supplies and cause havoc near the capital. Unfortunately for Stuart, the movement of the Union troops was already underway and the proposed route was now filled with Union soldiers. This forced Stuart farther east than he anticipated and he was unable to link up with Ewell. Thus, Stuart was a little late to the party that was the Battle of Gettysburg. Lee did not have his eyes and ears, which caused a major hindrance on the Confederate troops going into the massive battle. When Stuart finally made it, Lee gave him a rare rebuke, or so it is assumed, since no one else was in the tent with them. This proved to be the defining stain on Stuart's career, and he later became a scapegoat, along with James Longstreet, for the loss at Gettysburg by post-bellum proponents of the Lost Cause Movement.

Though he had those two marks against him during his career, Stuart proved to be an essential part of the Confederate Army. He was by far the most capable cavalry commander they had and he showed it time and time again. He specialized in circumventing the Union armies and especially Union Cavalry troops. He did it to McClellan's Army on the Virginia Peninsula, then to John Pope's Army of Virginia, and again to McClellan following Antietam. Stuart literally ran circles around the Union army and embarrassed the lousy generals the Union was working with at the time. What also made Stuart a great cavalry commander was his realization that mounted troops were to also act as advanced scouts. His troops gathered information about enemy numbers and troop movements, and relayed vital information to high command. Perhaps Stuart's defining moments was when he made the dangerous march toward the Potomac in June 1863. Although facing a much-improved Yankee cavalry, Stuart repeatedly thwarted his counterpart, General Alfred Pleasonton, when the Union horsemen attempted to locate Lee's northward-marching army.

Stuart's downfall would come in the form of Major General Phillip Sheridan during the Overland Campaign in 1864. Sheridan guessed that if they focused all their cavalry on a raid against Confederate supplies and railroad lines close to Richmond, they could get Stuart to come out. The battle of Yellow Tavern took place at an abandoned inn located six miles north of Richmond.
"The Confederate troopers tenaciously resisted from the low ridge line bordering the road to Richmond, fighting for over three hours. A counter charge by the 1st Virginia Cavalry pushed the advancing Union troopers back from the hilltop as Stuart, on horseback, shouted encouragement while firing his revolver at the Union troopers. As the 5th Michigan Cavalry streamed in retreat past Stuart, a dismounted Union private, 48-year-old John A. Huff, turned and shot Stuart with his .44-caliber revolver." Huff, a trained sharpshooter, though not armed with a scoped rifle like usual, still had a dead shot and apparently shot Stuart from 40 yards away. Huff ran back to his lines to avoid retribution, as it was still considered a jerk move to shoot commanders. The bullet struck Stuart in the left side, slicing through his stomach and then exited his back. Stuart was taken off the battlefield and died the next day of his wounds, his last words being,"I am resigned; God's will be done."

Stuart's wife, after his death noted, "He told me he never expected to live through the war, and that if we were conquered, that he did not want to live." His death could not have come at a more opportune time if that were true. The tide had turned in the Union's favor and cavalry generals for the North like Sheridan and Custer were finally getting the better of the Confederate cavalrymen. If he had seen it to the end, Stuart would of been heartbroken. That seems a bit odd today, but there were many men of the Confederacy that didn't want to live unless they were free from the Union. Stuart's death, though not as tragic or costly as Stonewall Jackson's, resonated across the Confederacy. Upon learning of Stuart's death, General Lee is reported to have said that he could hardly keep from weeping at the mere mention of Stuart's name and that Stuart had never given him a bad piece of information.

Stuart is still considered the one of the best, if not the best cavalry officer that the U.S. has ever created. With his death, Lee lost his trusted "eyes and ears" and the loss further cemented the Confederacy's demise.

Easter

Everybody loves Easter. It's the time of year where we combine our love of chocolate with our love of finding things! In this case, eggs and baskets. Hmmm....why do we do that anyway? I'll get to that later. Easter is one of the holidays that has been commercialized, though not as bad as some others i.e. Christmas. Sure, Easter has eggs, candy and bunnies, but we as a society go as nuts for buying presents for this holiday then we do at Christmas. Easter for me was waking up early, finding my Easter basket (it was most likely behind the chair in the corner of the living room), finding the eggs which we had painted the night before, and then getting into nice clothes for church. I always got a chocolate bunny, and when I was younger, a stuffed animal, usually a rabbit, duck or chick. Now that I'm older, some things have changed like the receiving of gifts on Easter, and somethings have not, like going to church. This is a tradition my house holds, as do many families, many of whom do not go to church regularly. Christmas and Easter are high traffic times for churches, for they are the holidays celebrate the birth and rising from the grave of Jesus Christ, respectively. Like Christmas, Easter today has become a mixture of paganism, Christianity, and commercialism. Let me guide you through that amalgamation.

The story that Easter is based around is Jesus' rising from death. According to the Gospels, Jesus, who was betrayed by Judas, put to death by Pontius Pilate, crucified on the cross, rose after three days, as he said he would, and then ascended into heaven after speaking with his disciples. I assume that most of you have at least heard the story of Jesus and don't need a long back story, so I'll skip that part. Why is this all such a big deal and why do millions celebrate this? Well, for Christians, Jesus' conquering of death and ascension into heaven proved that Jesus was God and had completed that prophecy which stated that Jesus would die for us and come back in three days and ascend into heaven. So, the holiday is celebrating the sacrifice that Jesus made for all humans. That's a pretty big deal for Christians.

Now, there was no real celebration attributed to this for quite awhile. It wasn't until the 2nd century that we even had any celebration related to it in any form. This is when a festival came up that celebrated all the martyrs for the faith. By the end of the 2nd century, a celebration for Jesus was made to coincide with Paschal. Then things got funny. People disagreed on what day to celebrate Paschal, otherwise known as Easter. Many wanted it to coincide with the Jewish Passover, and some wanted it to just be on a Sunday. The decision came centuries later to make them completely different days, and have Easter basically fall on random Sundays in late March and April.

Easter comes from the month Eostre month, named after the pagan goddess. The name was given in the year 899 as attested by Bede, a monk from England. Eostre is what we now call April. There was a celebration for the goddess Eostre in this month, but had been replaced by Paschal by the time he was alive. Now, where do we get eggs and bunnies from? Well, these are attributed to new life, or fertility. A pagan celebration of renewal which comes after a long winter, incorporated a rabbit as it's symbol given it's penchant for...ahem...rabid reproduction. The egg, also associated with new life, is synonymous with the spring festival. The tradition of coloring eggs comes from over 500 hundred years ago in England, but also in North Africa. People often abstained from meat and eggs for Lent and when Easter came around and Lent ended, eggs were a great commodity. The tradition of decorating the eggs, from legend, comes from when Mary Magdelene had brought cooked eggs to share with the women who were visiting Jesus' tomb. The eggs she had brought turned red as soon as she saw Jesus. The egg was meant to symbolize the rock in front of Jesus' tomb. There is very little information regarding the hiding of Easter eggs, so I'm going to guess that it just came about as a fun activity to do on Easter morning a couple hundred years ago.

Today, the Easter Bunny has lost it's fertility connotation and is now a fun symbol of springtime, along with chicks. We as a culture, give our kids Easter baskets, chocolates, eggs, and other small gifts and tell them that the Easter Bunny left it there for them. The Easter Bunny is not as popular as Santa Claus, but I still had fun believing that it was leaving stuff for me every Easter. Easter is a very fun holiday, one that is often overlooked when you are between childhood and adulthood with kids. Even if you don't get anything this year, go out and buy a chocolate bunny or a Cadbury Egg, though wait until after Easter because then it's way cheaper!

What caused the Civil War?

To mark the United States 150th anniversary of the Civil War, I will be making a comprehensive summary of the events, people, and cause and effect of the Civil War. To understand how we got into this huge mess in the first place, we must first look at the causes for the war. I have read several articles talking about the fact that we as Americans really don't understand the Civil War and it's reasons for being fought. Time magazine even mapped out a time line that showed all the times that the issue of slavery was glossed over in our history of the Civil War. Well, I can say definitely that though there are many causes to our great war, there is one underlying cause; that being slavery. Anyone who argues that slavery had nothing to do with it is just plain ignorant of our history. I'll give you a simple run down of the unique causes for the war.

First off, you have to remember that the north and south were completely different beings. The north had taken advantage of England's Industrial Revolution and incorporated new innovations to help industry grow. Textile mills sprouted up in the northeast, needing the many fast moving rivers for water power. Factories were built incorporating Eli Whitney's interchangeable part. The north was a fine working machine, but needed certain things from the other region; in this case, cotton. The south operated under a more agrarian lifestyle, depending on cash crops to make a living. The cotton that was cultivated went to the north, who made the cotton into clothing and was thus sold all over the U.S. and other countries. Though the two large sections needed each other, and the western states that grew the food crops, they had been uneasy with each other for a long time. Why? Slavery of course! Slavery had been basically outlawed in the northern states (basically anything above Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky) and they depended on the factory work and farming to make a living. Though facing a near death experience, slavery in the south came back with a vengeance after Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin was invented. All of a sudden cotton was easy to cultivate and slavery became a necessary thing for the large plantations.

You can blame the founders for letting future generations deal with the slavery issue, or the idea of manifest destiny, but slavery became a ticking time bomb. The U.S. began to realize that every time they added a state, there was a big fight over if it would allow slavery or not. How do they make it fair? They have to add another state at the same time to counter-balance. Why did they have to bring in two at a time? Because then there would be more slave states or more free states at one time. States equal representation in congress. If Missouri was accepted as a slave state and that's it, then the south would have an advantage in Congress and pass more laws that favored the agrarian society of the south. The same goes for the north. So came the Missouri Compromise, stating that anything under Missouri would allow slavery, but it be banned above that line that extended all the way to the coast. Missouri however would be a slave state, but only if Maine came in as a free state. Temporary fix for a long term problem. Fast forward to Polk's presidency. He beats up on Mexico and gains the southwest territories and California. Texas is technically ours already but Mexico finally signs it off as being ours and not theirs. Well now, California lays smack dab in the middle of the line. What will the U.S. do? The answer is the Compromise of 1850. Here it is in four bullet points:

• California is a free state
• The southwest territories are open to slavery
• The slave trade ends in Washington D.C.
• The Fugitive Slave Act is passed.

The Fugitive Slave Act basically said that if anyone in the north saw a runaway slave, they were required by law to capture said slave. If they refused or tried to help the runaway slave, they would be arrested, fined, or spend time in jail. Northerners were not happy that they had to go out of their way to catch runaway slaves and basically didn't follow the law. This pissed the south off....a lot. More animosity! So you can decide for yourself who got the better deal. It seems that the south did, but that's just my opinion.

Fast forward to four years later. Kansas wants to become a state, and the transcontinental railroad is in the works. The only issue is whether the railroad will be on northern soil or southern. This is a huge asset to each section so you know that each one wanted it to be in their area. So, they decided to let Kansas decide and discard the Missouri Compromise. Popular sovereignty, or letting people vote on issues, was now the main component of the new Kansas-Nebraska Act. Well, this caused a huge mess. Pro-slave and anti-slave factions met up in Kansas to try and vote, not caring that they didn't live in the territory to begin with. What resulted was Bleeding Kansas. It was literally a small war between the two factions. People were threatened, murdered, and hacked to pieces because of the new act. Enter John Brown.

John Brown was as big of an abolitionist (anti-slave person) as anybody. He believed he was sent by God to destroy slavery and basically stopped at nothing to achieve that end. When he heard what was going on in Kansas, he took his sons and traveled to the war torn area. Lets just say that he didn't stay long. He had to flee the area after he and his sons dragged pro-slavery men into the woods and hacked them to pieces with swords. Yes, you read that right. John Brown was scary determined. After fleeing Kansas, he set his sights on freeing slaves by starting a large scale rebellion. With his sons and a few other people, he would take over the armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (It's now in West Virginia, since the state broke in two in 1862) and rally slaves to join him and take slaves away from their masters by force. He had men go around to plantations to send word of his coming and asking them to join him at the armory. When the time came to take over the armory, no slaves showed up. It seems they had little faith in John Brown and his rebellion or couldn't get off their plantations. Brown held himself up in the armory with his sons and started to fight off the locals who caught wind of what was happening. Things got even worse when the military got involved led by Robert E. Lee. Two of Brown's sons were shot and another swam across the Potomac to get away. Brown was eventually subdued. Brown was tried and hanged for his act against the United States and it's military armory. Before Brown was hung he gave a slip of paper to his executioner that read, "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done." Brown is still considered one of the most controversial figures in American history for his acts. Some love him for his fight against slavery and some despise him for his harsh methods of doing so. The north mourned his death and marked him a hero to the abolitionists cause. The south, as expected, were outraged that the north would mourn such a man. More animosity! Hooray!

To say that everyone knew about slavery in the south and it's harshness was not true. Many in the north had a odd picture of slavery and knew nothing of the terrible treatment. Then came Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The book told the story of slavery in the south, though it was written by a white woman. The book became a hit in the north and for the first time, the masses had a view of slavery. This helped the abolitionist movement in the north, but cries of slander were raised in the south. Claims of falsehoods in the story led it to be completely despised in the south.

Here is a common belief about the north and south at this time in history. Everyone in the north hated slavery and everyone in the south were slave owners. Not even close to true. There were very little of both. Many in the north were concerned that the freedom of slaves would lead to extra competition for jobs in the north. Many southerners were not slave owners, though they strove to be. You had to be pretty rich to afford slaves and almost all southerners were poor farmers.

The last straw for the south was the election of Abraham Lincoln. Though the north had bent over backwards to make the south happy with all the compromises and acts, the south still felt that they were being abused and their way of life threatened. The election of 1860 included two radicals and two moderates.

• Abraham Lincoln- Though a moderate in his own party, his view that slavery should not be spread any further made him a radical in the eyes of the U.S. (Republican)
  
• John Breckenridge- Having split the Democrats, Breckenridge was the other radical, calling for slavery to be protected by the government. (Southern Democrat)
• John Bell- Wanted nothing else but to keep the union together and wanted more compromises. (Constitutional Union Party)
• Stephen A. Douglass- The creator of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he wanted to keep his idea of popular sovereignty and use it for all the other new states. (Northern Democrat)

Though Lincoln was not on the ballot in most southern states, he won the election over Breckenridge. This was too much for the south. They found Lincoln to be untrustworthy and his party to be the end of their way of life. South Carolina, the state that threatened to secede from the U.S. under Jackson, convened to try it again. They voted to secede unanimously and Mississippi and Florida followed suit. To see all of the state's declarations of succession, copy and paste this link:
http://www.mycivilwar.com/battles/secede.htm

The Civil War begins shortly after, when South Carolina considers it an act of war that Lincoln sent supplies to his troops stationed at Fort Sumter, a fort on the coast of South Carolina. After the attack, which led to no fatalities, Lincoln called for a gathering of troops. Several more southern states secede from the Union. Thus, the Civil War begins.

So, there you are. That is the somewhat short version of the reasons that the states went to war with each other. Though they all dealt with different issues, the cause for those issues was slavery itself.

King Tut

Tutankhaten was born in about 1341 B.C. His parents were Akhenaten, who was the current pharaoh of Egypt, and Kiya, one of his wives. Akhenaten died in 1332 B.C. though, and Tutankhaten became the new pharaoh!....at age nine. Other people ran Egypt for him until he was a little older, much like Peter the Great who inherited his Russian Empire at ten and whose mother basically ran the show for a while. As soon as Tutankhaten was crowned, he married Ankhesenamun. OK, for those who saw the new version of The Mummy with Brendan Fraser, her name is pronounced like the chick that the mummy was trying to bring back to life. OK, so he got married pretty young, but to make it even weirder, she was his half-sister and daughter of his father and his main wife, Nefertiti. Gross.

King Tut didn't make many important decisions as pharaoh, though he did let his advisers enact a few things. Unlike where Peter the Great's mother ran the show, Tut's top adviser, Ay, and the head of the military, Horemheb, basically ran everything. Tut's father had tried to replace the ancient Egyptian religious system of gods like Ra, Osiris, and Anubis, with a single, previously minor god named Aten. That's actually how Tutankhaten got his name. It meant "the living image of Aten." Ay and Horemheb didn't like this and after two years of Tut ruling, changed everything back to Ra decor. Statues, pillars, curtains, bedsheets and everything. They then changed Tutankhaten's name to Tutankamen, which means "living image of Amun." Amun was the god of air.

In 1323 B.C., at the age of 18, Tut died. He didn't leave any heirs, so Ay, his top adviser became the de facto leader. This was of course after he married Tut's wife. Oh, I forgot to mention that Ay was Ankhesenamun's (Tut's wife) grandfather. Egyptians are weird. Since Tut was considered a crumb bum of a pharaoh who didn't do anything, his mummified body was relegated to a small, out-of-the-way tomb in the Valley of the Kings, home to all the pharaohs' tombs. Over the years, stone chips that had crumbled off other tombs buried Tut's. The tombs of the Valley of the Kings were looted during the 11th century B.C., but Tut's was spared because nobody knew it was there.

So why is King Tut basically the most famous ancient Egyptian in the western world? Well, the 1922 discovery of his nearly entirely intact tomb by British researcher Howard Carter was a major world event. Carter's team had found a lot of treasure around the sarcophagus and took that and the treasure back to the British Museum. Carter removed Tut's burial mask-which is basically what we associate King Tut with-by peeling it off with scalding hot knives. The team then basically looted the unwrapped mummified corpse. While they were stealing all of Tut's treasures, they noticed that Tut had a large indentation in his head, which lead the discoverers to speculate that Tut was murdered, most likely by Ay.

This was what people thought til 2005. It was at this time that they put the mummified body through a series of CT scans and were able to decipher what the boy king looked like. He was 5'11", had an overbite, an elongated skull, and a slightly cleft palate. This is also when the team discovered that the indentation was actually a hole that had been drilled into the King's head, likely by an embalmer who'd removed Tut's brain. The scan revealed that there were a series of fractures to Tut's left thigh bone, likely caused during a fall, probably from a horse. It turns out that Tut died from the wound getting infected, which caused blood poisoning. So, whatever you do kids, don't ride horses, for they are the killer of Kings! So, it turns out there was no foul play, Tut just sucked at horseback riding. Today's King Tut's body rests in its tomb in a museum in the Valley of the Kings. The corpse is unwrapped and sits in a climate-controlled glass case. You can also see a computerized recreation of what Tut's face actually looked like.

What about that curse though? Well, this was fueled by the fact that a bunch of people who were there when Carter opened the tomb, or visited the tomb later, either died a few years after, or had massive amounts of bad luck. First was Lord Carnarvon. He was bitten by a mosquito, scratched it with his razor and then died of blood poisoning due to infection. This was strange back then, but considering what Tut died of, this is even stranger now. Speculation arose that it was a curse from King Tut for disturbing his tomb. This made people all around the world go crazy. In 1925, the anthropologist Henry Field, accompanied by Breasted, visited the tomb and recalled the kindness and friendliness of Carter. He also reported how a paperweight given to Carter's friend Sir Bruce Ingham was composed of a mummified hand with its wrist adorned with a scarab bracelet marked with, "Cursed be he who moves my body. To him shall come fire, water and pestilence." Soon after receiving the gift, Ingram's house burned down, followed by a flood when it was rebuilt. Some people just don't listen. Next to die from the group was George Jay Gould, who caught a fever after visiting the tomb a year later and abruptly died. Carter died in 1939, though of Lymphoma, which led people to believe that he was part of the curse. Five other people who had visited the tomb or been there the day of its opening died within a year or two, but many think the curse is nonsense since there were over fifty people who were at the excavation, and the rest were fine. Whether or not the curse of King Tut is true or not, it's still a fascinating story, and one that I loved reading when I was young.

Centennial Anniversary: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the fire that ravaged the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. It was the deadliest industrial disaster in New York City's history and ranks fourth in loss of life in industrial accidents in the U.S.

The Asch building, whose eighth, ninth, and top floor housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, lay in the Greenwich Village area of New York City. In case you're curious, shirtwaists are basically just blouses. The factory specialized in making them and mostly employed young immigrant women. Most who worked there were either Jewish or Italian. The factory typically worked five hundred women total who worked an average of nine hours on a weekday, and seven on Saturday.

Smoking was banned in the factory, and for good reason. They were working in a textile mill and a single spark could ignite clothing. That didn't stop some of the workers though, who sneaked cigarettes in and tried to smoke without getting caught. On March 25th, 1911, the worst thing that could of happened, happened. Someone had thrown the but of their cigarette into a trash bin which had scraps in it and eventually the whole thing caught fire. The fire quickly spread in the environment and people on the eighth floor started to panic. There was a phone line to the tenth floor from the eighth, but none to the ninth and no audible alarm for a fire, so there was no way the eighth floor could tell the ninth what was happening. That's just bad planning. Unfortunately for the people on the ninth, who found out about the fire when it was clearly visible, the fire had enveloped the stairs going downward that they could use to get out and the other staircase was locked to keep people from stealing. The foreman who had the key had already escaped. Some of the women either went up the stairs to the roof or crammed into the two freight elevators while they were still working. After three minutes, the stairs became unusable.

Many of the women from the ninth tried to escape the fire by getting out onto the fire escape which was a flimsy iron structure that may of been broken before the fire. It soon twisted and collapsed from the heat and overload and spilled victims nearly 100 ft to the concrete below. The elevator operators took many trips to get as many women from the ninth but during one of the trips some of the women had forced the elevator doors open on the ninth and jumped down the elevator shaft, making the elevator unable to be used anymore. By this time a crowd had gathered outside the building. The first person to jump was a man, and another man was seen kissing a young woman at the window before they both jumped to their deaths. The crowd witnessed sixty-two more people jumping or falling to their deaths from the top floors, who piled upon the already large amount of bodies around the building. There were so many bodies that the fire department had extreme difficulty getting close to the building. The fire department didn't have a ladder that could reach over the sixth floor and were not able to put out the fire in time to save any of the people that chose to stay inside the burning building.

In total, 146 people died from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. 129 women and 17 men. Six of the victims remained unidentified until 2011. The owners were indicted on charges of first and second degree manslaughter for locking to doors of the stairway, thereby dooming many people. After their lawyer destroyed the credibility of one of the survivors however, they were acquitted. It was determined that the owners did not know that the doors were locked at the time. In a later suit brought against them, they ended up having to pay $75 each to each victim's family. One of the owners was later punished for locking the doors in his other factory. His fine: $20.

While some saw this as an opportunity to band together into unions, others saw this as a time to take a good long look at factory conditions. In 1915 an investigation was started to look at the conditions of different factories around the city. New York City's Fire Chief John Kenlon told the investigators that his department had identified more than 200 factories where conditions made a fire like that at the Triangle Factory possible. Thanks to the investigation, there was a huge push to modernize labor laws and to improve factory conditions and their fire safety. It's too bad that we have to go through a terrible tragedy to wake us up and tell us we need to change how we do things.