Module 10

Money is one of the most powerful items a person can possess. It can be used to persuade important people or groups, and control and regulate just about anything. Some of the powerful people in the late 1800’s used money for their benefit and ruined the lives of many others in the process. When people use money in inappropriate ways at the expense of others it can turn into a type of financial abuse.

Greed can drive people to do horrible things. During the Civil War, to make a profit, J. P. Morgan bought malfunctioning rifles for $3.50 from an army arsenal and sold them to a general for $22. These rifles would shoot off the thumbs of the person operating the weapon. A congressional committee mentioned the defect in a report but a federal judge upheld the deal as the fulfillment of a valid legal contract.

Money can also make people do things they wouldn’t normally do. Thomas Edison paid $1000 to politicians for legislation to be more satisfactory to him. Other wealthy people like John Rockefeller paid his way out of going into the military for the Civil War. “A man may be a patriot without risking his own life or sacrificing his health. There are plenty of lives less valuable.” – Mellon (Zinn, 189)

During the Construction of the transcontinental railroad, “the Central Pacific spent $200,000 in Washington on bribes to get 9 million acres of free land and $24 million in bonds, and paid $79 million, an overpayment of $36 million, to a construction company which really was its own.” (Zinn, 189) 22,000 railroad workers were recorded as killed or injured by the Interstate Commerce Commission. 

 According to Dictionary.com a monopoly is “exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.” These Monopolies were huge in the late 1800’s and many disliked them. The government and laws that were passed only made the situation worse allowing monopolies to thrive. Laws were made kept out foreign competition allowing not many competitors, which meant that business could keep high prices and no one could do a thing about it. Without competition businesses were allowed to keep there wages low.

“Most of the fortune building was done illegally, with the collaboration of the government and the courts.” (Zinn, 188) Some examples of this total control consisted of, International Harvester prepared 85% of the farm machinery and Telephone and Telegraph controlled the telephone systems. John D. Rockefeller bought an oil refinery and set up Standard Oil Company. He then made an agreement with the railroads to ship his oil if they gave him a discount, which in turn destroyed what competitors there were.

The sad thing is that this control and manipulation happened in just about every company. The rich only got richer and the poor got poorer. This abuse ruined small businesses and destroyed people financially but no one could do much to change the situation especially when the government is passing laws that only helped progress the monopolies and the people controlling the businesses.

Work Cited

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York, NY: New, 2003. Print.

Picture Work Cited

"Nothing To See Here." UDL Book Builder. Web. 20 Nov. 2011. <http://bookbuilder.cast.org/view.php?op=view>.

Module 5

The United States of America was built from violence due to the need for control. From the torture of the Indians, slaves and servants all the way to the blood shed during the Revolutionary war. Since day one, those who have power had taken advantage of others. And we are supposed to a democratic nation where all people hold power? Everything we do and have done in this nation is violent, it might not be physical violence but the emotional violence of power over another human being.  

As noted on Merriam Webster online dictionary, democracy is defined as a government by the people especially rule of the majority.  According to this definition, the United States Constitution is defining a democratic government. The problem is that the “people” with the power does not include everyone.

Historian Charles Beard recognized that there were four groups that were left out of the Constitutional Convention. Those groups consisted of slaves, indentured servants, women, and men without property. Besides the fact that they were all men, Beard also found that the majority that made the Constitution were “lawyers by profession, that most of them were men of wealth, in land, slaves, manufacturing, or shipping, that half of them had money loaned out at interest, and that forty of the fifty-five held government bonds.” (Zinn, 68) The downfall to being excluded from the Constitutional Convention also meant that the interests of these groups were also left out of the Constitution.

The way that the United States Constitution was worded allows for many different interpretations, depending on how you look at it. Charles Beard looks at the Constitution from an economic point of view and says that those who drew up the Constitution made things a certain way to protect their interest, or the groups that represented their interests. Beard warned that “governments, including the government of the United States are not neutral, that they represent the dominant economic interests, and that their constitutions are intended to serve these interests.” (Zinn, 75) So even though the Constitution defines our government as a democracy, it is hard to have a democratic government in an economically polarized society because only those interests get noticed.

While making the Constitution, these men made sure that their interests were protected. Beard noted that most of the men had “some direct economic interest in establishing a strong federal government: the manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the moneylenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indians lands; slaveowners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds.” (Zinn, 69.) No one had interests in women’s rights or equality for blacks and whites or any interests in the Indians, except their land.

These are the same men that wanted to be free from under the British rule. But they turn around and make themselves in charge and the lower classes full of slaves, women, servants and non-property holders had to suffer. Once these men “found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits and political power from favorites of the British Empire.” (Zinn, 47) By creating a new nation, the upper class, the lawyers and land and slaves owners made a constitution that inevitably was the biggest form of control enforced on the lower classes. Someone wrote in the Boston Gazette “ A few person’s in power were promoting political projects for keeping the people poor in order to make them humble.” (Zinn, 49)

Even when the state constitutions were being created voters were arguing for everyone to have equal rights and for lower classes to have a say in the government. These people opposed “great and overgrown rich men…they will be too apt to be framing distinctions in society.”(Zinn, 50) Sadly to say that still to this day those with the wealth have majority of the power. If you have money, you can influence almost anyone to do things the way you want. As Howard Zinn says Tyranny is Tyranny. But in this case the tyrant is the upper classes. The focus was on the upper class interests. Since they were the ones making the constitution, their needs came first. Even thought the Constitution defines our government as democratic, we are not democratic entirely. Only the wealthy have the say in the government.

Works Cited

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York, NY: New, 2003. Print.

Module 2

Lincoln Assassination Conspiracy

“The prisoners are to be supplied with nothing but the necessary food and water during their imprisonment unless by special orders…”(Hartranft, 86)

John Frederick Hartranaft was appointed by Andrew Johnson to be the Military Governor of the Military prison located in Washington D.C on May 1, 1865. His assignment was to watch over the 8 conspirators that assassinated President Lincoln.

Exactly two weeks earlier, on April 14, 1865 at approximately 10:20 P.M John Wilkes Booth walked into the Ford’s Theater and shot President Lincoln point blank in the back of his head.  “I proceeded then to examine him, and instantly found that the President has received a gun shot wound in the back part of the left side of his head, into which I carried immediately my finger. I at once informed those around that the case was a hopeless one; that the president would die; that there was no positive limit to the duration of his life, that his vital tenacity was very strong, and he would resist as long as any man could, but that death certainly would soon close the scene.” – From Dr. Stone’s testimony. (Eyewitness) President Lincoln died early the next morning  

Within two weeks 8 conspirators were captured and put in the Washington Arsenal Military prison. Everyone with a connection to the case was seized. “In some instances it was difficult to tell the accused from the witnesses from the conditions under which both were incarcerated pending trial.” (Hartranft, 29)

3 were given life in prison sentences, one was sentenced to 6 years and the others were hung.

“Each of the prisoners was seated in a chair on the platform while the ministers in attendance offered a prayer in their behalf. The prisoners were made to stand and everything in readiness. The drop fell at 1:30 P.M. Life was pronounced by the Board of Surgeons appointed for that purpose to be extinct in each of the bodies at 1:50 P.M” (Hartranft, 113)

Major General Hartranft wrote these letters to the person in charge above himself, as documents of what was happening to the inmates, such as meals, exercise, when visitors came, and expressed the needs of the inmates. The letters also included what was going on inside the prison itself. He recorded those who worked with him during the execution as well as what was happening to prepare for the execution itself. These letters were the line of communication and how information and orders were sent to one another.

Noted in the preface of the book, the editors say that Hartranft himself gave the letters to the Gettysburg College. They moved to the Pennsylvania state archives and soon found its way to the U.S National Archives and Records Administration in 1995. A few people wanted the letters to be more readily available for the public and that’s when this book came about and was finally published in 2009.

Daily life in prison back then was completely different from prison life today, but this is where our roots are. The rules and regulations we have today come from our past. We learned what to do and what not to do from things we’ve done before.

Today prisoners and people in general have more rights to pretty much everything. Witnesses are not captured as they were then. Now they are just subpoenaed. Communication is not as prohibited, the food and health care is much better. And the death penalty is more human today. We use lethal injection rather than the hanging that was done to those conspirators. The one thing that was better in the 1800’s is the cell searches. Hartranaft did daily inspections on the inmates and documented it in his letter book. 

These eyewitness accounts are here to assist us in recreating events that happened years ago and we can look back and learn from our mistakes.

Works Cited

"Eyewitness." National Archives and Records Administration. Web. 28 Aug. 2011. <http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/eyewitness/html.php?section=13>.

Linder, Doug. "The Trial of the Lincoln Assassination Conspirators." UMKC School of Law. 2009. Web. 28 Aug. 2011. <http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/lincolnconspiracy/lincolnaccount.html>.

Hartranft, John F., Edward Steers, and Harold Holzer. The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators: Their Confinement and Execution, as Recorded in the Letterbook of John Frederick Hartranft. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2009. Print.