I Used to Know That_ Stuff You Forgot From School - Caroline Taggart [42]
☞ 2003-PRESENT: THE IRAQ WAR
The U.S. sought to remove the corrupt Iraqi government and military establishment from power. The American government claimed that the Iraqis were hiding weapons of mass destruction. And it also hoped to protect and secure U.S. interests in the Middle East, which many people believe to be oil. Many U.N. allies opposed the war, especially the Arab countries, but an abbreviated coalition was sent into Iraq nonetheless, toppling the Saddam Hussein regime. Through the years, a long and continued war in Iraq has lost popularity with most U.S. citizens, but the plan to exit the country was not as well executed as the plan to enter, and many fear the inevitable civil unrest that may ensue upon U.S. departure. Others fear that pouring manpower and trillions of dollars into a war that could last for many years could have futile and catastrophic consequences to a nation that needs to concentrate its money and human resources into conservation and clean and renewable energy.
African American History
Another scantly covered period in American history involves the mass atrocities committed against Africans; they were kidnapped, captured, and sold into slavery. Revolts ensued but were quashed. African Americans persisted and held strong against their persecutors, eventually gaining freedom after the Civil War and affecting major positive changes in the United States and Canada. This small section cannot do justice to the major obstacles that were overcome and the progressive advances made by the African American community. Slavery was finally abolished in 1865 by the 13th Amendment of the Constitution, and less than 150 years later Barack Obama, of half-Kenyan ancestry, announced his candidacy for president of the United States.
☞ SLAVERY
In 1619 a Dutch trader exchanged Africans for food in the marketplace of Jamestown, Virginia. By the 1660s a race-based slave system became popular with tobacco planters in the American South, who at the time also enslaved Native Americans; slavery soon spread among the colonies. Slaves were not treated as people but as property; they were mistreated, punished harshly, and killed. In the 1700s England’s abolitionists, and later the Quakers, within the colonies sought to petition government against slavery. The American abolitionist movement began to gain ground. In 1793 Eli Whitney patented his invention, the cotton gin, increasing demand and production of U.S.-grown cotton. Although this proved positive for the economy, it caused a resurge in slavery trade, especially in the cotton-growing South, since farmers needed more workers to glean the cotton. In the North small progress was being made, and in 1830 the first National Negro Convention was held in Philadelphia, where one point of discussion involved emigration to Canada.
☞ THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
The date marking the start of this movement remains unknown. During the 19th century Canada played a key role in the battle to abolish slavery, with at least 30,000 slaves escaping by secret routes to flee enslavement in the American South.
This political movement crossed the racial and geographic borders and exemplified Thoreau’s concept of civil disobedience, which also planted the seeds for the women’s suffrage movement. In 1790, Philadelphia became Underground-Railroad Central for the Northern states, since it contained a large number of emancipated black individuals and Quakers. In fact, Harriet Tubman originally escaped to Philadelphia before conducting 13 missions for the Underground Railroad to free slaves; she would later serve as a Union spy in the Civil War, and then struggled for the women’s suffrage.
As a youngster, a man named John Brown traveled northeastern Ohio guiding fugitives and vowed to dedicate his life to the freedom of slaves. In 1847 he laid out his plans to raid slave plantations and route the freed people through the Appalachian Mountains to a safe haven near Lake Placid,