Immigration: Then and Now

     Immigration has always been a hot-topic in America. Whether it was 1890 or 2015, immigration has been there and always will be. No matter who you are, you can trace your lineage back to an immigrant. The rate of immigration has decreased in the past because of the population size rising; leaving potential immigrants behind. The reason for immigrating has been the same as it was in the beginning. People have always longed for the freedom available in America. Freedom not being the only reason but the most intriguing reason to immigrants is the opportunities that America gives you. People from other countries simply are not given the opportunities everyone is given in America. Those reasons being push/pull factors.

This political cartoon shoes the opportunities that are given to immigrants and represent pull factors.

     When people of foreign nations have a problem such as oppression, unhealthy government, or lack of jobs; they are being pushed out of that country and are being pulled in by the opportunity that America gives them. If the U.S was a fast food restaurant, of course, it would be McDonalds. Known for all the good food (opportunities) that is available, customers see how much better everything is than their current favorite restaurant. They see the better quality food (life) and they want it. The poor quality of their current favorite restaurant's food is a push factor along with the better quality food of McDonalds being a pull factor.

     There is a shocking similarity between both times in the ways they handled immigrants. We continue to come with open-arms and accept them into society. There are still differences. Those being that in the older days, we were more prone to discriminate against a certain people. In the late 1800's, the Chinese were the ones being left out.

In the late 1800's, the Chinese were the ones being left out of the fun in America. 

 Today we see the Arabic people being rejected more than any because we are still in the war against terrorism. Though overpopulation was not a problem back then; America had little limitations to handle it, being that criminals were rejected. Now, we test our immigrants to see who is best fit to improve society, even though it may be immoral. However we deal with immigration, illegal immigration has been and will always be a problem in our country. Illegal or not, foreigners come for the same reasons: the freedom and opportunity that the U.S put on the table.

Why Did the U.S. invade Cuba in 1898?

     After the destruction of the Maine, an American battleship, Americans questioned the event. All over the country, citizens were scrambling around searching for the evidence of how it all happened. Politicians along with newspaper editors pointed their fingers at the Spanish. Considering this and the rumors of the Spaniards oppressing the Cuban people, it only made sense that America should sail 90 miles to the Cuban shores and invade the Spanish colony. With all of these generalizations in place, it only made sense that the United States invade the island. Almost too much sense that it made it seem as the States were trying to come up with reasons to take Cuba. It would also make sense that the States take Cuba which is geographically rich. The United States invaded Cuba in 1898 not only because of the destruction of the Maine and the oppression of the Cuban people, but because of Cuba's geographical benefits.

USS Maine being evacuated after explosion.

Cuba was said to be filled with bones from those who had died.

The Maine was destroyed in 1898 near the shores of Cuba. Almost instantly, Americans placed the blame on none other than the Spanish. Marie Elizabeth Lamb, an American poet, wrote, "Dost hear the sailors scream? Comrades will you go? Avenge the cruel blow!" Yellow journalism of the incident were created so that Americans would be on board with an invasion of Cuba in a way that would remind Americans that the Spanish were the cause of the lost of many lives. The other case of yellow journalism would be Spain's treatment of Cubans. It was written by American writer Fitzhugh Lee that the Cuban people were put into "reconcentration camps" and were "heaped pell-mell as animals, some in a dying condition, others sick and others dead." These explicit details were written strictly to make United States citizens supportive of the invasion of Cuba.
The Cuban island is still today a very important area geographically. Being an island, it was most likely full of natural resources. Also, owning Cuba would only help America's case as a world power. Clearly, there were many reasons for the United States to have an interest in acquiring Cuba. The interest not being in annexing according to the teller amendment. So, to avoid being labeled as an imperialistic nation, the United States forged evidence to make a Cuban invasion seem appropriate. America exaggerated details, making gruesome claims and statements, and made it seem as if their invasion of Cuba had many reasons behind it. In an article from the New York Times, it was found that within American naval ships "fire would sometimes be generated in the coal bunkers", which could easily spark an explosion due to the high amount of explosives inside of the battleship. Captain Schuley, a naval captain of the time, was "not prepared to believe that the Spanish or Cubans in Havana were supplied with either the information or the appliances necessary" to destroy the Maine.
The United States at the end of the day came up with excuses to cover up the fact that their invasion of Cuba was only because of Cuba's geographic benefits. The Spaniards were not responsible for the  destruction of the Maine, and their mistreatment of Cubans were true but were blown up to what we would today call holocaust size. Cuba was valuable for the United States. So valuable that they couldn't let the opportunity slide by, so they found a few reasons being  the Maine and "reconcentration camps." Due to Cuba's geographic benefits, the United States carried out the invasion. It was only because of the "reasons" they forged together to sway the nation.

Dred Scott: The Cause

     Following background is from ushistory.org:
 From the 1780s, the question of whether slavery would be permitted in new territories had threatened the Union. Over the decades, many compromises had been made to avoid disunion. But what did the Constitution say on this subject? This question was raised in 1857 before the Supreme Court in case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford. Dred Scott was a slave of an army surgeon, John Emerson. Scott had been taken from Missouri to posts in Illinois and what is now Minnesota for several years in the 1830s, before returning to Missouri. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had declared the area including Minnesota free.In 1846, Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that he had lived in a free state and a free territory for a prolonged period of time. Finally, after eleven years, his case reached the Supreme Court. At stake were answers to critical questions, including slavery in the territories and citizenship of African-Americans. The verdict was a bombshell. The rest is explained here.

     Even though it was not the only spark to the civil war, Dred Scott vs. Sandford certainly got the fire going at a faster pace. The tension it caused, caused a variety of reactions from a variety of people. Whether it was the power of the government or the potential spread of slavery in the west and eventually the north, the Dred Scott case was a party starter.

     The Dred Scott decision served as an eye-opener to Northerners who believed that slavery was tolerable as long as it stayed in the South. According to a source, "If the decision took away any power Congress once had to regulate slavery in new territories, these once-skeptics reasoned, slavery could quickly expand into much of the western United States. And once slavery expanded into the territories, it could spread quickly into the once-free states. The fact that congress was limiting their power hurt for the argument against slavery. Four years after Chief Justice Taney read his infamous Scott v. Sandford decision, parts of the proslavery half of the Union had seceded and the nation was engaged in civil war. Because of the passions it aroused on both sides, Taney's decision certainly accelerated the start of this conflict." Even in 1865, as the long and bloody war drew to a close with the Northern, antislavery side on top, a mere mention of the decision struck a nerve in the Northern Congress. A simple and customary request for a commemorative bust of Taney, to be placed in a hall with busts of all former Supreme Court Chief Justices, was blocked by the Republican-controlled Congress. Charles Sumner, the leader of those who blocked the request, had strong words on the late Chief Justice and his most notorious decision:

"I speak what cannot be denied when I declare that the opinion of the Chief Justice in the case of Dred Scott was more thoroughly abominable than anything of the kind in the history of courts. Judicial baseness reached its lowest point on that occasion. You have not forgotten that terrible decision where a most unrighteous judgment was sustained by a falsification of history. Of course, the Constitution of the United States and every principle of Liberty was falsified, but historical truth was falsified also..."

      The north refused to accept a decision by a Court they felt was dominated by "Southern fire-eaters." Many Northerners, including Abraham Lincoln, felt that the next step would be for the Supreme Court to decide that no state could exclude slavery under the Constitution, regardless of their wishes or their laws. It is apparent that the antislavery movement did not see this case as significant, assuming that the Court would rule on narrow grounds that Scott was still a slave. The idea that the Court would weigh in on questions relating to the power of Congress, the rights of states, the rights of individuals, and the rights of property owners, all questions which lead back to the Constitution, seem obvious today, but few foresaw that such action was imminent, at least not with this case. The north often argued that the decision made by the Supreme Court was the "Opinion of the Court" which sprung off the fact that the Chief Justice of the United States was Roger B. Taney, a former slave owner, as were four other southern justices on the Court. The two dissenting justices of the nine-member Court were the only Republicans.

Robert B. Taney, Chief Justice

     Southerners, primarily white, rejoiced at the decision, because it meant that slavery was legal in all of the territories. This was just what they had always wanted. The African Americans were angry that such an injustice had taken place by the government. The South really wanted their slaves to work their land, and they didn't want slavery to be abolished. They felt they had more power, now that they had beat the North in such a big debate. Southerners were ecstatic that they had increased their influence throughout the United States. Due to the declaration that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, the balance of slave and free states was upset in the South's favor. The South enjoyed a strong hold on the power of the government, and this decision verified that the South was still primarily in power.

The trials of Dred Scott were very contradicting in that all three courts gave different reasoning for their choice. According to a source, "  The Dred Scott case was first brought to trial in 1847 in the first floor, west wing courtroom of St. Louis' Old Courthouse. The Scotts lost their first trial because of hearsay evidence, but were granted a second in 1850. In the second trial, a jury heard the evidence and decided that Dred Scott and his family should be free.Slaves were valuable property, and Mrs. Emerson did not want to lose the Scotts, so she appealed her case to the Missouri State Supreme Court, which in 1852 reversed the ruling made at the Old Courthouse, stating that "times now are not as they were when the previous decisions on this subject were made." The slavery issue was becoming more divisive nationwide, and provided the court with political reasons to return Dred Scott to slavery. The court was saying that Missouri law allowed slavery, and it would uphold the rights of slave-owners in the state at all costs."

     The Dred Scott case exacerbated sectional tensions between the north and south. It pushed them more away than together than it intended. He effect a that the verdict caused were such like the fact that voters could not vote to ban slavery because slaves were property. Along with the point that congress can't control slavery because they are property which is protected by an amendment and can only do so through due process. The tension that the verdict caused ultimately led to the rise of the Republican Party which led to the secession of the southern states which then led to the great civil war.

     Clearly Scott v. Sandford was not an easily forgotten case. That it still raised such strong emotions well into the Civil War shows that it helped bring on the war by hardening the positions of each side to the point where both were willing to fight over the issue of slavery. The North realized that if it did not act swiftly, the Southern states might take the precedent of the Scott case as a justification for expanding slavery into new territories and free states alike. The South recognized the threat of the Republican party and knew that the party had gained a considerable amount of support as a result of the Northern paranoia in the aftermath of the decision. In the years following the case, Americans realized that these two mindsets, both quick to defend their side, both distrustful of the other side, could not coexist in the same nation. The country realized that, as Abraham Lincoln stated, "`A house divided against itself cannot stand.' . . . This government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free." [34] Scott's case left America in "shocks and throes and convulsions" that only the complete eradication of slavery through war could cure.

American Renaissance

     This is a picture called Storm in the Mountains painted by Albert Bierstadt in 1870. This picture really appeals to me because of all the different perspectives it holds. You could either choose to look at the beautiful valley shown by the sun, or you could look at the storm as a dark way of life and then there is the person that looks through the storm to the summit on the other side. I tend to look at it as a whole and look at the beauty of the picture and mountains as a whole.
     This connects to the American Renaissance because you can interpret the picture in the way of a timeline. I view the near sunlight is like the time that has come, antebellum. The clouds signify that the dark days of the War of 1812 have passed and it was time to enjoy life. The summit in the back, to me, signifies the time TO come. It shows how beautiful as a nation we can become. The again I could also say the summit symbolizes the summit, or test, as a nation with the Civil War to come.

Battle of New Orleans vs. Johnny Horton's "Battle of New Orleans"

Battle of New Orleans - Johnny Horton Lyrics
 In 1814 we took a little trip Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip. We took a little bacon and we took a little beans And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans.
 [Chorus:] We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin. There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago. We fired once more and they began to runnin' on Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. We looked down the river and we see'd the British come. And there must have been a hundred of'em beatin' on the drum. They stepped so high and they made the bugles ring. We stood by our cotton bales and didn't say a thing.
  [Chorus]
 Old Hickory said we could take 'em by surprise If we didn't fire our muskets 'til we looked 'em in the eye We held our fire 'til we see'd their faces well. Then we opened up with squirrel guns and really gave 'em ... well
 [Chorus]
 Yeah, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go. They ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch 'em Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.** We fired our cannon 'til the barrel melted down. So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round. We filled his head with cannon balls, and powdered his behind And when we touched the powder off, the gator lost his mind.
 [Chorus]
 Yeah, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go. They ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch 'em Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Battle of New Orleans
     The battle was a series of events in Louisiana from December 23, 1814 to January 8, 1815. It was the final battle of the War of 1812. Andrew Jackson, and 4,732 Americans, fought and held back an invading 11,000 soldiers. Who we're trying to take New Orleans as a strategic tool to end the war. It took place 2 weeks after the Treaty of Ghent was signed. But fighting continued until the British retreated putting an end to the war.

The Comparison
     The song talks more about the main battle in which lasted a whole 30 min. Jackson routed the brits with ease. Days later the british retreated and that ended the battles.