chapter 9

I understand that the westward expansion was a good sign for the United States beause it showed we could expand and economically we could have more land for production and jobs and our government showed strength.  However, I feel like we could have done this without being so harsh to the Native Americans.  I feel like we should have tried harder to make compromises and not take all their land away.  I read a whole book on the trail of tears and what the Native Americans went through to get relocated seems like it was absolutly awful.
I like the part about children making the decision on what they want to do with there life.  Children could grow up and be able to specialize in something besides what there parents did.  Deciding what you want to do with your life and not having to have your parents pick out who you marry seems pretty important to me.

The war of 1812

It is not exactly clear to me how this war really started or why it even started?  I looked it up online and what I found was that Americans called it a victory and that it was like a second war of independence.  I wish the book gave a little more information about it because I do not know a lot about the war of 1812, but from the book it seems like it was a fairly even war.  At the end there was really no expansion or decrease in land.  However, politically weaknesses and new strenghts were discovered and the federalist party came to an end.

chapter 7

The first thing that caught my attention in this chapter was in the very first paragraph.  The part about a Cherokee woman being a "war woman" and that as a woman she was able to have some power and she tried to convince the Cherokee people to realize they were out matched and to make peice stood out to me.  It seems like women are gaining a little in social standings.  Later in the chapter we see this to be true!  It is an exciting part to read about because I am a girl and I like being to be educated in things and this chapter looks into intellectual equality. 
It surprised me that with the invention of improved agricultural technology that made crop production more efficient, like the cotton gin, that the black slaves were not given more freedom.  Instead of more freedom, they found themselves more restricted.  I really thought that it was going to be the other way around.  

quotes

As much as I enjoy reading factual information in our text, reading these quotes was very interesting.  I enjoy changing up the reading.  One qoute I could relate to best was the one about treating others how you would want them to treat you.  I can relate so easily to this qoute because throughout my childhood I attended a private Catholic school and I can remember reading this qoute all the time.  The qoute would also be in the prayers we would say and when we went to church we would have to sing it in a song.  I am really not very religious but I have been well educated in religion and out of all the prayers, sayings and beliefs I have learned about I believe this one to be true.  If everyone treated people in a way that they would want to be treated we would have a much more peaceful world.  I mean I do not think that anyone wants to steal from themselves or commet crimes against themselves.  The world will never be perfect, but if more people treated others as they might want to be treated it would be a great step towards a better world for all.
  

“When I was teaching children I began every day writing this on the blackboard: "Do to others what you would like them to do to you", telling them how much better the world would be if everybody lived by this rule.”
― Common, Common Sense

slavery

I honestly do not understand how one human being could possible treat another human being as bad as slaves were treated.  It's just sad that people are capable of such cruel and thoughtless behavior.  I feel so bad for anyone who has or even is apart of anything like slavery.  I mean having someone else own you and your freedom has to just be the absolute worst.  The accounts that mention the brutail beating the slaves recieved if they misbehaved were awful.  I mean just a simple thing like not being able to work as fast as someone else would get a slave beaten or whipped to the point that their skin opened and bleeding occured.  Just to stop and think that I though a little spanking was horrible when I was little, and these slaves were beaten practically to death for things like not working fast enough.  I also cannot imagine having bells be the thing that run my life.  A few of the accounts tell stories of a bell going off and its time for work, another to eat and a final one for sleep and that is how a slaves day went.  That is just awful.  It was however nice to see that a few slave owners treated their slaves as decent people and were nice to them.  It gives me a little hope for human kindness to expand.

chapter2

While reading about the European society I was surprised when I came to the paragraph about nuclear families and that if a person lived outside the household of the family they were automatically more suspected of crimes like stealing or practicing witchcraft.  People in today's world live alone and move away from their families often and I do not not think they are any more likely to be a thief than a person who lives in a household with many family members.  The next part of the reading that caught my attention was about Columbus.  I find it fascinating that finding America was pretty much an accident while explorers were looking for faster ways to reach Asia.  I also think it is sad that foreign diseases is what killed many Native Americans.  I really enjoy reading about the first settlements in America and it just shocks me that during one winter Jamestown went from a population of 500 to 100.  In that winter they had to eat the dead peoples bodies just to try and survive.  I cannot imagine how hungry they were to be able to eat their own dead friends.