{"id":3055,"date":"2020-09-26T20:48:05","date_gmt":"2020-09-27T00:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/?p=3055"},"modified":"2020-09-26T20:48:05","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T00:48:05","slug":"sam-hussey-blog-post-9-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/2020\/09\/26\/sam-hussey-blog-post-9-28\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Hussey Blog Post 9\/28"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howard Zinn’s chapter\u00a0Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom,\u00a0<\/em>and OverSimplified’s video of the American Civil War both offered unique and factual accounts of this time period in American History that I had never heard before. Textbooks teach the information differently based on what part of the country you live in. Textbooks in the southern states often teach kids that the Civil War was only about states’ rights. On the other hand, northern states teach kids that it was a war against slavery. As OverSimplified explained it, it was a combination of both of these factors. The issue that was being debated was slavery, but the southern states overused their power and tried to secede from the Union. Growing up in New England, I remember being taught that Abraham Lincoln was an avid abolitionist. In reality, Lincoln solely wanted to halt the expansion of slavery and had no plans of trying to end slavery when he was running for office. Howard Zinn stresses the fact that Lincoln’s personal beliefs were probably more extreme than what he promoted publically so he could sympathize with the centrists. Close reading is required to read between the lines of Lincoln’s personal letters and journals to see what he truly believed versus what he promoted. I believe he knew he would not get elected if he was a full-fledged abolitionist, so it was a strategic move to take on a more moderate stance to gain the support of a wider demographic.<\/p>\n

One thing I noticed when comparing the two sources was how important phrasing can be in creating biases and opinions on objective data. When discussing data on whippings from a plantation, Zinn phrased the objective data in different ways that created implicit biases in the reader’s head. For example, one could state that over half of the slaves were not whipped over a two year period. This creates the illusion that the majority of the slaves were treated well. In reality, a whipping is just one punishment of many a slave could receive, and just because they are not getting whipped doesn’t mean they are treated well. Based on the same data, one could also conclude that “every four or five days,\u00a0some\u00a0<\/em>slave was whipped” (173). This creates the image that whippings were a common affair on the plantation and part of the violent way of life in the south. Despite using the same objective data, the author can create different opinions based on what they think the reader should get out of the information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Howard Zinn’s chapter\u00a0Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom,\u00a0and OverSimplified’s video of the American Civil War both offered unique and factual accounts of this time period…<\/p>\n

Continue readingSam Hussey Blog Post 9\/28<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4922,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4922"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3057,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions\/3057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst1010304f2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}