Themes in American History

Compare Richmond to New York City, one difference is that the population of free black increased fourfold between 1790 and 1810. However, for New York City, the population of free black increasing started by 1810, increased even more after the Gradual Manumission Act (Chudacoff 60).

On the other hand, both cities remained a larger proportion of slaves in 1860. Because of the increasing of unskilled white laborers and selling slaves to the plantations. The number of slaves in the southern cities decreased largely. Only in Richmond, the slave manpower demand of processing iron and tobacco kept the population of slaves basically unchanged in 1860 (Chudacoff 64). 

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Urban expansion in America from 1800 to 1865 was impressive. There was an intense competition of urbanization among many cities. Transportation improvement, for example, played a big role in the development of both New York City and Chicago. Like New York City, Chicago benefitted from the establishment of Erie Canal. The 363-mile canal, running west from Hudson River at Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo, completed the job of linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. The connection among Erie Canal, and Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan made it possible for Chicago to extend its trade with other regions despite its location in the interior of the continent.  Allowing a new route of water travel, the canal largely reduced the shipping costs. Due to this advantage, Chicago emerged as one of the largest lake ports in the region. New York City also benefitted from Erie Canal since the canal extended its trade from New York State to the entire Great Lakes System. Thanks to this transportation improvement, the economy of New York City grew even more rapidly, and manufacturing was spread out.

However, unlike New York City, Chicago also benefitted from another form of transportation improvement—a web of railroad. It is worth pointing out that building railroad tracks were cheaper than building canals, and they don’t freeze in the winter. Railroad could also run through some tough areas. Thus, during the 1850s, the railroad system grew to serve the entire Illinois State. At the same time, more than 30,000 miles railroad was built in America. The complexity of the rail system allowed transporting products easier. The dependence of water transportation no longer existed, and railroad system immediately dominated the Midwest commercial transportation. At the heart of the Midwest, the location of Chicago won over the location of New York City. As a result, Chicago emerged more quickly, with its population growing from hundreds in the 1830s to more than 109,260 in the 1860s, making it one of the major cities of the nation.(38-39, Chudacoff)

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In the period of Industrial Revolution, a major change was made  in agriculture, manufacture  and transportation throughout the whole nation. People’s lives in different states changed differently. Slavery were abolished thoroughly. By 1820, Baltimore owned  the nation’s largest freed African-American, where New york had a sizable freed black population (page 60). On the other hand, around 1844, there were some institutions in Baltimore and New York, which were  established by African-American.

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Immigration had important effects on the economic life, housing and culture of cities. One of the similarities between New York City and Boston is by the 1850s, more than half of the residents were foreign born(Chudacoff 64). On the other hand, in the 1820s and 1830s, Boston established free elementary schools in 1818, New York followed in 1832(Chudacoff 52).

Another similarities of these two cities are until the 1850s, the settled areas of even the largest cities, such as New York and Boston, rarely extended beyond the two miles from the city center—the average distance a person can walk in half an hour. Thus historians have labeled this early urban configuration the “walking city” because of its size and major mode of conveyance(Chudacoff 57-58). Moreover, an almost annual excess of new arrivals over those departing doubled and tripled populations of most established cities between 1840 and 1850. Crowding in settled areas swelled. By 1850 there were 135.6 persons per acre in New York, while 82.7 in Boston(Chudacoff 59).

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Most of American great cities were built near waterfront, which were true to both Philadelphia and New York. The completion of Erie Canal in 1825 created connection for New York City to the western markets. It linked the Hudson River to the Great Lake (Chudacoff 44). On the other hand, as a response to New York City, Philadelphia started its construction of transportation. The Pennsylvania railroads were built. One similarity of the two cities is that they were both the most populated cities from 1830 to 1860, and their population increased dramatically during the years (Chudacoff 60).

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I would like to compare New York City with Charleston, South Carolina because it was the only city which had higher number of slaves in proportion to urban population than New York at the end of 18^th century. The great number of slaves in Charleston was caused by expansion of cotton production, during the Antebellum period, which relied heavily on slave labor.

Both cities were seaports, so in most cases that was the first stop for the enslaved people who arrived to the United States. Life of the busy Charleston seaport provide unique opportunists, which were not available to people who worked on plantations. In New York as well as Charleston, slaves could “enjoy” urban life mostly because they live away from their masters supervision. They had obligation only to bring certain amount of money they made.

While slavery in New York starts to decreasing in early 1800s due to Gradual Emancipation Law, Charleston kept people enslaved for much longer period. According to New York Historical Society in 1828 “most New York slaves had already been freed.” In contrary, in 1856, Charleston’s city ordinance prohibited the practice of public auctions of slaves which initiated opening of special sales room, yards and marts. One of them was called The Old Slave Mart and “when sales were held in the shed, slaves stood on auction tables, three feet high and ten feet long, placed lengthwise so slave owners could pass by them during the auction” (nps.gov.) Slaves auction at the Old Slave Marts ends in 1862. This huge time disproportion, shows how slavery institution were approached differently in different parts in the county.

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I agree with the previous comments that we have an association of freedom with the North and how most of slavery took place in the South.  Although the south utilized the manpower of slavery for plantations, the North also exploited African Americans because many merchants, farmers, and artisans needed people for labor.  What I found incredibly interesting about the website is how long it took emancipation to take affect.  I’ve always thought NYC was a place that was ahead of its time on civil rights but what I have learned was emancipation was a long and grudgingly taken endeavor.  It took over 28 long years from the first step that was passed by John Jay, the Gradual Emancipation Act in 1799 and complete abolition of slavery in New York in 1827.

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The website is a very eye opening tool. As I timidly navigated through the different links the fact sheet grabbed my attention. Here I saw something I never knew about but always questioned. The price of slaves for most of the 1700s, the price of slaves did not change much. A healthy young male cost around £50 and a female around £45. This was the value of Africans in the United states During the British Era.

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Barnum’s American Museum was located at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in New York, from 1841 to 1865. The museum was mysteriously burnt at that time and the Lost museum was recreated to have people in modern time to visit and experience culture in the 19th century through website.  The museum offered both strange, and educational attractions.

Barnum opened his museum  to create a place where families could go for wholesome, affordable entertainment, but his success drew from the fact that he knew how to entice an audience. At its peak, the museum was open fifteen hours a day and had as many as 15,000 visitors a day. The museum was a spectacular place for people coming to enjoy it in 19th century.  People came to this place with their families and socialize with other people.  The cultural history of New York was people gathered in one place and watch other people’s show and share their opinions with each other while they were exploring the museum.

In my opinion, the strength about the website as a historical tool like Lost museum is that it helps people to experience and have more understanding about the historical facts that were really exist and greatly affected people but been destroyed. The weakness was it was mimicking the historical event, the accuracy would be affected.

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Website:
–Visit and browse through:
http://www.slaveryinnewyork.org/tour_galleries.htm

Blog:
–Respond to this post with one comment (1 paragraph in length)describing something new that you learned about slavery on the website, or respond to a comment that is already up by clicking “reply” next to an existing comment.  In both cases, add something new to the conversation and refer specifically to the website to indicate exactly what content on the site you are talking about.

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What the lost museum tells about entertainment is the rapid increase of many forms of social activities during the 1900’s that has shaped and still continues to impact NYC.  After the American Revolution, people again settled down in NYC and sought out forms of amusement and there was one particular person who provided it.  P. T. Barnun was a businessman that was a prominent figure that molded the entertainment industry by providing many venues such as a museum, circus, aquariums, and musical theathers. 

As I continued to explore the museum, I could not help but focus on the social issues on display in the lecture room of the museum, that involved race and immigration.  During the 1900’s there seems to be tension between races and the growing concern of the immigrant population. 

P. T. Barnum’s hoaxes and his forms of entertainment still impacts NYC and all of the US.  What amazes me is that it has contined to evolve.

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The museum’s archives have information ranging from President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination to the frontier out west to the civil rights movement. After exploring this museum my interest was most captured on the reform movement specifically with alcohol.

During the 19th century, to deter drinking and intoxication, cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia put on melodramas of an intoxicated person that is tempted by alcohol, and his life eventually going on a spiral downwards until he can chooses to reform. The Drunkard was one play that was so successful in Boston, in 1849 it debuted at Barnum’s American Museum in New York. An image representing this “alcohol induced wickedness” is from Ten Nights in a Bar Room. Temperance was not just a political debate but it was a moral dilemma facilitated in such melodramas, songs, conventions and parades. This inspiration came from the evangelical Christians who promoted moral reform.

I believe that the Saloons and the drinking culture in 19th century America was a chief source of entertainment. The fact that some spectators of these plays would go to the nearest saloon during intermission to drink, and then come back to watch the second act shows the difficulty in promoting temperance.

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The lost museum website has very rich, unbiased content. The material highlights many significant historical events that has changed the face of NYC. The museum site amazed me with themes such as race relations, unemployment, religious, social  disparity and  forms of entertainment. What I was very impressed with was that, as I got loss in the site I found a  mystery and adventure section that was available. The background of the adventure follows PT Barnum as an investigator looking into the burning of a building. However the mystery was reserved for signed up users. However, the lure of the mystery pulled me in adding fun to a very formalized site.

The site is very organized with many amenities and learning instruments. It has an appeal that can attract interested users of all ages. However its many amenities and detailed information may serve as a weakness. With many categories and several themes the site felt overwhelming with many details to cover the countless events of that time period. The site bombarded me with many information and concepts that may require a lot of time to cover specific information and may exclude younger users.

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When I’m browsing in the Lost Museum on the website, I’m trying to look for a historical character. On the 2nd floor picture gallery, there are many pictures of historical characters. I’m interested in one of the picture —-John Brown. The abolitionist John Brown was one of the most controversial person of the 19th century.  There are several incidents that influence him a lot. Firstly During his childhood year, his father explained to him that slavery was a sin against God. Also, he witnessed the beating of slave when he visited a farm.  Moreover, in 1837, Brown attended a meeting in Ohio in memory of Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist newspaper editor who had been killed in Illinois. At the meeting, Brown raised his hand and vowed that he would destroy slavery. Those incidents really motivate him to abolish slavery.  In 1859 he led a party of 21 men in a successful attack on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry. Brown hoped that his action would encourage slaves to join his rebellion, enabling him to form an emancipation army. Two days later the armory was stormed by Robert E. Lee and a company of marines. Brown and six men barricaded themselves in an engine-house, and continued to fight until Brown was seriously wounded and two of his sons had been killed. John Brown was tried and convicted of insurrection, treason and murder. He was executed on 2nd December, 1859. After his execution on December 2, 1859, Brown became a martyr to those opposed to slavery. And the controversy over his actions and his fate helped stoke the tensions that pushed the United States to the brink of Civil War. Americans either regarded him as a noble hero or a dangerous fanatic.

The Lost Museum is really informative which contains a lot images and animation.  If you browse the museum, we will find that the museum is really categorized. Actually, the ground floor is mainly about the American cultural history. The second floor is mainly about entertainment and historical character. Although the lose museum is virtual, it looks realistic. The Lost Museum makes the visitors that they are really browsing in a real museum. When the visitors keep browsing in the museum, I think they can definitely expand their knowledge about 19^th century of American history.  However, some of the pictures and words are too small. The visitors may have difficulty to read.

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The Barnum’s American Museum was the popular attraction in 19th century New York City. P.T.Barnum purchased this museum from John Scudder in 1841. By 1850 he had greatly influence on the mid-19th century popular culture. The museum was burned down at the end of the Civil War. In this lost museum, you can find exotic animals from around the world, a number of “human curiosities” and many different wonders. Barnum used different kinds of innovative ways to dazzle the audiences. The museum displayed automata that imitated human and animal behavior and lantern slide shows, cosmoramas, and panoramas that presented images in new ways. The museum foreshadowed the commercial culture and pop culture in the United States. The museum is not only a place for entertainment, it also promoted the education on natural science in its animal exhibition, included historical context in its paintings and wax figures, and temperance reform and Shakespear dramas in its “Lecture Room”. Through adding educational value into its exhibitions, Barnum avoided to offend the religiously inclined. The Barnum’s American Museum was a single place where the people from different classes, immigrant, tourists, and residents, men and women could gather. It reflected the diversity of the American population at that time. However, in order to reinforce the white identities of museum patrons, african americans were only allowed in the museum on a limited basis. It was a key site for the antebellum articulation of whiteness. In addition, many of the exhibits in the museum reflected the emerging political and social crises that led to secession and Civil War.

The website has re-constructed the Barnum’s American Museum. We could explore the museum in a 3-D interactive environment. In my opinion, this website is pretty good as a historical tool but it would be better if it could allow us to check the museum in full-screen. Also, the website should add a side bar so that it could provide us more historical context and background information when we are navigating the museum. It would be more convenient too if the website has an audio guide.

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“Walking” around the museum was very interesting since i had never experienced something similar to it before. The 3D virtual tour is very detailed and perfectly graphically designed. The museum points out the different reactions people had to various entertainments. The NYC show business is pretty much built on that old 19th century theory. I believe that the experiments that had been done back then helped the entertainment around the world to develop to what it is now. There are all sorts of interesting inventions like the elephant umbrella stand.

Also the different methods that people came up with to entertain and using things, this makes me think that they were eager to find something that will work as well as them being artistic and creative.  Even though the site tour was great, i would have loved to walk through it in real life. The site does a wonderful job of passing on the knowledge and the unique experience, i’m sure that walking through the museum in person would give the audience a  different experience and leave a different impression.  It would be hard to gather all the info from the site if it is needed since it is scatted throughout the site, but otherwise the site is great.

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When I think of P.T. Barnum I think of the showman.  Tom Thumb is one of people who I most readily associate with Barnum.  Barnum understood what attracted people and he was a master of exploiting it.  The people of the buttoned up Victorian Era were as interested in sensationalism as people are today.  This website is helpful in drawing parallels between entertainments in the 19th century and today.  Although I am a bit skeptical of museum exhibitions compiled by a man who said, ” there’s a sucker born every minute”, I can see why his attractions would be just as successful today as they was in his own lifetime.

The Lost Museum was an interesting web site to explore.  As a teacher I think it can be a great tool to help students to explore the cultural history of the 19th century.  I also liked how the archives provided a jumping off point for additional research into artifacts on display.  An artifact can make a event or time period so much more engaging than just text about it.

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The Lost Museum provides a very informative source to understand the 19^th century of America. The website is not only about one aspect. It includes American history and the entertainment of 19^th century. The best part of this museum is provides a huge numbers of picture, animation and copies of old document. It makes this virtual museum feels like I’m walking into an actual museum.

In the Waxwork room on second floor, I find some information about automaton. The 19^th century is an industrialized age. The time before the advent motion picture and electronic devices become popular. Automaton was the most advance technology entertainment at that time. In that period of time automaton has been largely produced for different purposes. One of the usages is entertainment. People fascinated in advance technology and like to see different automaton perform. In the picture below show an Automaton Chess Player. It was the most famous automaton of all time. The reason why it is so famous is because it is not only automaton chess playerimitated human behavior. It appeared to be a thinking machine to make the best decision and win chess experts and European royals. It fascinates audiences about how its operation.

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The tour of The Lost Museum was a very informative experience. I didn’t really know what to expect when I entered, but as I progressed and explored all the three floors I came out with a decent sense of the history of New York City. It wasn’t really like the museums nowadays, but it had a very good feel of what a typical 19th century museum would be like.

The one thing I found that was attention grabbing was the presentation on “The Great Fires of New York City.” The American Revolution ended with a fire in the city destroying many buildings and injuring people. Many more fires followed till the mid 1800s. The firefighters were the main heroes in these situations. They had the hardest, most dangerous jobs. Until the late 1800s, being a firefighter was voluntary, but after the Barnum Museum burned in the fire the legislature made changes and firefighters were then paid.

In addition to the presentation on the fires in NYC, I thought the portrayal of what entertainment was like in NYC in the past was very interesting too. Nowadays, entertainment means tv, movies, sports, etc. In the 1700 and 1800s, I learned that entertainment for them mainly were plays that acted out domestic dramas. Many people went and watched people perform live on stage for entertainment, for example “The Drunkard or the Fallen Saved.”

With its strengths, the museum came with weaknesses as well. The museum had very small floors. It could use addition of floors to spread things out and inform people more about the history of NYC. Also, some of the information was very vague. Many things could have been explained more for a better understanding.

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