Speech

Jackson Grelier

Speech

I have learned a lot about the history of the United States during my semester in this class. I’ve learned that you don’t necessarily have to copy down notes while the teacher lectures all class period, or learn straight out of a textbook, but you can also get the same learning experience from watching a historic film or two. It really enjoyed learning in depth about how industrial workers were treated during the industrial era of the United States. In years past, I had learned a lot about the industrial revolution, but the detail we went into really helped me fully understand what the conditions were like during that era. One thing that I thought was an unpleasant topic in the history of the United States was the treatment and removal of Native Americans from their home lands. I felt it was very wrong to remove a group of people from a place they had been living in for much longer than the new American settlers had. The school system seemed to like to shield us from the wrong things America had done when we were younger, so it was very interesting to see these events from the perspective that they really happened. I feel like I will always be able to talk about the Sand Creek Massacre no matter how long it has been since I learned about it. Not only did I do one of my major projects on that topic, I also found it very interesting, and can tell the stories very well, from memory, about what happened on that day. I learned so much about the first hand accounts from the people that were against what the soldiers had done, which happened to be most people by the way, and read many personal letters and stories about the soldiers that experienced and resented the slaughter that occurred at Sand Creek. It is important to learn about the history of you country for many reasons, one being that it is easy to repeat mistakes you have made in the past if you don’t learn from those mistakes people had made previously. It is easy to see this pattern because of the many times our nation and it’s people have repeated the same mistake throughout the years, even coming back to us present day. We have many problems that can be traced all the way back to time periods we studied this semester. If I had to name this era, I would have to go with the revolutionary era. Between all of the many great industrial innovations, and all of the many great men that came out of this time period, it is safe to say they revolutionized the way people thought about business and many other aspects to the American way of life. These men completely changed the nation and the world when they brought in their ideas. I’ve realized that learning about history isn’t just about memorizing the facts, or the dates of a war, but understanding and analyzing the significance these events had on our country.