Save the trees and all that

Today marks the anniversary of Earth Day--April 22, 1970, an official day of environmental awareness inspired by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, which was published in 1962, and the general social activism that pervaded the 1960s.  The founder of the modern earth day is Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin who, after witnessing the damages of the 1969 oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, was motivated to help spread environmental awareness and protection.  With the help of Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey and environmental activist Denis Hayes, an environmental movement was born: 22 million people demonstrated in the streets and parks and filled auditoriums on April 22, 1970.

Here are some links related to Earth Day history:
http://www.earthday.org/earth-day-history-movement
http://www.epa.gov/earthday/history.htm
http://www.nelsonearthday.net/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090421-earth-day-facts/

A link pertaining to Rachel Carson and the impact of Silent Spring:
http://classwebs.spea.indiana.edu/bakerr/v600/rachel_carson_and_silent_spring.htm

NPR also has a lot different articles and radio pieces related to Earth Day and the global environment in general.
http://www.npr.org/

April Anniversary

April marks the month of both the beginning and the end of the U.S. Civil War, the bloodiest U.S. war to date. Eric Foner's introductory essay is worth reading considering his expertise on the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, and his essay provides a good overview of such a complicated and consequential time in U.S. history.

http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era

The site includes a good video lecture on the role of the slaves during the Civil War, more specifically that African-Americans played a significant role in the "failure of the Confederacy."

There is an essay and multimedia speech on the significance of the Battle of Antietam and the pre-battle pessimistic mood that engulfed the South.

On the website above, there are many links to information concerning the conflict, including its causes, its commander in chief, blacks serving in the military, specific battles, the relationship between Great Britain and the U.S. Civil War, primary sources, the costs of war, the suspension of habeas corpus, among another topics.

The site included a piece concerning Walt Whitman's adoration of Lincoln, and I found the essay about Whitman's opinion of Lincoln very sincere:

"No other human being seemed as multifaceted to Whitman as Lincoln. The president, he said, 'had “canny shrewdness” and “horse-sense.' He seemed the down-home, average American, with his drab looks and his humor, redolent of barnyards and barrooms.' Whitman commented on the 'somewhat rusty and dusty appearance' of Lincoln, who 'looks about as ordinary in attire, etc. as the commonest man.' Whitman was excited that 'the commonest average of life—a railsplitter and a flat-boatsman!'—now occupied the presidency." (The essay continues.)

Overall, the site includes other primary and multimedia sources related to the era of Reconstruction, a time in which America grappled with a plethora of issues related to racial tension, economic strife, and an extension of conflict between the North and the South.

A Deadlier Fight

The New York Times recently published an interesting article about the Civil War death toll. The article not only discusses research concerning new mortality numbers, but also mentions the processes researchers went through in order to calculate the original death toll; immigrants and their relation to Civil War demographics; and the impact of disease on the North and South.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/civil-war-toll-up-by-20-percent-in-new-estimate.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&sq=new%20estimate%20raises%20civil%20war%20dead&st=cse&scp=1

According to new estimates from demographic historian J. David Hacker, the Civil War death toll is now thought to hover around 750,000, a number 20% higher than the original estimate of 618,222. Dr. Hacker's research has recently been published in Civil War History, a historical journal that recognizes the significance of the new information. Dr. Hacker's research not only aims at a more accurate representation of the Civil War death toll, but it presents the Civil War as an even deadlier conflict than it was originally thought to be.

What surprised me about this article was the fact that the old numbers have not been questioned too critically, if at all, since their origination in the late nineteenth-century. After reading about Dr. Hacker's methods of inquiry into demographic data, I was a bit surprised that this process hadn't been attempted before.