Discrimination, or Well-Intentioned?

            In class this week, we learned about the westward advance, mostly focused on Buffalo Soldiers and the Native Americans they encountered. Tribes like the Cherokee and the Sioux had their homelands invaded by the American westward expansionists. The Buffalo soldiers were African American soldiers who had fought with the Union in the Civil War, and decided that being a soldier would be a better life than going back to the States, which were still very intolerant to blacks. Both the Buffalo Soldiers and the Tribes they encountered were discriminated by the United States Government, through racial classification. However, was the discrimination fully intentional?
            The Buffalo soldiers were groups of black Civil War soldiers, who figured that being a soldier was better then returning to their old lives, due to the rise of sharecropping, a very unpopular method of work. This caused these soldiers to be deployed by the Government to go westward and clear the way for settlers to expand the United States borders. Clearing the way meant getting rid of Native American Tribes, through any means. The Buffalo Soldiers earned their name by clearing the midwest of the main source of food for the Native Americans: the buffalo. The soldiers cleared hundreds of thousands of buffalo from the Great Plains, reducing the population so greatly that the Native Americans greatest food supply was nearly exterminated. However, as much as the Buffalo soldiers did for the Government by clearing the way for new expansion, they were still the subject of racial discrimination. White Buffalo Soldiers still thought that they were above the blacks, and treated the black soldiers as inferior, even though they did the exact same job.
            The Native Americans, on the other hand, were very racially discriminated. The US Government, through the buffalo soldiers, rid the Native Americans of the food source, their human rights, and their land. Native American tribes were exiled to lands far away from the Great Plains. Resistance did come from the tribes, but it was often crushed by the Buffalo Soldiers. The United States government did not negotiate with the Native Americans, and ushered in the Indian Removal Act, which caused all Native Americans to live in reservations set up by the government. However, some of the Government intentions were good in their eyes. They wanted to give the Native Americans the opportunity to become civilized, albeit through removing their cultural identity. They put them in reservations and gave them new clothes, new education, and new lives. All of which were American "civilized" style. The Dawes act was passed by the Government, allowing the Native Americans to own their own land, as long as they became civilized by American standards. Children were given education, and schools were eventually set up for them.
            Although the Government did provide some benefits to the Native Americans for doing what they wished, the United States government did use the Buffalo soldiers to tear the Native Americans from their homes and migrate them somewhere else. They removed their cultural identity and tried to make them into new people, who were normal by American standards. The fact that they gave them education and the right to own land does not make up for the act of romoving their culture and taking their homes.

Rockefeller and Carnegie

In the mid to late 1800s, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie became two of the most successful men of their time. These two controlled the market in oil and steel, respectively, by gaining a monopoly over the market. In class, we spent the week watching videos on Rockefeller and Carnegie's lives and reading documents about them. We then split ourselves into groups and analyzed specific aspects of each mans life.

One of the main questions asked was how monopolistic leaders, like Carnegie and Rockefeller, affected the lives of the common worker. Each man affected the men who worked for them both negatively and positively.The way they accumulated such large companies was through buying out their competitors, and if they did not comply they would run the companies out of business. As ruthless as this is, it got them to the top, dominating the economy of their product. Causing so many businesses to go out greatly affected the working force in a negative way: so many workers were unemployed. This caused Rockefeller and Carnegie to be called "Robber-barons", or very corrupt company officials that bribed and cheated their way to the top. This was supported in the fact that Rockefeller, for example, bought out all the competition. While there was no more competition, Standard Oil, Rockefeller's company, had nobody to try and compete with, thus bettering the economy. However, it did put many people out of work.

Andrew Carnegie also had a good and bad side when coming to public criticism. Like Rockefeller, he also had a monopoly, but his was over the steel industry. Carnegie was born in Scotland and immigrated to America. Here he became a very successful steel company owner. He made a huge profit of money from the business, but then came the famous Homestead Strike. When profits skyrocketed for Carnegie Steel, but workers were given just a puny salary increase. This lead to strikes and protests outside the mill. Carnegie traveled to Scotland on vacation, and ordered his partner Clay Frick to close the mill. Frick did not, and instead brought in strikebreakers and Pinkerton guards to protect the. This resulted in a bloody fight, and ultimately the Pennsylvania militia was sent in to lessen the conflict. While this negatively impacted Carnegie's reputation among the workers, he did give away over $300 million to various charities towards the end of his life.

While both men seemed at first glance greedy, power hungry businessmen who only wanted the money for themselves, but did do good things for workers and other various causes. However, the amount of donations given to outside causes outweighs the hate that was given towards the two, which may have also been caused by jealousy for their wealth.