203 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2015
    1. The effects of slavery endured long after emancipation.

      The effects of slavery had been ingrained too deep for it to get ineffective that soon.

    2. Yet the end of legal slavery did not mean the end of racial injustice.

      Despite the legal end of slavery, blacks were still not treated as equals by white.

    3. Lincoln won twenty-two states, and McClellan only managed to carry three: New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky.19

      What a huge difference!

    4. In a time when the average woman gave birth to eight to ten children in her lifetime,

      That's too many kids for one woman to give birth to!

    5. In the North, the conditions in hospitals were somewhat superior. 

      thanks to the women!

    6. It is a common misconception that amputation was accompanied without anesthesia and against a patient’s wishes.
    7. Around 1862 both armies began to dig latrines rather than rely upon the local waterways.

      Lesson learnt the hard way!

    8. Tuberculosis, measles, rheumatism, typhoid, malaria, and smallpox spread almost unchecked among the armies.
    9. arrested all rebellious women as prostitutes.

      Such a harsh and demeaning term to be used for women who were fighting for their country.

    10. The working class citizens of New York felt especially angered as wealthy New Yorkers paid $300 for substitutes, sparing themselves from the hardships of war.

      The rich always get away for everything that's probably the reason why they live for so long.

    11. The Gettysburg Campaign was Lee’s final northern incursion and the Battle of Gettysburg remains the bloodiest battle of the war, and in American history, with 51,000 casualties.
    12. There was never any doubt that black laborers and camp servants were property.

      Black were not even considered living beings since a living being can never be referred to as one's "property".

    13. Gooding argued that, because he and his brethren were born in the United States and selflessly left their private lives and to enter the army, they should be treated “as American SOLDIERS, not as menial hirelings.
    14. African American soldiers in the Union army endured rampant discrimination and earned less pay than white soldiers, while also facing the possibility of being murdered or sold into slavery if captured by Confederate forces.

      African Americans never really felt the true sense of freedom!

    15. In order to avoid the issue of the slaves’ freedom, Butler reasoned that runaway slaves were “contraband of war,” and he had as much a right to seize them as he did to seize enemy horses or cannons

      The extreme measures that were taken in desperation of not letting the eradication of slavery occur.

    16. . War meant the possibility of disruption to their cotton produced on the backs of slave labor, and disruption could have catastrophic ramifications in commercial and financial markets abroad.
    17. “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.

      Tells the significance of winning over Kentucky.

    18. . Like an anaconda snake, they planned to surround and squeeze the Confederacy.

      Perfect analogy.

    19. Committee of Thirteen

      It was a committee of thirteen individuals that was formed to investigate the possibility of a "plan of adjustment" that might solve the growing secession crisis.

    20. sine qua non

      something that was absolutely needed. In this case it was SLAVERY.

    21. while doing little else to address the issues tearing the country apart.

      The issues that needed the utmost attention were being ignored.

    22. the Republicans were hardly unified around a single candidate themselves

      Finding unity among human race has always been a rare incidence.

    23. The nation’s oldest party had split over differences in policy toward slavery.

      One party wanted to eradicate slavery while the one wanted to keep it going.

    1. The first and most ominous sign of a coming sectional storm occurred over debates surrounding the admission of the State of Missouri in 1821.
    2. Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 contest on November 6, gaining just 40% of the popular vote and not a single southern vote in the Electoral College.
    3. It was Kansas that at last proved to many northerners that the sectional crisis would not go away unless slavery also went away.

      Finally they understood the main root of the problem.

    4. “Bleeding Kansas” was the first place to demonstrate that the sectional crisis could easily, and in fact already was, exploding into a full-blown national crisis.
    5. the anti-immigrant movement simply could not capture the nation’s attention in the ways the antislavery movement already had.
    6. The year 1855 nearly derailed the northern antislavery coalition
    7. In the words of Amos Adams Lawrence, “We went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, compromise Union Whigs & woke up stark mad Abolitionists.”13

      shows that stark change of events

    8. Ordinary Americans in the North increasingly resisted what they believed to be a pro-slavery federal government on their own terms.
    9. One measure of the popularity of antislavery ideas came in 1852 when Harriet Beecher Stowe published her bestselling antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

      Antislavery was becoming more and more popular.

    10. The 1852 Presidential election gave the Whigs their most stunning defeat and effectively ended their existence as a national political party.

      I am glad that Whig's party got wiped out.

    11. The Fugitive Slave Act created the foundation for a massive expansion of federal power, including an alarming increase in the nation’s policing powers
    12. By 1850, California wanted admission as a free state.
    13. a women’s rights movement also got underway in July at Seneca Falls, New York

      At last!

    14. Left unrepresented, antislavery Free Soil leaders swung into action.

      Since they were not left any other choice.

    15. Douglass grew up, like many enslaved people, barely having known his own mother or date of birth

      How unfortunate could it be to not know one's mother and date of birth.

    16. But the Liberty Party also shunned women’s participation in the movement, and distanced themselves from visions of true racial egalitarianism.

      As if antislavery movement was not big of a deal to handle.

    17. whites never intended them to be citizens of the United States

      Blacks are being referred to as "them"

    18. Even seemingly simple and straightforward phrases like “All Men Are Created Equal” were hotly contested all over again

      Whites did not think of blacks as their equal. What a shame!

    19. laws tried to keep blacks out of the West entirely.

      Law should never cast out a certain group of people based on their skin color!

    20. Kentucky and Tennessee emerged as slave states, while free states Ohio, Indiana (1816) and Illinois (1818) gained admission along the river’s northern banks.
    21. Thomas Jefferson, believed that slavery was a temporary institution and would soon die ou

      Slavery was never built as a temporary institution.

    22. Vermont coming into the Union as a free state, and Kentucky coming in as a slave state
    23. communities that would continually reignite the antislavery struggle.

      These were former enslaved Africans.

    24. English political theorists, in particular, began to re-think natural law justifications for slavery.

      How inhuman is it for a certain group of humans to try to think of a natural law to justify their repulsive act of enslaving other humans?

    25. They generated tremendous wealth for the British crown

      The enslaved workers

    26. Southerners feared that without slavery’s expansion, the abolitionist faction would come to dominate national politics and an increasingly dense population of slaves would lead to bloody insurrection and race war.

      Northerners and Southerners had the same motive despite the opposite mentalities and thought processes.

  2. Nov 2015
    1. I cannot but laugh

      John Adams is not taking his wife's concerns seriously.

    2. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands.

      Husbands tend to take their wives as their properties and not as other halves.

    3. "I long to hear that you have declared an independency

      Abigail says it in a sense where the independence would only affect her husband and not her.

    1. former slaves fled with the British army.

      in hopes of getting freedom.

    2. Americans began to create their own manufactures, no longer content to rely on those in Britain

      There were upsides and downsides.

    3. Americans celebrated their victory, but it came at great cost
    4. By 1781, the British were also fighting France, Spain, and Holland.
    5. he developed his own logic of warfare

      to split the armies into small groups

    6. The Congress approved the document on July 4, 1776

      The document of Independence.

    7. dangerous and ill-designing men

      traitors

    8. Congress was in the strange position of attempting reconciliation while publicly raising an army.

      The Congress was two-faced and untrustworthy.

    9. The Congress struck a compromise

      When everything else failed, Congress had no other option but to come to an agreement.

    10. the Coercive Acts fostered the sense of shared identity created over the previous decade

      This Act backfired

    11. Because women were often making decisions regarding which household items to purchase, their participation in consumer boycotts held particular weight
    12. By buying the tea, even though it was cheaper, colonists would be paying the duty and thereby implicitly acknowledging Parliament’s right to tax them.

      explains the reason for tea resistance.

    13. . A new sense of shared grievances began to join the colonists in a shared American political identity.

      Sharing the same sense of pain unites people more than sharing the same joy.

    14. bloodthirsty British soldiers with grins on their faces firing into a peaceful crowd.

      worked perfectly well to aggravate the situation even further.

    15. When a small number of soldiers came to the sentry’s aid, the crowd grew increasingly hostile until the soldiers fired.

      shows the hostility the colonists felt towards the Britishers.

    16. colonists, once again, resisted.

      Since the protest against the Stamp Act did work, the colonists thought of solving every issue with resistance.

    17. In New York City, the inhabitants raised a huge lead statue of King George III in honor of the Stamp Act’s repeal.
    18. However, the colonists rejected the notion of virtual representation, with one pamphleteer calling it a “monstrous idea
    19. This led, in part, to broader, more popular resistance.

      referring to Stamp Act

    20. Stamp Act

      The first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British government.

    21. The King forbade settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains in an attempt to limit costly wars with Native Americans.

      They could not afford spending any more money on war.

    22. Britain now controlled the North American continent east of the Mississippi River, including French Canada.

      The Seven Years' War grew Britain's power in unimaginable ways.

    23. Both Locke and Whitefield had empowered individuals to question authority and to take their lives into their own hands.

      Both education and religion played the key role in changing people's train of thought.

    24. Education would produce rational human beings capable of thinking for themselves and questioning authority rather than tacitly accepting tradition.

      Educating people is the initiate step a government could take towards better future.

    25. Perhaps no single philosopher had a greater impact on colonial thinking than John Locke
    26. Colonial political culture in the colonies also developed differently than that of the mother country

      So each colony had their own culture?

    27. Samuel Adams, in the Boston Gazette, described the colonies as each being a “separate body politic” from Britain.
    28. Constant war was politically consuming and economically expensive.

      War always has a negative impact on the economy.

    29. But the Revolution was as paradoxical as it was unpredictable
    30. Throughout the eighteenth century, colonists had developed significant emotional ties with both the British monarchy and the British constitution

      this explains why Benjamin Rush felt the way he did.

    1. I am not of opinion that in giving Land to the English, we deprive ourselves of the use of it, on the Contrary, I think we shall share it with them,

      I really am impressed by his thought process.

    2. Neither will the Generous Inflict a Punishment without a Crime.
    3. eternal marks traced

      Every word said out loud was written down so that no one could alter it later on.

    4. No group—European or Indian—held sovereign power, and diplomatic, military, trading, and social exchanges continued for much of the eighteenth century.

      Only if this could have lasted for a longer period of time.

    5. Native Americans living in interior regions maintained greater control over their lands and culture

      These were the peaceful times before the invasion of the White.

    1. Oh that I would be a Dog or a toad or any Creature but Man

      Isn't that what Buddhism believes in? That a man's acts decide if he would reborn as a human or not.

    2. and put me into a trembling fear before he began to preach;

      That's how the people fortunate enough to having met the men of God must have felt.

    3. I saw no man at work in his field, but all seemed to be gone.

      Because everyone had gathered up to listen to Mr. Whitefield.

    4. 4000 of people

      that is a large number of people.

    5. every horse seemed to go with all his might to carry his rider to hear news from heaven for the saving of Souls;

      The horse riders were making their horses run as fast as they could since they were so eager to hear to the news.

    6. I dropt my tool and I had in my hand an ran home to my wife telling her to make ready quickly to go and hear Mr. Whitefield preach at Middletown

      shows clearly how excited people were to go listen to Mr. Whitefield.

    7. and great numbers were converted to Christ;

      i.e turned Christians.

  3. classicliberal.tripod.com classicliberal.tripod.com
    1. It is true governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys his share of the protection should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it

      That's where taxes came into the picture.

    2. men unite into societies that they may have the united strength of the whole society to secure and defend their properties,

      United we stand, divided we fall.

    3. The rules that they make for, other men's actions must, as well as their own and other men's actions, be conformable to the law of Nature — i.e., to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of Nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good or valid against it.

      The world would be a much peaceful place to reside in if humankind followed the will of God.

    4. it being ridiculous to imagine one can be tied ultimately to obey any power in the society which is not the supreme.

      Now I understand why when a case is indecisive, it goes to a supreme court.

    5. This legislative is not only the supreme power of the commonwealth, but sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once placed it

      I'm not sure whether having an unalterable law is a good thing or bad?

    6. if anybody dislike, I consent with him to change it for a better.

      It's always a good sign to know that the government is willing to change for the better.

    7. hereditary monarchy

      What if the heir is not worthy enough of the responsibility?

    8. whoever has the legislative or supreme power of any commonwealth, is bound to govern by established standing laws

      Law is something that keeps us humans in limits

    9. of doing whatsoever he thought fit for the preservation of himself

      A human being is not perfect, therefore can not be 100% certain of his decisions.

    10. Secondly, in the state of Nature there wants a known and indifferent judge, with authority to determine all differences according to the established law.
    11. he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions
    1. 'Many of the most mutinous leapt overboard and drown'd themselves in the ocean with such resolution, shewing no manner of concern for life.'

      Anyone would accept death with open arms if living means having to die everyday.

    2. seven hundred

      That explains the limited space

    3. where he was freed.

      He was the luckiest guy ever who got his freedom without having to work for it.

    4. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.

      One could only imagine the horrifying experiences these unfortunate people had and the scar that had been left in their minds and souls.

    5. The stench of the hold

      Not only did the salves had to put up with the cruelty of the owners, but also with the loathsome smell.

    6. he feared that he was about to be eaten by the European crew

      sheds light on the thought that would cross the slaves' minds everyday

    7. transatlantic slave trade

      spreading across the Atlantic

    1. Quakers were the first group to turn against slavery

      Someone had to start somewhere.

    2. Carolina slaves had less direct oversight than those in the Chesapeake

      Chesapeake slaves had more insight on how to get their freedom.

    3. to avoid the diseases of the rice fields

      Why does the rich get to avoid all the bad stuff?

    4. Slave owners could not be convicted of murder for killing a slave;

      This is so heart breaking and unfair

    5. This distribution of property, which kept wealth and property consolidated, guaranteed that the great planters would dominate social and economic life in the Chesapeake.

      This system made sure that the money circulated around the rich only, which in turn made the rich richer and the poor poorer.

    6. Slavery was a transatlantic institution

      It was crossing the Atlantic

    1. anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiment, slowed European immigration

      Americans were afraid of the spread of Catholic.

    2. Jewish immigrants found work in retail, commerce, and artisanal occupations such as tailoring.

      Jewish civilians have always been intelligent people.

    3. hain migration allowed Irish men to send portions of their wages home, which would then be used to either support their families in Ireland or to purchase tickets for relatives to come to the United States

      This tradition still has not changed much. People working in the US still send part of their wages back home to their families.

    4. Middle-class owners and managers justified their economic privilege as the natural product of superior character traits, including their wide decision-making and hard work.

      "Superior character traits", the lamest excuse ever!

    5. Americans embarked upon their industrial revolution

      First the transportation and communication revolution and then industrial.

    6. enable the ‘rich’ to ‘take care of themselves’ while the poor must work or starve.

      Another change that the built of machines and factories had brought.

    7. They no longer shared the bonds of their trade but were subsumed under a new class-based relationships

      The introduction of the factories were changing a lot of relationships and were having negative impacts on many people's lives.

    8. twenty-one-year-old British immigrant Samuel Slater to build a yarn-spinning machine and then a carding machine

      Americans were using Britisher's brain to improve their technological knowledge.

    9. cotton

      main crop of that time

    10. steamboats filled the waters of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers

      Railroads were constructed before steamboats

    11. improved road networks

      was what made the change

    12. Her trip was less than 500 miles but took six full weeks to complete

      another example of the outrageous cost of traveling in lands

    13. exorbitant internal transportation costs hindered substantial economic development

      The costs to transport goods in lands were way expensive than the costs across the country

    14. America’s exports rose in value from $20.2 million in 1790 to $108.3 million by 1807

      Due to the increase in the number of the immigrants

    1. You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much—for we won’t take more than our pint’ll hold.

      Men were really scared of giving women their rights since they knew women were as intelligent as them, but they just didn't want women to have a chance at proving themselves.

    2. Since no written transcript of the speech has appeared,

      That's unfortunate! Not having a written transcript of a historical event.

    3. Women’s Rights Convention

      All these conventions resulted in getting women their rights.

    1. He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.

      Keeping women from getting education was a tactic to keep them under control.

    2. right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they were accustomed.

      Basically talking about men to abolish their acts of injustice towards women.

    3. all men and women are created equal;

      A man can not call himself lover of the God, if he does not think of women as his equal.

    4. During the first day the meeting will be exclusively for women, who are earnestly invited to attend.

      It just sounds like women were very conservative and that majority did not have the courage to voice their opinion.

    1. Missionaries worked to translate the Bible into Iroquois and other languages

      Having Bible translated into other languages helped in the spread of the word of God

    2. word of God

      i.e Bible

    3. an empire of benevolence

      the group that not only had the desire to do nice things but also made efforts to do so

    4. “fallen women.”

      They are referring to the prostitutes

    5. impassioned forms of worship

      A form of worship that includes executing great emotion

    6. Women, too, exhorted, in a striking break with common practice.

      Another activity that women were trying to take part in

    7. Middle-class women, in particular, were able to play a leading role in reform activity.

      Women finally started taking parts in social activities

    8. After religious disestablishment

      People need religion not just to look good in God's eye but also to have moral value and conscience.

    1. The white men pursued and fired on us several times.

      The whites first made the blacks their servants and now that a prophet has been in making, the whites can not come with anything new but attacking them. When would the fear of the white ever disappear?

    2. I now withdrew myself as much as my situation would permit from the intercourse of my fellow-servants,

      He withdrew himself from the society so he could spend more time in the worship of the Spirit.

    3. "What do you mean by the Spirit?

      It has to be God

    4. devoting my time to fasting and prayer.

      another sign of a being chosen as a prophet

    5. they would often carry me with them when they were going on any roguery, to plan for them

      It gives us an idea of how smart this guy was since other Negroes would trust him enough to let him devise the robbery plan even though, he himself did not take any part in it.

    6. I was telling them something, which my mother, overhearing, said it had happened before I was born.

      Most of the prophets were given the gift the knowing whatever has occurred before their birth.

    1. Some enslaved people converted to Christianity while others rejected it as the religion of their oppressors.

      The ones who rejected to convert were the descendants who could not forget the atrocities of the slave owners.

    2. Eventually, forms of pidgin, differing from colony to colony, emerged into fully-fledged creole languages of their own

      That is how different languages came into existence.

    3. Africans forced onto slave ships were drawn from a large range of societies and cultures.

      The African slaves didn't take another African slave who was from another lineage as their brother, but rather as a foreigner.

    4. descendants of African slaves came to speak the local variants of English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch.

      It shows how smart these descendants were

    5. Some of those crafts and skills, and the objects themselves, survive to this day.

      Unique and priceless pieces of history.

    6. Folklore often conveyed religious worldviews and beliefs

      the easiest way to learn about any religion or culture is to having stories about it.

    1. no tea, coffee, sugar, and with the exception of a very scanty sprinkling now and then, no salt...

      the treatment of the slaves is just unacceptable. They were not even provided with good nourishment.

    2. They do not dare to stop even at dinner time, nor return to the quarters, however late it be, until the order to halt is given by the driver

      Did they even consider the slaves as humans or what? they treated the slaves as if they were machines.

    3. "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS REST"

      The only time one does get to rest in a true sense would be when one passes away.

    1. Eli Whitney

      the individual who changed the history of teh cotton crop

    2. the American South quickly became the world’s leading cotton producer

      the history of cotton kingdom started from America

    3. a sense unity that remained unsaid, but was acted out daily.

      The slaves had been through a lot and since they did not have the power to say anything verbally, they acted out their shared sense of unity.

    4. The decades before the Civil War in the South, then, were not times of slow, simple tradition

      It was times of tough competition between the land owners. The more money a land owner made the more slaves it needed to work on the fields.

    5. the average cost of an enslaved male laborer likewise rose

      the rise in the cost of the slaves tells us how successful the cotton business was

    6. skin color of those forced to work its fields

      the slaves were African and the skin color refers back to them

    7. The two moved hand-in-hand

      We are talking about slavery and cotton kingdom. The United States needed slaves to harvest the cotton crops.

    1. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests

      It's an ugly truth how we are cutting down nature for the temporary pleasure of having more infrastructure. I think the human race has forgotten that the results of our actions are leaving permanent scars on earth and our future generations will be the victim of it.

    1. Free people of color would be referring to the fact of freeing black people and giving them the equal rights just as their white neighbor.

  4. Oct 2015
    1. Who were the Anti-Federalists?

      They were the ones who were more concerned about the rights of the citizens more than the anyone else.

    2. While not easy, this goal was far easier to achieve than the unanimous consent of the states required by Article 13 of the Articles of Confederation.

      Taking consent was, is, and will always be one of the hardest goal to achieve.

    1. The delegates took even longer to decide on the form of the national executive branc

      The farmers probably were starving and the delegates were busy deciding on the form of branches

    2. As creditors threatened to foreclose on their property

      This creditor reminds me of the bank that had taken the lands of the farmers and was referred to as the "monster".

    3. The potter hath power over his clay

      Basically stating how the citizens would have more power over their country

  5. Sep 2015
    1. desperation that drove some slaves to suicide

      this is heartbreaking. How can anyone be so inhumane as to be completely unapprehensive of others' basic needs.

    2. Wars offered the most common means for colonists to acquire Native American slaves

      In that case can we say that waging wars were just a tactic to gain more slaves for the labor that was in high demand for plantations?

    3. Puritans

      they had assumed the responsibility of purifying the churches from political corruption hence the name Puritans

    4. Bacon’s Rebellion

      The declaration of Bacon against William Berkeley for his protection of the Native Indians and waging war against the Indians.

    1. his own spirit

      Hutchinson is referring to the Lord.

    2. covenant of grace

      This refers to gaining heaven as a free gift

    3. covenant of works

      This refers to the teaching that states doing good deeds would gain one heaven.

    4. a thing not tolerable nor comely in the sight of God

      The court is talking about the masculine role that Hutchinson had assumed

    1. barbarous enemy

      Bacon's referring to "the Indians"

    2. For having protected, favored, and emboldened the Indians

      Bacon is talking about the protection Berkeley was providing for the Indians.

    1. God of Israel

      I thought that the Puritans were Christians, but reading " God of Israel " has me confused? Were the Puritans the followers of Christ or Moses?

    2. the Puritan had made a covenant with God to establish a truly Christian community,

      This explains why the Puritans had the mind set of cleansing the churches.

    3. Puritan

      The were the followers of James Calvin and their mission was to purify the church of any political corruption hence their name Puritans.

    1. And not being content with taking away life alone, they fell after again upon the dead, making, as well as they could, a fresh murder, defacing, dragging, and mangling the dead carcasses into many pieces, and carrying away some parts in derision

      This paragraph shows the barbarity of the savages to the extreme extent. After murdering the innocent people, the savages weren't satisfied enough so they decided to chop the dead bodies into smaller pieces. I wonder if there is any extent to being inhumane?

    2. Yea, such was the treacherous dissimulation of that people who then had contrived our destruction

      It tells us about the secret planning of the Native Americans to execute a massive massacre on the English colonies.

    3. Powhatan

      He's the famous Pocahontas's father.

    1. Conquest

      1) The goals of the Spanish were to build empires both secular and religious. The religious goals were to win people for Catholic church and the secular goals were to gain more power over the southern and northern america to have access to the wealth and gold.

      2) The greatest killer was the smallpox diseases that almost erased human life which was spread through direct human contact. Other diseases that killed Native Americans were influenza, malaria, whooping cough, diphtheria, and measles. European also brought in large domestic animals such as sheep, cattle, pig, and horse and plants e.g corn, avocado, squash, pineapple, peanuts, potatoes, etc which was more nutritious than the wheat, rice, barley and oats that the Native Americans were used to consuming.

      3) The Europeans claimed their right on claiming the land in America by the authority of the pope. Europeans also claimed to have conquered the native Americans and discovered the land. They claimed possession by occupying the land.

    2. Slaves and Indians occupied the lowest rungs of the social ladder

      Native Americans were enslaved and left out on all of advantages in their own country.

    3. Much of the city was built on large artificial islands called chinampas which the Aztecs constructed by dredging mud and rich sediment from the bottom of the lake and depositing it over time to form new landscapes

      Building cities from mud and rich sediment is very awe inspiring. It presents the Aztecs as very hard working native civilization. One can only imagine how much physical effort they must have put in.

    4. . In central America the Maya built massive temples, sustained large populations, and constructed a complex and long-lasting civilization with a written language, advanced mathematics, and stunningly accurate calendars

      The Maya civilization was filled with smart and witty human population. Their architecture and sharpness in math and physics is world known.

    5. Mercenaries joined the conquest and raced to capture the human and material wealth of the New World.

      The above statement elicits that the Native Americans were thought of as mere worthless creatures who could be used as pleased by the Spaniards.

    1. As time went on, the wife became pregnant. Her and her husband were very, very happy.

      This couple sounds like Adam and Eve. How Eve had the fruit from the forbidden tree and how Eve and Adam were sent to the water world as a punishment.