12/12/11

Today in History we read a document titled "The Union of These States is Perpetual: Lincoln's View of the American Union" This document was a speech written by Abraham Lincoln. After reading this document, we answered the questions that followed it on a separate paper and then discussed the answers as a class. This document contained Lincoln's opinion on the secession of the Southern States. An interesting thing we were taught is that Lincoln never referred to these states as the Confederate States because this would show that they were in fact separate from the Union.

Today in English we started the class off with a usual grammar worksheet. After we finished, we had a class discussion about the chapters we had just read. After our discussion we received many papers to place in our notebooks and we were given a quote assignment to find examples of Huck's moral growth.

When Abraham Lincoln avoided using the phrase " Confederate States" when referring to the states in the south that had seceded from the nation, it reminded me of one of Jim's crazy superstitions. Jim is always believing that if you do a certain thing such as pick up snakeskin, then bad luck will be brought upon you. This is similar to Lincoln's thinking because Lincoln believed that referring to the Confederate States using their proper name would be very bad. Although Lincoln's thinking did have logic to it, using that name would not change what the Confederate states really were, just like how touching a snameskin would not really change your luck or fate.