History 221 was the history class that I took my first semester of my freshman year, and it was centered around United States History from the Colonial era to the Civil War era. History is not my strongest subject in school, so I figured the class with less wars to remember was going to be the best fit for me.
This class was my hardest class freshman year, because I have a difficult time trying to enjoy learning about something that was so difficult for so many people to live through, such as slavery. Slavery was a big focus in our class, because from the Colonial era to the Civil War, the United States had a large slave population, so often our assignments would center around slavery. It was difficult to learn about, because this group of people suffered under oppression for so long. However, one thing this class did teach me is that people who are oppressed cannot stay oppressed forever; they will get their justice and freedom that they deserve. This made it a little easier to learn and understand the material, because I knew that they would one day get their happy ending. And in the mean time, people will continue to advocate for their freedoms.
Below I have included a paper that I wrote for the class that had to deal with slavery and how individuals used their voices to advocate for the freedom of African Americans in the Antebellum period, or the period before the Civil War.