The West

There are many differences between the real historical cowboy vs. the popular imagination cowboy.  The real historical cowboy was a low paid or no job worker with almost nothing to their name.  While the more popular well known cowboys like in the movies consisted of the freedom to do whatever they want, living in nature, always fighting or gun fights.  There is a huge difference between these two forms of a cowboy consisting from a low paid worker to a person that most kids wanted to be. 

In the western life the cowboys took the focus away from everything else to people that was an important part of history.  The Chinese coming into america was important because they took jobs and later in California took up ten percent of the population.  Also the Chinese Americans help create the railroads because they took up the majority of the railroad workers.  

One way that the cowboys was idealized the way it was because of movies and books had talked about the cowboys in this way because it was more interesting like in the book and movie called The Virginian.  These movies and books had created the mind set that the american cowboy had consisted of the free person who carried around a gun and fought Indians all the time.   That is the main reason of how cowboys were portrayed the way that they were.

I did not know as much as I thought about the Post- Civil War until this unit because I was not taught in that much detail ever.  I did know that about the 13th, 14th, and 15th, amendment were. Also i knew that Lincoln did not want to punish the South but i never thought that he stopped the south from being punished because i thought that everybody followed what he did.  I knew that a lot of the South was destroyed after the war.

What Really stood out to me was how Booth really didn't help the South but really hurt them by killing Lincoln. It is important to know how your country got started is very important because it is good to know how your country turned out the way it is today. also how it changed to become the way you see it and what made it that way.