Month: October 2017

Again, most of my work was posted this week in my milestone, been mostly unable to touch the project since Thursday. Just some nice artwork for my banners I’m looking forward to crop and this Tuesday looking forward to start rolling forward on write ups. Don’t have a much commitment to make this week in my other classes so hoping to get some real work into it.

Are website at this point is pretty well skeleton’ed out, but that’s about as far as we really got. The entire website went from basically nothing to broken-up into topics we think will we cover our topic completely. We have “back story” which we wanted to act as a glossary of sorts to help anyone who is unsure if what’s going on before Shays’ Rebellion. Parties involved works to give an more in depth look at who is who, Shays’ Rebellion tab is of course for the entire event of the Rebellion itself. Finally, the consequences tab is for non-rebellion conflict with the constitution and the resolution of the conflict I did get some artwork to use that I still gotta crop to use on the website, got a really nice image for the banner. As for write ups I started to really go at them Tuesday, but I had to rethink pretty much everything I was doing. Anthony pointed out even the original title I had for the website was too research paper like, which has caused me to rethink everything I’ve done to this point. I guess I’ve been drilled for the past four years to do research papers I have a hard time not writing analytically.  Got killed the rest of the week with a midterm, but I plan on reworking and getting write-ups this weekend.

Week went a bit slow but not without progress. We had to figure out a few general things that probably make us look technology inept. We figured out how to change our homepage and change the title, though we are still very lost on how to embed timelines like some of you had done on your blog posts earlier.

We started playing around with our tabs and plan to have them fully developed by tomorrow. I just wanted the time to review my materials before figuring out how much over everything I wanted and where I wanted it. I’m also still waiting on some possible artwork for banners and backgrounds that I think would look good and fit the theme.

Most of my progress this week was covered in my milestone one post. I have sucked up a lot of information and processed it to the point where I feel me and Anthony can now still giving more focus to making the site. My goal for the week ahead to meet with Anthony and start putting together a skeleton for the website, and to start gathering some images. Hopefully on the other side of the week or website will resemble something that looks like a website.

I’ve been through a bunch of resources at this point including what I consider my backbone:

The Crisis of the Standing Order: Clerical Intellectuals and Cultural Authority in Massachusetts, 1780-1833 by Peter S. Field

Shays’s Rebellion: The American Revolution’s Final Battle by Leonard L. Richards

Shays’ Rebellion by David P. Szatmary

Shays’s Rebellion by Dean Condon

A great resource written at the time by The history of the insurrections, in Massachusetts, in the year MDCCLXXXVI by George Richards Minot. Even better so because it was written by an anti-shays author but he surprisingly remains pretty fair to the people in the rebellion

Primary sources we have about a dozen Hampshire Gazette and Worcester Magazine articles, reporting everything from Shays’ attack on the armory to the court cases against the rebellion.

We are well covered for the who, what where and why the rebellion happened, any one of those books could have covered that. But I focused on the after where that grey area happens and in Richard’s book he articulated something that I feel really goes with the theme of this class, which I was able to backup with my other readings. After the rebellion takes place we are left with a Massachusetts that is deeply divided and to make matters further worse we needed to ratify the Constitution and everyone was afraid if it failed to be ratified in Mass that it would set an example for further states during their ratifying steps.

While most of the delegates in Massachusetts more wealthy towns/cities were for it almost none of the rural areas were and many of the representatives picked from these areas were either in the rebellion or supported it.  The fact that many citizens of Massachusetts where forced to take an oath of loyalty did not help feelings of resentment.  But other big names were also against the Constitution but not as supports of Shays, like Elbridge Gerry who feared a centralized government, John Handcock and Samuael Adams were all hesitant to support the Constitution.  

So the pro-federalists in Massachusetts had an uphill battle to mend ties between the rebels and the wealthy Mass residents, sway the opinion of Handcock and Adams, and get the Constitution ratified at the state level. This where sources kinda split on what worked, what changed minds and what didn’t matter.  What I’ve come to the conclusion through the different readings is the most important being how forgiving the government was on the rebels, Handcock throwing in support for the Constitution and George Richards Minot’s take on the rebellion all worked together to bring the state back together. The biggest irony being, despite the rebels fearing the more centralized government would lead to more taxes, it would in fact lead to Massachusetts’ debt being forgiving; what the rebels wanted from the start.

I realized I sort of just wrote a thesis statement for a Shays’s Rebellion paper… I guess it’s just how my brain works now. But this conclusion will be great for the website and on direct topic for the class. I think information wise, we are in great shape for this milestone, I will probably still keep an eye out for any other sources just in case, but I’m confident we have enough information to flesh out the website.

My only setback is despite really wanting to take photographs myself of the Springfield Armory I have still failed to find the time needed to drive up there and back in good daylight hours, I think I really need to just talk to my boss and lose a weekend day pay, because at this point I do not think I’ll get up there otherwise.

Not sure if we were suppose to post our final research contract but figured may as well seeing our other students did.

 

Shane Voci and Anthony Corbett

Research Proposal – COPLAC Conflict in America

Professor Wallace and Professor Welch

September 28, 2017

Title:

The Rebellion to End all Rebellions: How Shay’s Rebellion changed the U.S. Government’s Response to Armed Rebellions

Mission/Goal of Project:

Shays’ Rebellion may be one of the most famous, or infamous, rebellions in the history of the United States. Taking place in central and western Massachusetts and lasting only several months from 1787 until 1788, it claimed no more than a few dozen lives on both sides. However, it changed the way the U.S. government would function. It brought up questions of rebellion and how the U.S. government would, or could, handle them especially when they turned violent. The resolution to the rebellion was violence, despite a few legislative actions trying in vain to end the rebellion in peace. Putting down the rebels seemed to be the only solution many leaders came to and this solution brings up questions of how to deal with rebellions, and even protests. It begs the question of how should the U.S. government deal with these problems in present day America? Should we use violence or can they be settled in a more peaceful manner? Did the changes to the US government brought on by Shays’ Rebellion truly benefit in ending future rebellions peacefully?

For starters, many people today are not sure what Shays’ Rebellion even is so the opening page for our site should have its own “who, what, when, where, why and how.” This gives the reader/viewer a background before they delve into the real substance of the event. Off of the main page are several tabs which describe different stages in the event; the forming of the rebellion, Shays’ assault on the Springfield Armory, The Battle of Sheffield, just to name a few. Off of these pages there is a general description of what happened at the specific instance, will be more in-depth information about people, places, and what sort of effects the events had.

We would like to present this information as a narrative and not a website where the facts are just spewed back out and a conclusion is drawn. We would like to keep the attention of the reader by keeping the website in a narrative form that drops in primary resources we think would help immerse the read fully in our topic.

The front and center of the website should be the “narrative” of history on what happened with the Rebellion. That is history presented in an almost story like telling. But not without proper sources, citations and in context photographs. This will help draw people in to the site and help inform most people who do not know anything about the rebellion. The other tabs on the information will include in-depth look at primary sources and finally what could be a thesis of a paper an entire page of how the rebellion itself effected our early nation’s government, including the constitution and the forming the executive branch of the government. This ties the entire website together and brings in the conflict resolution, displaying the logical but ultimate failings of the new American government to prevent and more violent uprisings.

The overlook of the website we’d like to reflect the area of Massachusetts and the period of the rebellion. Background images that invoke the feeling of a forested area and old parchment. But also among other pictures of places and people from the event, such as Daniel

Shays and Luke Day but also period information such as pictures of newspapers printing the news of the rebellion, such as the New Hampshire Gazette.

The overall goal of the project is to be inviting but professional looking. With an easy to intake narrative with finally a conclusion on how Shays’ Rebellion starts as one of our new governments failed attempts on peacefully preventing future conflict in America.

Technical Details:

A lot of pictures and words, but in a more digestive manner than a twenty-page history paper. That is the general technical theme of any historian when trying to figure out this grand world of websites and how they should look. We plan on making use of photos of places with historical meaning. All of these important places are within driving distance for the two of us. Unless you know central and western Massachusetts, you’ll most likely have no idea where any of this is taking place so we intend to use the google maps to make it easy to follow where the events take place. Timelines are a perfect way to show off pictures and tidbits of information for those of us who are not used to reading long paragraphs about people who died a couple hundred years ago. Inserting news articles, if possible, into the website, that are properly cited, so viewers can read primary sources. The technical parts of the website, the meat and potatoes of it, will develop more as the website begins to take shape. To see how everything flows and moves, to see what else can be added and taken away, is much easier when there is a physical object to work on.

Milestone #1 – October 12

September 30 to October 1 –

· Shane Plans to Visit the Springfield Armory

· Tony Plans to visit Sheffield, MA

October 2 to 6 –

· Spend time together to work on pooling information

o Using online databases, information gathered from Springfield and Sheffield, books, articles, etc.

o Remember to use the North Adams Library at this time

October 9 to 11 –

· Get all useful information together and hit the goal for Milestone #1

Have all information on Shay’s Rebellion gathered and have sorted through it all. At this point we should have no need to go to the Springfield Armory or anywhere else. We should have all of our information, secondary and primary. We should know what we have, what goes together, and begin thinking about the layout of the website. After this point it should be more technical and aesthetic based work on the project.

Milestone #2 – October 26

October 13 to 18 –

· Begin write-ups for website

· Plan to have write-ups done before fine tuning them into easy to access timelines and maps for those who find reading to be shallow and pedantic

October 19 to 25 –

· Use write-ups to build timelines and maps

· Take turns building each to get a good feel for the programs

Have a basic layout of the website constructed. Have all if not most of the aspects; timelines, images and write-ups all done. By this date we should not be sitting down to write anything or be building any timelines, or looking for images. Being history majors, we are pretty good at writing things and pretty alright at doing timelines so this is where we put our noses to the grindstone in order finish a blueprint of the website to work off of. What goes where, how many pages/tabs, what the pages/tabs are, where do the images go, etc.

Milestone #3 – November 9

October 26 to 1 –

· Begin building the website

· Lots of hands on, working together

· Building the pages, tabs, background images. Make it appealing for people to look at

· Put in all of our hard work!

November 2 to 8 –

· Spend these last few days spell-checking one last time, making sure everything looks good, all the meshes mesh properly.

o Make sure all aspects work properly, page loads properly, etc.

Have the website designed and begin inserting the aspects. This point should see no more write-ups being done, especially no more information gathering. This is where we begin to “copy and paste” (for lack of a better term) the parts of the website together. Putting in the write-ups, timelines, images, etc. Making final changes to the project. We should have a pretty finished website by this point so then the following weeks we can be very nitpicky about it.

Final Project Due – November 30

November 10 to 29 –

· Get really nitpicky about the website. Make it absolutely perfect. Make it something you definitely want to bring home to momma

· Get feedback from peers and teachers

· Get feedback from friends and relatives

· Throw out most of this feedback, what do they know?

· Really polish it up and get ready to…

This week doing anything on the website was put to a bit of a standstill for me as my internet at my place has been down. With my job it’s hard for me to dedicate a whole lot of time on campus, I tend to be a nightowl to get my assignments and work done. So I focused hard on our first milestone and getting a bunch of research done. I’ve read through three books, secondary resources this week, they’re all tabbed at home so I can’t really go into detail about titles and authors, other than they all have “shays’s rebellion” in them. One I remember pretty well was by Browne, had a whole section on how the Rebellion contributed to state building, really neat stuff.

They’ve all been really good at recounting the facts and interpretation of the facts around the rebellion but many of our resources stop short of what the ripple effect the rebellion had into our constitution or remain nebulous about how much it contributed and to what. So will probably go through another book or two before Thursday.

This week was a bit crazy for me. Had two other rather big assignments in my other classes. I did however, managed to play with Anthony and my site to see if I could recreate what I learned. And I’m proud to say I’ve figured out how to do menus, and drop down lists off those menus to take people to different pages. I consider this a victory with how technologically illiterate I can be with this stuff. The other proportion of this week I dedicated to this class was with Anthony and figuring out how to clean up or research plan and better plan our work out between each other.