Hello and welcome to my next blog,  we have covered several eras during the time we were given and I had the choice of discussing freedom during the gilded age, progressive era, Spanish American war, and World War 1.  Since I personally find that World War 1 was had the biggest influence globally, I have decided to discuss it.

      
       In the article I read, which was actually Canadian, they tried to discuss why they fought the war.  What it appears like is that war propaganda was trying to sell that they were fighting the war to defend freedom.  However, the Canadian author  then points out, that in order to think of it as fighting for freedom, you would have to ignore the people that the European empires forcefully conscripted to fight their war.  Not only were many soldiers conscripted, but you could argue that some of these countries were no truly free.  Many countries fighting for "freedom" did no have women's suffrage yet.  Likewise Italy placed property restrictions on voting, and the U.S. implemented Jim Crow Laws to keep African Americans from voting.  If we look at Germany, we can see that they had total manhood suffrage.  The only other country in the war that had this was France.  So could we really claim to be fighting for freedom while our enemies were more socially free?  Instead of fighting for freedom in individuals, maybe we were fighting for freedom of nations.  trying to keep smaller nations out of the hands of the tyrants that wanted to control them.  But if we look closer, we can see that we only really cared about the balance of power.  After all France only joined because of alliances with Russia,  Britain only joined because they were trying to make sure that no one took over Belgium, and Italy only joined with promise of territory.  So can we really say we were fighting for freedom?

Article:
http://activehistory.ca/2015/11/world-war-one-a-fight-for-freedom/

     Hello, and welcome back to my blog.  This era will be covering the civil war and freedoms role in it.  However, unlike many of my other peers blogs, I will not be focusing on the freedom of African Americans.  I understand that African Americans freedom played a large part in the war; however, there are plenty of articles over the internet talking about their freedom.  So in this blog post I have decided to focus more on women's freedom (or lack thereof) and less of African Americans freedom.

     During the civil war, men on both sides rushed to the frontlines to fight for what they believed in creating a gap on the home front that was filled by women. Women before this time were usually confined to the house with jobs such as cooking and cleaning.  After war broke out women started to join the war effort in any way they could. They sowed uniforms, made food, and created medical stations for wounded soldiers.  This was the first time in American history that women played a significant part in the war effort.  After the war ended, women had the growing idea that they could take jobs after what they did in the war.  This new experience for them expanded their horizon on what they could do in society, and once confined again, wondered if they would ever see that sort of freedom again.  Here we find the first growing idea of women's rights.  During the war, many African American women were also freed from being slaves.  Once freed, they only found themselves within the confines of the house that American women had just temporarily freed themselves from.  While we see no large advances in societies idea of where women belong, we can start to see the growing concept of women's rights making small steps to the end goal of where we are today.


Article:
http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/women-in-the-civil-war