Sometimes when I’m home all alone, I like to make smoothies since my family’s blender is quite loud… so it’s best that no one be around to hear it. It’s just a combination of some fruit, ice, and milk, and although it’s quite a bare recipe, it tastes good so consider it a recipe for success. 7/10☆!
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| (How come mine doesn’t come with a handle) |
Yet not all recipes for success are as simple, some aren’t even successful what am I talking about!? One of these very recipes destined for unsuccessfulness was the Confederacy, a set of states who broke off from the U.S because they refused to give up slavery. Yet they weren’t even able to sustain themselves despite rebelling like a teenager. What losers.
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| (Passage gladly taken from the APUSH Textbook) |
When the Confederate congress needed money to pay for the war, they initially tried to take funds from the states and not the people. Well… that didn’t work… and states irked at the thought of taxing their own people… so they usually, if ever, paid congress with bonds or varyingly valued notes. In the year of 1863, congress would declare an income tax, one that made planters pay a percentage of their produce earnings away. Yet despite this tax, crop money was unfortunately not enough to keep the confederacy afloat. The crop cash was only responsible for about one percent of the Confederacy’s gains. The Confederacy also tried issuing bonds, but too many at once I guess- since people stopped buying and quickly lost faith in them. Another small loss for the Confederacy that would make way for their big big failure to win against the Union. Another method of money making they tried was to borrow money in Europe, but that didn’t do them any better.
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| (Passage was on two different pages. Sorry) |
Since they failed to pay for the war through stable earnings, they instead opted for more destructive means! Paper Currency! So thin so small! Yet so dangerous when unregulated! After beginning to spit out paper money in 1861, they had lent out a total of $1.5 billion by 1864. It was double that of the Union! Yet double done- doesn’t mean double done right! As the confederacy didn’t really set up any uniform system for their currency. So there was lots of chaos as the currency was issued from many different places. Prices in the South rose up by 9000 percent, can you imagine how much it was for the North? Only 80. The terrifying effects of inflation hit them hard, and their morale held hands with the economy as they both cried together.
This blog was designed to be informal and you do that amazingly, using the situation of the Civil War and the Confederates in a low position with no money and turning it into something like a story was also done very nicely.
ReplyDeleteHey Toro! I really enjoyed how this almost sounds like a parody on the Confederates because of the sarcasm and 'excitement' after the more destructive decision was opted for. In spite of this, you can still clearly understand the message and facts from the original textbook, while still having audience retention. Along with this, the repeated use of ellipses almost convey the questioning one would have while reading about their actions. Great post!
ReplyDeleteWait Toro I really liked how you started off with the anecdote of your smoothie making, and then transitioning it to about the failure of the Confedrates. 7/10!
ReplyDeleteI love the alliteration and anecdote, but I do not appreciate you bringing up my APUSH trauma from last year.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the informal language in it. I liked how it still retained the same information, because sometimes it be a bit hard to understand when you convert the language. The facts about inflation was also interesting.
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