Soldier Letter from the Mexico-USA War

Click on the link to a letter  from a soldier in the Mexico-USA War published in the periodical "Yankee Doodle."  As you read the letter, respond to these 4 questions:

1. In the first paragraph, what did the writer expect from going to war?

2. In the second paragraph, what did the writer find instead?

3. In the third paragraph, what advice would the writer expect from his mother, and what did he think of that advice?

4. In the forth paragraph, what was going to happen next?

5. What was in the letter that surprised you? Was anything missing from the letter that you expected to be there?

Health and Illness in Early Factories

According to the text, many workers in the mills got sick and were injured on the job or in inadequate housing provided by the mill owners. Was that true? We can use a primary source document, a page from the hospital log at Lowell, Massachusetts, to find out. Click on a transcript of the hospital log to answer the question:

1. What were the diseases and illnesses that afflicted the workers on the hospital log? In simple terms, what kind of disease or illness was it? How many people were suffering from each disease or illness? Were the diseases or illnesses related to work or life at the mill? Why or why not?