When I reflect on the Whiskey Wars, the illustration of the soldiers in conflict with the mob of protesters and hostile people are affected and greatly influenced by my reading of chapters one and three from the Visual Notes text. I see that the newspaper served as a form of a descriptive sketch and journal that not only depicted the seemingly unbiased view of the reporter, but also the capacity of the accuracy of the scene of the event to be influenced by the reporter’s experiences and preconceived notions. I did not read the original newspaper article from the mid-to-late 1800s, but I tend to observe from the illustration that the protesters and hostile people were more enraged and confrontational than the soldiers were, even though there were seemingly equal amounts of people and soldiers on both sides. I saw that the expressions of the protesters and hostile people were more animated with intolerance, anger, and rage, while the soldiers’ faces were mostly not drawn towards the reader(s) perspective, and the ones who could be seen had neutral expressions that were left to the reader(s) to decide on the emotions in an abstract sense.

I think that the Whiskey Wars were indicative of much corruption on all levels with bribery and criminal activities of that era, but to get a true sense of the actual events would have to have been directly experienced by myself. Only then, my conclusions would have been unaffected by the direct reference of the newspaper illustration and the author’s description, and only by my own biases. Visual Notes prescribe looking through a “clear,” an “accurate,” and an “acute” perspective, in order to translate an unbiased representation of a scene or event.

Sketches and journals add to the quality of information and knowledge. There is more learning and creativity involved when there are sketches that show the indirect and unseen and when there are journal concepts, thoughts, interpretations, and reflections that assist in linking and associating concepts.