1. Why did Barnum's Museum burn down? As always, make sure you give evidence for your conclusions. In the introductory movie, Barnum himself give several reasons. Which of these do you think is the most convincing, and why?

    Barnum's museum was burnt down in 1841 in New York City.  An introduction shows several reasons why his museum was burnt down.  First, Copperheads who were against him would possibly do this, because he was known as a person who supported Union.  New York was known as a city that many free Blacks resided and since that, many other races also resided there too.  This is enough that how Barnum could introduce many things that were brought from out side of the country and this fact shows that Barnum might be criticized by many Copperheads.  If you look around the museum, many weird things are exhibited.  Those exhibits were possibly enough to bring visitors' attention back in the time when many things newly introduced.  Of course, visitors' scientific knowledge should be less than real scientists so the visitors actually would keep visiting this museum with disregarding the truth.  By this, many scientists might dislike Barnum with his unsure explanations on those weird exhibits.  For example, "Chang and Eng" exhibit even asks visitors, "...are they two persons, or one man with a double allowance of legs, arms, head etc?" and FeJee Mermaid exhibit also does not show enough fact.  There are more exhibits with not enough explanations too.  This would make the scientists criticize him.  At last, after the museum was destroyed, he wrote a letter to New York Times.  In the letter, he mentioned that there is no way that somebody lit a fire in the museum because of his employees are enough to supervise in the museum.                  

    If he really thought that there could not be fire from outside of the museum as the letter shows, and museum is prepared well to extinguish fire, then I think it happened by one of his employees.  Barnum's employees either hated Barnum so they might mean to fire the museum or one of the employees made a mistake so the tragedy happened.  His guesses are all reliable actually, but once again, if he really disregarded the previous reasons such as Copperheads against Union, or criticizing by many scientists, then it might happen by his employees.