ralph waldo emerson, self-reliance (1841) main points i. independence of thought and action...
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Ralph Waldo Emerson,Self-Reliance (1841)
Main Points I. Independence of thought AND ACTION REGARDLESS OF SOCIETY’S REACTION. II. Existence of an inner divine force to give direction. III. Divine force supplies revelation of truth and beauty.
Quotes from Emerson’s Self-Reliance:
•…To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men,--that is genius.
•A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thought: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
•Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
•Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.
•Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
•I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.
•What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.
•Do your thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man-bluff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. p.
•For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure.
•A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
•To be great is to be misunderstood.
•The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks…. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.
•The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God spaketh, he should communicate not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole.
• …in the universal miracle petty and particular miracles disappear.
•Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He dares not say “I think,” “I am,” but quotes some saint or sage.
•…man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time….
•Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state….
•He who has more soul than I, masters me, though he should not raise his finger.
•I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.
•…you isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation.
•It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.
•Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end, is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness.
•The soul is no traveler: the wise man stays at home….
•Insist on yourself; never imitate.
•Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.
•The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
•Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.
•And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.
•Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Young American (1844) Main points: · Commerce is the most significant political issue for Americans because its revolutionary new developments combine us together as Americans.
1. “There is no American citizen who has not been stimulated to reflection by the facilities now in progress of construction for travel and the transportation of goods in the United States.” 2. The railroad creates American sentiment and connects people with resources. It also unifies people together as a country.
· “America is the country of the future.”
1. … “It is a country of beginnings, or projects, or designs, and expectations. It has no past: all has an onward and prospective look.”
2. … “For remote generations. We should be mortified to learn that the little benefit we change in our own persons to receive was the utmost they would yield.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Young American (1844) Main points: · History of commerce provides a record of the development of America and the tremendous benefits trade has brought.
1. “It is a new agent in the world and one of great functions; it is a very intellectual force.” 2. “Trade is an instrument in the hands of the friendly Power which works for us in our own despite.”
John L. O’Sullivan, John L. O’Sullivan, Manifest DestinyManifest Destiny
Westward Expansion:Westward Expansion:
““Our Manifest destiny is to overspread the continent Our Manifest destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.”our yearly multiplying millions.”
“Texas is now ours.” Texas has no obligation to Mexico and the United States needs welcome the annexation of Texas.
“There is a great deal of Annexation yet to take place, within the life of the present generation, along the whole line of our northern border.”
Main Points
1.) It is time now for opposition to the Annexation of Texas to cease…
2.) It is our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.
3. Nor is there any just foundation for the charge that Annexation is a great pro-slavery measure-calculated to increase and perpetuate that institution.
Manifest Destinyby John O’Sullivan
Civil DisobedienceHenry David Thoreau (1849)
Main Points:
• 1. Think for yourself, then do what is right.
– Refuse to obey the fugitive slave laws– Don’t participate in the Mexican War
• 2. An individual doing that which is right constitutes a majority.– Don’t wait for the majority to agree before acting
on a just cause
• 3. Do not support an unjust government.–Refuse to pay taxes –Most effective means of protest (beat the system within the bounds of the system)–The blood spilled by the government is on your hands as a faithful taxpayer–Non-violent approach to protest
• 4. A just government will respect the individual.
“I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men.”
Civil DisobedienceHenry David Thoreau (1849)
Main Points:• Mexico blames the War on the United States.
– “To explain then in a few words the true origin of the war, it is sufficient to say that the insatiable ambition of the United States, favored by our weakness, caused it.”
• United States an “Alpha Male”– “In throwing off the yoke of the mother country, the United States of the North
appeared at once as a powerful nation.”
• United States had an Expansion Plan.– “From the days of their independence they adopted the project of extending
their dominions, and since then , that line of policy has not deviated in the slightest degree… They desired from the beginning to extend their dominion in such a manner as to become the absolute owners of most of all this continent.”
• Even after acquiring the land that the U.S. wanted all along, the U.S. felt to add insult by placing fault on Mexico.– “Violence and insult were united: thus at the very time they usurped part of our
territory, they offered to us the hand of treachery, to have soon the audacity to say that our obstinacy and arrogance were the real causes of the war…”
The Mexican View of the War (1850)Ramon Alvarez Et Al.
Historical Significance
• The United States gained what they believed was God’s will.
• The article gave light to how the Mexicans’ felt about the war.– Allowed Americans to see the other side of
the war.
The Mexican View of the War (1850)Ramon Alvarez Et Al.
George BancroftThe Progress of
Mankind(1854)
Main Points By God’s plan Americans are destined to choose growth and
therefore achieve greatness.“...the condition of our race is one of growth or of decay. It is the
glory of man that he is conscious of this law of his existence.”
“The progress of man consists in this, that he himself arrives at the perception of truth. The Divine mind, which is its source, left it to be discovered, appropriated and developed by finite creatures.”
• It is by God’s design all men are equal in substance, therefore; progress depends on the individual’s contribution to the whole and the whole of society is wiser than the individual.
“Every man is in substance equal to his fellow-man.”
“Each member of the race is in will, affection, and intellect, consubstantial with every other; no passion, no noble or degrading affection, no generous or selfish impulse, has ever appeared, of which the germ does not exist in every breast.”
“But as every man partakes of the same faculties and is consubstantial with all, it follows that the race becomes richer, more varied, free and complete, as time advances.”
George Bancroft, The Progress of Mankind (1854)
Main Points cont.
“Were no other progress, therefore, possible than that of the individual, one period would have little advantage over another.”
“COMMON SENSE implies by its very name, that each individual is to contribute some share toward the general intelligence. The many are wiser than the few; the multitude than the philosopher; the race than the individual; and each successive generation than its predecessor....”
• Women have a significant role in politics, but it is not for the public realm, it is divulged in the home and expressed through her husband.
“ ...a lily among thorns, whose smile is pleasant like the light of morning, and whose eye is the gate of heaven; she, whom nature so reveres, that the lovely veil of her spirit is the best terrestrial emblem of beauty, must cease to command armies or reign supreme over nations.”
“Yet the progress of liberty...has redeemed her into the possession of the full dignity of her nature, has made her not man’s slave, but his companion, his counsellor, and fellow-martyr; and for an occasional ascendency in political affairs, has substituted the uniform enjoyment of domestic equality.”
George Bancroft, The Progress of Mankind (1854)
Main Points contd.
• Freedom through American Democracy is an open opportunity for the world to advance and grow.
“Our land extends far into the wilderness, and beyond the wilderness; and while on this side of the mountains it gives the Western nations of Europe a theater for the renewal of their youth, on the transmontane side, the hoary civilisation of the farthest antiquity leans forward from Asia to receive the glad tidings of the messenger of freedom. The islands of the Pacific entreat our protection, and at our suit the Empire of Japan breaks down its wall of exclusion....”
“Without attempting to unfold what the greater wisdom of coming generations can alone adequately conceive and practically apply, we may observe, that the human mind tends not only toward unity, but UNIVERSALITY.”
Questions
Does history ever demonstrate any retrograde motions?
Who or what is responsible for human progress?
What is the role of women in history?
George Bancroft, The Progress of Mankind (1854)
Historical Significance
The most significant aspect of George Bancroft’s, The Progress of Mankind is his belief that American Democracy would spread fervently throughout the world. American Democracy would be anxiously accepted by other nations as Americans shared the promise of freedom.
Bancroft’s devotion to the belief that the wisdom of the people held the answer is indicative in the picturesque view of America portrayed in his writing. Although, it is interesting to note that he completely ignores the issue of slavery. His notable political role would seem to suggest otherwise but that is not the case. At the time of this address, which he delivered to the Historical Society in New York, slavery was a very intense issue. The Kansas-Nebraska Act had just been passed, setting aside the Missouri Compromise of 1820, resulting in violent clashes. Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared the fugitive Slave Act of 1850 unconstitutional. The Potato Famine in Ireland created an influx of Irish immigrants that Bancroft also chose to ignore.
George Bancroft, The Progress of Mankind (1854)
Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (1852)
Main PointsMain Points1) Independence Day is for the white people, not the slaves.
“I am not included within the pale of the glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that hath brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct.”
2) American Slavery is what comes to the minds of slaves on the Fourth of July. It is not the freedom in America. Slaves had no freedom.
“My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there, identified with the American bondman, making his soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself the be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery--the great sin and shame of America!”
Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (1852)
Main PointsMain Points
3) The slave is a man, which is acknowledged by the government in the punishments given for their crimes.
“Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the state of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death...”
“What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being. The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under sever fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or write. When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave.
4) The wrongfulness of slavery is so strong that if any man be asked if it is wrong, he would say yes.
“Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
5) The Fourth of July is hypocritical because it is a celebration of freedom, yet there is still the evil of slavery.
“What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My FreedomMy Bondage and My Freedom (1855) (1855)
Main Points
1. Keeping the slaves illiterate was an important step in destroying the possibility of keeping accurate records and preventing revolts from being organized..
“I never met with a slave who could tell me how old he was. Few slave mothers know anything of the month of the year, nor of the days of the month. They keep no family records, with marriages, births, deaths”
“They measured the ages of their children by spring time, winter time, harvest time, planting time and the like”
“Master Hugh forbade her continuance of her instruction; telling her, in the first place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it was also unsafe, and could only lead to mischief. …He should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it.”
“If you teach the slave to read the Bible, there will be no keeping him”“If you learn him now to read, he’ll want to know how to write, he’ll be running
away with himself.”
2. In the Community of Slavery there were no family ties not even Mother and Dad and Child.
“Designated father, is literally abolished in slave law and slave practice”“My poor mother, like many other slave-women had many children, but NOT FAMILIES! I say nothing of father; I have never been able to penetrate. Slavery does away with fathers, as it
does away with families”
HISTORICAL SIGNIFIANCEArticulate Blackman opened up the eyes of the White people of how the slaves were treated and
the fact that they were people too.
Frederick Douglass: Historical Context
• Ex-slave who fought for the freedom of all slaves.• He wanted to let America know how it felt not to have a true
“family” or “father”.• Douglass felt that “Slaveholders are only a band of successful
robbers.” (Quote taken from, “Slavery in America from Colonial Times to the Civil War”)
• Slavery was wrong as well as the treatment of them.• The early to mid eighteen hundreds in the South was extremely
harsh on slaves.• Slaves didn’t really belong to a family, they belong to their
master’s like cattle, land, or crops. • Douglass wanted to open America’s eyes because they had
been closed far too long.
“My Bondage and My Freedom”: Main Points
Slavery makes families dysfunctional.• “ … My poor mother, like many other slave-women, had many children,
but NO FAMILY!” (68)
• “The practice of separating children from their mother, and hiring the latter out at distances too great to admit of their meeting …” (68)
• “Women—white women, I mean—are IDOLS at the south, not WIVES, for the slave women are preferred in many instances; and if these idols but nod, or lift a finger, woe to the poor victims: kicks, cuffs and stripes are sure to follow.” (69)
• It has been noted throughout history that there was and maybe even today been “Southern Bells”. Why did we never hear of a “Northern Bell”. That seems to be term used only to describe the southern women of the south.
“My Bondage and My Freedom”: Main Points (cont.)
Even black individuals who are half-white, they are often considered to be simply black slaves.
• “He may be a freeman; and yet his child may be a chattel [movable property: an item of personal property that is not freehold land and is not intangible.]. He may be white, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood; and his child may be ranked with the blackest slaves.” (69)
Many white masters did not acknowledge their mulatto children.
• “Men do not love those who remind them of their sins unless they have a mind to repent—and the mulatto child’s face is a standing accusation against him who is master and father to the child.” (69)
• They would many times repent for their sins by selling the mulatto child. In this way, they didn’t have to see them and be reminded; a case of out of sight out of mind.
• It may be important to point out that not all slave owners engaged in a sexual relationship with their slaves.
“My Bondage and My Freedom” :Main Points: (cont.)
White slave owners wanted to keep their black slaves ignorant to better insure their control over their slaves.
• “The frequent hearing of my mistress reading the bible … awakened my curiosity in respect to this mystery of reading, and roused my desire to learn.” (69)
• “he should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it.” (68)
• “it would forever unfit him for the duties of a slave…” (69)• “His iron sentences–cold and harsh—sunk deep into my heart,
and stirred up not only my feelings into a sort of rebellion, but awakened within me a slumbering train of vital thought.” (69)
• “the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man … knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” (69)
Historical Significance:
• The document had a great impact on society because it publicized America’s ugly secret.
• The groups within society which appeared to be impacted the most by the author’s document was the slave owners. After all, who had the most to loose.
• Because slavery was wrong, Douglass vowed to speak out so others would know by writing and giving speaches.
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
Main Points:Main Points:
1. A slave is the master’s property and is subject to his will in all things.1. A slave is the master’s property and is subject to his will in all things.“there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death…”
2. Slave girls often loose her innocence before the age of twelve to their 2. Slave girls often loose her innocence before the age of twelve to their white masters.white masters.“She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon she will learn to tremble when she hears her master’s footfall. She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child.”
3. The slave masters father many children.3. The slave masters father many children.“My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven slaves. But did the mothers dare to tell who was the father of their children?...No, indeed! They knew too well the terrible consequences.”
4. Slavery damages family values.4. Slavery damages family values.White children grow up thinking slavery is right.White women take their frustration out on the innocent slave girls.
Questions:Questions:If a slave was indeed property, what could keep a master from having sex with his property?Was Jacobs appealing to common cultural values in her narrative?
Alexander Stephens, Alexander Stephens, Slavery and the ConfederacySlavery and the Confederacy (1861) (1861) Main Points
1.With its secession from the Union, the Confederate States are no longer forced to endure the oppressive tariffs of the United States federal government.
•This old thorn of the tariff, which occasioned the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new. Again, the subject of internal improvements, under the power of Congress to regulate Commerce, is put at rest under our system.
•With us, it was simply a question, upon whom the burden should fall. The true principle is to subject commerce to every locality to whatever burdens may be necessary to facilitate it. Financial burdens should fall on the locality, which sees the benefit, not from the common Treasury.
2.Slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederate society. Jefferson believed that enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error.
•Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rest, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race is its natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
•With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eyes of the law. Not so with the Negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.
•The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience, we know it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is indeed, in conformity with the Creator. For His own purpose, He has made one race to differ from another, as He made “one star to differ from another in glory.”
Alexander Stephens, Alexander Stephens, Slavery and the ConfederacySlavery and the Confederacy (1861) (1861)
Main Points
3. The process of disintegration in the old union may be expected to go
on with almost absolute certainty. Our object is peace, not only with the north, but also with the world. We are now the nucleus of a growing power, which, if we are true to ourselves, our destiny, and our high mission, will become the controlling power on this continent.
• “With such an area of territory…with such resources already at our command-with productions which control the commerce of the world-who can entertain any apprehensions as to our success, whether others join us or not.
• In olden times, the olive branch was considered the emblem of peace, we will send to the nations of the earth another far more potential emblem of the same, the Cotton Plant…
Reverend Benjamin Morgan Palmer Slavery a Divine Trust: Duty of the South to
Preserve and Perpetuate it
1. The South’s providential trust “is to conserve and to perpetuate the institution of slavery as now existing….”
2. White slave owners act as guardians of their black slaves. Blacks are like helpless children who the slave owner protects.
3. “Freedom would be their doom.”
4. Slaves “form parts of our households, even as our children….”
5. The world should FEAR abolition. The world is more dependent on slavery for its wealth than ever, and if slavery ends, the world economy will totter.
6. The South needs slavery to support its material interests. Slavery is a matter of self-preservation for the South.
7. The South defends the cause of God and religion, since the “Abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic….”
Rabbi Morris J. Raphall Rabbi Morris J. Raphall
POINT 2:Abolitionists, such as Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, are inventing new sins when they claim that slavery is evil. By doing this they are insulting and exasperating “thousands of God-fearing, law-abiding citizens” and have pushed the country toward civil war.
POINT 1:The Bible does not condemn slavery. However, it does condemn coveting another’s property, including another’s slaves.
Bible View of Bible View of SlaverySlavery
Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
Peace, Be StillPeace, Be StillPOINT 1: “…The whole nation is guilty [regarding slavery]….”
POINT 2: “Our civilization has not begotten humanity and respect for others’ rights, nor a spirit of protection to the weak….”
Lincoln Himself1. He was born in a one room long cabin in Kentucky.2. At the age of twenty-four he was elected to the Illinois General Assembly.3. Lincoln was elected to the US House of Representatives to the Whig Party in
1846.4. Spoke against the Kansas-Nebraska Act5. Spoke against the Dread Scott decision in 18576. He was elected the 16Th President of the United States7. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed all slaves on January
1ST 1863.8. Delivered the Gettysburg Address for people of the present time and the future.
The Gettysburg Address 19th January 1863
Main Points
1. Equality Is Meant For All Mankind
“Conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Lincoln took from the Declaration of Independence and hinted that the Civil War was not just about the union, but also to bring equality to all citizens.
2. The Gettysburg address heightens the soldiers, and that their deaths did not go in vain.
“The word will little note nor long remember what we say here but it can never forget what they did here.”
3. The cause is a good one. The soldiers did not die in vain.
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that these dead shall not have died in vain.” Lincoln believed that the present and the future generations must defend the union.
4. The Nation Is Worth Fighting For
“That the union is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” This explains that Americans from now on should be proud and defend the union. That the people make it up, and should run the government
The Gettysburg Address 19th January 1863
Main points:
• The settlement of the Frontier is essential in understanding the History of America.
• “American History has been in a large degree the colonization of the Great West • “The wilderness masters the colonist.”• Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American.”
• The expansion of America into the West promoted an independence from European influence.
• “In the settlement of America we have to observe how European life entered the continent, and how America modified and developed that life…”
• “…the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from the influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines.”
• The taming of the frontier developed the American character • “…at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must
accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish…”• “…the men who grew up under these conditions, and the political, economic and
social results of it, is to study the really American part of our history….”
Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893)
• The westward expansion ensured the success of the United States.• “…legislation which most developed the powers pf national government, and
played the largest part in its activity, was conditioned on the frontier.”• “…frontier promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American
people…continental immigration flowed across to the free lands….”• “…growth of nationalism and evolution of American political institutions were
dependent on the advance of the frontier….”• “…America has been another name for opportunity…the people…have taken
their tone from the incessant expansion…”
• Settlement of the frontier created individualism and that promoted democracy.
• “…the most important effect of the frontier has been in the promotion of democracy….”
• “ …the frontier is productive of individualism.”• “The frontier individualism has from the beginning promoted democracy….”
• The Frontier is gone. • “From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound
importance….”• “Movement has been its dominant fact…the American energy will continually
demand a wider field for its exercise.”• “But never again will such gifts of free land offer themselves….And now, four
centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone….”
Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893)
Questions to consider:
• What role does Turner argue the frontier has played in American history?
• What role did the cities and industrial development play in Turner’s America?
• How is frontier defined?
• Does the end of the frontier mean the end of democracy as well?
• Now that the American frontier has ended will America find new frontiers? And if so to what degree?
Historical significance:Turner’s essay has been called “the single most influential piece of writing in the history of American history,” a turning point in American historical scholarship, repudiating the germ theory altogether. The essay became an organizing principle of the American historical studies. Turner’s influence as a teacher and proponent of a new and important theory made him one of the most renowned of all American historians.
Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893)
Frederick J. Turner's Senior History Seminar, 1893-4
Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life POINT 1: DO NOT LIVE A LIFE OF IDELNESS; A STRENUOUS LIFE IS
MUCH MORE REWARDING AND NOBLE.
• I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
• We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life.
• A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life
which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world. • The man must be glad to do a man's work, to dare and endure and to labor; to keep
himself, and those dependent on him. The woman must be the housewife, the helpmeet of the homemaker, the wise and fearless mother of many healthy children.
POINT 2: ONLY THROUGH STRIFE AND STRENUOUS AND DARING EFFORT WILL WE ACHIEVE NATIONAL GREATNESS.
• …it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.
Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life
POINT 3: WEAKNESS IS THE GREATEST OF CRIMES. OUR NATION HAS A RESPONSIBILTY TO BRING THE HALF-CAST NATIONS OF THE WORLD GOOD GOVERNMENT. IF WE DO THIS WE WILL BE GREAT, AND IF WE DO NOT WE WILL CEDE THE OPPORTUNITY TO “BOLDER AND STRONGER PEOPLES.”
• We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond them, sunk in scrambling commercialism; heedless of higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil and risk, busying ourselves only with the wants of our bodies for the day, until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of question, what China has already found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself into a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world.
• The guns that thundered off Manila and Santiago left us echoes of glory, but they also left us a legacy of duty. If we drove out a mediaeval tyranny only to make room for savage anarchy, we had better not begun the task at all. It is worse than idle to say that we have no duty to perform, and can leave to their fates the islands we have conquered. Such a course would be a course of infamy. It would be followed at once by utter chaos in the wretched islands themselves. Some stronger, manlier power would have to step in and do the work, and we would have shown ourselves weaklings, unable to carry to successful completion the labors that great and high-spirited nations are eager to undertake.
Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life
POINT 3 (CONTINUED): WEAKNESS IS THE GREATEST OF CRIMES. OUR NATION HAS A RESPONSIBILTY TO BRING THE HALF-CAST NATIONS OF THE WORLD GOOD GOVERNMENT. IF WE DO THIS WE WILL BE GREAT, AND IF WE DO NOT WE WILL CEDE THE OPPORTUNITY TO “BOLDER AND STRONGER PEOPLES.”
•The Philippines offer a yet graver problem. Their population includes half-caste and native Christians, warlike Moslems, and wild pagans. Many of their people are utterly unfit for self-government and show no signs of becoming fit.
•Resistance [in the Philippines] must be stamped out. The first and all-important work to be done is to establish the supremacy of our flag. We must put down armed resistance before we can accomplish anything else, and there should be no parleying, no faltering, in dealing with our foe. As for those in our own country who encourage the foe, we can afford contemptuously to disregard them; but it must be remembered that their utterances are not saved from being treasonable merely by the fact that they are despicable.
•[We must send out there only good and able men.... [They] must show the utmost tact and firmness, remembering that, we such people as those with whom we are to deal, weakness is the greatest of crimes, and that next to weakness comes lace of consideration for their principles and prejudices.
William Graham Sumner, What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)
Main Points:Main Points:
1. The State’s role should be limited to protecting the people. “when it exercises will or adopts a line of action- it is only a little group of men chosen in a very haphazard way by the majority of us to perform certain services for all of us.”“the state, instead of offering resources of wisdom, right reason, and pure moral sense beyond what the average of us posses, generally offers much less of all these things.”“the state is not even the known and accredited servants of the state, but, as has been well said, is only some obscure clerk, hidden in the recesses of a Government bureau…”
2. Everyone endures hardships and we cannot blame other for this.“Certain ills belong to the hardships of human life. They are natural. They are part of the struggle with Nature for existence. We cannot blame our fellow-men for our share of these.”“But God and Nature have ordained the chances and conditions of life on earth once for all.”
3. There are two reasons why you should not mind other people’s business.“First, there is the danger that a man may leave his own business unattended to; and second, there is a danger if an impertinent interference with another’s affairs.”
William Graham Sumner, What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)
Main Points:Main Points:
4. A society based on contract is best for individualism.“A society based on contract is a society of free and independent men, who form ties without favor or obligation, and co-operate without cringing or intrigue.”“A society based on contract, therefore, gives the utmost room and chance for individual development, and for all the self-reliance and dignity of a free man.”
Questions:Is it true that one has grievances as long as he has unsatisfied desires?If you are someone’s friends, should you interfere in their business?
Historical Significance:This document made many people think about the differences in social classes and if that makes a difference in the way they should treat one another.
Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
Veblen was the son of Norwegian immigrants, and he grew up in rural Minnesota.He did not learn to speak English until he was a teenager.He received a B.A. from Carleton College in 1880 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale in 1884. At Yale, he developed a friendship with his sociology professor, William Graham Sumner, and wrote his doctoral thesis on Immanuel Kant in the area of Moral Philosophy.In 1882, he started to teach political economy at the University of Chicago. He became known as a brilliant and eccentric thinker and an unconventional teacher. At the University of Chicago he gained a reputation as an insightful social critic, and it was during his years in Chicago that he wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class.He taught political economy and later became editor of the Journal of Political Thought.He taught at Stanford from 1906-1909 and at the University of Missouri from 1911-1918.In 1919 he became a founding member of the New School for Social Research in New York.He died in 1929 of heart disease.
Main Point 1: The leisure class is conservative, finding no reason to support changes, because they enjoy the status quo and are little affected by economic pressures.
The exigencies of the struggle for means of life are less exacting for [the leisure] class than for any other; and as a consequence of this privilege position we should expect to find it one of the least responsive of the classes of society to the demands which the situation makes for a further growth of institutions and a readjustment to an altered industrial situation. The leisure class is the conservative class.
…exigencies do not readily produce in the members of this class, that degree of uneasiness with the existing order which alone can lead any body of men to give up views and methods of life that have become habitual to them. The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent….
Main Point 2: Conservatism is decorous and respectable. Innovation is vulgar.•This conservatism of the wealthy class is so obvious a feature that it has even come to be recognized as a mark of respectability. Since conservatism is a characteristic of the wealthier and therefore more reputable portion of the community, it has acquired a certain honorific or decorative value. It has become prescriptive to such an extent that an adherence to conservative views is comprised as a matter of course in our notions of respectability; and it is imperatively incumbent on all who would lead a blameless life in point of social repute. Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar.•…progress is hindered by underfeeding and excessive physical hardship, no less effectually than by such a luxurious life as will shut out discontent by cutting off the occasion for it. The abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance, are conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow; just as the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands today.•From this proposition it follows that the institution of a leisure class acts to make the lower classes conservative by withdrawing from them as much as it may of the means of sustenance, and so reducing their consumption, and consequently their available energy, to such a point as to make them incapable of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new habits of thought.
Main Points 3: The example of the leisure class fosters conspicuous consumption, which diverts resources away from sustenance of the lower classes.
•The prevalence of conspicuous consumption as one of the main elements in the standard of decency among all classes is of course not traceable wholly to the example of the wealthy leisure class, but the practice and the insistence on it are no doubt strengthened by the example of the leisure class. The requirements of decency in this matter are very considerable and very imperative; so that even among classes whose pecuniary position is sufficiently strong to admit a consumption of goods considerably in excess of the subsistence minimum, the disposable surplus left over after the more imperative physical needs are satisfied is not infrequently diverted to the purpose of a conspicuous decency, rather than to added physical comfort and fullness of life. Moreover, such surplus energy as is available is also likely to be expended in the acquisition of goods for conspicuous consumption or conspicuous boarding. The result is that the requirements of pecuniary reputability tend (1) to leave but a scanty subsistence minimum available for other than conspicuous consumption, and (2) to absorb any surplus energy which may be available after the bare physical necessities of life have been provided for.
Main Point 4: Since the leisure class discourages change, it hinders evolutionary progress.
…the leisure class, in the nature of things, consistently acts to retard that adjustment to the environment which is called social advance or development. The characteristic attitude of the class may be summed up in the maxim: "Whatever is, is right" whereas the law of natural selection, as applied to human institutions, gives the axiom: "Whatever is, is wrong." Not that the institutions of today are wholly wrong for the purposes of the life of today, but they are, always and in the nature of things, wrong to some extent. They are the result of a more or less inadequate adjustment of the methods of living to a situation which prevailed at some point in the past developmentThe institution of a leisure class, by force or class interest and instinct, and by precept and prescriptive example, makes for the perpetuation of the existing maladjustment of institutions, and even favors a reversion to a somewhat more archaic scheme of life; a scheme which would be still farther out of adjustment with the exigencies of life under the existing situation even than the accredited, obsolescent scheme that has come down from the immediate past.
Main Points
– Women should be treated as equally as men.• “We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men and women
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
– Men have created a social and political tyranny over women by not recognizing their civil liberties.
• “ He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.”
– Women should be given equal rights to property and wages as citizens of the United States of America.
• “He has made her, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all rights in property, even to the wages she earns.”
Seneca Falls Convention, Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
Historical Significance and the intended Audience
• The public release of the Declaration of Sentiments triggered talk among many women. It became interesting to women, as well as men, that equal rights and women’s suffrage was a big issue. However, this document would serve as the basis for the nineteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution which granted women the right to vote in 1920.
• The Declaration also caused strong criticism and anger. A quote from a newspaper reporter stated that “it was the most shocking and unnatural event ever recorded in the history of womanity” (Oneida Whig, 1848).
• The intended audience was the United States as a whole and especially those in government positions
Seneca Falls Convention, Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
Questions
• Why do you think that there were men who agreed with and signed the Declaration of Sentiments?
• Why did Mott and Stanton believe that women were just as important as men?
• Did the Sentiments have as great of an impact on Mott and Stanton’s society as they had hoped for?
Seneca Falls Convention, Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
Horatio Storer, The Origins of the Insanity in Women (1865)
1.1.Mental disease in women is directly associated with the Mental disease in women is directly associated with the female reproductive organs and menstruation.female reproductive organs and menstruation.
• “That in women mental disease is often, perhaps generally, dependent upon functional or organic disturbance of the reproductive system.”
• “That in women the access or exacerbation of mental disease is usually coincident with the [menstrual] establishment…”
2.2.Removal of female organs to cure insanity should be as Removal of female organs to cure insanity should be as commonly accepted as an operation to remove something commonly accepted as an operation to remove something physical.physical.
•“The necessity of removing a cause to prevent or to cure its effect is as decided in mental pathology as in physical. We recognize it everywhere else; we must recognize it in the treatment of insane women…” •“…I believe, by the experience of every unbiased observer, we advance to [ask]…To what extent can the insanity of women be medically or surgically treated?...”
Horatio Storer, The Origins of the Insanity in Women (1865)
3. Women are so vulnerable to such excessive passions 3. Women are so vulnerable to such excessive passions because they are the weaker sex.because they are the weaker sex.• “The attacks of this (sexual desire) were clearly coincident with the
menstrual period, and so extreme that the patient could with difficulty restrain herself from soliciting the approach of the other sex.”
4. There is possibility of a high success rate.4. There is possibility of a high success rate.• “The morbid desires and the disgusting propensity thence arising
ceased…upon freely incising the cervix uteri and dilating its canal. They have not returned, save one single instance…”• “[Thus] we have a reasonable hope of success, nearly as great,
perhaps, as in relieving the other reflex disturbances to which the female is confessedly so prone.”
Questions:Questions:1. If women had held a higher role in society during the 1860s, 1. If women had held a higher role in society during the 1860s,
or if there had been any female doctors, would such extreme or if there had been any female doctors, would such extreme measures have been taken to cure their insanity?measures have been taken to cure their insanity?2. Why do you think sexual desires in men were viewed as 2. Why do you think sexual desires in men were viewed as
normal, yet sexual desires in women were viewed as insane normal, yet sexual desires in women were viewed as insane behavior?behavior?
“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. “
Fourteenth Amendment to The U.S. Constitution:
Myra Colby Bradwell
•Born in 1831 in Manchester, Vermont.
•In 1852 Myra married James B. Bradwell, an Englishman who had immigrated to the United States and studied law in Memphis Tennessee.
•In 1854, the Bradwells moved to Chicago, where James opened a law office and eventually became a judge of the Cook County Court.
•Myra began to study law to help her husband as his assistant. She later decided to open a practice of her own.
•In 1868 Myra founded a weekly legal newspaper called the Chicago Legal News. With Bradwell servicing as both editor and business manager, the Chicago Legal News quickly became a success.
•In 1869, after passing the state bar examination, Bradwell applied to the Illinois Supreme Court for admission to the bar. The court rejected her application on the grounds that as a married woman she “would be bound neither by her express contracts nor by those implied contracts which it is the policy of the law to create between attorney and client.” She reapplied, but the court rejected her again, this time because she was a woman, regardless of her marital status.
•She appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1873 upheld the Illinois decision, saying that it could not interfere with each state’s right to regulate the granting of licenses within its borders.
James Bradwell
Myra BradwellMyra Bradwell
Bradwell v. The State of Illinois (1873), U.S. Supreme Court
Main Point 1
(Majority Decision written by Justice Miller):
Citizenship does not give one the right, under the fourteenth amendment, to practice law in the courts of a state.
“We agree with [counsel] that there are privileges and immunities belonging to citizens of the United States, in that relation and character, and that it is these and these alone which a State is forbidden to abridge. But the right to admission to practice in the courts of a State is not one of them. This right in no sense depends on citizenship of the United States.” p. 84.
Justice Samuel Freeman Miller Justice Samuel Freeman Miller
Main Point 2 (Concurring Opinion by Justice Bradley): Men and women are very different. Women are naturally timid and delicate and there are many occupations for which they are unfit. Man is woman’s protector and defender.
…[T]he civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is, or should be, woman's protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. p. 85.
Justice BradleyJustice Bradley
Main Point 3 (Concurring Opinion by Justice Bradley): Women belong to the domestic sphere, and should not adopt a career distinct and independent from that of her husband.The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and functions of womanhood. The harmony, not to say identity, of interests and views which belong, or should belong, to the family institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her husband. p. 85.
Main Point 4 (Concurring Opinion by Justice Bradley): God has given women the role of wives and mothers. This is a natural law to which we must adapt, and not be persuaded by exceptional cases. The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. And the rules of civil society must be adapted to the general constitution of things, and cannot be based upon exceptional cases. p. 85.
Historical Significance
• In the 1875 case Minor V. Happersett, the Court ruled against women suffrage in Missouri on the basis that the Fourteenth Amendment does not add to the privileges and immunities of a citizen, and that historically “citizen” and “eligible voter” have not been synonymous.
• About a hundred years later, the Court began employing the Fourteenth Amendment as a way of overturning gender-discriminatory state laws. In doing so, however, it would typically use the "equal protection" clause, rather than the clause cited in Bradwell, "privileges and immunities."
• In 1882, the Illinois legislature passed a law guaranteeing all persons, regardless of sex, the right to select a profession as they wished. Although Bradwell never reapplied for admission to the bar, the Illinois Supreme Court informed her that her original application had been accepted. As a result, she became the first woman member of the Illinois State Bar Association; she was also the first woman member of the Illinois Press Association. On March 28, 1892, she was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
• In addition to her efforts to win admission to the bar, Bradwell played a role in the broader women's rights movement. She was active in the Illinois Woman Suffrage Association and helped form the American Woman Suffrage Association. She was also influential in the passage of laws by the Illinois legislature that gave married women the right to keep wages they earned and protected the rights of widows.
• Bradwell died February 14, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois.
Main Points
• The most important force in the remaking of the world is a free motherhood.– “…or she may, by controlling birth, lift motherhood to the plane of a
voluntary, intelligent function, and remake the world. When the world is thus remade, it will exceed the dream of statesman, reformer and revolutionist.”
• A woman’s status in society is such, due to an inability to govern her ability to bear children. Suffrage, and overall equality are inconsequential compared to her reproductivity.– “Woman’s acceptance of her inferior status was the more real because
it was unconscious. She had chained herself to her place in society and the family through the maternal functions of her nature, and only chains thus strong could have bound her to her lot as a brood animal for the masculine civilizations of the world.”
Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (1920)
Main Points
• The woman’s position of submissive reproduction has lead to over-population.
– “No period of low wages or of idleness with their want among the workers, no peonage or sweatshop, no child-labor factory, ever came into being, save from the same source.”
• This over-population is the fault of Women and has unleashed evils upon society and allowed her to incur a debt to society.
– “War, famine, poverty and oppression of the workers will continue while woman makes life cheap. They will cease only when she limits her reproductivity and human life is no longer a thing to be wasted.”
Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (1920)
Main Points
• There are two obstacles impeding repayment of this debt.– 1. Laws prevent women from obtaining knowledge of her
reproductive nature.– 2. Ignorance of the extent and effect of her submission has
wrought.
Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (1920)
Main Points
• Woman’s submissive role is due to ignorance of her reproductive nature.– “Woman’s passivity under the burden of her disastrous task was
almost altogether that of ignorant resignation. She knew virtually nothing about her reproductive nature and less about the consequences of excessive childbearing.”
• For women to obtain true liberty, they must take control of their ability to bear children. They will obtain this through birth control. A woman’s freedom is dependent upon her having control over her body.
Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (1920)
Main Points
• “Birth control is woman’s problem. The quicker she accepts it as hers and hers alone, the quicker will society respect motherhood.”
• Once freedom has been obtained, it is a woman’s duty to infuse the world with her feminine spirit.– “…[A woman’s mission] is not to create a human
world by the infusion of the feminine element into all its activities.
Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (1920)
MAIN POINTS
• For more than thirty years Negroes were brutally murdered without extra legal proceedings.
• “During these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution.”
• The government did nothing to stop brutal lynchings of Negroes.
• “The government which had made the Negro a citizen found itself unable to protect him. It gave him the right to vote, but denied him
the protection which should have maintained that right.”
IDA B. Wells, A Red Record (1895)
Main Points Continued
• After Negroes were given emancipation, White women from the north began teaching the negroes despite allegations by southern white women that these negroes were violent.
• “ Before the world adjudges the Negro a moral monster, a vicious assailant of womanhood and a menace to the sacred precincts of home, the colored people ask the consideration of the silent record of gratitude, respect, protection, and devotion of the millions of the race in the South, to the thousands of northern white women who have served as teachers and missionaries since the war…”
IDA B. Wells, A Red Record (1895)
Main Points Continued
• The Negroes were helpless in the fight against the white men.
• “The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud, violence, intimidation, and murder. The franchise vouchsafed to the Negro grew to be a “barren ideality,” and regardless of numbers, the colored people found themselves voiceless in the councils of those whose duty it was to rule.”
IDA B. Wells, A Red Record (1895)
Main Point: We should concentrate on work and progress. Blacks and whites need stop fighting, agitating and relocating. The South will progress if we work together. We only hurt ourselves by fighting.
Brooker T. Washington, Atlantic Exposition Address (1895)
THE MESSAGE FOR BLACKS: Work hard, and do not agitate for THE MESSAGE FOR BLACKS: Work hard, and do not agitate for equality. Start at the bottom and work your way up.equality. Start at the bottom and work your way up.
Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. …when it comes to business…, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world…. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life…. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.
The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.However, working together does not necessary include socializing together.
THE MESSAGE FOR WHITES: We are a loyal and humble people who THE MESSAGE FOR WHITES: We are a loyal and humble people who serve you well if you treat us well. It is in your interest to encourage serve you well if you treat us well. It is in your interest to encourage and help black people.and help black people.
Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested….. Cast down your bucket among these people who have without strikes and labor wars tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, just to make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sickbed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives,….[We will interlace ] our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one.
THE MESSAGE FOR WHITES: If white people insist on keeping the THE MESSAGE FOR WHITES: If white people insist on keeping the Negro down, they will only be hurting themselves. Negro down, they will only be hurting themselves.
Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body, of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic.
Stamp commemorating Booker T. Washington Issue Date: April 7, 1940
SIGNIFICANT FINE POINT FOR BOTH RACES: We do not have to SIGNIFICANT FINE POINT FOR BOTH RACES: We do not have to socialize together, but we should work together for the common socialize together, but we should work together for the common cause of development.cause of development.
In all things that are purely social we call be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
W.E.B. Du Bois, Strivings of the Negro People (1897)
Main Points:
1. Being a problem [i.e. being an black person in 19th c. America] is a strange experience.
[T]he Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,--a world which yields him no self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. (p. 88)
2. The African American feels his duality of being both African and American.
One ever feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa; he does not wish to bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he believes — foolishly, perhaps, but fervently — that Negro blood has yet a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without losing the opportunity of self-development. (p. 88)
3. Prejudice and discrimination keep the freedman oppressed.
The freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of lesser good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people…. (p. 88)
4. Americans, including white Americans, should appreciate the Negro race.
Work, culture, and liberty,--all these we need, not singly, but together; for to-day these ideals among the Negro people are gradually coalescing, and finding a higher meaning in the unifying ideal of race,--the ideal of fostering the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to, but in conformity with, the greater ideals of the American republic, in order that some day, on American soil, two world races may give each to each those characteristics which both so sadly lack. (p. 88)
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Niagara Movement, (1905)
1. We should meet, despite the existence of other organizations for Negroes.
2. We must complain about common wrongs toward blacks.
We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong—this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty, and we must follow it. (p. 100)
3. In not a single instance has the justice of our demands been denied, but then come the excuses.
Abrams v. United States (1919)U.S. Supreme CourtBackground: Abrams and the other defendants were all born in Russia. They were intelligent and had considerable schooling. Three of them testified as witnesses in their own behalf, and called themselves revolutionists and they did not believe in government of any form and said they had no interest in the government of the United States. The fourth said he was a socialist and believed in a proper form of government that was not capitalistic and in his opinion the U.S. government was capitalistic. The leaflets were printed in English and Yiddish criticizing American intervention in the Russian Revolution. They met in rooms rented by Abrams, who bought a printing outfit, and installed it in a basement where the work was done at night. Some of the leaflets were distributed by throwing them from a window where one of the defendants was employed. WWI was still in progress.
Main Points: Abrams and his colleagues were charged on 4 counts of conspiring:1) “disloyal and abusive language about the form of Government of the United States”2) the language “intended to bring the form of Government of the United States into contempt” 3) the language "intended to incite, provoke, and encourage resistance to the United States in said war”4) “when the United States was at war with the Imperial German Government…unlawfully and willfully ... to urge, incite and advocate curtailment of production of…ordnance and ammunition, necessary and essential to the prosecution of the war” Although it was argued that the Espionage Act was unconstitutional and in conflict with the First Amendment, it was argued briefly and proven otherwise:
On the record thus described it is argued, somewhat faintly, that the acts charged against the defendants were not unlawful because within the protection of that freedom of speech and of the press which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and that the entire Espionage Act is unconstitutional because in conflict with that Amendment. This contention is sufficiently discussed and is definitely negative in Schenck v. United States.
Main Points: According to Holmes there was not enough evidence to promote danger or hinder the success of the government:
“Now nobody can suppose that the surreptitious publishing of a silly leaflet by an unknown man, without more, would present any immediate danger that its opinions would hinder the success of the government arms or have any appreciable tendency to do so.” They were found guilty by the original court:
“by bringing upon the country the paralysis of a general strike, thereby arresting the production of all munitions and other things essential to the conduct of war...Thus ...the defendants were guilty as charged...and...the judgment of the District Court must be Affirmed.” If in the event the threat poses no “clear and present danger,” the best place to dismiss dangerous or disagreeable ideas is in the market place of ideas. Persuasion is more persistent than imprisoning people with dangerous and disagreeable ideas.
“But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon, which their wishes safely can be carried out.”
Historical Significance
• Abrams v. United States was during the time while America intervening into the Russian Revolution
• The case involved the 1918 amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917 which made it a criminal offense to criticize the U.S. Federal Government.
• The case was overturned during the Vietnam War Era in Brandenburg v. Ohio. The decision was based on Holmes’ argument of “clear and present danger”