Review for Examination 2

Review for Examination 2
History 419: American Social and Intellectual History Examination Date: November 5, 2007

Ralph Waldo Emerson ( )

Quotes from Emerson’s Self-Reliance:
…To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private hears, is true for all men,--that is genius. p. 70 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. p. 70 Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. p. 71. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. p. 71. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. p. 71. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. p. 71. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. p. 71.

Do your thing, and I shall know you
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. 71. For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure. p. 71. 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. p. 72. 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. p. 72. 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. p. 73

…in the universal miracle petty and particular miracles disappear. p
Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He dares not say “I think,” “I am,” but quotes some saint or sage. p. 73. …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…. p. 73. 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…. p. 73. He who has more soul than I, masters me, though he should not raise his finger. p. 73. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. p. 74. …you isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. p. 74.

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. p. 74. 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. p. 74. The soul is no traveler: the wise man stays at home…. p. 75. Insist on yourself; never imitate. p. 75. Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. p. 75. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. p. 75. 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. p. 75. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. p. 75.

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)
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.”

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1848)
Thoreau was a transcendentalist. Transcendentalism: A literary and philosophical movement, associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition. Source: Excerpted from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition Copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V.

Essayist, poet, and Transcendentalist Born to a pencil maker in Concord, Mass. July 12, 1817 Went to Concord Academy and then to Harvard Loved the outdoors Best known for his book Walden Other jobs teacher and pencil maker Once went to chapel in a green coat “because the rules required black” Refused to pay his poll tax

“He [Thoreau] is a singular character — a young man with much wild original nature still remaining in him; and so far as he is sophisticated, it is in a way and method of his own. He is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and somewhat rustic, although courteous manners, corresponding very well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than beauty.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, distinguished American novelist "He [Thoreau] had a great contempt for those who made no effort to gauge accurately their own powers and weaknesses, and by no means spared himself, of whom he said that a man gathers materials to erect a palace, and finally concludes to build a shantee with them." --Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher and Thoreau’s friend and mentor “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison…. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.” --Henry David Thoreau Thoreau dedicated his life to the exploration of nature — not as a backdrop to human activity but as a living, integrated system of which you and I are simply a part. --Randall Conrad, Director of the Thoreau Project

MAIN POINT 1: Thoreau prefers a laissez-faire government, but he does not call for abolishing government. Rather he wants a better government. “That government is best which governs least” “…I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.”

MAIN POINT 2: Most men serve the state mechanically and do not freely exercise moral judgment about their service. “The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose.”

MAIN POINT 3: It is man’s duty to wash his hands of wrong. “It is not man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any…wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.”

MAIN POINT 4: Order, Civil Government, and the rule of the majority (i.e. democracy) sometimes prevents people from doing the right thing. “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority?”

MAIN POINT 5: Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority because he has God on his side, and he should act immediately to wash his hand of wrong. If a government is maintaining unjust laws, people should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government. They should “not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.”

MAIN POINT 6: One honest man can change the state by standing up to it. “…if one thousand, if on hundred, if ten men whom I could name,—if ten honest men only, —ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefore, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission.

MAIN POINT 7: A man can change an unjust system by refusing to be unjust, and by being entirely willing to make a sacrifice. “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison…. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.” “A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.”

MAIN POINT 8: Blood spilt is lamentable, but wounding one’s conscience is worse. Suppose blood should flow when standing up to the government or the majority in refusal to consent to unjust laws. “Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death.”

MAIN POINT 9: The state should respect the individual. “The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual…. There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imaging 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.”

The Progress of Mankind (1854)
George Bancroft ( ) The Progress of Mankind (1854) Transcendentalism: A literary and philosophical movement, associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is knowable through intuition.

George Bancroft The Progress of Mankind (1854) Point 1: Americans and their political system have discovered how to bring to bear the Divine mind, and thus we are destined for 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. (We great Americans choose growth.) 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. In this great work our country holds the noblest rank…. Our land extends far into the wilderness, and beyond the wilderness; and while on this side of the great mountains it gives the Western nations of Europe a theatre 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….

George Bancroft The Progress of Mankind (1854) Point 2: In order to progress, each individual must contribute to the whole, and the whole of society is more intelligent than the wisest individual. In order to advance human progress, it is every individual’s responsibility “to contribute some share to 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….” Point 3: “The human mind tends not only toward unity, but UNIVERSALITY.” The world is just beginning to take to heart this principle of the unity of the race, and to discover how fully and how beneficently it is fraught with international, political, and social revolutions.

Frederick Douglass, What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July? (1852)
The motto of Frederick Douglass’ newspaper, The North Star: "Right is of no Sex — Truth is of no Color — God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren."

Frederick Douglass, What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July? (1852)
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was probably born in 1818 on Holme Hill Farm in Talbot County, Maryland, to Harriet Bailey, a slave. Frederick never knew his father but suspected him to be his owner, Captain Aaron Anthony. At the age of 16, he was hired out to Mr. Covey, a "slave breaker", to destroy his spirit and force him to accept slavery. Leader of the abolitionist movement Douglas escaped in 1838 at the age of 20. He married Anna Murray, a free black woman. Settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In 1841, gave his first speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. He soon became known as a brilliant speaker Douglass wrote three autobiographical narratives: First: “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” (1845) Published seven years after his escape. Second: “My Bondage and My Freedom” (1855) Written after he had established himself as a newspaper editor. Third: “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass” (1881). Married his second wife Helen Pitts, a white woman because during this time there were not many black women. Founder of the antislavery newspaper “North Star.” Served as advisor to President Lincoln during the Civil War. He died 1895 His intended audience was American People

Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (1852)
Main Points: The Fourth of July is important to the white American people, but a mockery to the black people. “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.” A day that reveals to him, more than all 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, and unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless: you denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy

Main Points 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!”

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.

My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
Frederick Douglass MAIN POINTS: 1. Slavery dehumanizes by destroying the family unit by undermining family values of both slaves and slave owners. The practice of separating children from their mother, and hiring the latter out at distances too great to admit of their meeting, except at long intervals, is a marked feature of the cruelty and barbarity of the slave system. But it is in harmony with the grand aim of slavery, which, always and everywhere, is to reduce man to a level with the brute. It is a successful method of obliterating from the mind and heart of the slave, all just ideas of the sacredness of the family, as an institution. …My poor mother, like many other slave-women, had many children, but NO FAMILY! Slavery has no use for fathers, as it does away with families. Slavery has no use for either fathers or families, and its laws do not recognize their existence in the social arrangements of the plantation. He [the master] can be father without being a husband, and may sell his child without incurring reproach, if the child be by a woman in whose veins courses one thirty-second part of African blood. …[T]he fact remains, in all its odiousness, that, by the laws of slavery, children, in all cases, are reduced to the condition of their mothers. This arrangement admits of the greatest license to brutal slaveholders, and their profligate sons, brothers, relations and friends, and gives to the pleasure of sin, the additional attraction of profit.

My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
Frederick Douglass 2. Education of slaves was dangerous to slave owners because it empowered slaves and could possibly lead to their freedom. Mr. Auld promptly forbade 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. (Douglass’ masters’ response to his wife teaching Douglass to read the Bible) …If you learn him now to read, he’ll want to know how to write; and, this accomplished, he’ll be running away with himself. It was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery, against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit: the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man. “Very well,” thought I; “knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition; and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom…

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
1813- Harriet Ann Jacobs is born 1819- Harriet’s mother dies and she realizes she is a slave 1825- Harriet Jacobs mistress dies and she becomes the slave to Dr. Flint’s 3 year old daughter 1828- Dr. flint begins to harass Harriet and tries to sexually take advantage of her 1829- Harriet and Mr. Sands son is born and the baby and Harriet move in with her grandmother 1831- Harriet and Mr. Sands daughter is born 1835- Harriet escapes and goes into hiding in the attic of her grandmothers house 1842- Harriet Jacobs escapes to the North 1844- Harriet moves to Boston with her 2 children 1849- Harriet moves to Rochester, New York, while Dr. Flint’s daughter continues searching for her 1852- Harriet finds out her owner is in New York, so she flees to California to join her brother. She becomes free when Cornelia Willis, her employer and friend, buys her freedom for $300 1853- Harriet’s grandmother dies; she begins to write about her experiences in anonymous letters to a New York paper. Later she starts her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. 1858- She finishes her book, and travels to England to try to sell her story 1861- Harriet’s book is published 1897- Harriet Jacobs dies on March 7, in Washington D.C.

Main Points: 1) A slave was property and no legal rights, and therefore a slave could not go against their master’s will, even sexual affairs. But he was my master. I was compelled to live under the same roof with him---where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of my nature. He told me I was his property; that I must subject to his will in all things. My soul revolted against the mean tyranny. But where could I turn for protection? No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, for violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men. 2) The people in the North would not ever believe what was taking place in the South, and they would not put up with it. Surely, if you credited one half the truths that are told you concerning the helpless millions suffering in this cruel bondage, you at the north would not help to tighten the yoke. You surely would refuse to do for the master, on your own soil, the mean and cruel work which trained bloodhounds and the lowest class of whites do for him at the south.

Main Points: 3) The mistress will end up hating the slave girl the most. If a slave is beautiful, jealousy and hatred could make her a victim of her slave owner. She listens to violent outbreaks of jealous passion, and cannot help understanding what is the cause. She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon she will learn to tremble when she hears her master’s footfall. If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That whish commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave. 4) Sex between master and slave represent unequal power relationship, which is often exploited to the benefit of the master and the detriment of the slave. My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him. If I went out for a breath of fresh air, after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me. If I knelt by my mothers grave, his dark shadow fell on me even there. The light heart which nature had given me became heavy with sad forebodings

Main Points: 5) A slave had no recourse against violations, and was often in a situation of isolation and loneliness. I longed for some one to confide in…..But Mr. Flint swore he would kill me, if I was not as silent as the grave. Then although my grandmother was all in all to me, I feared her as well as loved her…..I was very young and felt shamefaced about telling her such impure things, especially as I knew her to be very strict on such subjects. 6) The wives of the slave owners often also suffered from the unequal relations between their slave-master husbands and his female slaves. Moreover, she often blamed the slave for her husband’s infidelity. I had entered my sixteenth year, and every day it became more apparent that my presence was intolerable to Mrs. Flint. Angry words frequently passed between her and her husband. He had never punished me himself, and he would not allow any body else to punish me. In that respect, she was never satisfied; but, in her angry moods, no terms were to vile for her to bestow upon me. Yet I, whom she detested so bitterly, had far more pity for her than he had, whose duty it was to make her life happy. I never wronged her; and one word of kindness from her would have brought me to her feet…

Main Points: 7) Southern woman often looked at her husbands-slave children as unwanted objects, who didn’t deserve any special treatment, and might preferably be sold. …..Southern woman often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it. They regard such children as property, as marketable as the pigs on the plantation; and it is seldom that they do not make them aware of this by passing them into the slave-trader’s hands as soon as possible, and thus getting them out of their sight.

Alexander Stephens Vice-president of the Confederacy
Alexander Hamilton Stephens was born near Crawfordville, Taliaferro County, Georgia, on February 11, Left orphaned and penniless at age 15, he attended school through the charity of friends and by working. In 1832 he graduated from the University of Georgia. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in He served in the state legislature from 1836 to 1842 and in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1843 to 1858. Always in frail health, Stephens was nonetheless a dedicated statesman, an effective leader, and a powerful orator, always seeking moderation and peace. Abraham Lincoln, serving in Congress with Stephens, admired and befriended him; John Quincy Adams wrote a poem in his honor. Although opposed to secession and differing with Jefferson Davis over states rights and nullification, Stephens served as the Confederacy's vice president. Lincoln's trust in Stephens led to the Hampton Roads Peace Conference, which was unsuccessful. At the close of the war, Stephens was arrested and imprisoned for five months at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. Elected to the U.S. Senate upon his release, he was refused a seat because Georgia had not been readmitted to the Union. He served again in the House of Representatives from 1873 to Elected governor of Georgia in 1882, he served for four months until his death on March 4, 1883. Throughout his life Stephens helped numerous deserving young men secure an education, and he was influential in the affairs of the Wesleyan, the first state chartered female college. Stephens is buried on his estate, "Liberty Hall," near Crawfordville, Georgia. Source: art/nsh/stephens.cfm Alexander Stephens Vice-president of the Confederacy

Alexander Hamilton Stephens Slavery and the Confederacy
Main Point 1: The new Constitution is similar to the old only better “All the great principles of Magna Charta are retained in it. No citizen is deprived of life, liberty or property, but by the judgment of his peers, under the laws of the land. The great principle of religious liberty, which was the honor and pride of the old Constitution, is still maintained and secured.” “So, taking the whole new Constitution, I have not hesitancy in giving it as my judgment, that it is decidedly better than the old.”

Main Point 2: With the Independence of the Confederate States of America, the South will no longer suffer from the oppressive tariffs of the United States’ federal government. “The old thorn of the tariff, which occasioned the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new…” “The cost of the grading, the superstructure and equipments of our roads was borne by those who entered upon the enterprise…” “The true principle is to subject commerce of every locality to whatever burdens may be necessary to facilitate it.”

Main Point 3: Slavery is the cause of the split of the Union “…African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. JEFFERSON anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split”…What was conjecture with him, is now realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.” “Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of the races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it-when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.” (Matthew 7:27)

Main Point 4: Slavery is the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy “Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. [Applause] This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” “It is upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly planted.”

Anti-Lincoln Political Ad, 1964 Main Point #5: Northerners are fanatics. “Those at the North who still cling to these errors with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind; from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity.” Main Point #6: Northerners are trying to make equal what the Creator has made unequal. “They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights, with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just; but their premises being wrong, their whole argument fails. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.” “The truth of the Negro’s inferiority “has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.”

Main Point 7: The Confederate government is in conformity with God and Nature “It is the first Government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many Governments have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved, were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature’s laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.” “It is, indeed, in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances or to question them. For His own purposes He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made “one star to differ from another in glory.” The great objects of humanity are best attained, when conformed to his laws and degrees, in the formation of Governments as well as in all things else. Our Confederacy is founded, upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders “is become the chief stone of the corner” in our new edifice.” [Applause] (Matthew 21:42) “The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system [(i.e. slavery)].”

Main Point 8: The people of the confederacy are peaceful people, but do not try to coerce them. “Our object is Peace, not only with the North, but with the world… The ideal of coercing us, or subjugating us, is utterly preposterous.” Main Point 9: If we stay true, we will succeed. “If…we are true to ourselves, true to our cause, true to our destiny, true to our high mission, in presenting to the world the highest type of civilization ever exhibited by man—there will be found in our Lexicon no such word as FAIL.”

Reverend Benjamin Morgan Palmer
Benjamin Morgan Palmer was born in Charleston, SC on January 25, 1818 to parents Edward and Sarah Bunce Palmer. He later attended Amherst College, , taught from , attended the University of Georgia in 1838 and Columbia Theological Seminary from He was licensed to preach in 1841 by Charleston Presbytery and ordained in 1842 by Georgia Presbytery. His first pastorate was at the First Presbyterian Church of Savannah, GA, From there he pastored the First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, SC from , served as a professor at Columbia Theological Seminary from , and finally assumed the post of his last church, First Presbyterian of New Orleans, in 1856, serving there until his death in He was struck by a street car on 5 May 1902 and died on 25 May Dr. Palmer preached the opening sermon at the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church U.S. and served as Moderator of that first Assembly (4 Dec 1861). His published works include: Life and Letters of J.H. Thornwell; the Family in Its Civil and Churchly Aspects; Theology of Prayer; the Broken Home or Lessons in Sorrow; Formation of Character; and two volumes of Sermons. Most of these titles remain in print to this day. Reverend Benjamin Morgan Palmer

Reverend Benjamin Morgan Palmer
Slavery a Divine Trust: Duty of the South to Preserve and Perpetuate it The South’s providential trust “is to conserve and to perpetuate the institution of slavery as now existing….” White slave owners act as guardians of their black slaves. Blacks are like helpless children who the slave owner protects. “Freedom would be their doom.” Slaves “form parts of our households, even as our children….” 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. The South needs slavery to support its material interests. Slavery is a matter of self-preservation for the South. The South defends the cause of God and religion, since the “Abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic….” Benjamin Morgan Palmer, clergyman, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 25 September, 1781 ; died in Charleston, South Carolina, 9 October, He was graduated at Princeton in 1800, studied theology in Charleston, and was licensed to preach by the Congregational association of ministers in South Carolina, continuing with this body until it was merged into the Charleston union presbytery in He was pastor for several years of the Presbyterian church in Beaufort, South Carolina, and from 1817 till 1835 of a church in Charleston. He received the degree of D. D. from the College of South Carolina in In addition to numerous sermons, he published "The Family Companion" (1835).--His nephew, Benjamin Morgan, , clergyman, born in Charleston, South Carolina, 25 January, 1818, was the son of Reverend Edward Palmer, who, at his death in 1882, was the oldest minister of the southern Presbyterian church. He was graduated at the University of Georgia in 1838, and at the Theological seminary of Columbia, South Carolina, in He has held Presbyterian pastorates in Savannah, Georgia, and Columbia, South Carolina, and since 1856 has been in New Orleans, Louisiana In 1853-'6 he was professor of church history and polity in Columbia theological seminary, South Carolina, of which he was a director from 1842 till He has also been a director of the Southwestern Presbyterian university, Clarksville, Tennessee, since 1873, and of Tulane university, New Orleans, since its organization in He has frequently served as commissioner to the general assemblies of his denomination. He received the degree of D.D. from Oglethorpe university in 1852, and that of LL.D. from Westminster college, Fulton, Missouri, in Since 1847 he has been an editor and contributor to "The Southern Presbyterian Review," published in Columbia, South Carolina, of which journal he was a founder. In addition to numerous addresses and pamphlets, he is the author of " The Life and Letters of Reverend James Henley Thornwell, D.D., LL. D." (Richmond, 18'75) ; "Sermons" (2 vols., New Orleans, 1875-'6); and " The Family in its Civil and Churchly Aspects" (New York, 1876).

Bible View of Slavery Rabbi Morris J. Raphall POINT 1:
The Bible does not condemn slavery. However, it does condemn coveting another’s property, including another’s slaves. 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. Morris Jacob Raphall, clergyman, born in Stockholm, Sweden, in September, 1798; died in New York city, 23 June, He was educated for the Jewish ministry in the college of his faith in Copenhagen, in England, where he went in 1812, and afterward in the University of Giessen, where he studied in 1821-'4. He returned to England in 1825, married there, and made that country his home. In 1832 he began to lecture on biblical Hebrew poetry, attaining a high reputation, and in 1834 he established the "Hebrew Review," the first Jewish periodical in England. He went to Syria in 1840 to aid in investigating persecutions of the Jews there, and became rabbi of the Birmingham synagogue in He was an active advocate of the removal of the civil disabilities of the Jews, aided in the foundation of the Hebrew national school, and was an earnest defender of his religion with voice and pen. In 1849 he accepted a call from the first Anglo-German Jewish synagogue in New York city, in Greene street, and several years later he became pastor of the congregation B'nai Jeshurun, with which he remained till his death. On leaving Birmingham for this country he was presented with a purse of 100 sovereigns by the mayor and citizens, and an address thanking him for his labors in the cause of education. Dr. Raphall was a voluminous writer, and also translated many works into English from Hebrew, German, and French. The University of Giessen gave him the degree of Ph.D. after the publication of his translation of the "Nishna," which he issued jointly with Reverend D. A. de Sola, of London (1840). His principal work was a "Post-Biblical History of the Jews," a collection of his lectures on that subject (2 vols., New York, 1855; new ed., 1866). His other books include "Festivals of the Lord," essays (London, 1839); "Devotional Exercises for the Daughters of Israel" (New York, 1852) ; "The Path to Immortality " (1859) ; and "Bible View of Slavery," a discourse (1861). He also undertook, with other scholars, an annotated translation of the Scriptures, of which the volume on "Genesis " was issued in (Edited Appletons Encyclopedia, Copyright © 2001 VirtualologyTM)

Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
Peace, Be Still POINT 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….” Henry Ward Beecher, the eighth son of the Rev. Lyman Beecher, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on 24th June, The brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, he was educated at the Lane Theological Seminary before becoming a Presbyterian minister in Lawrenceburg ( ) and Indianapolis ( ). His pamphlet, Seven Lectures to Young Men, was published in Beecher moved to Plymouth Church, Brooklyn in By this time he had developed a national reputation for his oratorical skills, and drew crowds of 2,500 regularly every Sunday. He strongly opposed slavery and favoured temperance and woman's suffrage. Beecher condemned the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska bill from his pulpit and helped to raise funds to supply weapons to those willing to oppose slavery in these territories. These rifles became known as Beecher's Bibles. John Brown and five of his sons, were some of the volunteers who headed for Kansas. He supported the Free Soil Party in 1852 but switched to the Republican Party in During the Civil War Beecher's church raised and equipped a volunteer regiment. However, after the war, he advocated reconciliation. Beecher edited The Independent ( ) and the Christian Union ( ) and published several books including the Summer in the Soul (1858), Life of Jesus Christ (1871), Yale Lectures on Preaching (1872) and Evolution and Religion (1885). Henry Ward Beecher died of a cerebral hemorrhage on 8th March, 1887.

The Gettysburg Address
By: Abraham Lincoln

Bibliography Abraham Lincoln was born in a log Cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky Abraham Lincoln and his family moved by wagon across the Ohio River into Indiana 1818- Nancy Lincoln, Abraham’s mother, died from “milk sickness” At age 19, in New Orleans Lincoln saw for the first time slaves being sold in the marketplace. 1836- Lincoln became a lawyer. He practiced law in Springfield, Il. 1842- He marries Mary Todd when Lincoln was 33 years old 1858- Lincoln debated Stephen Douglas in seven cities on the issue of slavery 1860- Lincoln decides to run for president 1861- Lincoln took oath of office to become president. The Civil War began in April, 1861 1863- a ceremony was held to dedicate a cemetery on the Gettysburg battlefield. Lincoln made a famous speech know as the “Gettysburg Address” 1865- Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth while attending a play at Ford’s theater

Main Points Our founding fathers brought forth a new nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Main Points cont’d We cannot consecrate this field. The soldiers have already done so. “But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

Main Points The Union is worth fighting for
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

Questions Why couldn’t Lincoln consecrate the ground?
What responsibility does Lincoln give us as the readers?

The Significance of the Frontier in American History
Frederick Jackson Turner Main Point #1: America’s Western frontier, at all points during its colonization, placed many hardships on the people who would settle in it. These obstacles and the settlers’ spirit to overcome them built the American identity. The westward expansion was founded largely by individuals who sought fortune and freedom. Their search for personal satisfaction and the distances in which this was done drove them to distrust an intrusive and stratified government, thus reinforcing the concept of self-governance. It is the Western Frontier which shaped the American Dream- the idea of unlimited opportunity and financial security. “The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. “…to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom, these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier.

Frederick Jackson Turner
The Significance of the Frontier in American History Frederick Jackson Turner Main Point #2: The Frontier transformed America from a land of British colonists to a country encompassing dozens of nationalities- the proverbial “Melting Pot.” Hordes of newly arrived immigrants, many escaping the financial and social obscurity of Europe, ventured westwards where, if they overcame the environment, financial success and equality were virtually guaranteed. Every step westwards was a step away from an old and stagnated Europe. America presented any brave and willing soul with the opportunities of an untouched land. “The Scotch-Irish and the Palatine Germans furnished the dominant element in the stock of the colonial frontier. With these peoples were also the freed indentured servants, or redemptioners, who at the expiration of their time of service passed to the frontier… In the crucible of the frontier the immigrants were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristic.” “[The Atlantic Coast] was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving Westward, the frontier became more and more American. Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a steady growth of independence on American lines.

The Significance of the Frontier in American History Frederick Jackson Turner Main Point #3: The uneven expansion of the West forced the transition from frontier to settled area to repeat itself many times over. Each time this process was repeated, democratic ideals and economic opportunities found new strongholds. “This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnishes the forces dominating American character.” “The growth of nationalism and the evolution of American political institutions were dependent on the advance of the frontier…”

The Significance of the Frontier in American History Frederick Jackson Turner Main Point #4: The frontier and the individualism it fostered placed considerable gaps between the American people and the federal government. The mass exodus westwards placed long distances between the new territories and the political hegemony of the Eastern United States. Settlers were less likely to accept legislation from the federal government, and because the distances involved were so great, Congress and the President lost control of the westward expansion. As each new community strove for self-sufficiency and governance, less attention was paid to the political situation in Washington. This lack of critical oversight encouraged incompetent leadership. “Individualism in America has allowed a laxity in regard to governmental affairs which has rendered possible the spoils system and all the manifest evils that follow from the lack of a highly developed civil spirit.”

The Significance of the Frontier in American History Frederick Jackson Turner Main Point #5: The continental frontier drove early American history. Now that it’s gone, a new chapter in American history opens. “The legislation which most developed the powers of the national government, and played the largest part in its activity, was conditioned on the frontier.” “…four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.”

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.

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.

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.

The English philosopher Herbert Spencer relied on the theories of evolution to explain differences between the strong and the weak: successful individuals and races had competed better in the natural world and consequently evolved to higher states than did other less fit peoples. On the basis of this reasoning, Spencer and others justified the domination of European imperialists over subject peoples as the inevitable result of natural scientific principles. (B & Z, p. 960.) Herbert Spencer ( )

William Graham Sumner, What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)
Main Points The State has one obligation and that is to ensure the safety of the people “also whether there is anything but a fallacy and a superstition in the notion that “the State” owes anything to anybody except peace, order, and the guarantee of rights”

Main Point #2 It is God’s and Nature’s intent that everyone will have hardships, and who are we to change this. “But God and Nature have ordained the chances and conditions of life on earth once and for all. The case cannot be reopened. We cannot get a revision of the laws of human life. We are absolutely shut up to the need and duty, if we would learn how to live happily, of investigation the laws of Nature, and deducing the rules of right living in the world as it is” “Certain ills belong to the hardships of human life. They are natural. They are part of the struggle with Nature for existence”

Main Point #3 The gains of some imply the loss of others
William Graham Sumner, What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883) Main Point #3 The gains of some imply the loss of others “ We shall find that all the schemes for producing equality and obliterating the organization of society produce a new differentiation based on the worst possible distinction…the right to claim and the duty to give one man’s effort for another man’s satisfaction! We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty.”

Main Point #4 Our first duty is to take care of himself and mind your own business “ Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is, to take care of his or her own self.” “..there is a 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”

Main Point #5 Our society does well under a contract, because contracts are rational. “ Contract, however, is rational- even rationalistic. It is also realistic, cold, and matter-of-fact. A contract relation is based on a sufficient reason, not on custom or prescription. It is not permanent. It endures only so long as the reason for it endures.”

Main Point # 6 The Forgotten Man is the person who suffers quietly, works hard, and takes care of himself. “He passes by and is never noticed, because he has behaved himself, fulfilled his contracts, and asked for nothing……” “He will be found to be worth, industrious, independent, and self-supporting. He is not technically, “poor” or “weak” he minds his own business, and makes no complaints. Consequently the philanthropists never think of him, and trample on him….”

Main Point #7 “The pursuit of happiness” should not be confused with the possession of happiness “Rights do not pertain to results, but only to chances. They pertain to the conditions of the struggle for existence….It cannot be said that each one has a right to have some property, because if one man had such a right some other man or men would be under a corresponding obligation to provide him with some property.”

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 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 and at the University of Missouri from 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
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. What is a living wage? Why is there starvation?

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 development. The 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.

Seneca Falls Convention, Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
All women are created equal. We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal…” Women, too, are given certain unalienable rights by God. “…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…” When under oppression, women have the right to refuse allegiance to their government and lobby for a better one that grants equality. “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Men have repeatedly harmed and dominated women. “The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.” Because women are equal, but because they have been oppressed, they should be immediately admitted as full American citizens. “…because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.”

Horatio Storer, The Origins of the Insanity in Women (1865)
Mental disease in women results from a disturbance in their reproductive system. “That in women mental disease is often, perhaps generally, dependent upon the functional or organic disturbance of the reproductive system.” These mental disorders coincide with women’s menstrual cycles. “That in women…mental disease is usually coincident with the catamenial [menstrual] establishment.” Therefore, focusing only on the disorder is like only treating the symptoms. The disease – the dysfunctional reproductive system – must be cured to ensure a healthy patient. “…it is just as unscientific here, and generally as futile, to treat primarily the mental disturbance, which is usually a symptom only or a consequence…”

Fourteenth Amendment to The U.S. Constitution:
“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.”

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. The Court ruled, "God designed the sexes to occupy different spheres of action, and that it belonged to men to make, apply and execute laws, was regarded as an almost axiomatic truth." 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 Colby 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. Myra Bradwell 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. 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. Justice Bradley

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.

Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (1920)
Main points: 1. Birth control will lay the foundation for improving civilization and decreasing the ills of society. “While unknowingly laying the foundations of tyrannies and providing the human tinder for racial conflagrations, woman was also unknowingly creating slums, filling asylums with insane, and institutions with other defectives. She was replenishing the ranks of the prostitutes, furnishing grist for the criminal courts and inmates for prisons. Had she planned deliberately to achieve this tragic total of human waste and misery, she could hardly have done it more effectively.” “Within her is wrapped up the future of the race- it is hers to make or mar.”

Main points: 2. The use of contraceptives will lessen the economic and social hardships that many people encounter due to overcrowding, and will revolutionize the world. “It is she who has the long burden of carrying, bearing and rearing the unwanted children. It is she who must watch beside the beds of pain where lie the babies who suffer because they have come into overcrowded homes. It is her heart that the sight of the deformed, the subnormal, the undernourished, the overworked child smites first and oftenest and hardest.” “War, famine, poverty, and oppression of the workers will continue while woman makes life cheap.” “Diplomats may formulate leagues of nations and nations may pledge their utmost strength to maintain them, statesmen may dream of reconstructing the world out of alliances, hegemonies and spheres of influence, but woman, continuing to produce explosive populations, will convert these pledges into the proverbial scrapes of paper; or she may, by controlling birth, lift motherhood to the plane of a voluntary, intelligent function, and remake the world. When the world is this remade, it will exceed the dream of statesman, reformer and revolutionist.”

Main points: 3. Birth control is a woman’s problem and she must be able to educate herself about the various methods that are best suited for her needs. Education will allow her to have the freedom to determine her future. “In an ideal society, no doubt, birth control would become the concern of the man as well as the woman. The hard, inescapable fact which we encounter to-day is that man has not only refused any such responsibility, but has individually and collectively sought to prevent woman from obtaining knowledge by which she could assume this responsibility for herself.” “Woman must have her freedom- the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall be a mother- and how many children she will have.” Question: According to Sanger, why is birth control a woman’s problem?

IDA B. Wells, A Red Record (1895)
Thousands gathered in Paris, Texas, for the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.

MAIN POINTS For more than thirty years Negroes were killed without due process. “During these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution.” Race Riots Unjust Suffrage Violators of white women 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.”

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…”

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.”

Booker T. Washington

Main Point: We should concentrate on work and progress
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.

THE MESSAGE FOR BLACKS: Work hard, and do not agitate for equality
THE MESSAGE FOR BLACKS: Work hard, and do not agitate for 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 serve you well if you treat us well. It is in your interest to encourage 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 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 socialize together, but we should work together for the common 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.

William Edward Burghardt DuBois (1868 - 1963)

Born: 23 February 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Died: 27 August 1963 While in high school Du Bois showed a keen concern for the development of his race. At age fifteen he became the local correspondent for the New York Globe. Attended Fisk College in Tennessee & received his bachelor's degree & later completed a doctorate from Harvard. Du Bois chose to study at the University of Berlin in Germany will there, he began to see the racial problems. After the completion of the study, Du Bois accepted a position at Atlanta University to further his teachings in sociology.

Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. Between 1890 and 1906

Controversy grew between Du Bois and Booker T
Controversy grew between Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, which later grew into a bitter personal battle. Du Bois was not opposed to Washington's power, but rather, he was against his ideology/methodology of handling the power. Washington argued the Black people should temporarily forego "political power, insistence on civil rights, and higher education of Negro youth. They should concentrate all their energies on industrial education." Du Bois believed in the higher education of a "Talented Tenth" who through their knowledge of modern culture could guide the American Negro into a higher civilization.

Among the greatest scholars in American history stands Dr. W. E. B
Among the greatest scholars in American history stands Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois. A towering figure, a brilliant scholar and a prolific writer.

In 1909 merged with some white liberals and thus the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was born. World War I had dramatic affects on the lives of Black folks. Firstly, the Armed Forces refused Black inductees, but finally relinquished and put the "colored folks" in subservient roles. Secondly, while the war was raging, Blacks in the southern states were moving North where industry was desperately looking for workers. Ignorant, frightened whites, led by capitalist instigators, were fearful that Blacks would totally consume the job market. Thus, lynching ran rampant. Finally, after the war, Black veterans returned home to the same racist country they had fought so heroically to defend.

Striving of the Negro People
The August 1897 issue of the Atlantic Monthly introduced Du Bois to a national audience when it published his article "The Striving of the Negro People. In his article, Du Bois argued that, given the opportunity to cultivate and educate themselves, American blacks would demonstrate that they have their own distinctive and worthy contributions to make to American life and culture.

Main Points For Dubois, this double-consciousness both gives blacks a "second sight" and hinders their progress toward a simple access to identity. Blacks can never see themselves directly, but only through the eyes of contemptuous white men who are watching for them to fail or to behave foolishly. Americans, including white Americans, should appreciate the Negro race for its contribution.

A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. The training of the schools we need to-day more than ever,-the training of deft (skillful) hands, quick eyes, and ears, and the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds. Negros should have access to all levels of education including the highest. Negros shouldn’t be left at the bottom to climb their way up.

Freedom of life and limb, freedom to work and think
Freedom of life and limb, freedom to work and think. All of these we need, not singly, but together… The idea 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.

W.E.B. Du Bois, The Niagara Movement, (1905)
We should meet, despite the existence of other organizations for Negroes. 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) In not a single instance has the justice of our demands been denied, but then come the excuses.

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