Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)
Democracy in America
This article was written in 1835, by Alexis De Tocqueville. He was from a
prominent family of nobility. He also was a member of parliament where he defended
abolitionist views and upheld free trade. He was a sort of world traveler. He traveled to
Algeria, England, and various other countries. He criticized the French model of
colonization, and preferred the British model of direct rule. After he got his law degree he
was named auditor-magistrate at the court of Versailles. While there he met Gustave de
Beaumont, and they were both sent to America to study the penitentiary system. After
returning from the trip Tocqueville became a lawyer and wrote his master work,
“Democracy in America”.
Main Points:
1. Democratic Government is basically the same thing as the
majority.
2. The majority is always right. Like the King could do no wrong and
passed blame to advisors, so does the majority blame everyone
but themselves.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)
Main Points:
3. The majority can misuse power if not within boundary of
moral and physical authority. This means the majority of
the people having more intelligence. He says that
quantity is more important than quality.
4. Branches of government exist, but they are not really
effective. Tocqueville has his own idea. “ If, on the other
hand, a legislative power could be o constituted as t
represent the majority without necessarily being the
slave of its passions; an executive so as to retain a
certain degree of uncontrolled authority; and a judiciary,
so as to remain independent of the two other powers; a
government would be formed which would still be
democratic, without incurring any risk of tyrannical
abuse.”
Main Points:
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)
5. People can have their own opinion, but the majority will make the
decision if it is within bounds. They will make the decisions on
the basis of the moral and physical authority. The majority would
rule, because who would want to be the outsider.
6. Lawyers are the only ones to make sure the majority stays within
he moral and physical boundaries. He compares lawyers to the
aristocracy. This is because they are the highest educated, and in
the highest circle of society. He says they have nothing to gain
because they have it all.
7. The passions of the people make the democracy. The people are
proud of their opinions, material things, monetary gain, and mainly
physical prosperity. In America they valued these things more
than political actions. The main mean of the passions is value
what is right.
This article was intended as his master work, and for anyone to
view in France or abroad. This article was important because it
explained American democracy to any reader the way it was then
and they way it is now. The main points of the article are still as
important as ever.
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
Marlea Key
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882
•
•
•
•
•
Born in Boston
Son of a Minister
Studied at Harvard
Transcendentalist
Individualist that rejected traditional
authority
• Poet
• One of the greatest orators
The Young American
• A lecture that Emerson read before the
Mercantile Library Association in Boston
on February 7, 1844.
• He claims that America wanted everything
“British,” and that Americans can start
making their own history.
• He stresses that it is great to be an
American and that everyone should start
acting like one and be proud of it.
Main Points
• “It is remarkable, that our people have their intellectual culture
from one country, and their duties from another… This false
state of things is newly in a way to be corrected. America is
beginning to assert itself to the senses and to the imagination
of her children, and Europe is receding in the same degree.”
- America needs to make its own history and stop living in the
shadows of Britain. He is stressing that everyone needs to act
“American,” be proud of it, and pass it on for generations to come.
• “An unlooked for consequence of the railroad, is the increased
acquaintance it has given the American people with the
boundless resources of their own soil.”
- The building of the railroad benefits Americans by contracting time
and space. It facilitates transportation and travel, benefits
commerce, creates wealth, and binds Americans together as a
common people.
Main Points Continued
• “Commerce, is the political fact of most significance to the
American at this hour…”
• “The history of commerce… is the record of this beneficent
tendency… Trade, a plant which grows wherever there is peace,
as soon as there is peace, and as long as there is peace.”
• “We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste,
we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for
remote generations. We should be mortified to learn that the
little benefit we chanced in our own persons to receive was the
utmost they would yield.”
- Commerce will build America’s wealth by exploiting her many
riches. It also forms American character by placing everything into
the competitive market place: “talent, beauty, virtue, and man
himself…”
Main Points Continued
• “Gentlemen, the development of our American
internal resources, the extension to the utmost
of the commercial system, and the appearance
of new moral causes which are to modify the
state, are giving an aspect of greatness to the
Future, which the imagination fears to open.”
-These (commerce, railroad & trade) are the
elements that will make America “great” in the
future, and allow Americans to make their own
history rather than living in the shadow of Britain’s
history.
Historical Significance
• Emerson directed this speech to all
Americans, in hopes that it would make
them see what a bright future it held.
• Emerson also wanted his audiences to
see that America has no history and they
can make the history for themselves.
Henry David Thoreau,
Civil Disobedience
(1848)
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1848)
IT IS MAN’S DUTY TO WASH HIS HAND 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 concern 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 fist,
that he may pursue his contemplations too. (p. 51.)
DEMOCRACY SOMETIMES PREVENTS PEOPLE
FROM DOING THE RIGHT THING. In a democracy,
there are unjust laws, but people “think that they
ought to wait until they have persuaded the
majority to alter them.” (p. 52.)
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1848)
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.” (p. 52)
ONE HONEST MAN CAN CHANGE THE STATE. 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. (p. 52)
“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.” (p. 52)
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1848)
“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.”
(p. 52)
IT IS GOOD TO BE A MARTYR RATHER THAN A SINNER. 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.” (p. 52)
THE STATE SHOULD HAVE TRUE RESPECT FOR 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-
The Mexican View of the War
(1850)
Ramon Alvarez Et Al.
Leading up to the War
• Manifest Destiny
– Written by John O’Sullivan
– The belief that God intended for the United
States to spread its political power over the
entire continent.
• Mexico
– Just Emancipated from Spain
– Weak from several revolutions
Questions to Consider
• What, in the Mexican editor’s view, caused
the war with the United States?
• Did they see a pattern in U.S. history?
• Was Mexico entirely blameless?
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…”
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.
Questions
• Was it always the goal of the United States
to take over part of Mexico?
• If the United States had not taken over
part of Mexico, what would the country be
like today?
John O'Sullivan, Manifest Destiny (1845)
Main Points
It is God's will that the United States spread to dominate the entire continent.
"...the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent alloted to us by
Providence for the free development of our multiplying millions"
There should be no more discussion about the annexation of Texas.
"It is time now for opposition to the Annexation of Texas to cease, all further
agitation of the waters of bitterness and strife, at least in connexion with this
question...It is time for the common duty of Patriotism to the Country to succeed; or if
this claim will not be recognized, it is at least time for common sense to acquiesce
with decent grace in the inevitable and the irrevocable."
The Congress of Texas has already voted to join the union, therefore she is
already part of America.
"her convention has undoubtedly ratified the acceptance, by her Congress, of our
proffered invitation into the Union"
"Her star and her stripe may already be said to have taken their place in the
glorious blazon of our common nationality"
John O'Sullivan, Manifest Destiny (1845)
Main Points
The Mexican government has no claim to Texas because Texas was colonized
by Americans and Texas has already won indepedence from Mexico.
"If Texas became peopled with an American population, it was by no contrivance of
our government, but on the express invitation of that of Mexico herself"
"She was released, rightfully and absolutely released, from all Mexican
allegiance...by the acts and faults of Mexico herself."
The annexation of Texas and other Western areas is not a pro-slavery
movement, in fact it will serve to ease the transition to the abolishment of
slavery.
--Texas offers an outlet for black migration towards a more racially diverse
Mexico, aiding in the disappearance of the race from America after the
abolishment of slavery.
"it is undeniably much gained for the cause of the eventual voluntary abolition of
slavery, that it should have been thus drained off towards the only outlet which
appeared to furnish much probability of it the ultimate disappearance of the negro race
from our borders"
John O'Sullivan, Manifest Destiny (1845)
Main Points
The rapid population growth of America demands further expansion westward
and along the whole line of the Northern border.
"the general law which is rolling our population westward, the connexion of
which with the ratio of growth in population which is destined within a hundred
years to swell our numbers to the enormous population of two hundred and fifty
millions(if not more)."
Summation:
In summation, Manifest Destiny became a rallying cry for the belief that is was
the God given destiny of America to spread it's domain from the Atlantic in the
East to the Pacific in the West and utilize every acre in between the two great
oceans to it's full glorious potential.
George Bancroft
The Progress of Mankind (1854)
Historical Context
 Father was a distinguished revolutionary soldier
 Entered Harvard at age thirteen, then studied abroad
 Was expected to join the ministry, but was unsuccessful
 Became a statesmen and historian
 Leaned towards romanticism and humanist beliefs
 Gained favor with Polk and became Secretary of the Navy
 Established the United States Naval Academy
 Was assigned the position of Minister to Britain and Prussia
 Was a supporter of Jacksonian Democracy
 Was prolific writer, including his book History of the United
States of America, from the discovery of the American continent
Main Points
 Bancroft stresses the wisdom of the majority.
“The many are wiser than the few; the multitude than the
philosopher; the race than the individual; and each successive
generation than its predecessor.” This relays the idea that majority is
always right, and coincides with the Jacksonian ideal.
 Addresses the role of the individual contributing to the whole
consciousness saying “Common sense implies by its very name,
that each individual is to contribute some share toward the general
intelligence.” Bancroft suggests through the collective experiences
of the past, the people understand what is best for all and constantly
move forward.
 Believes truth and morality to be universal and unchangeable,
saying “The relation of good to evil is from the beginning, and is
unalterable.”
Main Points (cont.)
 States that Divine will constitutes progress…”and when any part of
the destiny of humanity is fulfilled, we see the ways of Providence
vindicated,” which is his reference to a divine creator.
 Last section addresses women and their role in nature as a “lily
among thorns” to be “not man’s slave, but his companion.” Bancroft
places women in an inferior role with subtle hints of the superiority of
men.
 In concluding his speech, he hopes that following generations will
approach…”not only toward unity, but universality.” Meaning even
more enlightenment and general consensus of good.
Historical Significance
 This speech speaks for a career dedicated to justifying democracy
 Bancroft’s ideas influenced many people, including the politicians
which admired and awarded him with positions
 As a historian, his volume of United States history helped put the
nation’s past in a comprehensive framework
Questions to Consider
Does history ever demonstrate any retrograde
motions?
Who or what is responsible for human progress?
What is the role of women in history?
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? (July 5,1852)
Frederick Douglass
Main Points:
The Declaration of Independence did not positively affect the African-Americans.
“Why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do
with your national independence?”
“The Fourth of July is yours not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
A giant black hole will always consist between the Whites and Blacks.
“The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to
me.”
Of all the things the Whites have done or celebrated, they are not worse than Fourth
of July.
“I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this
nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.”
The country was disillusioned to how they unjustly treated the African-Americans.
“America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be
false to the future.”
The Whites knew in their hearts that slavery was wrong.
“There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is
wrong for him.”
America is so blind when it considered itself as the top country.
“There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practice more shocking and bloody, than
are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”
The 4th of July is a mockery to the black slave.
“…a day that reveals to him, more that all other days in the year, the gross injustice
and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”
Frederick Douglas
My Bondage
And
My Slavery (1887)
Frederick Douglass: Background
• Was born Frederick Augustus Bailey in February of 1818.
• Son of a white father and Harriet Bailey (a slave of mixed African and
American Indian descent.
• Taught himself to read, write, and study oratory.
• Escaped in 1838 at the age of 20.
• Married Anna Murray, a free black woman.
• Settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
• In 1841, gave his first speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society.
• 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.
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.
Frederick Douglass: Questions to Consider:
• What is the importance for Douglass of his opening observation that
slaves lack a family history?
• Why were slave owners so terrified by the idea of an education?
Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Main Points
Slavery was harmful to the stability and structure of many
Southern families, and therefore destabilized the Southern society
and culture as a whole.
•Slaves were thought to be property disregarded as a person with no
emotions or thought, even the life of a child could escape the
oppression of slavery.
“He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will
in all things. My soul revolted against the mean tyranny.”
•Slavery damaged family values.
•The white children were brought up to think slavery was right
but saw the tensions that it caused within their family.
•The white women took their frustration out on the slave girl
because they were more vulnerable to attack than their husbands
were.
“The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no
other feelings toward her but those of jealousy and rage.”
Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897),
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
•The master would go to the slave girl for his guilty
pleasure because she would be at his disposal.
“My master met me at every turn, reminding me
that I belong to him, and swearing by heaven and
earth that he would compel me to submit to him.”
•Southern women knew that their men had fathered
slave children and saw them as property.
“…Southern women 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…”
Alexander Stephens
Slavery and the Confederacy
Alexander Stephens (1812-1883)
•born February 11, 1812 near Crawfordsville, Georgia
•was orphaned and penniless at age 15
•with the help of friends and by working, he graduated from the
University of Georgia at Athens in 1832
•studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1834
•joined Whig party and became a member of the Georgia State House
of Representatives from 1836-42
•elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1843 and served until
1858
•later, he served as Vice President of the Confederate States
•he originally opposed Georgia’s secession
•after Georgia’s secession, he became an advocate for the cause
•This speech was delivered on March 21, 1861 in Savannah, Georgia.
Main Points
Alexander Stephens
Slavery and the Confederacy
1. “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. All the essentials of
the old Constitution, which have endeared it to the hearts of the American people,
have been preserved and perpetuated.”
•This statement ensures that each “citizen” will be afforded the rights and
freedoms they are presently accustomed to.
2. “We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of
persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand
upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are
left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged in.”
“The true principle is to subject commerce of every locality to whatever burdens may
be necessary to facilitate it….This is again the broad principle of perfect equality and
justice.”
•Under the Confederate Constitution, excess taxes and tariffs of every
industry will be repealed or distributed equally.
•Local and business monies should be used to repair or improve local
infrastructure instead of the National Treasury.
Alexander Stephens
Slavery and the Confederacy
Main Points
3. “The new Constitution has put to rest forever all the agitating questions relating to
our peculiar institutions—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.”
“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.
This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great
physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
•The institution of slavery is at the heart of the revolution.
•By not being equal, Africans must be subordinate to whites, and this is the
first Government to recognize and follow this truth
Main Points
Alexander Stephens
Slavery and the Confederacy
4. “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’”.
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As long as slaves are from the African race, then it conforms with the laws of
God and nature.
It is God’s divine wisdom why there is a difference between races, and that
wisdom should not be questioned.
5. “Our object is Peace, not only with the North, but with the world…. Rumors are afloat,
however, that it is the result of necessity. All I can say to you, therefore, on that point
is, keep your armor bright, and your powder dry.”
•
The Confederacy wants to secede peacefully, but just in case, be prepared for
a fight.
Alexander Stephens
Slavery and the Confederacy
Main Points
6. “….notwithstanding their (the Union) professions of humanity, they are disinclined
to give up the benefits they derive from slave labor…. The idea of enforcing the
laws, has but one object, and that is a collection of the taxes, raised by slave labor
to swell the fund necessary to meet their heavy appropriations. The spoils is what
they are after—though they come from the labor of the slave.
•
Through the taxes and tariffs collected from South, the Federal Treasury
enriches itself by the use of slave labor.
Alexander Stephens
Slavery and the Confederacy
Historical Significance
1. In my opinion, this speech was made to justify the morality and
justness of the institution of slavery.
2. It was a tool of propaganda to further the Confederate cause and to
recruit other southern States.
3. It was an appeal to the nations of the world to recognize the
Confederate States of America as an independent nation.
4. Three weeks after Stephens delivered this speech, the Confederate
Army attacked Ft Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861.
5. After the war, Stephens was arrested and imprisoned for five
months. Later, he returned to serve again in the House of
Representatives from 1873-1882. After his service in the House, he
was elected Governor of Georgia for four months until he died March
4, 1883.
Reverend Benjamin Morgan Palmer
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
Bible View of Slavery
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.
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….”
The Gettysburg Address 19th January 1863
Lincoln Himself
1. 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 Act
5. Spoke against the Dread Scott decision in 1857
6. He was elected the 16Th President of the United States
7. 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 Significance of the Frontier in American History”
Historical Context:
Frederick Jackson Turner (b. November 14, 1861-d. March
14, 1932)
A Professor at Harvard and Wisconsin University, Turner’s
collection of essays entitled The Significance of Sections in
American History won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1933.
Turner delivered this essay at the World Fair in Chicago on
July 12, 1893 (not long after the Great Fire ravaged the city
in October of 1871).
“The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
Main Points
1. The study of the Western frontier reveals the truly American side of our history.
“And to study this advance, 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…”
2. One of America’s strong points is her ability to adapt to her surroundings.
“The peculiarity of American institutions is the fact that they have been compelled to
adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding people—to the changes involved in
crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this
progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier in the
complexity of city life…”
3. The frontier Americanized the colonists, and defined their mental temperament.
“Our history is the study of European germs developing in an American
environment…The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization.”
“Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from the
influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines.”
“From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound
importance…Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the
New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the
United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only
been open but has even been forced upon them.”
“The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
Main Points
4. The Indian wars and skirmishes unified the American people under one
cause.
“This frontier stretched along the western border like a cord of union. The
Indian was a common danger, demanding united action…”
5. Americans were no longer just English, but were made up of a variety of
European settlers.
“The frontier promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the
American people. The coast was preponderantly English, but the later tides
of continental immigration flowed across to the free lands…”
6. Democracy was born out of the difficulties of the frontier.
“But the most important effect of the frontier has been the promotion of
democracy here and in Europe. As has been indicated the frontier is
productive of individualism. Complex society is precipitated by the
wilderness into a kind of primitive organization, based on the family. The
tendency is anti-social. It produces antipathy to control, and particularly to
any direct control…The frontier individualism has from the beginning
promoted democracy…”
“The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
Main Points
7. The western frontier no longer exists.
“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, and with its going has closed the first period of American
history.”
The Significance of the Document
This document gave Americans a strong sense of national pride and
accomplishment. In just a short time since declaring freedom from
Britain, Americans had “tamed” the wilderness; they had faced the
challenges and difficulties of the frontier victoriously, and in so
doing, they had developed their own sense of nationality and history.
Turner, in effect, gave Americans a pat on the back. The first
chapter of colonial history, though long and arduous in the making,
had ended well, and offered a bright future to the hopeful
Americans.
The Strenuous Life (1900)
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
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Born: October 27, 1858
Birthplace: New York, New York
Died: January 6, 1919 (Arterial Blood Clot) in New York, New
York
Born into a wealthy and socially prominent New York family.
Suffered from life-threatening asthma attacks throughout his
childhood, but he overcame these attacks with strenuous
exercise and became a model of physical courage and
toughness.
Wife: Alice Roosevelt, first wife (died on the same day as his
mother); Edith Roosevelt, second wife (had 5 kids with her and
one from previous marriage).
Attended Harvard University and Columbia University Law
School.
Occupation(s) before Presidency: Officer in the National Guard,
New York police commissioner.
Other ways he served: Governor of New York, Vice President to
McKinley, and Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
With the help of Leonard Wood, he organized The Rough Riders,
an all-volunteer cavalry regiment.
26th President of the United States from 1901-1909
Party Affiliation- Republican
First President to ride in a car while President.
Theodore Roosevelt: Historical Context
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Roosevelt never ceased to preach about virtues and consistently denounced
civilized softness.
Supported military and naval preparedness. Adopted the pet phrase, “Speak
softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far.”
He had an enormous popular appeal because the common people saw him as
a champion.
He was an advocate of American imperialism.
“The Strenuous Life” speech was delivered months after the Senate had
ratified the treaty with Spain that established the Philippines as a colony of
the United States and at the beginning of the 3 year Philippine- America War.
This speech defended American imperialism by focusing on economic selfinterest, masculine pride, and the national destiny.
During this time period, many worried that the American society was losing its
masculine edge because of the closing of the frontier, the increasing
dominance of women’s taste in art, literature, and culture, and the conflict
between domestic value and the marketplace.
“The Strenuous Life” addressed this worry and explored the foreign policy
ideas.
It also supported the philosophy that adversity builds character and that
individuals should be tested by danger, hardship, and toil.
Speech presented to the Hamilton Club, Chicago on April 10, 1899.
The Strenuous Life: Main Points
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A true American is one who embraces the strenuous life and the hardships
that come with it to ensure that we, as a society, do not become soft and
yielding.
“…I wish to preach, not 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.”
•
A man should be glad to work and has a duty to teach his sons to work
hard. If one is born rich, work where you are needed and where you can be
successful to “reflect most honor upon the nation.”
•
A woman should not be afraid of motherhood or her duty as a mother. This
fear of motherhood for women or fear of work from men can doom the
nation.
“The woman must be the housewife, the helpmeet of the homemaker, the wise and
fearless of many healthy children.”
•
If you choose an easy life, you lack desire and will not be satisfied with
this life of ease.
“A mere life of ease is not in the end a satisfactory life, and above all, it is not a life
which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.”
The Strenuous Life: Main Points
View on the Civil War
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To not have fought in the Civil War would have been an easier
choice. Lives would have been spared, money would have been saved,
loved ones would not have been killed, “simply by shrinking from strife.” If
we had chosen that route, the nation would have been considered
“weaklings” and “unfit to stand among the great nations of the earth.”
Thanks to the leadership and wisdom of Lincoln and Grant we
were successful, even with the struggles and sacrifices that the
nation faced, the results were overwhelmingly positive for the
nation.
The Union decided to follow the “wisdom of Lincoln and bore the
sword or rifle in the armies of Grant!” We suffered through the many
losses of the war, and “in the end the slave was freed, the Union
restored, and the mighty American republic placed once more as a
helmeted queen among nations.”
The Strenuous Life: Main Points
Navy and Army
• Roosevelt was a supporter of the military. He praised those who
supported the Navy, and told his audience to “keep in mind those
who opposed its building up.” Once the naval needs had been
met by Congress, the Navy was considered one of the most
“brilliant and formidable fighting navies in the entire world.”
• The Army, however, was in need of “complete reorganization, not merely enlarging.” Roosevelt claimed that the responsibility
for blood shed in the Philippines and failure of any kind would be
put on those who didn’t take action and who were more
concerned with “mock humanitarianism of the prattlers who sit at
home in peace.”
The Strenuous Life: Main Points
Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines
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Issues must be taken care of in his own country, but a man’s responsibility
doesn’t stop there. One must face his duties to the world and govern those
that cannot govern themselves.
“A man’s first duty is to his own home, but he is not thereby excused from
doing his duty to the State; for if he fails in this second duty it is under
penalty of ceasing to be a freeman.”
The West Indies and the Philippines had numerous problems, but they had
to be faced and solved in the proper way. If we are unable to do it, a
“bolder and abler people must undertake the solution.”
Reasons for the U.S.’s need to intervene:
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Porto Rico is not large enough to stand alone.
Cuba is entitled to decide for itself if it will be an independent state or a
part of the United States.
The Philippines had a bigger problem because the population included “halfcastes and native Christians, warlike Moslems, and wild pagans.” Roosevelt
felt that these people were” utterly unfit for self-government and show no
signs of becoming fit.”
The Strenuous Life: Main Points
Great Benefit for the U.S. and Philippines
• England’s rule in India and Egypt had been beneficial to all parties
involved, yet above all else it had “advanced the cause of
civilization.”
• If the U.S. succeeds in the Philippines, then they will “add to that
national renown which is the highest and finest part of national life,
will greatly benefit the people of the Philippines island, and above
all, we will play our part well in the great work of uplifting mankind.”
• To accomplish this goal, we must stop any resistance and be
prepared for the “even more difficult task” of governing the
Philippines.
The Strenuous Life: Main Points
Conclusions
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In the face of these challenges, Roosevelt says “that our country calls not
for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor.” We cannot
support a life of peace, because if we do other stronger countries will pass
us by and dominate the world.
•
“Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well
and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness but deed and by word;
resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use
practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical,
within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is
justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor,
that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.”
Questions:
1.) Is Roosevelt concerned that vigorous activity could produce evil as well as
good?
2.) What would Roosevelt say about our world today when it comes to woman
and motherhood and men and working?
The Strenuous Life: Main Points
Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy
• Due to the amendment of the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, America
was able to intervene into Latin American nation’s affairs. This
allowed Latin America to be a way to expand U.S. commercial
interests AND to intervene in Latin America conflicts exercising an
international police power.
• Roosevelt gained intense criticism in the U.S., as well as in
Congress, due to his changed from an isolationist policy to an
interventionist and imperialistic policy.
• This speech was a way for Roosevelt to justify any expansions and
towards imperialism so that he could rally support from the people
of the nation because he was not popular with his peers at the time
due to his policies.
William Graham Sumner,
Main Points
What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)
Only the select few can solve society’s problems and create
problems.
“Those who are bound to solve problems are the rich, comfortable,
prosperous, virtuous, respectable, educated and healthy; those
whose right it is to set the problems are those who have been less
fortunate or less successful in the struggle for existence.”
It is not your fault in society that you are better than me, and it is
not your responsibility to help me become like you and be your
burden.
“A man who is present as a consumer, yet who does not contribute
either by land, labor, or capital to the work of society, is a burden.
On no sound political theory ought such a person to share in the
political power of the state.”
The crumbling of a society by a social class.
“Those whom humanitarians and philanthropists call weak are the
ones through whom the productive and conservative forces of
society are wasted. They constantly neutralize and destroy the
finest efforts of the wise and industrious, and are a dead-weight on
the society in all its struggles to realize better things.”
William Graham Sumner,
What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)
Take care of your own business and not everyone else’s.
“Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is, to take care of his or her
own self. This is a social duty.”
“the legislation are kept constantly busy, by the people who have made up their minds
that it is wise and conducive to happiness to live in a certain way, and who want to
compel everybody else to live in their way.”
The government gets its money from you to help reform society. It gives it to me to help
make me like you.
“the right to claim and the duty to give one man’s efforts for another man’s satisfaction.
We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty.”
“prejudice that a man who gives a dollar to a beggar is generous and kind-hearted, but
that a man who refuses the beggar and puts the dollar in a savings-bank is stingy and
mean. The former is putting the capital where it is very sure to be wasted, and where it
will be a kind of seed for a long succession of future dollars, which must be wasted to
ward off a greater strain of the sympathies than would have been occasioned by a
refusal in the first place. Inasmuch as the dollar might have been turned into capital and
given to a laborer who, while earning it, would have reproduced it, it must be regarded
as taken from the latter.”
I have as much right as you to have as much success as you do, but I expect to have it
handed to me without the sacrifices that you have made.
“We each owe it to the other to guarantee rights. Rights do not pertain to results, but
only to chances. They pertain to the conditions of the struggle for existence, not to any
of the results of it; to the pursuit of happiness, not to the possession of happiness.”
“The men who have not done their duty in this world never can be equal to those who
have done their duty more or less well.”
William Graham Sumner
Main Points
• A person that doesn’t contribute to society is a
burden on society
– “a man who is present as a consumer, yet who does
not contribute either by land, labor, or capital to the
work of society, is a burden”
• Every person has a responsibility to take care of
themselves, to mind their own business
– “every man and woman in society has one big duty.
That is, to take care of his or her own self. This is a
social duty.”.
William Graham Sumner
Main Points Cont.
• The state can not make any money, they
can only give money to one person by
taking it away from another
– “these conflicts are rooted in the supposed
reality that one group wins on the expense of
another group. The gains of some imply the
losses of others. The path of achievement in
society is trod over the well being of others.”
William Graham Sumner
The social structure is based on
contract
• “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.”
William Graham Sumner
And that of the Forgotten Man
• “He is not, technically, “poor” or “weak”; he
minds his own business, and makes no
complaint. Consequently the
philanthropists never think of him, and
trample on him…..”
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 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)
Main Points
Women declared their independence and
inalienable Rights: Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness.
• “We insist that [women] have immediate admission to
the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens
of the United States.”
• “…Such has been the patient sufferance of the women
under this government, and such is now the necessity
which constrains them to demand the equal station to
which they are entitled.”
Seneca Falls Convention, Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
Main Points
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.”
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“He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.”
“He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.”
“He has withheld from her rights which are given the most ignorant and degraded menboth natives and foreigners.”
“He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.”
“He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.”
“In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband,
he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master.”
…if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which
recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.”
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Horatio Storer, The Origins of the Insanity in Women (1865)
Historical Context
Horatio Robinson Storer (1830-1922) was an American physician and campaigner
against abortion. Storer was born in Boston, Massachusetts and attended the Boston
Latin School, Harvard College, and the Boston (Harvard) Medical School. After
obtaining his M.D. in 1853 he traveled to Europe and spent a year studying with
James Young Simpson at Edinburgh. He began medical practice in Boston in 1855
with emphasis on obstetrics and gynecology.
In 1857, he started the "physicians' crusade against abortion" both in Massachusetts
and nationally, when he persuaded the American Medical Association to form a
Committee on Criminal Abortion. The Committee Report was presented at the AMA
meeting in Louisville, Kentucky in 1859 and accepted by the Association. As a result,
the AMA petitioned the legislatures of the states and territories to strengthen their
laws against elective abortions.
By 1880 most states and territories had enacted such legislation. Although abortion
continued to be a common, if clandestine practice,[1] some women were persuaded
to refrain from abortion by these new laws, and also by physician persuasion.
In 1865, Storer won an AMA prize for his essay aimed at informing women about the
moral and physical problems of induced abortion. It was published as Why Not? A
Book for Every Woman. It was widely sold and many physicians distributed it to their
patients who requested abortion.
Storer started the Gynaecological Society of Boston, the first medical society
devoted exclusively to gynecology, in 1869. It quickly moved to publish the first
gynecology journal, the Journal of the Gynaecological Society of Boston. In many
respects, Storer can be considered the Father of American Gynecology.
Information provided by: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Storer
Horatio Storer, The Origins of the Insanity in Women (1865)
Main Points
Main Point – Storer said he knew the answer to certain mental illnesses found in women
because of a defect in that some women have in their ovaries. He came to these
conclusions without much scientific research and is very troubling. The quote below
illustrates this:
"I believe, by the experience, however, of every unbiased observer, we advance to (ask)…To
what extent can the insanity of women be medically or surgically treated?"
Another quote about this topic follows:
“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 catamenial (menstrual)
establishment.”
As a woman, my take on Dr. Storer’s writing was that no woman could be trusted to be truly
rational because our own ovaries may have certain defects that have the ability to make us
crazy.
Main Point -- Storer contends that he has found a way to help alleviate, in some cases
remove, insanity that a defect in the ovaries might cause. He states:
"It is just as unscientific here, and generally as futile, to treat merely or primarily the
mental disturbance, which is usually a symptom only or a consequence, as it has been to
amputate an hysterical knee. The necessity of removing a cause to prevent or to cure its
effect is as decided in mental pathology as in physical. 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."
Horatio Storer, The Origins of the Insanity in Women (1865)
Main Point – Nymphomaniacs Are Crazy
In the nineteenth century nymphomania was believed to be a specific organic disease, classifiable, with an
assumed set of symptoms, causes, and treatments. Like alcoholism, kleptomania, and pyromania--diseases that
were identified in the mid-nineteenth century--a diagnosis of nymphomania was based on exhibited behavior.
"Excessive" female sexual desire is, however, a much more ambiguous concept than habitual drunkenness,
shoplifting, or setting fires. Consider the following cases of nymphomania diagnosed in the second half of the
nineteenth century.
One Specific Case - "Mrs. B.," age twenty-four and married to a much older man, sought the help of Dr. Horatio
Storer, a gynecologist and the future president of the American Medical Association, because of lascivious
dreams. He reported that she "can hardly meet or converse with a gentleman but that the next night she fancies
she has intercourse with him,...though thinks she would at once repel an improper advance on the part of any
man" (Storer 1856, 384). In fact, she "enjoys intercourse greatly" (with her husband) and has had sex with him
nightly for the seven years of their marriage. The husband "has of late complained that he found physical
obstruction to intercourse on her part, though she thinks it rather an increasing failure by him in erection" (Storer
1856, 384). In this "Case of Nymphomania," Storer directed Mrs. B. to separate temporarily from her husband as
well as to restrict her intake of meat and abstain from brandy and all stimulants to lessen her sexual desire, to
replace the feather mattress and pillows with ones made of hair to limit the sensual quality of her sleep, and to
take cold enemas and sponge baths and swab her vagina with borax solution to cool her passions. "If she
continued in her present habits of indulgence," Storer argued, "it would probably become necessary to send her
to an asylum" (Storer 1856, 385). At the time he presented the case before the Boston Society for Medical
Observation in 1856, the woman's husband was still absent and her lascivious dreams had not occurred for
several days. The doctor was "hopeful as regards the mental symptoms, which, however, will for some time
require decided enforcement of very strict laws" (Storer 1856, 386).
The Victorian Era was a very Romantic period. Women were relegated mainly to the private sector of life. They
were expected to be virtuous, chaste and pure. Women who were promiscuous or enjoyed sex with their
husbands to exuberantly were considered nymphomaniacs. This was inconsistent with men's views about
women at this time. There is a clear double standard between men and women at this time. Men were allowed to
pride himself on his conquests but women were kept in a very strict mode of behavior they had to follow. This
deviant behavior was dealt with in various treatments "crazy women" were given to force them back into
society's expected "role".
Horatio Storer, The Origins of the Insanity in Women (1865)
Historical Significance
This philosophy completely contradicts Thoreau, who was a firm believer in acting as
an individual and not following conventions. He would have not have wanted men or
women to play any kind of "role". However, during this time, individualism, especially in
women, was not a highly prized attribute.
A Victorian Idea About What Makes a “Good” Woman - The legal rights of married women
were similar to those of children; they could not vote or sue or even own property. Also,
they were seen as pure and clean. Because of this view, their bodies were seen as temples
which should not be adorned with jewelry nor used for physical exertion or pleasurable sex.
The role of women was to have children and tend to the house. They could not hold a job
unless it was that of a teacher or a domestic servant, nor were they allowed to have their
own checking accounts or savings accounts. In the end, they were to be treated as saints,
but saints that had no legal rights.
This article, written by Dr. Horatio Storer, was meant to impact other doctors who had
women under their care. This article achieved what it was intended for. “Following Storer’s
advice, American doctors performed tens of thousands of ovariectomies, the removal of the
ovaries, over the next fifty years as a treatment for neuroses of various kinds. The
relationship between the ovaries and mental health eludes most modern medical
researchers.”
Basically, in the Victorian Era, a woman being chaste was greatly prized. Any woman
too interested in sex was probably considered a slut or worse. Men, however, were not
viewed as “crazy nymphos” if they liked to sow their wild oats, as long as they were
discreet. I believe Dr. Storer to have been a product of this Era and found ways to confirm
his views that women should be chaste, not sensual. Seen, not heard.
Bradwell v. The State of Illinois (1873)
U.S. Supreme Court
Historical Context:
•Myra Colby Bradwell was Born on February 12, 1831 in Manchester Vermont.
•She attended schools in Kenosha Wisconsin and later enrolled in Elgin Female
Seminary in Illinois.
•Bradwell completed her formal education by the age of twenty four.
•In 1852 she married James Bradwell.
•In 1855 they moved to Chicago where James was admitted tho the Chicago Bar. He
became a successful lawyer, judge, and in 1873 he was elected to the State Legislature.
•Myra Bradwell, a Vermont attorney, attempted to exercise her profession in Illinois, she
was rejected from the bar because of her gender.
•She sued for her rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. ( “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 Bradwell died on February 14, 1894 of cancer. Just two years after she received
her license to practice law.
Main Points:
The right to practice law in a State is granted by the qualifications of the applicant. Citizenship does
not give someone that right.
"The right to admission to practice in the courts of a state is not a privilege or
immunity belonging to citizens of the United States. The right to practice as an attorney in no sense
depends on citizenship of the United States. It has not, as far as we know, ever been made in any
State, or in any case, to depend on citizenship.” ( Mr Justice Miller )
$
Men and women have many differences that are recognized by civil law and nature. Men
are women's protector and defender. Women are timid and delicate and makes them unfit for many
occupations.
"The 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." (Mr Justice Bradley )
$
A married woman is incapable of performing the duties of a lawyer without the consent of
her husband.
"A woman has no legal existence separate from her husband. Supreme Court
of Illinois deemed important in rendering a married woman incompetent fully to perform the duties
and trusts that belong to the office of an attorney and counselor." ( Mr Justice Bradley )
$
It is God's will that women be wives and mothers. This being the natural law, we should
adapt and cannot be based upon exceptional cases.
"The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and begin
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." ( Mr
Justice Bradley )
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
•
James 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.
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
Myra Bradwell
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, Women and the New Race (1920)
Main Point 1: Much of humankind’s misery can be attributed to women’s ignorance about
reproductivity, women’s acceptance of inferior status, and women’s willingness to
unthinkingly submit to the will of their men and have numerous children. The result has
been the cheapening of life through over-population.
• Whether it was the tyranny of monarchy, an oligarchy or a republic, the one indispensable factor of its
existence was, as it is now, hordes of human beings—human beings so plentiful as to be cheap, and so cheap
that ignorance was their natural lot. Upon the rock of an unenlightened, submissive maternity have these been
founded; upon the product of such a maternity have they flourished.
• No period of low wages or of idleness with their want among the workers, no peonage or sweatshop, no childlabor factory, ever came into being, save from the same source. Nor have famine and plague been as much
“acts of God” as acts of too prolific mothers.
Margaret Sanger,
• Unknowingly, women replenish the
Women and the New
• poor
Race (1920)
• insane
• criminal
• hungry
• ranks of prostitutes
• legions of soldiers to die in foreign conquests (due to pressures of overpopulation)
• [In the mass, women] went on breeding with staggering rapidity those numberless, undesired children who
become the clogs and the destroyers of civilizations.
• In her submission lies her error and her guilt. By her failure to withhold the multitudes of children who have
made inevitable the most flagrant of our social evils, she incurred 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.
Main Point 2. Through sex education and birth control, women will gain
free motherhood and become liberated. They will also be remaking the
world into a more humane and less miserable place.
• The most important force in the remaking of the world is a free motherhood.
• ...she may, by controlling birth, lift motherhood to the plane of a voluntary, intelligent
function, and remake the world.
• Millions of women are asserting their right to voluntary motherhood. They are determined
to decide for themselves whether they shall become mothers, under what conditions and when.
This is the fundamental revolt referred to. It is for women the key to the temple of liberty.
Even as birth control is the means by which woman attains basic freedom, so it is the
means by which she must and will uproot the evil she has wrought through her submission.
• …she must emerge from her ignorance and assume her responsibility.
• She can do this only when she has awakened to a knowledge of herself and of the
consequences of her ignorance. The first step is birth control. Through birth control she will
attain to voluntary motherhood. Having attained this, the basic freedom of her sex, she will
cease to enslave herself and the mass of humanity
• Birth control is woman’s problem. The quicker she accepts it as hers and hers alone, the
quicker will society respect motherhood. The quicker, too, will the world be made a fit place
for her children to live.
Main Point 3: Women need to value themselves for
who they are. They also need to educate themselves
(know thyself).
• The problem of birth control has arisen directly from the effort
of the feminine spirit to free itself from bondage. Woman herself
has wrought that bondage through her reproductive powers and
while enslaving herself she enslaved the world.
• Her mission is not to enhance the masculine spirit, but to
express the feminine; hers is not to preserve a man-made world,
but to create a human world by the infusion of the feminine
element into all of its activities.
• She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is
born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her
into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure
it. That right to decide imposes upon her the duty of clearing the
way to knowledge by which she may make and carry out the
decision.
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.”
• 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.”
Spectacle lynching. The Burning and Lynching of
Jesse Washington, Waco Texas 1916.
Although accurate figures on the lynching of blacks are
lacking, one study estimates that in Texas between 1870
and 1900, extralegal justice was responsible for the
murder of about 500 blacks—only Georgia and Mississippi
exceeded Texas’s numbers in this grisly record. Between
1900 and 1910, Texas mobs murdered more than 100
black people. In 1916 at Waco, approximately 10,000
whites turned out in holiday-like atmosphere to watch a
mob mutilate and burn a black man named Jesse
Washington. (Source: Calvert, De Leon and Cantrell, The
History of Texas, pp. 189, 261-262.)
The lynching of
Lige Daniels.
August 3, 1920,
Center, Texas.
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
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 onethird 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.
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 selfconsciousness, 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 selfconscious 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 selfdevelopment. (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 Court
Background:
 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”