Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Self-Reliance (1841)
Main Points
I.
Independence of thought AND ACTION
REGARDLESS OF SOCIETY’S REACTION.
II.
Existence of an inner divine force to give
direction.
III.
Divine force supplies revelation of truth
and beauty.
Quotes from Emerson’s Self-Reliance:
•…To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in
your private heart, is true for all men,--that is genius.
•A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which
flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the
firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his
thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our
own rejected thought: they come back to us with a certain alienated
majesty.
•Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
•Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every
one of its members.
•Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
•I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls
me.
•What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.
•Do your thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall
reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man-bluff is
this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your
argument. p.
•For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure.
•A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great
soul has simply nothing to do.
•To be great is to be misunderstood.
•The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks….
See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the
average tendency.
•The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is
profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God
spaketh, he should communicate not one thing, but all things; should
fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time,
souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new
create the whole.
• …in the universal miracle petty and particular miracles
disappear.
•Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He
dares not say “I think,” “I am,” but quotes some saint or sage.
•…man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the
present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless
of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee
the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives
with nature in the present, above time….
•Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the
instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a
past to a new state….
•He who has more soul than I, masters me, though he should
not raise his finger.
•I like the silent church before the service begins, better than
any preaching.
•…you isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is,
must be elevation.
•It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all
the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in
their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in
their speculative views.
•Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of
view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of
God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a
private end, is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in
nature and consciousness.
•The soul is no traveler: the wise man stays at home….
•Insist on yourself; never imitate.
•Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the
other.
•The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.
•Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is
composed does not.
•And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments
which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.
•Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace
but the triumph of principles.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Young American (1844)
Main points:
· Commerce is the most significant political issue for Americans because its
revolutionary new developments combine us together as Americans.
1. “There is no American citizen who has not been stimulated to reflection by the
facilities now in progress of construction for travel and the transportation of goods
in the United States.”
2. The railroad creates American sentiment and connects people with
resources. It also unifies people together as a country.
· “America is the country of the future.”
1. … “It is a country of beginnings, or projects, or designs, and
expectations. It has no past: all has an onward and prospective
look.”
2. … “For remote generations. We should be mortified to learn that
the little benefit we change in our own persons to receive was the
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Young American (1844)
Main points:
· History of commerce provides a record of the development of America and
the tremendous benefits trade has brought.
1.
“It is a new agent in the world and one of great functions; it is a very
intellectual force.”
2. “Trade is an instrument in the hands of the friendly Power which works for
us in our own despite.”
John L. O’Sullivan, Manifest Destiny
Westward Expansion:
“Our Manifest destiny is to overspread the
continent allotted by Providence for the free
development of our yearly multiplying millions.”


“Texas is now ours.” Texas has no
obligation to Mexico and the United States
needs welcome the annexation of Texas.
“There is a great deal of Annexation yet to
take place, within the life of the present
generation, along the whole line of our
northern border.”
Manifest Destiny
by John O’Sullivan
Main Points
1.) It is time now for opposition to the Annexation of Texas to cease…
2.) It is our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by
Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.
3. Nor is there any just foundation for the charge that Annexation is a great
pro-slavery measure-calculated to increase and perpetuate that
institution.
Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau (1849)
Main Points:
• 1. Think for yourself, then do what is
right.
– Refuse to obey the fugitive slave laws
– Don’t participate in the Mexican War
• 2. An individual doing that which is right
constitutes a majority.
– Don’t wait for the majority to agree before
acting on a just cause
Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau (1849)
• 3. Do not support an unjust government.
–Refuse to pay taxes
–Most effective means of protest (beat the system within
the bounds of the system)
–The blood spilled by the government is on your hands as a
faithful taxpayer
–Non-violent approach to protest
• 4. A just government will respect the individual.
“I please myself with imagining a State at least which can
afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with
respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it
inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof
from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who
fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men.”
The Mexican View of the War (1850)
Ramon Alvarez Et Al.
Main Points:
• Mexico blames the War on the United States.
– “To explain then in a few words the true origin of the war, it is sufficient to say
that the insatiable ambition of the United States, favored by our weakness,
caused it.”
• United States an “Alpha Male”
– “In throwing off the yoke of the mother country, the United States of the North
appeared at once as a powerful nation.”
• United States had an Expansion Plan.
– “From the days of their independence they adopted the project of extending
their dominions, and since then , that line of policy has not deviated in the
slightest degree… They desired from the beginning to extend their dominion in
such a manner as to become the absolute owners of most of all this continent.”
• Even after acquiring the land that the U.S. wanted all along, the U.S.
felt to add insult by placing fault on Mexico.
– “Violence and insult were united: thus at the very time they usurped part of our
territory, they offered to us the hand of treachery, to have soon the audacity to
say that our obstinacy and arrogance were the real causes of the war…”
The Mexican View of the War (1850)
Ramon Alvarez Et Al.
Historical Significance
• The United States gained what they
believed was God’s will.
• The article gave light to how the Mexicans’
felt about the war.
– Allowed Americans to see the other side of
the war.
George Bancroft
The Progress of Mankind
(1854)
George Bancroft, The Progress of Mankind (1854)
Main Points

By God’s plan Americans are destined to choose growth and
therefore achieve greatness.
“...the condition of our race is one of growth or of decay. It is the glory of man
that he is conscious of this law of his existence.”
“The progress of man consists in this, that he himself arrives at the perception
of truth. The Divine mind, which is its source, left it to be discovered, appropriated
and developed by finite creatures.”
•
It is by God’s design all men are equal in substance, therefore;
progress depends on the individual’s contribution to the whole
and the whole of society is wiser than the individual.
“Every man is in substance equal to his fellow-man.”
“Each member of the race is in will, affection, and intellect,
consubstantial with every other; no passion, no noble or degrading
affection, no generous or selfish impulse, has ever appeared, of which the
germ does not exist in every breast.”
“But as every man partakes of the same faculties and is
consubstantial with all, it follows that the race becomes richer, more
varied, free and complete, as time advances.”
George Bancroft, The Progress of Mankind (1854)
Main Points cont.
“Were no other progress, therefore, possible than that of the individual, one
period would have little advantage over another.”
“COMMON SENSE implies by its very name, that each individual is to
contribute some share toward the general intelligence. The many are wiser than the
few; the multitude than the philosopher; the race than the individual; and each
successive generation than its predecessor....”
• Women have a significant role in politics, but it is not for
the public realm, it is divulged in the home and expressed
through her husband.
“ ...a lily among thorns, whose smile is pleasant like the light of morning, and
whose eye is the gate of heaven; she, whom nature so reveres, that the lovely veil of
her spirit is the best terrestrial emblem of beauty, must cease to command armies or
reign supreme over nations.”
“Yet the progress of liberty...has redeemed her into the possession of the full dignity
of her nature, has made her not man’s slave, but his companion, his counsellor, and
fellow-martyr; and for an occasional ascendency in political affairs, has substituted
the uniform enjoyment of domestic equality.”
George Bancroft, The Progress of Mankind (1854)
Main Points contd.
• Freedom through American Democracy is an open
opportunity for the world to advance and grow.
“Our land extends far into the wilderness, and beyond the wilderness; and
while on this side of the mountains it gives the Western nations of Europe a theater
for the renewal of their youth, on the transmontane side, the hoary civilisation of the
farthest antiquity leans forward from Asia to receive the glad tidings of the
messenger of freedom. The islands of the Pacific entreat our protection, and at our
suit the Empire of Japan breaks down its wall of exclusion....”
“Without attempting to unfold what the greater wisdom of coming
generations can alone adequately conceive and practically apply, we may observe,
that the human mind tends not only toward unity, but UNIVERSALITY.”
Questions
Does history ever demonstrate any retrograde motions?
Who or what is responsible for human progress?
What is the role of women in history?
George Bancroft, The Progress of Mankind (1854)
Historical Significance
The most significant aspect of George Bancroft’s, The Progress of
Mankind is his belief that American Democracy would spread
fervently throughout the world. American Democracy would be
anxiously accepted by other nations as Americans shared the
promise of freedom.
Bancroft’s devotion to the belief that the wisdom of the people held the
answer is indicative in the picturesque view of America portrayed in
his writing. Although, it is interesting to note that he completely
ignores the issue of slavery. His notable political role would seem to
suggest otherwise but that is not the case. At the time of this
address, which he delivered to the Historical Society in New York,
slavery was a very intense issue. The Kansas-Nebraska Act had just
been passed, setting aside the Missouri Compromise of 1820,
resulting in violent clashes. Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle
Tom’s Cabin and the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared the fugitive
Slave Act of 1850 unconstitutional. The Potato Famine in Ireland
created an influx of Irish immigrants that Bancroft also chose to
ignore.
Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (1852)
Main Points
1) Independence Day is for the white people, not the slaves.
“I am not included within the pale of the glorious anniversary! Your high independence
only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this
day rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty,
prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me.
The sunlight that hath brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to
me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a
man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you
in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean,
citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your
conduct.”
2) American Slavery is what comes to the minds of slaves on the Fourth of July. It is not the
freedom in America. Slaves had no freedom.
“My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see this day and its
popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there, identified with
the American bondman, making his soul, that the character and conduct of this nation
never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July. Whether we turn to the
declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation
seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present,
and solemnly binds herself the be false to the future. Standing with God and the
crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is
outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and
the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to
denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate
slavery--the great sin and shame of America!”
Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (1852)
Main Points
3) The slave is a man, which is acknowledged by the government in the punishments given
for their crimes.
“Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The
slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They
acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in
the state of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to
the punishment of death...”
“What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being. The
manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that southern statute books are covered with
enactments forbidding, under sever fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or write. When
you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the
manhood of the slave.
4) The wrongfulness of slavery is so strong that if any man be asked if it is wrong, he would
say yes.
“Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of
logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the
principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look today in the presence of Americans,
dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it
relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and
to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not
know that slavery is wrong for him.
5) The Fourth of July is hypocritical because it is a celebration of freedom, yet there is still
the evil of slavery.
“What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than other days
in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is
a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of
rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your prayers
and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere
bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a
Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
Main Points
1.
Keeping the slaves illiterate was an important step in destroying the possibility of
keeping accurate records and preventing revolts from being organized..
“I never met with a slave who could tell me how old he was. Few slave
mothers know anything of the month of the year, nor of the days of
the month. They keep no family records, with marriages, births,
deaths”
“They measured the ages of their children by spring time, winter time,
harvest time, planting time and the like”
“Master Hugh forbade her continuance of her instruction; telling her, in
the first place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it was also
unsafe, and could only lead to mischief. …He should know nothing
but the will of his master, and learn to obey it.”
“If you teach the slave to read the Bible, there will be no keeping him”
“If you learn him now to read, he’ll want to know how to write, he’ll be
running away with himself.”
2. In the Community of Slavery there were no family ties not even Mother and Dad and
Child.
“Designated father, is literally abolished in slave law and slave practice”
“My poor mother, like many other slave-women had many children, but NOT FAMILIES!
I say nothing of father; I have never been able to penetrate. Slavery does away with
fathers, as it does away with families”
HISTORICAL SIGNIFIANCE
Articulate Blackman opened up the eyes of the White people of how the slaves were
treated and the fact that they were people too.
Frederick Douglass: Historical Context
• Ex-slave who fought for the freedom of all slaves.
• He wanted to let America know how it felt not to have a true
“family” or “father”.
• Douglass felt that “Slaveholders are only a band of successful
robbers.” (Quote taken from, “Slavery in America from Colonial
Times to the Civil War”)
• Slavery was wrong as well as the treatment of them.
• The early to mid eighteen hundreds in the South was extremely
harsh on slaves.
• Slaves didn’t really belong to a family, they belong to their
master’s like cattle, land, or crops.
• Douglass wanted to open America’s eyes because they had
been closed far too long.
“My Bondage and My Freedom”: Main Points
Slavery makes families dysfunctional.
•
•
•
•
“ … My poor mother, like many other slave-women, had many children,
but NO FAMILY!” (68)
“The practice of separating children from their mother, and hiring the
latter out at distances too great to admit of their meeting …” (68)
“Women—white women, I mean—are IDOLS at the south, not WIVES,
for the slave women are preferred in many instances; and if these idols
but nod, or lift a finger, woe to the poor victims: kicks, cuffs and stripes
are sure to follow.” (69)
It has been noted throughout history that there was and maybe even
today been “Southern Bells”. Why did we never hear of a “Northern
Bell”. That seems to be term used only to describe the southern women
of the south.
“My Bondage and My Freedom”: Main Points (cont.)
Even black individuals who are half-white, they are often
considered to be simply black slaves.
• “He may be a freeman; and yet his child may be a chattel
[movable property: an item of personal property that is not
freehold land and is not intangible.]. He may be white, glorying
in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood; and his child may be
ranked with the blackest slaves.” (69)
Many white masters did not acknowledge their mulatto
children.
• “Men do not love those who remind them of their sins unless
they have a mind to repent—and the mulatto child’s face is a
standing accusation against him who is master and father to the
child.” (69)
• They would many times repent for their sins by selling the
mulatto child. In this way, they didn’t have to see them and be
reminded; a case of out of sight out of mind.
• It may be important to point out that not all slave owners
engaged in a sexual relationship with their slaves.
“My Bondage and My Freedom” :Main Points: (cont.)
White slave owners wanted to keep their black slaves ignorant
to better insure their control over their slaves.
• “The frequent hearing of my mistress reading the bible …
awakened my curiosity in respect to this mystery of reading, and
roused my desire to learn.” (69)
• “he should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to
obey it.” (68)
• “it would forever unfit him for the duties of a slave…” (69)
• “His iron sentences–cold and harsh—sunk deep into my heart,
and stirred up not only my feelings into a sort of rebellion, but
awakened within me a slumbering train of vital thought.” (69)
• “the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the
black man … knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” (69)
Historical Significance:
• The document had a great impact on society
because it publicized America’s ugly secret.
• The groups within society which appeared to
be impacted the most by the author’s
document was the slave owners. After all,
who had the most to loose.
• Because slavery was wrong, Douglass vowed
to speak out so others would know by writing
and giving speaches.
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
Main Points:
1. A slave is the master’s property and is subject to his will in all things.
“there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even
from death…”
2. Slave girls often loose her innocence before the age of twelve to their white
masters.
“She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon she will learn to
tremble when she hears her master’s footfall. She will be compelled to realize
that she is no longer a child.”
3. The slave masters father many children.
“My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven slaves. But did the
mothers dare to tell who was the father of their children?...No, indeed! They
knew too well the terrible consequences.”
4. Slavery damages family values.
White children grow up thinking slavery is right.
White women take their frustration out on the innocent slave girls.
Questions:
If a slave was indeed property, what could keep a master from having sex with
his property?
Was Jacobs appealing to common cultural values in her narrative?
Alexander Stephens, Slavery and the Confederacy (1861)
Main Points
1. With its secession from the Union, the Confederate States are no longer forced to endure
the oppressive tariffs of the United States federal government.
• This old thorn of the tariff, which occasioned the cause of so much irritation in the old
body politic, is removed forever from the new. Again, the subject of internal improvements,
under the power of Congress to regulate Commerce, is put at rest under our system.
• With us, it was simply a question, upon whom the burden should fall. The true principle is
to subject commerce to every locality to whatever burdens may be necessary to facilitate
it. Financial burdens should fall on the locality, which sees the benefit, not from the
common Treasury.
2. Slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederate society. Jefferson believed that
enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature. Those ideas, however,
were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This
was an error.
• Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid,
its cornerstone rest, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that
slavery, subordination to the superior race is its natural and moral condition. This, our new
Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical,
philosophical, and moral truth.
• With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eyes of
the law. Not so with the Negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse
against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.
• The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by
experience, we know it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it
should be so. It is indeed, in conformity with the Creator. For His own purpose, He has
made one race to differ from another, as He made “one star to differ from another in glory.”
Alexander Stephens, Slavery and the Confederacy (1861)
Main Points
3. The process of disintegration in the old union may be expected
to go on with almost absolute certainty. Our object is peace,
not only with the north, but also with the world. We are now the
nucleus of a growing power, which, if we are true to ourselves,
our destiny, and our high mission, will become the controlling
power on this continent.
•
•
“With such an area of territory…with such
resources already at our command-with
productions which control the commerce of
the world-who can entertain any
apprehensions as to our success, whether
others join us or not.
In olden times, the olive branch was
considered the emblem of peace, we will send
to the nations of the earth another far more
potential emblem of the same, the Cotton
Plant…
Reverend Benjamin Morgan Palmer
Slavery a Divine Trust: Duty of the South to Preserve and Perpetuate it
1. The South’s providential trust “is to conserve and to
perpetuate the institution of slavery as now existing….”
2. White slave owners act as guardians of their black slaves.
Blacks are like helpless children who the slave owner
protects.
3. “Freedom would be their doom.”
4. Slaves “form parts of our households, even as our children….”
5. The world should FEAR abolition. The world is more
dependent on slavery for its wealth than ever, and if slavery
ends, the world economy will totter.
6. The South needs slavery to support its material interests.
Slavery is a matter of self-preservation for the South.
7. The South defends the cause of God and religion, since the
“Abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic….”
Rabbi Morris J. Raphall
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
Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893)
Main points:
•
The settlement of the Frontier is essential in understanding the
History of America.
•
•
•
•
The expansion of America into the West promoted an independence
from European influence.
•
•
•
“American History has been in a large degree the colonization of the Great West
“The wilderness masters the colonist.”
Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American.”
“In the settlement of America we have to observe how European life entered the
continent, and how America modified and developed that life…”
“…the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from the
influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines.”
The taming of the frontier developed the American character
•
•
“…at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must
accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish…”
“…the men who grew up under these conditions, and the political, economic and
social results of it, is to study the really American part of our history….”
Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893)
•
The westward expansion ensured the success of the United States.
•
•
•
•
•
Settlement of the frontier created individualism and that promoted
democracy.
•
•
•
•
“…legislation which most developed the powers pf national government, and
played the largest part in its activity, was conditioned on the frontier.”
“…frontier promoted the formation of a composite nationality for the American
people…continental immigration flowed across to the free lands….”
“…growth of nationalism and evolution of American political institutions were
dependent on the advance of the frontier….”
“…America has been another name for opportunity…the people…have taken
their tone from the incessant expansion…”
“…the most important effect of the frontier has been in the promotion of
democracy….”
“ …the frontier is productive of individualism.”
“The frontier individualism has from the beginning promoted democracy….”
The Frontier is gone.
•
•
•
“From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound
importance….”
“Movement has been its dominant fact…the American energy will continually
demand a wider field for its exercise.”
“But never again will such gifts of free land offer themselves….And now, four
centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life
under the Constitution, the frontier has gone….”
Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893)
Questions to consider:
•
What role does Turner argue the frontier has played in American history?
•
What role did the cities and industrial development play in Turner’s America?
•
How is frontier defined?
•
Does the end of the frontier mean the end of democracy as well?
•
Now that the American frontier has ended will America find new frontiers? And if so to
what degree?
Historical significance:
Turner’s essay has been called “the single most influential piece of writing in the
history of American history,” a turning point in American historical scholarship,
repudiating the germ theory altogether. The essay became an organizing principle of
the American historical studies. Turner’s influence as a teacher and proponent of a
new and important theory made him one of the most renowned of all American
historians.
Frederick J. Turner's Senior History Seminar, 1893-4
Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life
POINT 1: DO NOT LIVE A LIFE OF IDELNESS; A STRENUOUS
LIFE IS MUCH MORE REWARDING AND NOBLE.
• I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous
life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of
success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who
does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these
wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
• We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies
victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a
friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual
life.
• A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life
which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.
• The man must be glad to do a man's work, to dare and endure and to labor; to keep
himself, and those dependent on him. The woman must be the housewife, the
helpmeet of the homemaker, the wise and fearless mother of many healthy children.
POINT 2: ONLY THROUGH STRIFE AND STRENUOUS AND
DARING EFFORT WILL WE ACHIEVE NATIONAL GREATNESS.
• …it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor,
that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.
Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life
POINT 3: WEAKNESS IS THE GREATEST OF CRIMES. OUR NATION
HAS A RESPONSIBILTY TO BRING THE HALF-CAST NATIONS OF
THE WORLD GOOD GOVERNMENT. IF WE DO THIS WE WILL BE
GREAT, AND IF WE DO NOT WE WILL CEDE THE OPPORTUNITY TO
“BOLDER AND STRONGER PEOPLES.”
• We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease
within our borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond them, sunk in scrambling
commercialism; heedless of higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil and risk, busying ourselves
only with the wants of our bodies for the day, until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of
question, what China has already found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself into
a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations
which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really great people,
we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world.
• The guns that thundered off Manila and Santiago left us echoes of glory, but they also left us a
legacy of duty. If we drove out a mediaeval tyranny only to make room for savage anarchy, we
had better not begun the task at all. It is worse than idle to say that we have no duty to perform,
and can leave to their fates the islands we have conquered. Such a course would be a course of
infamy. It would be followed at once by utter chaos in the wretched islands themselves. Some
stronger, manlier power would have to step in and do the work, and we would have shown
ourselves weaklings, unable to carry to successful completion the labors that great and highspirited nations are eager to undertake.
Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life
POINT 3 (CONTINUED): WEAKNESS IS THE GREATEST OF
CRIMES. OUR NATION HAS A RESPONSIBILTY TO BRING THE HALFCAST NATIONS OF THE WORLD GOOD GOVERNMENT. IF WE DO THIS
WE WILL BE GREAT, AND IF WE DO NOT WE WILL CEDE THE
OPPORTUNITY TO “BOLDER AND STRONGER PEOPLES.”
• The Philippines offer a yet graver problem. Their population includes halfcaste and native Christians, warlike Moslems, and wild pagans. Many of their
people are utterly unfit for self-government and show no signs of becoming fit.
• Resistance [in the Philippines] must be stamped out. The first and allimportant work to be done is to establish the supremacy of our flag. We must
put down armed resistance before we can accomplish anything else, and there
should be no parleying, no faltering, in dealing with our foe. As for those in our
own country who encourage the foe, we can afford contemptuously to disregard
them; but it must be remembered that their utterances are not saved from being
treasonable merely by the fact that they are despicable.
• [We must send out there only good and able men.... [They] must show the
utmost tact and firmness, remembering that, we such people as those with
whom we are to deal, weakness is the greatest of crimes, and that next to
weakness comes lace of consideration for their principles and prejudices.
William Graham Sumner, What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)
Main Points:
1. The State’s role should be limited to protecting the people.
“when it exercises will or adopts a line of action- it is only a little group of men chosen in
a very haphazard way by the majority of us to perform certain services for all of us.”
“the state, instead of offering resources of wisdom, right reason, and pure moral sense
beyond what the average of us posses, generally offers much less of all these things.”
“the state is not even the known and accredited servants of the state, but, as has been
well said, is only some obscure clerk, hidden in the recesses of a Government bureau…”
2. Everyone endures hardships and we cannot blame other for this.
“Certain ills belong to the hardships of human life. They are natural. They are part of
the struggle with Nature for existence. We cannot blame our fellow-men for our share of
these.”
“But God and Nature have ordained the chances and conditions of life on earth once for
all.”
3. There are two reasons why you should not mind other people’s business.
“First, there is the danger that a man may leave his own business unattended to; and
second, there is a danger if an impertinent interference with another’s affairs.”
William Graham Sumner, What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)
Main Points:
4. A society based on contract is best for individualism.
“A society based on contract is a society of free and independent men, who form
ties without favor or obligation, and co-operate without cringing or intrigue.”
“A society based on contract, therefore, gives the utmost room and chance for
individual development, and for all the self-reliance and dignity of a free man.”
Questions:
Is it true that one has grievances as long as he has unsatisfied desires?
If you are someone’s friends, should you interfere in their business?
Historical Significance:
This document made many people think about the differences in social classes
and if that makes a difference in the way they should treat one another.
Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class
(1899)
Veblen was the son of Norwegian immigrants, and he
grew up in rural Minnesota.
He did not learn to speak English until he was a
teenager.
He received a B.A. from Carleton College in 1880 and
a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale in 1884. At Yale, he
developed a friendship with his sociology professor,
William Graham Sumner, and wrote his doctoral thesis
on Immanuel Kant in the area of Moral Philosophy.
In 1882, he started to teach political economy at the
University of Chicago. He became known as a brilliant
and eccentric thinker and an unconventional teacher.
At the University of Chicago he gained a reputation as
an insightful social critic, and it was during his years in
Chicago that he wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class.
He taught political economy and later became editor
of the Journal of Political Thought.
He taught at Stanford from 1906-1909 and at the
University of Missouri from 1911-1918.
In 1919 he became a founding member of the New
School for Social Research in New York.
He died in 1929 of heart disease.
Main Point 1: The leisure class is conservative, finding no
reason to support changes, because they enjoy the status
quo and are little affected by economic pressures.
The exigencies of the struggle for means of life are less
exacting for [the leisure] class than for any other; and as a
consequence of this privilege position we should expect to
find it one of the least responsive of the classes of society
to the demands which the situation makes for a further
growth of institutions and a readjustment to an altered
industrial situation. The leisure class is the conservative
class.
…exigencies do not readily produce in the members of this
class, that degree of uneasiness with the existing order
which alone can lead any body of men to give up views and
methods of life that have become habitual to them. The
office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard
the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent….
Main Point 2: Conservatism is decorous and respectable. Innovation is
vulgar.
•This conservatism of the wealthy class is so obvious a feature that it has
even come to be recognized as a mark of respectability. Since
conservatism is a characteristic of the wealthier and therefore more
reputable portion of the community, it has acquired a certain honorific or
decorative value. It has become prescriptive to such an extent that an
adherence to conservative views is comprised as a matter of course in our
notions of respectability; and it is imperatively incumbent on all who would
lead a blameless life in point of social repute. Conservatism, being an
upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a
lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar.
•…progress is hindered by underfeeding and excessive physical hardship,
no less effectually than by such a luxurious life as will shut out discontent
by cutting off the occasion for it. The abjectly poor, and all those persons
whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance,
are conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking thought
for the day after tomorrow; just as the highly prosperous are conservative
because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as
it stands today.
•From this proposition it follows that the institution of a leisure class acts
to make the lower classes conservative by withdrawing from them as much
as it may of the means of sustenance, and so reducing their consumption,
and consequently their available energy, to such a point as to make them
incapable of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new habits
of thought.
Main Points 3: The example of the leisure class fosters conspicuous
consumption, which diverts resources away from sustenance of the
lower classes.
•The prevalence of conspicuous consumption as one of the main
elements in the standard of decency among all classes is of course
not traceable wholly to the example of the wealthy leisure class, but
the practice and the insistence on it are no doubt strengthened by
the example of the leisure class. The requirements of decency in this
matter are very considerable and very imperative; so that even
among classes whose pecuniary position is sufficiently strong to
admit a consumption of goods considerably in excess of the
subsistence minimum, the disposable surplus left over after the more
imperative physical needs are satisfied is not infrequently diverted to
the purpose of a conspicuous decency, rather than to added physical
comfort and fullness of life. Moreover, such surplus energy as is
available is also likely to be expended in the acquisition of goods for
conspicuous consumption or conspicuous boarding. The result is that
the requirements of pecuniary reputability tend (1) to leave but a
scanty subsistence minimum available for other than conspicuous
consumption, and (2) to absorb any surplus energy which may be
available after the bare physical necessities of life have been
provided for.
Main Point 4: Since the leisure class discourages change, it hinders
evolutionary progress.
…the leisure class, in the nature of things, consistently acts to retard
that adjustment to the environment which is called social advance or
development. The characteristic attitude of the class may be
summed up in the maxim: "Whatever is, is right" whereas the law of
natural selection, as applied to human institutions, gives the axiom:
"Whatever is, is wrong." Not that the institutions of today are wholly
wrong for the purposes of the life of today, but they are, always and
in the nature of things, wrong to some extent. They are the result of
a more or less inadequate adjustment of the methods of living to a
situation which prevailed at some point in the past 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 should be treated as equally as men.
• “We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men and
women are created equal; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
– Men have created a social and political tyranny
over women by not recognizing their civil
liberties.
• “ He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her
confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to
make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.”
– Women should be given equal rights to property
and wages as citizens of the United States of
America.
• “He has made her, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken
from her all rights in property, even to the wages she earns .”
Seneca Falls Convention, Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
Historical Significance and the intended Audience
• The public release of the Declaration of Sentiments triggered talk
among many women. It became interesting to women, as well as
men, that equal rights and women’s suffrage was a big issue.
However, this document would serve as the basis for the nineteenth
amendment to the U.S. Constitution which granted women the right
to vote in 1920.
• The Declaration also caused strong criticism and anger. A quote
from a newspaper reporter stated that “it was the most shocking and
unnatural event ever recorded in the history of womanity” (Oneida
Whig, 1848).
• The intended audience was the United States as a whole and
especially those in government positions
Questions
• Why do you think that there were men who
agreed with and signed the Declaration of
Sentiments?
• Why did Mott and Stanton believe that
women were just as important as men?
• Did the Sentiments have as great of an
impact on Mott and Stanton’s society as
they had hoped for?
Seneca Falls Convention, Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
Horatio Storer, The Origins of the Insanity in Women (1865)
1.Mental disease in women is directly associated with the
female reproductive organs and menstruation.
•
•
“That in women mental disease is often, perhaps generally,
dependent upon functional or organic disturbance of the
reproductive system.”
“That in women the access or exacerbation of mental disease is
usually coincident with the [menstrual] establishment…”
2.Removal of female organs to cure insanity should be as
commonly accepted as an operation to remove something
physical.
•“The necessity of removing a cause to prevent or to cure its effect
is as decided in mental pathology as in physical. We recognize it
everywhere else; we must recognize it in the treatment of insane
women…”
•“…I believe, by the experience of every unbiased observer, we
advance to [ask]…To what extent can the insanity of women be
medically or surgically treated?...”
Horatio Storer, The Origins of the Insanity in Women (1865)
3. Women are so vulnerable to such excessive passions
because they are the weaker sex.
• “The attacks of this (sexual desire) were clearly coincident with
the menstrual period, and so extreme that the patient could with
difficulty restrain herself from soliciting the approach of the other
sex.”
4.
There is possibility of a high success rate.
• “The morbid desires and the disgusting propensity thence
arising ceased…upon freely incising the cervix uteri and dilating
its canal. They have not returned, save one single instance…”
• “[Thus] we have a reasonable hope of success, nearly as great,
perhaps, as in relieving the other reflex disturbances to which the
female is confessedly so prone.”
Questions:
1. If women had held a higher role in society during the 1860s, or
if there had been any female doctors, would such extreme
measures have been taken to cure their insanity?
2. Why do you think sexual desires in men were viewed as
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, Woman and the New Race (1920)
Main Points
• The most important force in the remaking of the world is a free
motherhood.
– “…or she may, by controlling birth, lift motherhood to the plane of a
voluntary, intelligent function, and remake the world. When the world is
thus remade, it will exceed the dream of statesman, reformer and
revolutionist.”
• A woman’s status in society is such, due to an inability to govern her
ability to bear children. Suffrage, and overall equality are
inconsequential compared to her reproductivity.
– “Woman’s acceptance of her inferior status was the more real because
it was unconscious. She had chained herself to her place in society and
the family through the maternal functions of her nature, and only chains
thus strong could have bound her to her lot as a brood animal for the
masculine civilizations of the world.”
Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (1920)
Main Points
•
The woman’s position of
submissive reproduction has lead
to over-population.
– “No period of low wages or of
idleness with their want among
the workers, no peonage or
sweatshop, no child-labor factory,
ever came into being, save from
the same source.”
•
This over-population is the fault of
Women and has unleashed evils
upon society and allowed her to
incur a debt to society.
– “War, famine, poverty and
oppression of the workers will
continue while woman makes life
cheap. They will cease only when
she limits her reproductivity and
human life is no longer a thing to
be wasted.”
Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (1920)
Main Points
• There are two obstacles impeding repayment of this
debt.
– 1. Laws prevent women from obtaining knowledge of her
reproductive nature.
– 2. Ignorance of the extent and effect of her submission has
wrought.
Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (1920)
Main Points
• Woman’s submissive role is due to ignorance of her
reproductive nature.
– “Woman’s passivity under the burden of her disastrous task was
almost altogether that of ignorant resignation. She knew virtually
nothing about her reproductive nature and less about the
consequences of excessive childbearing.”
• For women to obtain true liberty, they must take control
of their ability to bear children. They will obtain this
through birth control. A woman’s freedom is dependent
upon her having control over her body.
Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (1920)
Main Points
• “Birth control is woman’s problem. The quicker she
accepts it as hers and hers alone, the quicker will society
respect motherhood.”
• Once freedom has been obtained, it is a woman’s duty to
infuse the world with her feminine spirit.
– “…[A woman’s mission] is not to create a human
world by the infusion of the feminine element into all
its activities.
IDA B. Wells, A Red Record (1895)
MAIN POINTS
• For more than thirty years Negroes were
brutally murdered without extra legal
proceedings.
•
“During these years more than ten thousand Negroes have
been killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and
legal execution.”
• The government did nothing to stop brutal
lynchings of Negroes.
• “The government which had made the Negro a citizen found itself
unable to protect him. It gave him the right to vote, but denied him
the protection which should have maintained that right.”
IDA B. Wells, A Red Record (1895)
Main Points Continued
• After Negroes were given emancipation, White
women from the north began teaching the negroes
despite allegations by southern white women that
these negroes were violent.
•
“ Before the world adjudges the Negro a moral monster, a vicious assailant
of womanhood and a menace to the sacred precincts of home, the colored
people ask the consideration of the silent record of gratitude, respect,
protection, and devotion of the millions of the race in the South, to the
thousands of northern white women who have served as teachers and
missionaries since the war…”
IDA B. Wells, A Red Record (1895)
Main Points Continued
• The Negroes were helpless in the fight
against the white men.
•
“The white man’s victory soon became complete by
fraud, violence, intimidation, and murder. The franchise
vouchsafed to the Negro grew to be a “barren ideality,”
and regardless of numbers, the colored people found
themselves voiceless in the councils of those whose duty
it was to rule.”
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”