Seminar Notes
ADVANCED PLACEMENT AMERICAN HISTORY
SEMINAR READINGS AND NOTES
2005-2006
Table of Contents
Seminar and Debate ………………………………………………………………………2
Conversation ……………………………………………………… …………………….3
1.1 A Model of Christian Charity …………………………………………………….4
1.2 Common Sense and the Crisis …………………………………………………...8
1.3 The Declaration of Independence ………………………………………………13
1.4 American Political Thought …………………………………………………….15
2.1 Washington’s Farewell Address ………………………………………………..19
2.2 Jefferson’s Inaugural Address …………………………………………………..25
3. The Indian Question …………………………………………………………….28
3.1 A Women’s Place ………………………………………………………………34
2. Civil Disobedience ……………………………………………………………...39
3.3 Walden ………………………………………………………………………….46
4.1 Manifest Destiny ………………………………………………………………..50
4.2 Lincoln’s Inaugural Address ……………………………………………………55
3. All Men Are Created Equal …………………………………………………….60
5.1 The Significance of the Frontier ………………………………………………..67
5.2 Reflections on the American West ……………………………………………..70
5.3 The Gospel of Wealth …………………………………………………………..76
5.4 The Paradox of Poverty ………………………………………………………...81
6.1 Imperialism ……………………………………………………………………..87
6.2 Progressivism …………………………………………………………………...94
7.1 World War I …………………………………………………………………….99
7.2 ee cummings …………………………………………………………………..104
8.1 Roosevelt’s Inaugural Address ………………………………………………..108
8.2 Cannery Row ………………………………………………………………….114
8.3 Hiroshima ……………………………………………………………………...118
1. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address …………………………………………………125
9.2 Vietnam ………………………………………………………………………..129
10.1 Letters from the Birmingham Jail ……………………………………………..136
10.2 Generations ……………………………………………………………………143
APPENDIX A – What is an American? ………………………………………………149
APPENDIX B - Poems of Industrial America ………………………………………...152
APPENDIX C – Immigration …………………………………………………………156
APPENDIX E – Nightmare at Noon ………………………………………………….160
Differences Between Debate and Seminar
DEBATE SEMINAR
Begins with the assumption No assumption of absolute right and
of right and wrong positions; wrong; each participant may have
important to defend the some element of “truth” that
“rightness” of a position. collectively contributes to
everyone’s understanding.
Combative in nature, objective to win. Cooperative in nature, objective to
work together to understand and
explore material.
Listen to find flaws in opponents Listen critically to develop
arguments; focus only on weaknesses understanding and meaning; look
and flaws in opponents position; never for insight in others ideas; examine
acknowledge strengths. both strengths and weaknesses.
“Silence” others with the strength of your Encourage everyone’s participation;
arguments and personality. draw out reluctant participants.
Defend assumptions. Explore assumptions.
Attack others’ ideas; exploit weaknesses Support and build upon others’ ideas; looking for strengths in
others’ ideas can advance your own.
Conceal information which does not fit Explore many different facets of the
your position; ignore ideas which do not material; new ideas and perspectives
support your position. are desirable.
Seeks a conclusion that is exactly the same Seeks to have everyone see things
as your original position. differently than before.
Conversation
This class requires students to discuss ideas formally in
seminars and informally in class discussions and presentations.
One of the advantages of advance classes is having the
opportunity of meaningful interactions with your peers and
teachers. Conversation is a skill, and like any skill, has various
components that need to be practiced.
Understand questions by examining the premises upon which the idea is based.
Empirical questions – issues of fact. These questions are based upon premises that are factual in nature and can be resolved as either right or wrong by examination of the actual facts of the matter.
For example, the following statement is based upon an empirical premise – Capital punishment should exist because it deters crime. Do places without capital punishment have more crime than places that do? Careful scientific research could (theoretical) resolve this question as either true or false.
Value questions – issues of fundamental belief. These questions are based upon premises that are subjective not objective. While value premises can not be proven “right” or “wrong,” they can be examined, questioned, and weighed against other values. For example, the following statement is based upon a value premise – The atomic bomb should not have been dropped on Japan in 1945 because innocent lives were lost. What exactly defines “innocent lives?” Do you accept that as a valid premise? Are there other values of equal or greater importance that could lead someone to another conclusion?
Kinds of Reasoning
- Be aware of your thinking process.
- Deductive – specific to general.
- Inductive – general to specific.
Effective Classroom Discussions
For most of your life you will be expected to articulate your ideas, far more often than you will be expected to write or be tested on your ideas. Debates expect participants to “win,” seminars and discussions are designed to explore and develop ideas.
Some Basic Ground Rules and Suggestions
* Consider class discussions important. * Be prepared to disagree with people
* Prepare for seminars like you would a test. but criticize the idea not the person
* Take notes during discussions and seminars. * Have an open mind, be prepared to
see an idea in a new light.
* Listen to others, ask clarification questions. * Speak loudly and clearly, avoid
* Use peoples names and talk to everyone, not slang and bad grammar.
just the teacher. * Be as interested in what others
* Do not take disagreement personally. have to say as you are in your own
ideas.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
1.1 A Model of Christian Charity John Winthrop
A. Select 2 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Select 4 of the below. Each should be explained and supported with the ideas of the author.
1. What does Winthrop say about the inequality of mankind? What are the consequences?
2. What role do justice and mercy play in society?
3. What is the “double law” and how does it apply to New England?
4. What is the responsibility of the individual to the community? What is the responsibility of the community to God?
5. What is the “covenant?”
6. What does Winthrop mean when he describes the “City on the Hill?”
7. What principle(s) do all three documents have in common?
A Model of Christian Charity John Winthrop 1630
A MODEL HEREOF
God Almighty in His most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection.
THE REASON HEREOF
First, to hold conformity with the rest of His works, being delighted to show forth the glory of His wisdom in the variety and difference of the creatures; and the glory of His power, in ordering all these differences for the preservation and good of the whole; and the glory of His greatness, that as it is the glory of princes to have many officers, so this great King will have many stewards, counting Himself more honored in dispensing His gifts to man by man than if He did it by His own immediate hands.
Secondly, that He might have the more occasion to manifest the work of His Spirit first upon the wicked in moderating and restraining them, so that the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against their superiors and shake off their yoke; secondly in the regenerate, in exercising His graces, in them, as in the great ones, their love, mercy, gentleness, temperance, etc., in the poor and interior sort, their faith, patience, obedience, etc.
Thirdly, that every man might have need of other, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection. From hence it appears plainly that no man is made more honorable than another or more wealthy, etc., out of any particular and singular respect to himself, but for the glory of his creator and the common good of the creature, man.
There are two rules whereby we are to walk one towards another: justice and mercy. These are always distinguished in their act and in their object, yet may they both concur in the same subject in each respect; as sometimes there may be an occasion of showing mercy to a rich man in some sudden danger of distress, and also doing of mere justice to a poor man in regard of some particular contract, etc.
There is likewise a double law by which we are regulated in our conversation one towards another in both the former respects: the law of nature and the law of grace, or the moral law or the law of the Gospel. By the first of these laws man as he was enabled so withal [is] commanded to love his neighbor as himself. Upon this ground stands all the precepts of the moral law which concerns our dealings with men. To apply this to the works of mercy, this law requires two things: first, that every man afford his help to another in every want or distress; secondly, that he performed this out of the same affection which makes him careful of his own goods, according to that of our Savior.
Do good to all, especially to the household of faith: Upon this ground the Israelites were to put a difference between the brethren of such as were strangers though not of Canaanites. Third, the law of nature could give no rules for dealing with enemies, for all are to be considered as friends in the state of innocence, but the Gospel commands love to an enemy.
This law of the Gospel propounds likewise a difference of seasons and occasions. There is a time when a Christian must sell all and give to the poor, as they did in the Apostles’ times. There is a time also when a Christian (though they give not all yet) must give beyond their ability. Likewise community of perils calls for extraordinary liberality, and so doth community in some special service for the Church. Lastly, when there is no other means whereby our Christian brother may be relieved in his distress, we must help him beyond our ability, rather than tempt God in pulling him upon help by miraculous or extraordinary means. This duty of mercy is exercised in the kinds, giving, lending and forgiving.
When God gives a special commission He looks to have it strictly observed in every article. When He gave Saul a commission to destroy Amaleck, He indented with him upon certain articles, and because he failed in one of the least, and that upon a fair pretense, it lost him the kingdom which should have been his reward if he had observed his commission.
Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission, the Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these actions, upon these and those ends, we have hereupon besought Him of favorer and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and scaled our commission, [and] will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fail to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us; be revenged of such a perjured people and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.
Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make other’s conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.
So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “the lord make it like that of NEW ENGLAND.”
For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the months of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us ‘til we be consumed out of the good land whether we are agoing.
We are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in His ways and to keep his commandments, that we may live and be multiplied, and that our Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other gods, our pleasures and profits, and serve them; it is propounded onto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whether we pass over this vast sea to possess it.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
1.2 Common Sense and The Crisis Thomas Paine
A. Answer all of the below questions in paragraph form.
1. Explain the following quotes and put them into context;
a. “Europe and not England is the parent country of America.”
b. “It is not in the power of Great Britain to do... justice.”
c. “In absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king.”
2. Which arguments are idealistic and which are materialistic?
3. Where does Paine show evidence of application of the principals of natural law?
Common Sense Thomas Paine
Volumes have been written on the subject of the struggle between England and America. Men of all ranks have embarked in the controversy, from different motives, and with various designs: but all have been ineffectual, and the period of debate is closed....
I have heard it asserted by some, that as America hath flourished under her former connection with Great Britain, the same connection is necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thriven upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty. But even this is admitting more than is true; for I answer roundly, that America would have flourished as much, and probably much more, had no European power taken any notice of her. The commerce by which she hath enriched herself are the necessaries of life, and will always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.
But she has protected us, say some. That she hath engrossed us is true, and defended the continent at our expense as well as her own is admitted; and she would have defended Turkey from the same motive, viz., for the sake of trade and dominion.
Aias, we have been long led away by ancient prejudices, and made large sacrifices to superstition. We have boasted the protection of Great Britain without considering that her motive was interest, not attachment, and that she did not protect us from our enemies on our account, but from her enemies on her own account, from those who had no quarrel with us on any other account, but who will always be our enemies on the same account. Let Britain waive her pretensions to the continent, or the continent throw off the dependence, and we should be at peace with France and Spain were they at war with Britain....
But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families; wherefore, the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so, and the phrase parent or mother country, hath been enthusiastically adopted by the king and his parasites, with a low, papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted bvers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of a mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still....
I challenge the warmest advocate for reconciliation to show a single advantage that this continent can reap, by being connected with Great Britain. I repeat the challenge, not a single advantage is derived. Our corn will fetch its price in any market in Europe, and our imported goods must be paid for, buy them where we will.
But the injuries and disadvantages we sustain by that connection are without number; and our duty to mankind at large, as well as to ourselves, instructs us to renounce the alliance: because any submission to, or dependence on, Great Britain, tends directly to involve this continent in European wars and quarrels, and sets us at variance with nations who would otherwise seek our friendship, and against whom we have neither anger nor complaint. As Europe is our market for trade, we ought to form no partial connection with any part of it. Tis the true interest of America to steer clear of European contentions, which she never can do while by her dependence on Britain she is made the make-weight in the scale of British politics.
Europe is too thickly planted with kingdoms to be long at peace, and whenever a war breaks out between England and any foreign power, the trade of America goes to ruin, because of her connection with Britain. The next war may not turn out like the last, and should it not, the advocates for reconciliation now will be wishing for separation then, because neutrality in that case would be a safer convoy than a man of war, Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ‘TIS TIME TO PART. Even the distance at which the Almighty hath placed England and America is a strong and natural proof that the authority of the one over the other, was never the design of heaven....
It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of present sorrow; the evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American property is possessed. But let our imaginations transport us for a few moments to Boston; that seat of wretchedness will teach us wisdom, and instruct us forever to renounce a power in whom we can have no trust. The inhabitants of that unfortunate city, who but a few months ago were in ease and affluence, have now no other alternative than to stay and starve, or turn out to beg. Endangered by, the fire of their friends if they continue within the city, and plundered by the soldiery if they leave it, in their present situation they are prisoners without the hope of redemption, and in a general attack for their relief they would be exposed to the fury of both armies....
But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then you are not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then you are unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover; and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant....
Every quiet method for peace hath been ineffectual. Our prayers have been rejected with disdain; and have tended to convince us that nothing flatters vanity or confirms obstinacy in kings more than repeated petitioning- and nothing hath contributed more than that very measure to make the kings of Europe absolute.
To say they will never attempt it again is idle and visionary; we thought so as the repeal of the Stamp Act, yet a year or two undeceived us; as well may we suppose that nations which been once defeated will never renew the quarrel
As to government matters, it is not in the power of Britain to do this continent justice; the business of it will soon be too weighty and intricate to be managed with any tolerable degree of convenience, by a power so distant from us, and so very ignorant of us; for if they cannot conquer us, they cannot govern us. To be always running three or four thousand miles with a tale or a petition, waiting four or five months for an answer, which, when obtained, requires five or six more to explain it in, will in a few years be looked upon as folly and childishness. There was a time when it was proper, and there is a proper time for it to cease.
Small islands not capable of protecting themselves are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet; and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverse the common order of nature, it is evident that they belong to different systems. England to Europe: America to itself...
But where, say some, is the king of America? I’ll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Great Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING For as in absolute governments the king is law, so hi free countries the law ought to BE king, and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.
A government of our own is our natural right, and when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced that it IS infinitely wiser and safer to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance....
Ye that tell us of harmony and reconciliation, can ye restore to us the time that Is passed? Can ye give to prostitution its former innocence? Neither can ye reconcile Britain and America. The last cord now is broken; the people of England are presenting addresses against us. There are injuries which nature cannot forgive; she would cease to be nature if she did. As well can the lover forgive the ravisher of his mistress, as the continent forgive the murders of Britain. The Almighty hath implanted in us these unextinguishable feelings for good and wise purposes. They are the guardians of his image in our hearts. They distinguish us from the herd of common animals. The social compact would dissolve, and justice be extirpated from the earth, or have only a casual existence, were we callous to the touches of affection. The robber and the murderer would often escape unpunished, did not the injuries which our tempers sustain, provoke us into justice.
0 ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. 0 receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; ‘Us dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.
The Crisis Thomas Paine 1776
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; ‘Us dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
1.3 The Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson
A. Evaluate and react to the following quotes in paragraph form.
1. “All men are created equal.”
2. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
3. “. . . truths to be self evident.”
B. Answer the below questions in paragraph form.
1. According to Jefferson, what are the conditions which justify revolution?
2. What is the role of God in society?
The Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson 1776
In Congress, July 4, 1776, THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved;.... And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
1.4 American Political Thought Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Rush
A. Evaluate the following quotes:
1. “The temple of tyranny has two doors.”
2. “A little rebellion is a good thing.”
3. “A government supposes control.”
4. “Resistance is treason against society.”
5. “Wolves and sheep.”
B. Answer the below question in paragraph form.
1. What are the most noticeable differences between the three writers?
Early American Political Thought Thomas Jefferson in Paris to Edward Camngton January 16,1787
The tumults in America expected would have produced in Europe an unfavorable opinion of our political state. But it has not. On the contrary, the small effect of these tumults seems to have given more confidence in the firmness of our governments. The interposition of, the people themselves on the side of government has had a great effect on the opinion here. I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves.
The people are the only censors of their governors; and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers, and be capable of reading them.
I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretense of governing, they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate.
This is a true picture of Europe. Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their intention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves, it seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Thomas Jefferson in Paris to James Madison, January 30, 1787
...I am impatient to learn your sentiments on the late troubles in the Eastern states. So far as I have yet seen, they do not appear to threaten serious consequences. Those states have suffered by the stoppage of the channels of their commerce, which have not yet found other issues. This must render money scarce and make the people uneasy. This uneasiness has produced acts absolutely unjustifiable; but I hope they will provoke no severities from their governments. A consciousness of those in power that their administration of the public affairs has been honest may, perhaps, produce too great a degree of indignation; and those characters, wherein fear predominates over hope, may apprehend too much from these instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience.
Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently distinguishable— (1) without government, as among our Indians; (2) under governments, wherein the will of everyone has a just influence, as is the case in England, in a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one; (3) under governments of force, as is the case in all other monarchies, and in most of the other republics.
To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the first condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has its evils, too, the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. It prevents the degeneracy of government and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs.
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government
Alexander Hamilton: Liberty and Anarchy, 1794
If it were to be asked -- “What is the most sacred duty, and the greatest source of security in a republic?” - the answer would be - “An inviolable respect for the Constitution and laws, the first growing out of the last.” It is by this, in a great degree, that the rich and the powerful are to be restrained from enterprises against the common liberty - operated upon by the influence of a general sentiment, by their interest in the principle, and by the obstacles which the habit it produces erects against innovation and encroachment. It is by this in a still greater degree that intriguers, and demagogues are prevented from climbing on the shoulders of faction to the tempting seats of usurpation and tyranny.
Were it not that it might require too long a discussion, it would not be difficult to demonstrate that a large and well organized republic can scarcely lose its liberty from any other cause than that of anarchy, to which a contempt of the laws is the high road.
But without entering into so wide a field, it is sufficient to present to your view a more simple and a more obvious truth, which is this; that a sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy, of a free government.
Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions - a government of force, and a government of laws. The first is the definition of despotism; the last, of liberty. But how can a government of laws exist when the laws are disrespected and disobeyed? Government supposes control. It is that power by which individuals in society are kept from doing injury to each other, and are brought to cooperate to a common end. The instruments by which it must act are either the authority of the laws or force. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted, and where this be comes the ordinary instrument of government, there is an end to liberty!
Those, therefore, who preach doctrines, or set examples which undermine or subvert the authority of the laws, lead us from freedom to slavery they incapacitate us for a government of laws, and, consequently, prepare the way for one of force, for mankind must have government of one sort or another. There are, indeed, great and urgent cases where the bounds of the Constitution are manifestly transgressed, or its constitutional authorities so exerted as to produce unequivocal oppression on the community and to render resistance justifiable. But such cases can give no color to the resistance by a comparatively inconsiderable part of a community, of constitutional laws distinguished by no extraordinary features of rigor or oppression, and acquiesced in by the body of the community.
Such a resistance is treason against society, against liberty, against everything that ought to be dear to a free, enlightened, and prudent people. To tolerate it were to abandon your most precious interests. Not to subdue it were to tolerate it.
Benjamin Rush, 1787
In our opposition to monarchy, we forgot that the temple of tyranny has two doors. We bolted one of them by proper restraints; but we left the other open, by neglecting to guard against the effects of our own ignorance and licentiousness...
The custom of turning out of power or office as soon as they are qualified for it has been found to be absurd in practice. Is it virtuous to dismiss a general, a physician, or even a domestic as soon as they have acquired knowledge sufficient to be useful to us for the sake of increasing the number of able generals, skillful physicians, and faithful servants? We do not (believe) Government is a science, and can never be perfect in America until we encourage men to devote not only three years but their whole lives to it. I believe the principal reason why so many men of abilities object to serving in Congress is owing to their not thinking it worth while to spend three years in acquiring a profession which their country immediately afterwards forbids them to follow.
There are two errors or prejudices on the subject of government in America which lead to the most dangerous consequences. It is often said that the sovereign and all other power is seated in the people. This idea is unhappily expressed. It should be, all power is derived from the people, they possess it only on the days of their elections. After this, it is the property of their rulers; nor can they exercise or resume it unless it be abused. It is of importance to circulate this idea, as it leads to order and good government.
The people of America have mistaken the meaning of the word sovereignty; hence each state pretends to be sovereign. In Europe, it is applied only to those states which possess the power of making war and peace, of forming treaties and the like. As this power belongs only to Congress, they are the only sovereign power in the United Stales.
We commit a similar mistake in our ideas of the word independent No individual state, as such, has any claim to independence. She is independent only in a union with her sister states in congress.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
2.1 Washington’s Farewell Address George Washington
A. Select 2 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Answer the below questions in short answer form.
1. According to Washington, what...
a. makes a strong country?
b. creates national unity?
c. is the relationship between religion, morality, and government?
C. Answer the below question in paragraph form.
1. What is the proper relationship between the United States and foreign nations?
2. Contrast Washington’s ideas to any previous document.
Farewell Address George Washington 1796
Friends and Fellow Citizens: The period for a new election of a citizen, to administer the executive government of the United States, being not far distant, and the time actually arrived, when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.
I am persuaded, whatever partiality may be retained for my services, that, in the present circumstances of our country, you will not disapprove my determination to retire. I have, with good intentions, contributed toward the organization and administration of the Government, the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. The increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. Satisfied that if any circumstances have given peculiar value to my services, they were temporary, I have the consolation to believe, that while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.
Here, perhaps, I ought to stop. But a solicitude for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger, natural to that solicitude urge me on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments; which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive as his counsel...
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home; your peace abroad; of your safety of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee, that from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual and immoveable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.
For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of ‘American’, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together. The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint councils, and joint efforts; of common dangers, sufferings and successes.
But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole. While then every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries, not lied together by the same government; which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments and intrigues would stimulate and imbitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear you to the preservation of the other.
Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. Ills well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.
In contemplating the causes which may disturb our union, it occurs as a matter of serious concern, that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations: Northern and Southern; Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views.
To the efficacy and permanency of your union, a Government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances however strict between the parts can be an adequate substitute. They must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a Constitution of Government, better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This Government, the offspring of your own choice uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the constitution which at any time exists till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.
Toward the preservation of your government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts... In all the changes to which you may be invited remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country... and remember especially that for the efficient management of your common interests in a country so extensive as ours a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.
I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind, It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another - foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion.
There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose; and there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.
It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those intrusted with its administration to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness - these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric? Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.
Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct. And, can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that in the course of time and things the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantage which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue?
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial, else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.
Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial lies in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions other friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world... Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.
Though in reviewing the incidents of my Administration I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence, and that, after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest
Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and actuated by that fervent love toward it which is so natural to a man who views in it the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realize without alloy the sweet enjoyment of partaking in the midst of my fellow-citizens the benign influence of good laws under a free government - the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors and dangers.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
2.2 1st Inaugural Address Thomas Jefferson
A. Evaluate the following quotes and write a short personal reaction to
each.
1. “ . . . that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”
2. “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”
3. “Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?”
4. “ . . . a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another . . . “
5. “the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies . . . .”
First Inaugural Address Thomas Jefferson, Wednesday, March 4, 1801
Friends and Fellow-Citizens:
CALLED upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye—when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue, and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair did not the presence of many whom I here see remind me that in the other high authorities provided by our Constitution I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.
During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.
I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country's love and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.
Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make. And may that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
2.3 The Indian Question Andrew Jackson, Chief Seattle
A. Evaluate the following quotes in short answer form
1. “Day and night cannot dwell together.”
2. “Philanthropy could not wish to see the continent restored.”
3. “[the white man] . . . cannot be exempt from the common destiny.”
4. “The white man will never be alone.”
B. Answer the below questions in paragraph form.
1. What ideas do both men have in common?
2. What are their most significant differences?
Andrew Jackson On Indian Removal, December 6th, 1830
It gives me great pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of the government steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation. Two important i tribes have accepted the provision made for their removal at the last session of Congress, and it is believed that their example will induce the remaining tribes also to seek the same obvious advantages.
The consequences of a speedy removal will be important to the United Stales, to individual states, and to the Indians themselves. The pecuniary advantages which it promises to the government are the least of it’s recommendations. It puts an end to all possible danger of collision between the authorities of the general and state governments on account of the Indians. It will place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters. By opening the whole territory between Tennessee on the north and Louisiana on the south to the settlement of the whites it will incalculably strengthen the southwestern frontier and render the adjacent states strong enough to repel future invasions without remote aid. It, will relieve the whole state of Mississippi and the western part of Alabama of Indian occupancy, and enable those states to I advance rapidly in population, wealth, and, power.
It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the states; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of government and through the influence good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, Christian community. These consequences, some of them so certain and the rest so probable, make the complete execution of the plan sanctioned by Congress object of much solicitude.
Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would I go further in attempting to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous People. I have endeavored to impress upon them my own solemn convictions of the duties and powers of the general government in relation to the state authorities. For the justice of the laws passed by the states within the scope of their reserved powers they are not responsible to this government. As individuals we may entertain and express our opinions of their acts, but as a government we have as little right to control them as we have to prescribe laws for other nations.
With a full understanding of the subject, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw tribes have with great unanimity determined to avail themselves of the liberal offers presented by the act of Congress, and have agreed to remove beyond the Mississippi River. Treaties have been made with them, which in due season will be submitted for consideration. In negotiating these treaties, they were made to understand their true condition, and they have preferred maintaining their independence in the Western forests to submitting to the laws of the states in which they now reside. These treaties, being probably the last which will ever be made with them, are characterized by great liberality on the part of the government. They give the Indians a liberal suite in consideration of their removal, and comfortable subsistence on their arrival at their new homes. If it be their real interest to maintain a separate existence, they will there be at liberty to do so without the inconveniences and vexatious to which they would unavoidably have been subject in Alabama and Mississippi.
Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections, But true Philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another. In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes. Nor is there anything in this which, upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race, is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12 million happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?
Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves of their fathers; but what do they more than our ancestors did or than our children are now doing? To better their condition in an unknown land our forefathers left all that was dear in earthly objects. Our children by thousands yearly leave the land of their birth to seek new homes in distant regions. Does humanity, weep at these painful separations from everything animate and inanimate, with which the young heart has become entwined? Far from
it. It is rather a source of joy that our country affords scope where our young population may range unconstrained in body or in mind, developing the power and faculties of man in their highest perfection. These remove hundreds and almost thousands of miles at their I own expense, purchase the lands they occupy, and support themselves at their new homes from the moment of their arrival. Can it be cruel in this government when, by events which it cannot control, the Indian is made discontented in his ancient home to purchase his lands, to give him a new and extensive territory, to pay the expense of his removal, and support him a year in his new abode? How many thousands of our own people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on such conditions? If the offers made to the Indians were extended to them, they would be hailed with gratitude and joy.
And is it supposed that the wandering savage has a stronger attachment to his home than the settled, civilized Christian? Is it more afflicting to him to leave the graves of his fathers than it is to our brothers and children? Rightly considered, the policy of the general government toward the red man is not only liberal but generous. He is unwilling to submit to the laws of the states and mingle with their population. To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the general government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement.
In the consummation of a policy originating at an early period, and steadily pursued by every administration within the present century — so just to the states and so generous to the Indians - the executive feels it has a right to expect the cooperation of Congress and of all good and disinterested men. The states, moreover, have a right to demand it. It was substantially a part of the compact which made them members of our Confederacy. With Georgia there is an express contract; with the new states an implied one of equal obligation. Why, in authorizing Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, and Alabama to form constitutions and become separate states, did Congress include within their limits extensive tracts of Indian lands, and, in some instances, powerful Indian tribes? Was it not understood by both parties that the power of the states was to be coextensive with their limits, and that, with all convenient dispatch, the general government should extinguish the Indian title and remove every obstruction to the complete jurisdiction of the state governments over the soil? Probably not one of those states would have accepted a separate existence -certainly it would never have been granted by Congress - had it been understood that they were to be confined forever to those small portions of their nominal territory the Indian title to which had at the time been extinguished.
It is, therefore, a duty which this government owes to the new states to extinguish as soon as possible the Indian title to all lands which Congress themselves have included within their limits. The Indians may leave the state or not as they choose. The purchase of their lands does not alter in the least their personal relations with the state government No act of general government has ever been deemed necessary to give the states jurisdiction over be persons of the Indians. That they possess by virtue of their sovereign power within their own limits in as full a manner before as after the purchase of the Indian lands; nor can this government add to or diminish it
May we not hope, therefore, that all good citizens, and none more zealously than those who think the Indians oppressed by subjection to the laws of the states, will unite in attempting to open the eyes of those children of the forest to their true condition, and by a speedy removal to relieve them from all the evils, real or imaginary, present or prospective, with which they may be supposed to be threatened.
Chief Seattle “The White Man Will Never Be Alone” 1853
Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever Seattle says the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. The White Chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. The great - and I presume - good White Chief sends us word that he wishes to buy our lands but is willing to allow us enough to live comfortably. This indeed appears just, even generous, for the Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be wise also, as We are no longer in need of an extensive country.
There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but, a mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it as we too may have been somewhat to blame.
Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun.
However, your proposition seems fair and I think that my people will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them. Then we will dwell in peace, for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking to my people out of dense darkness.
It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many. The Indians’ night promises to be dark. Not a single star of hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man’s trail, and wherever he goes he will hear the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter.
A few more moons. A few more winters - and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people - once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the, White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend with friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.
We will ponder your proposition and when we decide will let you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends and children. Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as they swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than to yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy-hearted maidens, and even our little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
3.1 A Women’s Place
Abigail Adams, Seneca Falls Declaration, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
A. Summarize Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s central thesis.
B. In paragraph form, explain in context the following quotes.
1. “Men’s love and sympathy enter only in the sunshine of our lives.~~
2. “They must make the voyage of life alone.”
3. “Men of all ages abhor those customs.”
C. Answer the below questions in paragraph form.
1. What does Stanton mean by the phrase “solitude of self’ and “selfsovereignty?”
2. What is the relationship between women’s rights and American values?
A Woman’s Place
“Remember The Ladies” Abigail Adams To John Adams, 31 March 1776
I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And by the way, in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of master for the more lender and endearing one of friend. Why then not put it out of the power of the vicious and the lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity? Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your sex. Regard us then as beings placed by providence under your protection, and in imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness.
Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course.
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 unalienable rights.… Such has been the patient suffering 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.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To provide this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her unalienable right to the elective franchise...
He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law civilly dead...
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in cases of separation, to whom guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women - the law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands…
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty renumeration...
He has taken from her all rights of property, even to the wage she earns...
He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education - all colleges being closed against her...
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...
The Solitude of Self Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1892
The point I wish plainly, to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul; our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment; our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe, with her woman, Friday, on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness.
Secondly, if we consider her as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same rights as all other members, according to the fundamental principles of our Government.
Thirdly, viewed as a woman, an equal factor in civilization, her rights and duties are still the same—individual happiness and development
Fourthly, it is only the incidental relations of life, such as mother, wife, sister, daughter, which may involve some special duties and training....
The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, her forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition: from all the crippling influences of fear - is the solitude an personal responsibility - of her own individual life.
The strongest mason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor - a place in the trades and professions where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual she must rely on herself. No mailer how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency, they must know something of the laws of navigation. To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer, with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to watch the winds and waves, and know when to take in the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all. It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman; nature, having endowed them equally leaves them to their own skill and judgment in the hour of danger, and, if not equal to the occasion, alike they perish.
To appreciate the importance of fitting every human soul for independent action, think for a moment of the immeasurable solitude of self. We come into the world alone, unlike all who have gone before us, we leave it alone, under circumstances peculiar to ourselves. No mortal ever has been, no mortal ever will be like the soul just launched on the sea of life. There can never again be just such a combination of prenatal influences; never again just such environments as make up the infancy, youth and manhood of this one. Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another. No one has ever found two blades of ribbon grass alike, and no one will ever find two human beings alike. Seeing, then, that what must be the infinite diversity in human character, we can in a measure appreciate the loss to a nation when any class of the people is uneducated and unrepresented in the government.
We ask for the complete development of every individual, first, for his own benefit and happiness. In fitting out an army, we give each soldier his own knapsack-, arms, powder, his blanket, cup, knife, fork and spoon. We provide alike for all their individual necessities then each man bears his own burden.
Again, we ask complete individual development for the general good: for the consensus of the competent on the whole round of human interests, on all questions of national life; and here each man must bear his share of the general burden. It is sad to see how soon friendless children are left to bear their own burdens, before they can analyze their feelings; before then can even tell their joys and sorrows, they are thrown on their own resources. The great lesson that nature seems to teach us at all ages is self-dependence, self-protection, self-support...
We ask no sympathy from others in the anxiety and agony of a broken friendship or shattered love. When death sunders our nearest ties, alone we sit in the shadow of our affliction. Alike amid the greatest triumphs and darkest tragedies of life, we walk alone. On the divine heights of human attainment, eulogized and worshipped as a hero or saint, we stand alone. In ignorance poverty and vice, as a pauper or criminal, alone we starve or steal: alone we suffer the sneer and rebuffs of our fellows; alone we are hunted and hounded through dark courts and alleys, in by-ways and high-ways; alone we stand in the judgment seat; alone in the prison cell we lament our crimes and misfortunes; alone we expiate them on the gallows. In hours like these we realize the awful solitude of individual life, its pains, its penalties, its responsibilities, hours in which the youngest and most helpless are thrown on their own resources for guidance and consolation. Seeing, then, that life must ever be a match and a battle that each soldier must be equipped for his own protection, it is the height of cruelty to rob the individual of a single natural right.
To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of poverty, is like cutting off the hands. To refuse political equality is to rob the ostracized of all self-respect of credit in the marketplace; of recompense in the world of work, of voice in choosing those who make and administer the law, a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decide their punishment. [Think of] ... woman’s position! Robbed of her natural rights, handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to fight her own battles, and in the emergences of life to fall back on herself for protection....
The young wife and mother, at the head some establishment, with a kind husband to shield her from the adverse winds of life, with wealth, fortune and position, has a certain harbor of safety, secure against the ordinary ills life. But to manage a household, have a desirable influence in society, keep her friends and the affections of her husband, train her children and servants well, she must have rare common sense, wisdom, diplomacy, and a knowledge of human nature. To do all this, she needs the cardinal virtues and the strong points of character that the most successful statesman possesses. An uneducated woman trained to dependence, with no resources in herself, must make a failure of any position in life. But society says women do not need a knowledge of the world, the liberal training that experience in public life must give, all the advantages of collegiate education; but when for the lack of all this, the woman’s happiness is wrecked, alone she bears her humiliation; and the solitude of the weak and ignorant is indeed pitiable. In the wild chase for the prizes of life, they are ground to powder.
In age, when the pleasures of youth are passed, children grown up, married and gone, the hurry and bustle of life in a measure over, when the hands are weary of active service, when the old arm chair and the fireside are the chosen resorts, then men and women all must fall back on their own resources. If they cannot find companionship in books, if they have no interest in the vital questions of the hour, no interest in watching the consummation of reforms with which they might have been identified, they soon pass into their dotage. The more fully the faculties of the mind are developed and kept in use, the longer the period of vigor and active interests in all around us continues. If, from a life-long participation in public affairs, a woman feels responsible for the laws regulating our system of education, the discipline of our jails and prisons, the sanitary condition of our private homes, public building and thoroughfares, an interest in commerce, finance, our foreign relations, in any or all these questions, her solitude will at least be respectable, and she will not be driven to gossip or scandal for entertainment
The chief reason for opening to every soul the doors to the whole round of human duties and pleasures is the individual development thus attained, the resources thus provided under all circumstances to mitigate the solitude that at times must come to everyone....
Inasmuch, then, as woman shares equally the joys and sorrows of time and eternity, is it not the height of presumption in man to propose to represent her at the ballot box and the throne of grace, to do her voting in the state, her praying in the church, and to assume the position of high priest at the family altar?
Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded - a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position. Conceding, then, that the responsibilities of life rest equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity. The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce storms of life is the sheerest mockery for they beat on her from every point of the compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, and to conquer. Such are the facts in human experience, the responsibilities of individual sovereignty. Rich and poor, intelligent and ignorant, wise and foolish, virtuous and vicious, man and woman; it is ever the same, each soul must depend wholly on itself.
Whatever the theories may be of woman’s dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life, he cannot bear her burdens. Alone she goes to the gates of death to give life to every man that is born into the world, no one can share her fears, no one can mitigate her pangs: and if her sorrow is greater than she can bear, alone she passes beyond the gates into the vast unknown....
So it ever must be in the conflicting scenes of life, in the long, weary march, each one walks alone. We may have many friends, love, kindness, sympathy and charity, to smooth our pathway in everyday life, but in the tragedies and triumphs of human experience, each mortal stands alone....
Women are already the equals of men in the whole realm of thought, in art, science, literature and government.... The poetry and novels of the century are theirs, and they have touched the keynote of reform, in religion, politics and social life. They fill the editor’s and professors chair, plead at the bar of justice, walk the wards of the hospital, speak from the pulpit and the platform. Such is the type of womanhood that an enlightened public sentiment welcomes today, and such the triumph of the facts of life over the false theories of the past.
Is it, then, consistent to hold the developed woman of this day within the same narrow political limits as the dame with the spinning wheel and knitting needles occupied in the past? No, no! Machinery has taken the labors of woman as well as man on its tireless shoulders; the loom and the spinning wheel are but dreams of the past; the pen, the brush, the easel, the chisel, have taken their places, while the hopes and ambitions of women are essentially changed.
We see reason sufficient in the outer conditions of human beings for individual liberty and development, but when we consider the self-dependence of every human soul, we see the need of courage, judgment and the exercise of every faculty of mind and body, strengthened and developed by use, in woman as well as man.
Whatever may be said of man’s protecting power in ordinary conditions, amid all the terrible disasters by land and sea, in the supreme moments of danger, alone woman must ever meet the horrors of the situation. The Angel of Death even makes no royal pathway for her. Man’s love and sympathy enter only into the sunshine of our lives. In that solemn solitude of self, that links us with the immeasurable and the eternal, each soul lives alone forever....
And yet, there is a solitude which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being which we call our-self, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced. It is more hidden than the caves of the gnome; the sacred adytum of the oracle; the hidden chamber of Elysian mystery, for to it only, omniscience is permitted to enter.
Such is individual life. Who, I ask you, can take, dare take on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
3.2 Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau
A. Select 6 quotes drawn from Civil Disobedience and evaluate their significance to American society.
B. Select 3 of the quotes you have chosen and evaluate them from a contemporary view.
Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau
I heartily accept the motto- “that government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,-”That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government The standing army is only an arm of the standing government The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally, liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.
This American government, what is it but a tradition ?. . . It does not settle the West. It does not educate.
The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.
But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no—government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest.
But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?-in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right...
How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think in the Revolution of ‘75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them; all machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized. I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subject to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact, that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army....
Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless. We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free—trader and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advice from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both.
The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow,- one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance....
As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man’s life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to life, but to live in i~ be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the governor or the legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death which convulse the body.
Ido not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and 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....
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons.., the only house in a slave state in which a free man can abide with honor.
If any think- that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.
This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, But what shall I do? my answer is, if you really wish to do anything, resign our office. When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. 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. I see this blood flowing now....
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder: for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys. if they cannot come at some person against whom the have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.
Thus the State never intentionally confront a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses, It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I.. .When I meet a government which says to me, “Your money or your life.”, why should I be in haste to give it my money? It may, be in a great strait, and not know what to do: I cannot help that... I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society... perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow, and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man....
I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed I have reason to suspect myself on this head: and
each year, as the lax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and stale governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for conformity... Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is very good: the law and the courts are very respectable even this State and this American government are, in many respects, very admirable and rare things, to be thankful for, such as a great many have described them; but seen from a point of view a little higher, they are what I have described them: seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of at all?
However, the government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under a government, even in this world. If a man is thought free, fancy-free, imagination-free, that which is not never for a long time appearing to be to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him....
The authority of government.., must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. 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. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? 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 imagining a State at last 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 fellowmen. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered 1110 drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
3.3 Walden Henry David Thoreau
A. Select 6 quotes drawn from Walden and evaluate their significance to American society.
B. Select 3 of the quotes you have chosen and evaluate them from a contemporary view.
Walden Henry David Thoreau
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new... Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost
One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by Me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my mentors said nothing about...
When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defense against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them.
To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a Mountain which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a traveling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere....
I went to the woods because I wished to live separately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out alt the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that ii is the chief end of man here to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.
An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and
-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and be must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.
The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain....If we go to tinkering with our lives to improve them, who will build the railroads? And if the railroads are not built how are we to get to heaven in season?... We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers [ties] are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them.
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow. As for work we haven’t any of any consequence. Hardly a man takes a half-hours nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, ‘What’s the news? as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half—hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night’s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. ‘Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe,-and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River-, never dreaming the while that be lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation... Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner... If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy an religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality and say, This is, and no mistake.... Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold it the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sand bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hand and feet I feel all my best faculties concentrate in it.
My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors judge; and here I will begin to mine.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
4.1 Manifest Destiny John O’ Sullivan, William H. Channing
A. Examine O’Sullivan’s position concerning each of the following topics. Use at least one quote to illustrate each.
1. Religion
2. Economics
3. Race
4. Progress
B. Answer the below questions in paragraph form.
1. How does the slavery issue influence each argument?
2. What aspects of each argument are prophetic?
Our Manifest Destiny John O’Sullivan, 1845
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 connection with this question, even though it may perhaps be required of us as a necessary condition of the freedom of our institutions, that we must live on forever in a state of unpausing struggle and excitement upon some subject of party division or other. But, in regard to Texas, enough has now been given to party. 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.
Texas is now ours. Already, before the words are written, her convention has undoubtedly ratified the acceptance by her congress, of our proffered invitation into Union; and made the requisite changes in her already republican form of constitution to adapt it to its future federal relations. Her star and her stripe may already be said to have taken their place in the glorious blazon of our common nationality; and the sweep of our eagle’s wing already includes within its circuit the wide extent of her fair and fertile land.
She is no longer to us a mere geographical space - a certain combination of coast plain, mountain, valley, forest, and stream. She is no longer to us a mere country on the map. She comes within the dear and sacred designation of our country; no longer a pays [country], she is a part of La patrie; and that which is at once a sentiment and a virtue, patriotism, already begins, to thrill for her too within the national heart.
Why, were other reasoning wanting, in favor of now elevating this question of the reception of Texas into the Union, out of the lower region of our past party dissensions to its proper level of a high and broad nationality, it surely is to be found, found abundantly, in the manner in which other nations have undertaken to intrude themselves into it, between us and the proper parties to the case, in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions. This we have seen done by England, our old rival and enemy; and by France, strangely coupled with her against us, under the influence of the Anglicism strongly tinging the policy of her present prime minister, Guizot.
The independence of Texas was complete and absolute. It was an independence, not only in fact, but of right. No obligation of duty toward Mexico tended in the least degree to restrain our right to effect the desired recovery of the fair province once our own- whatever motives of policy might have prompted a more deferential consideration of her feelings and her pride, as involved in the question. 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; accompanied with such guaranties of state independence, and the maintenance of a federal system analogous to our own, as constituted a compact fully justifying the strongest measures of redress on the part of those afterward deceived in this guaranty, and sought to be enslaved under the yoke imposed by its violation.
She was released, rightfully and absolutely released, from all Mexican allegiance, or duty of cohesion to the Mexican political body, by the acts and fault of Mexico herself, and Mexico alone. There never was a clearer case. It was not revolution; it was resistance to revolution: and resistance under such circumstances as left independence the necessary resulting state, caused by the abandonment of those with whom her former federal association had existed. What then can be more preposterous than all this clamor by Mexico and the Mexican interest, against annexation, as a violation of any rights of hers, any duties of ours? ...
Nor is there any just foundation for the charge that annexation is a great pro-slavery measure - calculated to increase and perpetuate that institution. Slavery had nothing to do with it. Opinions were and are greatly divided, both at the North and South, as to the influence to be exerted by it on slavery and the slave states. That it will tend to facilitate and hasten the disappearance of slavery from all the northern tier of the present slave states, cannot surely admit of serious question. The greater value in Texas of the slave labor now employed in these states, must soon produce the effect of draining off that labor southwardly, by the same unvarying law that bids water descend the slope that invites it.
Every new slave state in Texas will make at least one free state from among those in which that institution now exists - to say nothing of those portions of Texas on which slavery cannot spring and grow - to say nothing of the far more rapid growth of new states in the free West and Northwest, as these fine regions are overspread by the emigration fast flowing over them from Europe, as well as from the Northern and Eastern states of the Union as it exists. On the other hand, it is undeniably much gained for the cause of the eventual voluntary abolition of slavery, that it should have been thus drained off toward the only outlet which appeared to furnish much probability of the ultimate disappearance of the Negro race from our borders.
The Spanish-Indian-American populations of Mexico, Central America, and South America, afford the only receptacle capable of absorbing that race whenever we shall be prepared to slough it off - to emancipate it from slavery, and (simultaneously necessary) to remove it from the midst of our own. Themselves already of mixed and confused blood, and free from the “prejudices which among us so insuperably forbid the social amalgamation which can alone elevate the Negro race out of a virtually servile degradation: even though legally free the regions occupied by those populations must strongly attract the black race in that direction; and as soon as that destined hour of emancipation shall arrive, will relieve the question of one of its worst difficulties, if not absolutely the greatest
California will, probably, next fall away front the loose adhesion which, in such a country as Mexico, holds a remote province in a slight equivocal kind of dependence on the metropolis. Imbecile and distracted, Mexico never can exert any real government authority over such a country. The importance of the one and the distance of the other, must make the relation one of virtual independence; unless by stunting the province, of all natural growth, and forbidding that immigration which can alone develop its capabilities and fulfill the purposes of its creation, tyranny may retain a military dominion, which is no government in the legitimate sense of the term.
In the case of California this is now impossible. The Anglo-Saxon fool is already on its borders. Already the advance guard of the irresistible army of Anglo-Saxon emigration has begun to pour down upon it, armed with the plough and the rifle, and marking its trail with schools and colleges, courts and representative halls, mills and meetinghouses. A population will soon be in actual occupation of California, over which it will be idle for Mexico to dream of dominion. They will necessarily become independent All this without agency of our government, without responsibility of our people - in the natural flow of events, the spontaneous working of principles, and the adaptation of the tendencies and wants of the human race to the elemental circumstances in the midst of which they find themselves placed.
And they will have a right to independence - to self-government - to the possession of the homes conquered from the Wilderness by their own labors and dangers, sufferings and sacrifice, - a better and a truer right than the artificial title of sovereignty in Mexico, a thousand miles distant, inheriting from Spain a title good only against those who have none better. Their right to independence will be the natural right of self-government belonging to any community strong enough to maintain it — distinct in position, origin and character, and free from any mutual obligations of membership of a common political body, binding it to others by the duty of loyalty and compact of public faith. This will be their title to independence; and by this title, there can be no doubt that the population now fast streaming down upon California will both assert and maintain that independence.
Whether they will then attach themselves to our Union or riot, is not to he predicted with any certainty. Unless the projected railroad across the continent to the Pacific be carried into effect, perhaps they may not, though even in that case, the day is not distant when the empires of the Atlantic and Pacific would again flow together into one, as soon as their inland border should approach each other. But that great work, colossal as appears the plan on its first suggestion, cannot remain long unbuilt.
Its necessity for this very purpose of binding and holding together in its iron clasp our fast-settling Pacific region with that of the Mississippi Valley - the natural facility of the route - the ease with which any amount of labor for the construction can he drawn in from the overcrowded populations of Europe, to be paid in the lands made valuable by the progress of the work itself - and its immense utility to the commerce of the world with the whole eastern coast of Asia, alone almost sufficient for the support of such , road — these considerations give assurance that the day cannot be distant which shall witness the conveyance of the representatives from Oregon and California to Washington within less time than a few years go was devoted to a similar journey by those from Ohio; while the magnetic telegraph will enable the editors of the San Francisco Union, the Astoria Evening Post, or the Nootka Morning News, to set up in type the first half of the President’s inaugural before the echoes of the latter half shall have died away beneath the lofty porch of the Capitol, as spoken from his lips.
Away, then, with all idle French talk of balances of power on the American Continent There is no growth in Spanish America! Whatever progress of population there may be in the British Canadas, is only for their own early severance of their present colonial relation to the little island 3,000 miles across the Atlantic; soon to be followed by annexation, and destined to swell the still accumulating momentum of our progress. And whosoever may hold the balance though they should cast into the opposite scale all the bayonets and cannon, not only of France and England, but of Europe entire, how would it kick the beam against the simple, solid weight of the 250, or 300 million - and American millions - destined to gather beneath the flutter of the stripes and stars, in the fast hastening year of the Lord 1945!
The Christian Destiny of America William Henry Channing, 1843
I BELIEVE:
1. That, as a member of the confederacy of Christendom, these United states have peculiar opportunities and duties; that consecrated by the devout faithfulness of forefathers, whom Providence led to this new found land - planted at the very season when the vital elements of Europe, Christian love, and German freedom were casting off the oppressions of outgrown usages and prompting men to seek piety and a purer virtue; guided onward through a discipline of toil and poverty and simple habits, through unexampled experiences in social government and the gradual growth of untried institutions. . .this nation is manifestly summoned to prove the reality of human brotherhood and the worship of the heavenly father...
2. That, acknowledging as we do our providential mission to fulfill the law of love, and professing as we do to encourage each and every member of our communities in the exercise of their inalienable rights, we stand before the face of God and fellow nations as guilty of hypocrisy and of a breach of trust;
3. That we deserve the retributions, losses, disgraces which our savage robberies of the Indians, our cruel and wanton oppressions of the Africans, our unjust habits of white serfdom, our grasping national ambition, our eagerness for wealth, our deceitful modes of external and internal trade, our jealous competitions between different professions and callings, our aping of aristocratic distinctions, our licentiousness and sensuality, our profligate expenditures, public and private, have brought, and will continue to bring upon us;
4. That it behooves our religious bodies, our political parties, our statesmen and philosophers, our scholars and patriots, and all who desire a growing life for themselves or their race, to put aside questions of minor importance and concentrate their energies upon measures which may remove inhumanity utterly from our land;
5. That our duties will not be done, our ideal will not be fulfilled till we solve the problem of UNITED INTERESTS now pressing upon all Christendom; till, within our own borders, we secure for every individual man, woman, child, full culture, under healthy, pure, and holy influences; free exercise of their faculties, for the glory of God and the good of man; recompense for all services that shall be just; such stations of honorable usefulness of their virtues merit, and access to all sources of refinement and happiness which our communities can command till, in intercourse with other lands, we strive honestly and bountifully to share the blessings which the universal Father gives, and so aid to reunite all nations in one family of the children of God, where His will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
4.2 1st Inaugural Address Abraham Lincoln
A. Select 2 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Answer the following questions:
1. What is Lincoln’s stance on the slavery issue? Explain.
2. What is the role of the constitution? Explain.
3. According to Lincoln, who is responsible for the slavery question?
4. What are the rights and duty of all Americans, according to Lincoln?
1st Inaugural Address Abraham Lincoln, March 4th, 1861
Fellow-citizens of the United States:
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property, and their peace, and personal security, are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this, and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And more than this, they placed in the platform, for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves, and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read: Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."
I now reiterate these sentiments; and in doing so, I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause -- as cheerfully to one section as to another.
There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it, for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the law-giver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution -- to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause, "shall be delivered," their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not, with nearly equal unanimity, frame and pass a law, by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?
There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by state authority; but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him, or to others, by which authority it is done. And should any one, in any case, be content that his oath shall go unkept, on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?
I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper, ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever -- it being impossible to destroy it, except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself. Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that, in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution, was "to form a more perfect Union." But if [the] destruction of the Union, by one, or by a part only, of the States, be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.
It follows from these views that no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union, -- that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.
I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it, so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative manner, direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that will constitutionally defend and maintain itself.
In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion -- no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality, shall be so great and so universal, as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable with all, that I deem it better to forego, for the time, the uses of such offices.
Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step, while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to, are greater than all the real ones you fly from? Will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake?
All profess to be content in the Union, if all constitutional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right, plainly written in the Constitution, has been denied? I think not. Happily the human mind is so constituted, that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this. Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force of numbers, a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution -- certainly would, if such right were a vital one. But such is not our case. All the vital rights of minorities, and of individuals, are so plainly assured to them, by affirmations and negations, guaranties and prohibitions, in the Constitution, that controversies never arise concerning them. But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate, nor any document of reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible questions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by State authority? The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the territories? The Constitution does not expressly say.
Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.
One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive slave clause of the Constitution, and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections, than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction, in one section; while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all, by the other.
Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence, and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory, after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the national Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it.
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it." I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
4.3 All Men Are Created Equal... Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Debois
A. Chose 3 of the following quotes and explain them in context.
1. “Cast down your bucket where you are.”
2. “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, not the top.”
3. “Is it possible that progressive economics [can be made] if deprived of political rights [and made] servile.”
4. “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”
5. “We shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third its intelligence and progress.”
6. “The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in a opera house.
B. Answer the below questions in paragraph form.
1. What is the “Atlanta Compromise?”
2. What is the “Triple Paradox?”
3. Which argument is more convincing?
All Men Are Created Equal Booker T. Washington
As a nation we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except the Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
Abraham Lincoln, letter to Joshua F. Speed, 24 August 1855
THE ATLANTA EXPOSITION ADDRESS, September 18th, 1895
One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way, have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.
Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the State Legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political Convention or stump speaking had more attraction than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.
A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of this unfortunate vessel was seen, a signal “Water, water, we die of thirst.” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time the signal, “Water, water, send us water”, rang up from, the distressed vessel and was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are,” And a third and fourth signal for water was answered “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River.
To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign lands, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly, relations with the Southern white man who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: Cast down your bucket where you are; cast it down in making friends, in every manly way, of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions, and in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called upon to bear, when it comes to business pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom, we will 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 the portion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. 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. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.
To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Cast it down among the 8,000,000 Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. 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, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and, with 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 unresenfful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed 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 our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours; interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all. If anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging and making him the most useful and intelligent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per cent interest. These efforts will be twice blessed-”blessing him that gives and him that takes.”
There is no escape, through law of man or God, from the inevitable:
The laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with oppressed,
And close as sin and suffering joined
We march to fate abreast
Nearly sixteen million hands will aid you in pulling the load upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one—third its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic.
Gentlemen of the Exposition: As we present to you our humble effort at an exhibition of our progress, you must not expect over much. Starting thirty years ago with ownership here and there in a few quilts and pumpkins and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), remember~ the path that has led us from these to the invention and production of agricultural implements, buggies, steam engines, newspapers, books, statuary, carving, paintings, the management of drugstores and banks, has not been trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. While we take pride in what we exhibit is a result of our independent efforts, we do riot for a moment forget that our part in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has come to our educational life, not only from the Southern states, but especially from Northern philanthropists who have made their gifts a stream of blessing and encouragement.
The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that the 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. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges. The opportunity, to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house.
In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years has given us more hope and encouragement and drawn us so near to you of the white race as this opportunity offered by the Exposition; and here bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the results of the struggles of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge that, in your effort to work out the great and intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the South, you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race. Let us pray God [time] will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law. This, coupled with material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a now earth.
OF MR. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON and OTHERS W.E.B. DuBois, 1903
Easily the most striking thing in the history of the American Negro since 1876 is the ascendancy of Mr. Booker I. Washington. It began at the time when war memories and ideals were rapidly passing; a day of astonishing commercial development was dawning; a sense of doubt and hesitation overtook the freedmen’s sons, then it was that his leading began. Mr. Washington came, with a simple definite programme, at the psychological moment when the nation was a little ashamed of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes, and was concentrating its energies on Dollars. His programme of industrial education, conciliation of the South, and submission and silence as to civil and political rights, was not wholly original. But Mr. Washington put enthusiasm, unlimited energy, and perfect faith into this programme, and changed ii from a by-path into a veritable Way of Life.
It startled the nation to hear a Negro advocating such a programme after many decades of bitter complaint; it startled and won the applause of the South, it interested and won the admiration of the North; and after a confused murmur of protest, it silenced if it did not convert the Negroes themselves.
To gain the sympathy and cooperation of the various elements comprising the white South was Mr. Washington’s first task; and this, at the time Tuskegee was founded, seemed, for a black man, well-nigh impossible. And yet ten years later it was done in the word spoken at Atlanta: In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” This “Atlanta Compromise” is by all odds the most notable thing in Mr. Washington’s career. The South interpreted it in different ways: the radicals received it as a complete surrender of the demand for civil and political equality the conservatives, as a generously conceived working basis for mutual understanding. So both approved it, and today its author is certainly the most distinguished Southerner since Jefferson Davis, and the one with the largest personal following.
Next to this achievement comes Mr. Washington’s work in gaining place and consideration in the North. Others less shrewd and tactful had formerly essayed to sit on these two stools and had fallen between them; but as Mr. Washington knew the heart of the South from birth and training, so by singular insight he intuitively grasped the spirit of the age which was dominating the North. And,- so thoroughly did he learn the speech and thought of triumphant commercialism, and the ideals of material prosperity, that the picture of a tone black boy poring over a French grammar amid the weeds and dirt of a neglected home soon seemed to-him the acme of absurdities. One wonders what Socrates and St Francis of Assisi would say to this.
And yet this very singleness of vision and thorough oneness with his age is a mark of the successful man. It is as though Nature must needs make men narrow in order to give them force. So Mr. Washington’s cult has gained unquestioning followers, his work has wonderfully prospered, his friends are legion, and his enemies are confounded. One hesitates, therefore, to criticise a life which, beginning with so little, has done so much. And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington’s career...
Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington’s programme naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life. Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced races are coming in closer contact with the less developed races, and the race-feeling is therefore intensified; and Mr. Washington’s programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races. Again, in our own land, the reaction from the sentiment of wartime has given impetus to race-prejudice against Negroes, and Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens. In other periods of intensified prejudice all the Negro’s tendency to self- assertion has been called forth; at this period a policy of submission is advocated. In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.
In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission. Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things,-first, political power, second, insistence on civil rights, and third, higher education of Negro youth,— and concentrate all their energies on industrial education the accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South. This policy has been triumphant for perhaps ten years. As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred:
1. The disfranchisement of the Negro.
2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro.
3. The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro.
These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Washington’s teachings; but his propaganda has, without a shadow of doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment. The question then comes: Is it possible, and probable, that nine millions of men can make effective progress in economic lines if, they are deprived of political rights, made a servile caste, and allowed only the most meagre chance for developing their exceptional men? If history and reason give any distinct answer to these questions, ills an emphatic No. And Mr. Washington thus faces the triple paradox of his career:
1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans business men and property-owners; but it is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and property-owner to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.
2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission to civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.
3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day were ii not for teachers trained, in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates.
The way to truth and right lies in straightforward honesty, not in indiscriminate flattery in praising those of the South who do well and criticizing uncompromisingly those who do ill; in taking advantage of the opportunities at hand and urging their fellows to do the same. At the same time in remembering that only a firm adherence to their higher ideals and aspirations will ever keep those ideals within the realm of possibility. Do not expect that the free right to vote, to enjoy civic rights, and to be educated, will come in a moment; do not expect to see the bias and prejudices of years disappear at the blast of a trumpet; but be absolutely certain that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them; the way for a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves; on the contrary, Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys.
In failing thus to state plainly and unequivocally the legitimate demands of their people, even at the cost of opposing an honored leader, the thinking classes of American Negroes would shirk a heavy responsibility,-a responsibility to themselves, a responsibility to the struggling masses, a responsibility to the darker races of men whose future depends so largely on this American experiment, but especially a responsibility to this nation, this common Fatherland. It is wrong to encourage a man or a people in evil-doing; it is wrong to aid and abet a national crime simply because it is unpopular not to do so. The growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between the North and. South after the frightful differences of a generation ago ought to be a source of deep congratulation to all, and especially to those whose mistreatment caused the war but if that reconciliation is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black men, with permanent legislation into a position of inferiority, then those black men, if they are really men, are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a course by all civilized methods, even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington. We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white...
By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: “We hold these truths to be self-evident That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
5.1 The Significance of the Frontier Frederick Jackson Turner
A. Select 2 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Answer the below questions in paragraph form.
1. What is the Turner Thesis?
2. How does the wilderness shape the American Character?
3. What are the essential characteristics of America and Americans, according to Turner?
The Significance of the Frontier in American History
Frederick Jackson Turner (1893)
Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, continuous recession, and the advance of American settlements westward, explain American development. Behind institutions, behind constitutional forms and modifications lie the vital forces that call these organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions. 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, this winning a wilderness, and in developing at each area of this progress out of the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life.
Thus American development has exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area. American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the West.
The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs and Indian palisade around him. Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts the war cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trails. Little by little he transforms the wilderness but the outcome is not the old Europe, not simply the development of Germanic germs... The fact is, that here is a new product that is American. At first, the frontier was the Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving westward, the frontier became more and more American. As successive terminal moraines result from successive glaciations, so each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when it becomes a settled area the region still partakes of the frontier characteristics. 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. And to study this advance, the men who grew up under these conditions, and the political, economic, and social results of its, is to study the really American part of our history...
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 form the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has been forced upon them. He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise. But never again will such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant. There is not tabula rasa. The stubborn American environment is there with its imperious summons to accept its conditions; the inherited ways of doing things are also there; and yet, in spite of environment, and in spite of custom, each frontier did indeed furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its restrains and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the frontier. What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. 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 in American history.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
5.2 Reflections on the American West Wallace Stegner
A. Select 2 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Answer the below questions in paragraph form.
1. What are the qualities Stegner identifies as aspects of the American West?
2. What reactions do you have to Stegner’s reflections on his early childhood? How is this relevant to history?
3. Select three passages and explain how they communicate some important idea to the study of history.
Reflections on the American West Wallace Stegner
From Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, 1992
The first year in Eastend was a chaos of experiences, good and bad. I caught lice from the half-Indian kids I played with and was fiercely shampooed with kerosene. I learned dirty words and dirty songs from the children of railroad construction workers and from Z-X cow punchers. With other boys, I was induced to ride calves and lured into “shit fights with wet cow manure in the Z-X corrals. Then or later I learned to dog-paddle, first in the irrigation ditch, later in the river, and I fished for suckers in the deep holes of the bends, and followed trails through willows that felt like authentic wilderness. Then or later we put .22 cartridges or blasting caps on the tracks ahead of approaching handcars or speeders, and once we got satisfactorily chased by the gandy dancers of the section crew. Around Christmas we all watched the first soldiers go off to the war, and then and afterward we had trouble with Canadian kids who said the United States was too yellow to get in the fight.
My brother, who was big for his age, and tough, fought every kid his size, and some bigger, in defense of America’s honor. But we were ashamed, and we got an instructive taste of how it felt to be disliked for tribal affiliations that we hadn’t really known we had.
The town grew around us, and incorporated us, and became our familiar territory: Main Street with its plank sidewalks, its drug and grocery and hardware stores, its Pastime Theater, its lumberyard, its hotel and bank, Millionaire Row with its four or five bungalows with sweet peas and nasturtiums in their yards; Poverty Flat, where the two Chinese and some metis had shacks.
The people we knew were of many kinds: metis -- French- Indian half breeds——left over from the fur trade days; Texas and Montana cow punchers left over from the cattle period; and a stew of new immigrants, Ontario men, cockneys fresh from another East End, Scandinavians moving up the migration route from the Dakotas to the Northwest, a few Jews, a Syrian family, a couple of Chinese, a Greek. Mark Twain, confronted by a colorful character, used to say, “I know him--knew him on the river.” I could say, almost as legitimately, I know him--knew him in Eastend.
A young frontier gathers every sort of migrant, hope-chaser, roughneck, trickster, incompetent, misfit, and failure. All kinds passed through our town, and some stayed, or were stuck. Our first doctor was a drifter and a drunk who finally died of eating canned heat. Our only dentist came through once a year, and in a week’s stay did more harm than an ordinary dentist could have done in a decade. Our religious needs were served by two institutions: the shack-chapel and itinerant priest who took care of the metis, and the Presbyterian church with resident pastor who took care of everyone else. The Scandinavians, Germans, Ontario men, Englishmen, and run-of- the-mine Americans, even the Syrian grocer and his family, became Presbyterians because that was where the principal social action was. The Jewish butcher, the cow punchers, the two Chinese who ran the restaurant, and the Greek who took over from them--all without families--remained refractory and unassimilable.
When we arrived, and for a couple of years thereafter, the Frenchman River provided a habitat for beaver, muskrats, mink, weasels, sandhill cranes; in the willow breaks were big populations of cottontails and snowshoe hares preyed on by coyotes and lynxes. On the long, mainly roadless way to the homestead down on the Montana line--two days by lumber wagon with the cow tied behind, one day by buckboard (we called it a democrat), seven or eight excruciating hours by Model T--we passed many sloughs swarming with nesting ducks. On the homestead itself, dry country far from any slough, it was all flickertails, prairie dogs, badgers, blackfooted ferrets, coyotes, gopher snakes, and hawks. That prairie, totally unsuited to be plowed up, was hawk heaven.
We plowed our first field, and dammed our coulee, and built our shack, in the summer of 1915, and thereafter we spent the summers on the homestead, the winters in town. It was an uneven division, for in that latitude a wheat crop, from seed time to harvest, took only about three months. But either on the prairie or in town we were only a step from the wild, and we wavered between the pleasure ii was to be part of it and the misguided conviction that it was in our interest to destroy it. There are two things that growing up on a belated western frontier gave me: an acquaintance with the wild and wild creatures, and a delayed guilt for my part in their destruction.
I was a sickly child, but hardly a tame one. Like all the boys I knew, I had a gun, and used it, from the age of eight or nine. We shot at anything that moved; we killed everything not domesticated or protected. In winter we trapped the small fur-bearers of the river bottom; in summer my brother and I spent hours of every day trapping, shooting, snaring, poisoning, or drowning out the gophers that gathered in our wheat field and the dependable water of our rezavoy.” We poisoned out the prairie dogs, and incidentally did in the blackfooted ferrets that lived on them—ferrets that are now the rarest North American mammals. We didn’t even know they were ferrets; we called them the big weasels. But we killed them as we killed everything else. Once I speared one with a pitchfork in the chickenhouse and was sickened by its ferocious vitality, dismayed by how hard the wild died. I had the same feeling when I caught a badger in a gopher trap. I would gladly enough have let him loose, but he was too fierce, and lunged at me too savagely, and in the end I had to stone him to death.
Our neighbors were few, and miles away, most of them across the line in Montana. For two weeks at a time we might see no one but ourselves; and when our isolation was broken, it was generally broken by a lonesome Swedish homesteader who came over ostensibly to buy eggs, but more probably to hear the sound of a human voice. We welcomed him. We were as hungry for the sound of a human voice as he was.
I am somewhat skeptical of the fabled western self-reliance, because as I knew it, the West was a place where one depended on neighbors and had to give as well as get in any trouble while we were on the homestead, I ran, or rode one of the horses, four or five miles to get Tom Larson or Ole Telepo or someone else to help. They came to us the same way. And yet there is something to the notion of western independence; there is something about living in big empty space, where people are few and distant, under a great sky that is alternately serene and furious, exposed to sun from four in the morning till nine at night, and to a wind that never seems to rest - there is something about exposure to that big country that not only tells an individual how small he is, but steadily tells him who he is. I have never understood identity problems. Any time when I lay awake at night and heard the wind in the screens and saw the moon ride up the sky, or sat reading in the shade of the shack and heard the wind moan and mourn around the corners, or slept out under the wagon and felt it searching among the spokes of the wheels, I knew well enough who, or what, I was, even if I didn’t matter.
THE WESTERN LANDSCAPE
The Westerner is less a person than a continuing adaptation. The West is less a place than a process.
History builds slowly, starting from scratch, and understanding a new country depends on every sort of report, including some that are unreliable, biased, or motivated by personal interest . . . . True or false, observant or blind, impartial or interested, factual or fanciful, it has all gone into the hopper and influenced our understanding and response at least as much as first-hand acquaintance has. But it took a long time. Even learning the basic facts-- extents, boundaries, animals, ranges, tribes of men--took a long time.
In the marginal zone between humid Midwest and arid West it was easy to be deluded, for the difference of just one inch in rainfall or a slight variation in the seasonal distribution would make the difference between success and failure. And delusion was promoted. The individualism of the frontier, the folklore and habit learned in other regions, the usual politics and boosterism, and land speculation encouraged settlement on terms sure sooner or later to defeat it. Cooperation was one lesson the West enforced, and it was learned hard. Bernard DeVoto once caustically remarked, in connection with the myth of western individualism, that the only real individualists in the West had wound up on one end of a rope whose other end was in the hands of a bunch of cooperators. But a lot of other individualists wound up in the hands of the bank, or trailed back eastward from the dry plains in wagons with signs reading, “In God we trusted, in Kansas we busted,” leaving a half-ruined land behind them.
The western landscape is of the wildest variety and contains every sort of topography and land form, even most of those familiar from farther east. Bits of East and Middle West are buried here and there in the West, but no physical part of the true West is buried in the East The West is short-grass plains, alpine mountains, geyser basins, plateaus and mesas and canyons and cliffs, salinas and sinks, sagebrush and Joshua tree and saguaro deserts. If only by reason of their size, the forms of things are different, but there is more than mere size to differentiate them. You know also that the western landscape is more than topography and land forms, dirt and rock. It is, most fundamentally, climate--climate which expresses itself not only as land- forms but as atmosphere, flora, fauna. And here, despite all the local variety, there is a large, abiding simplicity.
Aridity, more than anything else, gives the western landscape its character. It is aridity that gives the air its special dry clarity; aridity that puts brilliance in the light and polishes and enlarges the stars; aridity that leads the grasses to evolve as bunches rather than as turf; aridity that exposes the pigmentation of the raw earth and limits, almost eliminates, the color of chlorophyll; aridity that erodes the earth in cliffs and badlands rather than in softened and vegetated slopes, that has shaped the characteristically swift and mobile animals of the dry grasslands and the characteristically nocturnal life of the deserts. The West. Walter Webb said, is “a semi-desert with a desert heart.” The primary unity of the West is a shortage of water.
The consequences of aridity multiply by a kind of domino effect. In the attempt to compensate for nature’s lacks we have remade whole sections of the western landscape... Aridity has made a lot of difference in us, too, since Americans first ventured up the Missouri into the unknown in the spring of 1804. Our intentions varied all the way from romantic adventurousness to schemes of settlement and empire; all the way from delight in dehumanized nature to a fear of the land empty of human settlements, monuments, and even, seemingly, history.
We have gone about modifying the western landscape, it has been at work modifying us. And what applies to agricultural and social institutions applies just as surely to our pictorial and literary representations. Perceptions trained in another climate and another landscape have had to be modified. Our first and hardest adaptation was to learn all over again how to see. Our second was to learn to like the new forms and colors and light and scale when we had learned to see them. Our third was to develop new techniques, a new palette, to communicate them. And our fourth, unfortunately out of our control, was to train an audience that would respond to what we wrote or painted.
THE WEST AND COMMUNITY
Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, sent out in 1806 to explore the country between the Missouri and Santa Fe, had called the high plains the Great American Desert. In 1819 the expedition of Major Stephen Long corroborated that finding, and for two generations nobody seriously questioned it. The plains were unfit for settlement by a civilized, meaning an agricultural, people, and the farther west you went, the worse things got. So for the emigrants who in 1840 began to take wheels westward up the Platte Valley, the interior West was not a place but a way, a trail to the Promised Land, an adventurous, dangerous rite of passage.
Insofar as the West was a civilization at all between the time of Lewis and Clark’s explorations and about 1870, it was largely a civilization in motion, driven by dreams. The people who composed and represented it were part of a true Folk-Wandering, credulous, hopeful, hardy, largely uninformed. The dreams are not dead even today, and the habit of mobility has only been reinforced by time. Ever since Daniel Boone took his first excursion over Cumberland Gap, Americans have been wanderers. With a continent to take over and Manifest Destiny to goad us, we could not have avoided being footloose. The initial act of emigration from Europe, an act of extreme, deliberate dissatisfaction, was the beginning of a national habit
It should not be denied, either, that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west. Our folk heroes and our archetypal literary figures accurately reflect that side of us. Leatherstocking, Huckleberry Finn, the narrator of Moby Dick, all are orphans and wanderers... The Lone Ranger has no dwelling place except the saddle. And when teenagers run away in the belief that they are running toward freedom, they more often than not run west.
But the rootlessness that expresses energy and a thirst for the new... has just as often been a curse. Migrants deprive themselves of the physical and spiritual bonds that develop within a place and a society. Our migratoriness has hindered us from becoming a people of communities and traditions, especially in the West. It has robbed us of the gods who make places holy. It has cut off individuals and families and communities from memory and the continuum of time. It has left at least some of us with a kind of spiritual pellagra, a deficiency disease, a hungering for the ties of a rich and stable social order. Not only is the American home a launching pad, as Margaret Mead said; the American community, especially in the West, is an overnight camp. American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging. Freedom, when found, can turn out to be airless and unsustaining. Especially in the West, what we have instead of place is space. Place is more than half memory, shared memory. Rarely do Westerners stay long enough at one stop to share much of anything.
The principal invention of western American culture is the motel, the principal exhibit of that culture the automotive roadside. A principal western industry is tourism, which exploits the mobile and the seasonal. Whatever it might want to be, the West is still primarily a series of brief visitations or a trail to somewhere else; and western literature, from Roughing It to On the Road, from The Log of a Cowboy to Lonesome Dove, from The Big Rock Candy Mountain to The Big Sky, has been largely a literature not of place but of motion.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
5.3 The Gospel of Wealth Andrew Carnegie
A. Chose 3 of the following quotes and explain them in context.
1. “The Socialist or anarchist who seek to overturn present conditions is to be regarded as attacking the foundation upon which civilization itself rests.”
2. “Not evil but good come to the race from the accumulation of wealth.”
3. “What is the proper mode of administering wealth after the laws upon which civilization is founded have thrown it into the hands of the few.
4. “Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? ... it is not well for the children to be so burdened.”
5. “There remains, then, only one mode of using great fortune....”
6. “The man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee for his poorer brethen, bringing to their service their superior wisdom, experience ... doing for them better than they could do for themselves.”
The Gospel of Wealth Andrew Carnegie 1889
We accept and welcome . . . as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves great inequality of environment, the concentration of business - industrial and commercial - in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these as being not only beneficial but essential for the future progress of the race. Having accepted these, it follows that there must be great scope for the exercise of special ability in the merchant and in the manufacturer who has to conduct affairs upon a great scale. That this talent for organization and management is rare among men is proved by the fact that it invariably secures for its possessor enormous rewards, no mailer where or under what laws or conditions. The experienced in affairs always rate the man whose services can be obtained as a partner as not only the first consideration but such as to tender the question of his capital scarcely worth considering, for such men soon create capital; while, without the special talent required, capital soon takes wings.
Such men become interested in firms or corporations using millions; and estimating only simple interest to be made upon the capital invested, it is inevitable that their income must exceed their expenditures and that they must accumulate wealth. It is a law, as certain as any of the others named, that men possessed of this peculiar talent for affairs, under the free play of economic forces, must, of necessity, soon be in receipt of more revenue than can be judiciously expended upon themselves; and this law is as beneficial for the race as the others.
Objections to the foundations upon which society is based are not in order because the condition of the race is better with these than it has been with any others which have been tried. Of the effect of any new substitutes proposed, we cannot be sure. The socialist or anarchist who seeks to overturn present conditions is to be regarded as attacking the foundation upon which civilization itself rests, for civilization took its start from the day that the capable, industrious workman said to his incompetent and lazy fellow, “If thou dose not sow, thou shalt not reap,” and thus ended primitive Communism by separating the drones from the bees. One who studies this subject will soon be brought face to face with the conclusion that upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends the right of the laborer to his $100 in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions.
To those who propose to substitute Communism for this intense individualism the answer, therefore, is: The race has tried that all progress from that barbarous day to the present time has resulted from its displacement Not evil, but good, has come to the race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it. But even if we admit for a moment that it might be better for the race to discard its present foundation, individualism - that it is a nobler ideal that man should labor, not for himself alone but in and for a brotherhood of his follows and share with them all in common, even admit all this, and a sufficient answer is: This is not evolution, but revolution.
It necessitates the changing of human, nature itself a work of aeons, even if it were good to change it, which we cannot know. It is not practicable in our day or in our age. Even if desirable theoretically, it belongs to another and long-succeeding sociological stratum. Our duty is with what is practicable now with the next step possible in our day and generation. It is criminal to waste our energies in endeavoring to uproot, when all we can profitably or possibly accomplishes to bend the universal tree of humanity a little in the direction most favorable to the production of good fruit under existing circumstances.
We might as well urge the destruction of the highest existing type of man because he failed to reach the ideal, as to favor the destruction of individualism, private property, the law of accumulation of wealth and the law of competition; for these are the highest results of human experience, the soil in which society so far has produced the best fruit Unequally or unjustly, perhaps as these laws sometimes operate, they are, nevertheless, like the highest type of man, the best and most valuable of all that humanity has yet accomplished.
Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection? Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so burdened. Neither is it well for the state. Beyond providing for the wife and daughters moderate sources of income, and very moderate allowances indeed, if any, for the Sons, men may well hesitate, for it is no longer questionable that great sums bequeathed oftener work more for the injury than for the good of the recipients. Wise men will soon conclude that, for the best interests of the members of their families and of the state, such bequests are an improper use of their means.
As to the second mode, that of leaving wealth at death for public uses, it may be said that this is only a means for the disposal of wealth provided a man is content to wait until he is dead before it becomes of much good in the world. Knowledge of the results of legacies bequeathed is not calculated to inspire the brightest hopes of much posthumous good being accomplished. The cases are not few in which the real object sought by the testator is not attained, nor are they few in which his real wishes are thwarted. In many cases the bequests are so used as to become only monuments of his folly... Men who leave vast sums in this way may fairly he thought men who would not have left it at all had they been able to take it with them. The memories of such cannot be held in grateful remembrance, for there is no grace in their gifts.
The growing disposition to tax more and more heavily large estates left at death is a cheering indication of the growth of a Salutary change in public opinion... It is desirable that nations should go much further in this direction. This policy would work powerfully to induce the rich man to attend to, the administration of wealth during his life, which is the end that society should always have in view, as being that by far most fruitful for the people. Nor need jibe feared that this policy would sap the root of enterprise and render, men less anxious to accumulate, for to the class whose ambition it is to leave great fortunes and be talked about after their death, it will attract even more attention, and, indeed, be a somewhat nobler ambition to have enormous - sums paid over to the state from their fortunes.
There remains, then, only one mode of using great fortunes; but in this we have the true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth, the reconciliation of the rich and the poor - a reign of harmony - another ideal, differing, indeed, from that of the Communist in requiring only the further evolution of existing conditions, not the total overthrow of our civilization. Under its sway we shall have an ideal state in which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense, the property of the many, because administered for the common good; and this wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves. Even the poorest can be made to see this and to agree that great sums gathered by some of their fellow citizens and spent for public purposes, from which the masses reap the principal benefit, are more valuable to them than if scattered among them through the course of many years in trifling amounts
Poor and restricted are our opportunities in this life; narrow our horizon; our best work most imperfect, but rich men should he thankful for one inestimable boon. They have it in their power during their lives to busy themselves in organizing benefactions from which the masses of their fellows will derive lasting advantage, and thus dignity their own lives.
This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth; first, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display of extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner, which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community the man of wealth thus becoming the mere agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.
In bestowing charity the main consideration, should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give those who desire to rise the aids by which they may rise; to assist, but rarely or never to do all. Neither the individual nor the race is improved by alms giving. Those worthy of assistance, except in rare cases, seldom require assistance. The really valuable men of the race never do, except In cases of accident or sudden change. everyone has, of course, cases of individuals brought to his own knowledge where temporary assistance can do genuine good, and these he will not overlook But the amount which can be wisely given by the individual for individuals is necessarily limited by his lack of knowledge of the circumstances connected with each. He is the only true reformer who is careful and as anxious not to aid the unworthy as he is to aid the worthy, and, perhaps, even more so, for in alms giving more injury is probably done by rewarding vice than by relieving virtue….
Thus is the problem of rich and poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor entrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself. The best minds will thus have reached a stage in the development of the race in which it is clearly seen that there is no mode of disposing of surplus wealth creditable to thoughtful and earnest men into whose hands it flows save by using it year by year for the general good.
The day already dawns. But a little while, and although, without incurring the pity of their fellows, men may die sharers in great business enterprises from which their capital cannot be or has not been withdrawn, and is left chiefly at death for public uses, yet the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was his to administer during life, will pass away “unwept, unhonored, and unsung,” no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the public verdict will then be: The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”
Such, in my opinion, is the true gospel concerning wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the rich and the poor, and to bring Peace on earth, among men goodwill.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless
otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
5.4 The Paradox of Poverty Henry George
A. Chose 3 of the following quotes and explain them in context.
1. “We all might have leisure, comfort, and abundance, not merely of the necessaries but even of what are esteemed the elegancies and luxuries of life.”
2. “Did you ever see a pail of swill given to a pen of hungry hogs? That is human society as it is.”
3. “If an architect were to build a theater so that no more than one tenth of the audience could see and hear, we would call him a burglar and a botch.”
4. “So is it true that poverty does not come from the inability to produce more wealth that from every side we hear that the power to produce is in excess of the ability to find a market; that the constant fear seems to be not that too little, but that too much will be produced.”
5. “One would think that the cause of poverty is that there is not work enough for so many people.”
6. “It must come from social maladjustment which permit the monopolization of these natural opportunities, and which rob labor of its fair rewards.”
7. “Mind not muscle is the motor of progress.”
The Paradox of Poverty Henry George 1879
The terms rich and poor are of course frequently used, in a relative sense. Among Irish peasants, kept on the verge of starvation by the tribute wrung from them to maintain the luxury of absentee landlords in London or Paris, “the woman of three cows” will be looked on as rich, while in a society of millionaires a man with only $500,000 will be regarded as poor. Now, we cannot, of course, all be rich in the sense of having more than others; but when people say, as they so often do, that we cannot all be rich, or when they say that we must always have the poor with us, they do not use the words in this comparative sense. They mean by the rich those who have enough, or more than enough, wealth to gratify all reasonable wants, and by the poor, those who have not
Now, using the words in this sense, I join issue with those who say that we cannot all be rich; with those who declare that in human society the poor must always exist. I do not, of course, mean that we all might have an array of servants; that we all might outshine each other in dress, in equipage, in the lavishness of our balls or dinners, in the magnificence of our houses. That would be a contradiction in terms. What I mean is, that we all might have leisure, comfort, and abundance, not merely of the necessaries but even of what are now esteemed the elegancies and luxuries of life. I do not mean to say that absolute equality could be had, or would be desirable. I do not mean to say that we could all have, or would want, the same quantity of all the different forms of wealth. But I do mean to say that we might all have enough wealth to satisfy reasonable desires; that we might all have, much of the material things we now struggle for that no one would want to rob or swindle his neighbor, that no one would worry all day or lie awake at nights fearing he might be brought to poverty or thinking how he might acquire wealth.
Does this seem a utopian dream? What would people of fifty years ago have thought of one who would have told them that it was possible to sew by steam power; to cross tile Atlantic in six days or the continent in three; to have a message sent from London at noon delivered in Boston three hours before noon; to hear in New York the voice of a man talking in Chicago?
Did you ever see a pail of swill given to a pen of hungry hogs? That is human society as it is. Did you ever see a company of well-bred men and women sitting down to a good dinner without scrambling or jostling or gluttony, each, knowing that his own appetite will be satisfied, deferring to and helping the others? That is human society as it might be.
“Devil catch the hindmost” is the motto of our so-called civilized society today. We learn early to “take care of No. 1”, lest No. 1 should suffer we learn early to grasp from others that we may not want ourselves. The fear of poverty makes us admire great wealth; and so habits of greed are formed, and we behold the pitiable spectacle of men who have already more than they can by any possibility use, toiling, striving, grasping to add to their store up to the very verge of the grave - that grave which, whatever else it may mean, does certainly mean the parting with all earthly possessions however great they be... In vain may the preacher preach of the vanity of riches while poverty engulfs the hindmost. But the mad struggle would cease when the fear of poverty had vanished. Then, and not till then, will a truly Christian civilization become possible.
And may not this be?
We are so accustomed to poverty that even in the most advanced countries we regard it as the natural lot of the great masses of the people; that we take it as a matter of course that even in our highest civilization large classes should want the necessaries of healthful life, and the vast majority should only get a poor and pinched living by the hardest toil. There are professors of political economy who teach that this condition of things is the result of social laws of which it is idle to complain! There are ministers of religion who preach that this is the condition which an all-wise, all-powerful Creator intended for His children!
If architect were to build a theater so that not more than one-tenth of the audience could see and hear, we would call him a bungler and a botch. If a man were to give a feast and provide so little food that nine-tenths of his guests must go away hungry, we would call him a fool, or worse. Yet so accustomed are we to poverty that even the preachers of what passes for Christianity tell us that the great Architect of the universe, to whose infinite skill all nature testifies, has made such a botch job of this world that the vast majority of the human creatures whom He has called into it are condemned by the conditions. He has imposed to want, suffering, and brutalizing toil that gives no opportunity for the development of mental powers - must pass their lives in a hard struggle to merely live!
Yet who can took about him without seeing that to whatever cause poverty may be due, it is not due to the niggardliness of nature; without seeing that it is blindness or blasphemy to assume that the Creator has condemned the masses of men to hard toil for a bare living?
If some men have not enough to live decently, do not others have far more than they really need? If there is not wealth sufficient to go around, giving everyone abundance, is it because we have reached the limit of the production of wealth? Is our land all in use? Is our labor all employed? Is our capital all utilized? On the contrary, in whatever direction we look we see the most stupendous waste of productive forces so potent that were they permitted to freely play, the production of wealth would be so enormous that there would be more than a sufficiency for all. What branch of production is there in which the limit of production has been reached? What single article of wealth is there of which we might not produce enormously more?
If the mass of the population of New York are jammed into the fever-breeding rooms of tenement houses, it is not because there are not vacant lots enough in and around New York to give each family space for a separate home. If settlers are going into Montana and Dakota and Manitoba, it is not because there are not vast areas of untitled land much nearer the centers of population. If farmers are paying one fourth, one-third, or even one-half of their crops for the privilege of getting land to cultivate, it is not because there are not, even in our oldest states, great quantities of land which no one is cultivating.
So true is it that poverty does not come from the inability to produce more wealth that from every side we hear that the power to produce is in excess of the ability to find a market; that the constant fear seems to be not that too little, but that too much, will be produced! Do we not maintain a high tariff and keep at every port a horde of customhouse officers for fear the people of other countries will overwhelm us with their goods? Is not a great part of our machinery constantly idle? Are there not, even in what we call good times, an immense number of unemployed men who would gladly be at work producing wealth if they could only get the opportunity?
Coal operators band together to limit their output; ironworks have shut down or are running on halftime; distillers have agreed to limit their production to one-half their capacity, and sugar refiners to 60 percent; paper mills are suspending for one, two, or three days a week; the gunny-cloth manufacturers, at a recent meeting, agreed to close their mills until the present overstock on the market is greatly reduced; many other manufacturers have done the same thing. The shoemaking machinery of New England can, in six months’ full running, it is said, supply the whole demand of the United States for twelve months; the machinery for making rubber goods can turn out twice as much as the market will take.
So evident is this that many people think and talk and write as though the trouble is that there is not work enough to go around, We are in constant fear that other nations may do for us some of the work we might do for ourselves, and, to prevent them, guard ourselves with a tariff. We laud as public benefactors those who, as we say, furnish employment. We are constantly talking as though this “furnishing of employment,’ this “giving of work” were the greatest boon that could be conferred upon society. To listen to much that is talked and much that is written, one would think that the cause of poverty is that there is not work enough for so many people and that if the Creator had made the rock harder, the soil less fertile, iron as scarce as gold, and gold as diamonds; or if ships would sink and cities burn down oftener, there would be less poverty because there would be more work to do.
Perhaps nothing shows more clearly the enormous forces of production constantly going to waste than the fact that the most prosperous time in all branches of business that this country has known was during the Civil War, when we were maintaining great fleets and armies, and millions of our industrial population were engaged in supplying them with wealth for unproductive consumption or for reckless destruction. It is idle to talk about the fictitious prosperity of those “flush” times. The masses of the people lived better, dressed better, found it easier to get a living, and had more of luxuries and amusements than in normal times. There was more real, tangible wealth in the North at the close than at the beginning of the war.
Our armies and fleets were maintained, the enormous unproductive and destructive use of wealth was kept up by the labor and capital then and there engaged in production. And it was that the demand caused by the war stimulated productive forces into activity that the enormous drain of the war was not only supplied but that the North grew richer. The waste of labor in marching and countermarching, in digging trenches, throwing up earthworks, and fighting battles, the waste of wealth consumed or destroyed by our armies and fleets did not amount to as much as the waste constantly going on from unemployed labor and idle or partially used machinery.
It is evident that this enormous waste of productive power is due, not to defects in the laws of nature but to social maladjustments which deny to labor access to the natural opportunities of labor and rob the laborer of his just reward. Evidently the glut of markets does not really come from overproduction when there are so many who want the things which are said to be overproduced and would gladly exchange their labor for them did they have opportunity. Every day passed in enforced idleness by a laborer who would gladly be at work could he find opportunity means so much less in the fund which creates the effective demand for other labor - every lime wages are screwed down means so much reduction in the purchasing power of the workmen whose incomes are thus reduced.
The paralysis which at all times wastes productive power, and which in times of industrial depression causes more loss than a great war, springs from the difficulty which those who would gladly satisfy their wants by their labor find in doing so. It cannot come from any natural limitation so long as human desires remain unsatisfied and nature yet offers to man the raw material of wealth. It must come from social maladjustments which permit the monopolization of these natural opportunities, and which rob labor of its fair reward....
I wish . . . to call attention to the fact that productive power in such a state of civilization as ours is sufficient, did we give it play, to so enormously increase the production of wealth as to give abundance to all to point out that the cause of poverty is not in natural limitations, which we cannot alter, but in inequalities and injustices of distribution entirely within our control.
The passenger who leaves New York on a transatlantic steamer does not fear that the provisions will give out. The men who run these steamers do not send them to sea without provisions enough for all they carry. Did He who made this whirling planet for our sojourn lack the forethought of man? Not so. In soil and sunshine, in vegetable and animal life, in veins of minerals, and in pulsing forces which we are only beginning to use are capabilities which we cannot exhaust - materials and powers from which human effort, guided by intelligence, may gratify every material want of every human creature. There is in nature no reason for poverty - not even for the poverty of the crippled or the decrepit. For man is by nature a social animal, and the family affections and the social sympathies would, where chronic poverty did not distort and embrute, amply provide for those who could not provide for themselves.
But if we will not use the intelligence with which we have been gifted to adapt social organization to natural laws - if we allow dogs in the manger to monopolize what they cannot use; if we allow strength and cunning to rob honest labor, we must have chronic poverty and all the social evils it inevitably brings. Under such conditions there would be poverty in paradise.
“The poor ye have always with you.” If ever a scripture has been wrested to the devil’s service, this is that scripture. How often have these words been distorted from their obvious meaning to soothe conscience into acquiescence in human misery and degradation - to bolster that blasphemy, the very negation and denial of Christ’s teachings, that the All-Wise and Most Merciful, the Infinite Father, has decreed that so many of His creatures must he poor in order that others of His creatures to whom He wills the good things of life should enjoy the pleasure and virtue of doling out alms!
“The poor ye have always with you,” said Christ; but all His teachings supply the limitation, “until the coming of the Kingdom.” In that Kingdom of God on earth, that kingdom of justice and love for which He taught His followers to strive and pray, there will be no poor. But though the faith and the hope and the striving for this kingdom are of the very essence of Christ’s teaching, the staunchest disbelievers and revilers of its possibility are found among those who call themselves Christians.
That in spite of all our great advances we have yet with us the poor, those who, without fault of their own, cannot get healthful and wholesome conditions of life, is our fault and our shame. Who that looks about him can fail to see that it Is only the injustice that denies natural opportunities to labor and robs the producer of the fruits of his toll, that prevents us all from being rich? Consider the enormous powers of production now going to waste; consider the great number of unproductive consumers maintained at the expense of producers — the rich men and dudes, the worse than useless government officials, the pickpockets, burglars, and confidence men; the highly respectable thieves who carry on their operations inside the law; the great army of lawyers; the beggars and paupers and inmates of prisons; the monopolists and cornerers and gamblers of every kind and grade.
Consider how much brains and energy and capital are devoted, not to the production of wealth but to the grabbing of wealth. Consider the waste caused by competition which does not increase wealth; by laws which restrict production and exchange. Consider how human power is lessened by insufficient food, by unwholesome lodgings, by work done under conditions that produce disease and shorten life. Consider how intemperance and unthrift follow poverty. Consider how the ignorance bred of poverty lessens production and how the vice bred of poverty causes destruction, and who can doubt that under condition s of social justice all might be rich?
The wealth-producing powers that would he evoked in a social state based on justice, where wealth went to the producers of wealth, and the banishment of poverty had banished the fear and greed and lusts that spring from it, we now can only faintly imagine. Wonderful as have been the discoveries and inventions of this century, it is evident that we have only begun to grasp that dominion which it is given to mind to obtain over matter. Discovery and invention are born of leisure, of material comfort, of freedom. These secured to all, and who shall say to what command over nature man may not attain?
It is not necessary that anyone should be condemned to monotonous toil; it is not necessary that anyone should lack the wealth and the leisure which permit the development of the faculties that raise man above the animal. Mind, not muscle, is the motor of progress, the force which compels nature and produces wealth. In turning men into machines we are wasting the highest powers. Already in our society there is a favored class who need take no thought for the morrow - what they shall eat, or what they shall drink, or wherewithal they shall be clothed. And may it not be that Christ was more than a dreamer when He told His disciples that in that kingdom of justice for which He taught them to work and pray this might be the condition of all?
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
6.1 Imperialism Beveridge, Bryan, Kipling
A. Select 2 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Select 4 of the below questions and answer using paragraph form.
1. Briefly summarize the essential argument of Beveridge and Bryan.
2. Beveridge and Bryan both have views on destiny. Draw quotes from the reading to illustrate how each man sees American destiny.
3. What connections can you make with earlier documents and ideas?
4. Give examples of how Beveridge and Bryan use history to support their position.
5. Analyze Kipling’s view of “White Man’s Burden.”
The Taste of Empire Albert J. Beveridge, 1898
It is a noble land that God has given us; a land that can feed and clothe the world; a land whose coastlines would enclose half the countries of Europe; a land set like a sentinel between the two imperial oceans of the globe, a greater England with a nobler destiny. It is a mighty people that He has planted on this soil; a people sprung from the most masterful blood of history; a people perpetually revitalized by the virile, man-producing working folk of all the earth; a people imperial by virtue of their power, by right of their institutions, by authority of their heaven-directed purposes -— the propagandists and not the misers of liberty.
It is a glorious history our God has bestowed upon His chosen people; a history whose keynote was struck by Liberty Bell; a history heroic with faith in our mission and our future; a history of statesmen who flung the boundaries of the republic out into unexplored lands and savage wildernesses; a history of soldiers who carried the flag across the blazing deserts and through the ranks of hostile mountains, even to the gates of sunset; a history of a multiplying people who overran a continent in half a century; a history of prophets who saw the consequences of evils inherited from the past and of martyrs who died to save us from them; a history divinely logical, in the process of whose tremendous reasoning we find ourselves today.
Therefore, in this campaign, the question is larger than a party question. It is an American question. It is a world question. Shall the American people continue their resistless march toward the commercial supremacy of the world? Shall free institutions broaden their blessed reign as the children of liberty wax in strength, until the empire of our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind?
Have we no mission to perform, no duty to discharge to our fellow man? Has the Almighty Father endowed us with gifts beyond our deserts and marked us as the people of His peculiar favor, merely to rot in our own selfishness.. .And shall we reap the reward that waits on our discharge of our high duty as the sovereign power of earth; shall we occupy new markets for what our farmers raise, new markets for what our factories make, new markets for what our merchants sell - aye, and, please God, new markets for what our ships shall carry?
Shall we avail ourselves of new sources of supply of what we do not raise or make so that what are luxuries today will be necessities tomorrow? Shall our commerce be encouraged until, with Oceanica, the Orient and the world, American trade shall be the imperial trade of the entire globe?
What are the great facts of this administration? [Mckinley].. .The past two years, which have blossomed into four splendid months of glory. But a war has marked it, the most holy ever waged by one nation against another -- a war for civilization, a war for a permanent peace, a war which, under God, although we knew it not, swung open to the republic the portals of the commerce to the the world...We are told that all citizens and every platform endorse the war, and admit, with the joy of patriotism, that this is true. But that is only among ourselves, and we are of and to ourselves no longer.
This election takes place on the stage of the world, with all earth’s nations for our auditors. If the administration is defeated at the polls, will England believe that we accept the results of the war? Will Germany, that sleepless searcher for new markets for her factories and fields, and therefore the effective meddler in all international complications - will Germany be discouraged from interfering with our settlement of the war if the administration is defeated at the polls? Will Russia, that weaver of the webs of commerce into which province after province and people after people fall, regard us as a steadfast people if the administration is defeated at the polls?
The world still rubs its eyes from its awakening to the resistless power and sure destiny of this republic. Which outcome of this election will be best for America’s future, which will most healthfully impress every people of the globe with the steadfastness of character and tenacity of purpose of the American people - the triumph of the government at the polls or the success of the opposition?
I repeat, it is more than a party question. It is an American question. It is an issue in which history sleeps. It is a situation which will influence the destiny of the republic....
Hawaii is ours; Puerto Rico is to be ours; at the prayer of the people, Cuba will finally be ours; in the islands of the East, even to the gates of Asia, coaling stations are to be ours; at the very least the flag of a liberal government is to float over the Philippines, and I pray God it may be the banner that Taylor unfurled in Texas and Fremont carried to the coast - the stars and stripes of glory.
And the burning question of this campaign is whether the American people will accept the gifts of events; whether they will rise as lifts their soaring destiny; whether they will proceed upon the lines of national development surveyed by the statesmen of our past; or whether, for the first time, the American people doubt their mission, question fate, prove apostate to the spirit of their race, and halt the ceaseless march of free institutions.
The opposition tells us that we ought not to govern a people without their consent. I answer-i The rule of liberty, that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government... If England can govern foreign lands, so can America. If Germany can govern foreign lands, so can America. If they can supervise protectorates, so can America. Why is it more difficult to administer Hawaii than New Mexico or California? Both had a savage and an alien population; both were more remote from the seat of government when they came under our dominion than Hawaii is today... we are of the ruling race of the world, that ours is the blood of government, ours the heart of dominion, ours the brain and genius of administration? Will you remember that we do but what our fathers did - we but pitch the tents of liberty farther westward, farther southward - we only continue the march of the flag.
The march of the flag!...
The ocean does not separate us from lands of our duty and desire - the oceans join us, a river never to be dredged, a canal never to be repaired.
Today we are raising more than we can consume. Today we are making more than we can use. Today our industrial society is congested; there are more workers than there is work; there is more capital than there is investment We do not need more money - we need more circulation, more employment Therefore we must find new markets for our produce, new occupation for our capital, new work for our labor. And so, while we did not need the territory taken during the past century at the time it was required , we do need what we have taken in 1898, and we need it now.
Think of the thousands of Americans who will pour into Hawaii and Puerto Rico when the republic’s laws cover those islands with justice and safety! Think of the tens of thousands of Americans who will invade mine and field and forest in the Philippines when a liberal government, protected and controlled by this republic, if not the government of the republic itself, shall establish order and equity there! Think of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who will build a soap-and-water, common-school civilization of enemy and industry in Cuba when a government of law replaces the double reign of anarchy and tyranny. Think of the prosperous millions that empress of islands will support when, obedient to the law of political gravitation, her people ask for the highest honor liberty can bestow, the sacred Order of the Stars and Stripes, the citizenship of the Great Republic!
What does all this mean for every one of us? It means opportunity for all the glorious young manhood of the republic - the most. virile, ambitious, impatient, militant manhood the world has ever seen...
Ah! as our commerce spreads, the flag of liberty will circle the globe and the highways of the ocean - carrying trade to all mankind - be guarded by the guns of the republic. And as their thunders salute the flag, benighted peoples will know that the voice of liberty is speaking, at last, for them; that civilization is dawning, at last, for them - liberty and civilization, those children of Christ’s gospel, who follow and never precede the preparing march of commerce.
Fellow Americans, we are God’s chosen people. Yonder at Bunker Hilt and Yorktown His providence was above us. At New Orleans and on ensanguined seas His hand sustained us. Abraham Lincoln was His minister, and His was the Altar of Freedom the boys in blue set on a hundred battlefields. His power directed Dewey in the East, and delivered the Spanish Fleet into our hands on the eve of Liberty’s natal day, as He delivered the elder Armada into the hands of our English sires two centuries ago. His great purposes are revealed in the progress of the flag, which surpasses the intentions of congresses and cabinets, and leads us like a holler pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night into situations unforeseen by finite wisdom and duties unexpected by the unprophetic heart of selfishness.
The American people cannot use a dishonest medium of exchange; it is ours to set the world its example of right and honor. We cannot fly from our world duties; it is ours to execute the purpose of a fate that has driven us to be greater than our small intentions. We cannot retreat from any soil where Providence has unfurled our banner~ it is ours to save that soil for liberty and civilization. For liberty and civilization and God’s promise fulfilled, the flag must henceforth be the symbol and the sign to all mankind - the flag!
The Paralyzing Influence of Imperialism William Jennings Bryan, 1900
The Filipinos do not need any encouragement from Americans now living. Our whole history has been an encouragement, not only to the Filipinos but to all who are denied a voice in their own government. If the Republicans are prepared to censure all who have used language calculated to make the Filipinos hate foreign domination, let them condemn the speech of Patrick Henry. When he uttered that passionate appeal, “Give me liberty or give me death,” he expressed a sentiment which still echoes in the hearts of men.
Let them censure Jefferson; of all the statesmen of history none have used words so offensive to those who would hold their fellows in political bondage. Let them censure Washington, who declared that the colonists must choose between liberty and slavery. Or, if the statute of limitations has run against the sins of Henry and Jefferson and Washington, let them censure Lincoln, whose Gettysburg speech will be quoted in defense of popular government when the present advocates of force and conquest are forgotten.
Someone has said that a truth once spoken can never be recalled. It goes on and on, and no one can set a limit to its ever widening influence. But if it were possible to obliterate every word written or spoken in defense of the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, a war of conquest would still leave its legacy of perpetual hatred, for it was God Himself who placed in every human heart the love of liberty. He never made a race of people so low in the scale of civilization or intelligence that it would welcome a foreign master.
Those who would have this nation enter upon a career of empire must consider not only the effect of imperialism on the Filipinos but they must also calculate its effects upon our own nation. We cannot repudiate the principle of self-government in the Philippines without weakening that principle here.
Lincoln said that the safety of this nation was not in its fleets, its armies, its forts, but in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all times, everywhere, and he warned his countrymen that they could not destroy this spirit without planting the seeds of despotism at their own doors.
If we have an imperial policy we must have a great standing army as its natural and necessary complement. The spirit which will justify the forcible annexation of the Philippine Islands will justify the seizure of other islands and the domination of other people, and with wars of conquest we can expect a certain, if not rapid, growth of our military establishment.
The Democratic Party disputes this doctrine and denounces it as repugnant to both the letter and spirit of our organic law. There is no place in our system of government for the deposit of arbitrary and irresistible power. That the leaders of a great party should claim for any President or Congress the right to treat millions of people as mere “possessions” and deal with them unrestrained by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights shows how far we have already departed from the ancient landmarks and indicates what may be expected if this nation deliberately enters upon a career of empire.
I place the philosophy of Franklin against the sordid doctrine of those who would put a price upon the head of an American soldier and justify a war of conquest upon the ground that it will pay. The Democratic Party is in favor of the expansion of trade. It would extend our trade by every legitimate and peaceful means; but it is not willing to make merchandise of human blood.
But a war of conquest is as unwise as it is unrighteous. A harbor and coaling station in the Philippines would answer every trade and military necessity and such a concession could have been secured at any time without difficulty. It is not necessary to own people in order to trade with them. We carry on trade today with every part of the world, and our commerce has expanded more rapidly than the commerce of any European empire. We do not own Japan or China, but we trade with their people. We have not absorbed the republics of Central and South America, but we trade with them. Trade cannot be permanently profitable unless it is voluntary.
Imperialism would be profitable to the Army contractors; it would be profitable to the ship owners, who would carry live soldiers to the Philippines and bring dead soldiers back; it would be profitable to those who would seize upon the franchises, and it would be profitable to the officials whose salaries would be fixed here and paid over there; but to the farmer, to the laboring man, and to the vast majority of those engaged in other occupations, it would bring expenditure without return and risk without reward.
When our opponents are unable to defend their position by argument, they fall back upon the assertion that it is destiny and insist that we must submit to it no matter how much it violates our moral precepts and our principles of government This is a complacent philosophy. It obliterates the distinction between right and wrong and makes individuals and nations the helpless victims of circumstances. Destiny is the subterfuge of the invertebrate, who, lacking the courage to oppose error, seeks some plausible excuse for supporting it. Washington said that the destiny of the republican form of government was deeply, if not finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the American people.
The destiny of this republic is in the hands of its own people, and upon the success of the experiment here rests the hope of humanity. No exterior force can disturb this republic, and no foreign influence should be permitted to change its course. What the future has in store for this nation no one has authority to declare, but each individual has his own idea of the nation’s mission, and he owes it to his country as well as to himself to contribute as best he may to the fulfillment of that mission.
I can conceive of a national destiny surpassing the glories of the present and the past - a destiny which meets the responsibilities of today and measures up to the possibilities of the future. Behold a republic, resting securely upon the foundation stories quarried by revolutionary patriots from the mountain of eternal truth
- a republic applying in practice and proclaiming to the world the self-evident proposition that all men are created equal; that they are endowed with inalienable rights; that governments are instituted among men to secure these rights, and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Behold a republic in which civil and religious liberty stimulate all to earnest endeavor and in which the law restrains every hand uplifted for a neighbor’s injury - a republic in which every citizen is a sovereign, but in which no one cares to wear a crown. Behold a republic standing erect while empires all around are bowed beneath the weight of their own armaments - a republic whose flag is loved while other flags are only feared. Behold a republic increasing in population, in wealth, in strength, and in influence, solving the problems of civilization and hastening the coming of an universal brotherhood - a republic which shakes thrones and dissolves aristocracies by its silent example and give light and inspiration to those who still in darkness. Behold a republic gradually but surely becoming a supreme moral factor in the world’s progress and the accepted arbiter of the world’s disputes - a republic whose history, like the path of the just, is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”
The White Man’s Burden Rudyard Kipling, 1899
While the debate over the Philippines was raging, Kipling addressed to Americans a poem entitled
“The White Man’s Burden,” which, despite its ironic tone, struck, a note of nobility that was seized upon by expansionists. It was the title rather than the content of the poem that provided a catch-phrase for Imperialists and the poem, which was first published by S. S. McClure and widely reprinted throughout the country within a week, did much to bolster the expansionist cause.
Take up the white man’s burden- Send forth the best ye breed- Go, bind your Sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need; To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-
Your new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child.
Take up the white man’s burden - The savage wars of peace - Fill full the mouth of famine, And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest (The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the white man’s burden No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper - The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter, The roads Ye shall not tread, Go, make them with your living And mark them with your dead.
Take up the white man’s burden, In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror And check the Show of pride; By open speech and simple, A hundred times made plain,
To seek another’s profit And work another’s gain.
Take up the white man’s burden, And reap his old reward-
The blame of those ye better The hate of those ye guard -
The cry of hosts ye humor (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:
“Why brought ye us from bondage Our loved Egyptian night?”
Take up white man’s burden- We dare not stoop to less- Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness. By all ye will or whisper, By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the white man’s burden! Have done with childish days
The lightly proffered laurel, The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless
otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author.
Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
6.2 Progressivism George Baer, Woodrow Wilson
A. Select 1 quote from each of the readings and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Choose 3 of the below questions and answer them in paragraph form.
1. Compare each author’s ideas to earlier ideas or precedents. In other words, what is the historical “heritage of each author?”
2. Outline and react to the major arguments of Debs and Wilson.
3. What does Wilson say about being average? React to his ideas.
4. Explain Wilson’s “Rose” metaphor.
On the Divine Right to Property GEORGE F. BAER 1902
Few letters halve attracted so much public attention as George F. Baer’s reply to W.P. Clark on July 1, 1902. The letter was written during an anthracite coal strike in Pennsylvania. Clark had appealed to Baer, president of The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, to end the strike. The letter served to intensify the hostile feelings between labor and management and delay any Peaceful settlement of the strike.
I do not know who you are. I see that you are a religious man, but you are evidently biased in favor of the right of the working man to control a business in which he has no other interest than to obtain fair wages for the work he does.
I beg of you not to be discouraged. The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for, not by the labor agitators but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country, and upon the successful management of which so much depends.
Do not be discouraged. Pray earnestly that right may triumph, always remembering that the Lord God Omnipotent still reigns, and that His reign is one of law and order and not of violence and crime.
The New Freedom Woodrow Wilson 1912
Wilson’s speeches and writings brought him national recognition and he was elected governor of New Jersey in 1910. His appeal to progressive forces won him the Democratic nomination for president in 1912.
When I look back on the processes of history, when I survey the genesis of America, I see this written over every page: that the nations are renewed from the bottom, not from the top; that the genius which springs up from the ranks of unknown men is the genius which renews the youth and energy of the people. Everything I know about history, every bit of experience and observation that has contributed to my thought, has confirmed me in the conviction that the real wisdom of human life is compounded out of the experiences of ordinary men. The utility, the vitality, the fruitage of life does not come from the top to bottom; it comes, like the natural growth of a great tree, from the soil, up through the trunk into the branches to the foliage and the fruit. The great struggling unknown masses of the men who are at the base of everything are the dynamic force that is fifing the levels of society. A nation is as great, and only as great, as her rank and file.
So the first and chief need of this nation of ours today is to Include in the partnership of government all those great bodies of unnamed men who are going to produce our future leaders and renew the future energies of America. And as I confess that, as I confess my belief in the common man, I know what I am saying. The man who is swimming against the stream knows strength of it. The man who is in the melee knows what blows are being struck and what blood is being drawn. The man who is on the make is the judge of what is happening in America, not the man who has made good, not the man who has emerged from the flood; not the man who is standing on the bank looking on, but the man who is struggling for his life and for the lives of those who are dearer to him than himself. That is the man whose judgment will tell you what is going on in America; that is the man by whose judgment I, for one wish to be guided.
We have had the wrong Jury; we have had the wrong group,-no. I will not say the wrong group, but too small a group,-in control of the policies of the United States. The average man has not been consulted and his heart had begun to sink for fear he never would be consulted, and his heart had begun to sink for fear he rest would be consulted again. Therefore we have got to organize a government whose sympathies will be open to the whole body, of the people of the United States, a government which will consult as large a proportion of the people of the United States as possible before it acts. Because the great problem of government is to know what the average man is, experiencing and is thinking about. Most of us are average men; very few of us rise, except by fortunate accident, above the general level of the community, about us; and therefore the man who thinks common thoughts, the man who has had common experiences is almost always the man who interprets America aright. Isn’t that the reason that we are proud of such stories as the story of Abraham Lincoln,-a man who rose out of the ranks and interpreted America better than any man had interpreted it who had risen out of the privileged classes or the educated classes of America?
The hope of the United States in the present and in the future is the same that it has always been: it is the hope and confidence that out of unknown homes will come men who wilt constitute themselves the masters of industry and of politics. The average hopefulness, the average welfare, the average enterprise, the average initiative, of the United States are the only things that make it rich. We are not rich because a few gentlemen direct our industry; we are rich because of our own intelligence and our own industry. America does not consist of men who get their names into the newspapers; America does not consist politically of the men who set themselves up to be political leaders, she does not consist of the men who do most of her talking,-they are important only so far as they speak for that great voiceless multitude of men who constitute the great body and the saving force of the nation. Nobody who cannot speak the common thought, who does not move by the common impulse, is the man to speak for America, or for any of her future purposes. Only he is fit to speak who knows the thoughts of the great body of citizens, the men who go about their business every day; the men who toil from morning till night the men who go home tired in the evenings; the men who are caring on the thing we are so proud of.
You know how it thrills our blood sometimes to think how all the nations of the earth wait to see what America is going to do with her power; her physical power; her enormous resources; her enormous wealth. The nations hold their breath to see what this young country will do with her young unspoiled strength: we cannot help but be proud that we are strong. But what has made us strong? The toil of millions of men, the toil of men who do not boast, who are inconspicuous, but who live their lives humbly from day to day: it is the great body of toilers that constitutes the might of America. It is one of the glories of our land that nobody is able to predict from what family, from what region, from what race, even, the leaders of the country are going to come. The great leaders of this country have not come very often from the established, “successful” families.
I remember speaking at a school not long ago where I understood that almost all the young men were the sons of very rich people, and I told them I looked upon them with a great deal of pity, because, I said: “Most of you fellows are doomed to obscurity. You will not do anything. You will never try to do anything and with all the great tasks of the country waiting to be done, probably, you are the very men who will decline to do them. Some man who has been ‘up against it,’ some man who has come out of the crowd, somebody who has had the whip of necessity laid on his back-, will emerge out of the crowd, will show that he understands the crowd, understands the interests of the nation, united and not separated, and will stand up and lead us.”
If I may speak of my own experience, I have found audiences made up of the “common people” quicker to take a point, quicker to understand an argument, quicker to discern a tendency and to comprehend a principle, than many a college class that I have lectured to, not because the college class lacked the intelligence, but because college boys
are not in contact with the realities of life, while “common” citizens are in contact, with the actual life of day by day; you do not have to explain to them what touches them to the quick.
There is one illustration of the value of the constant renewal of society from the bottom that has always interested me profoundly. The only reason why government did not suffer dry rot in the Middle Ages under the aristocratic system which then prevailed was that so many of the men who were efficient instruments of government were drawn from the church, from that great religious body which was then the only church, that body which we now distinguish from other religious bodies as the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church was then, as it is now, a great democracy. There was no peasant so humble that he might not become a priest, and no priest so obscure that he might not become Pope of Christendom; and every chancellery in Europe, every court in Europe was ruled by these learned, trained and accomplished men, the priesthood of that great and dominant body. What kept government alive in the Middle Ages was this constant rise of the sap from the bottom, from the rank and file of the great body of the people through the open channels of the priesthood. That, it seems to me. is one of the most interesting and convincing illustrations that could possibly be adduced of the thing that I am talking about.
The only way that government is kept pure is by keeping these channels open, so that nobody may deem himself so humble as not to constitute a part of the body politic, so that there will constantly be coming new blood into the veins of the body politic; so that no man is so obscure that he may not break the crust of any class he may belong to, may not spring up to higher levels and be counted among the leaders of the state. Anything that depresses, anything that makes the organization greater than the man, anything that blocks, discourages, dismays the humble man is against all the principles of progress. When I see alliances formed as they are now being formed, by successful men of business with successful organizers of politics, I know that something has been done that checks the vitality and progress of society. Such an alliance, made at the top, is an alliance made to depress the levels, to hold, them where they are, if not to sink them; and, therefore, it is the constant business of good politics to break up such partnerships, to reestablish and reopen the connections between the great body of the people and the offices of government.
Today, when our government has so far passed into the hands of special interests; today; when the doctrine is implicitly allowed that only, select classes have the equipment necessary for carrying on government; today when the doctrine is implicitly avowed that only select, classes have the equipment necessary for carrying on government; today when so many conscientious citizens, smitten with the scene of social wrong and suffering, have fallen victims to the fallacy that benevolent government can be meted out to the people by kind hearted trustees of prosperity and guardians of the welfare of dutiful employees-today, supremely, does it behoove this nation to remember that a people shall be saved by the power that sleeps in its own deep bosom, or by none: shall be renewed in hope, in conscience, in strength, by waters welling up from ifs own sweet perennial springs. Nor from above, not by patronage of its aristocrats. The flower does not bear the roof, but the roof the flower. Everything that blooms in beauty in the air of heaven draws its fairness, its vigor, from its roots. Nothing living can blossom into fruit age unless through nourishing stalk deep planted in the common soil. The rose is merely the evidence of the vitality of the root, and the real source of its beauty, the very blush that if wears upon it’s tender cheek, comes from those silent sources of life that lie hidden in the chemistry of the soil. Up from that soil, up from the silent bosom of the earth, rise the currents of life and energy. Up from the common soil, up from the quiet heart of the people rise joyously today streams of hope and determination bound to renew the face of the earth in glory.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
7.1 World War One Woodrow Wilson, Alan Seeger
A. Select 2 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Outline Wilson’s position.
C. Using quotes, evaluate what Wilson believes American’s role in the world should be..
D. Explain the reasoning behind Wilson’s claims that the world can be made “safe for Democracy” and that we should ‘‘fight a war to end all wars.’’
War Message to Congress Woodrow Wilson, April 1917
On the third of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the first day of February it was Its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe
That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed.
The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.
I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law, which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world.... This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity, and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.
It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed In the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for Itself how it wifl meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion....
With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be In fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war....
While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are.... Our object Is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles. Neutrality Is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states.
We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of syrr~~athy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the Interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools....
We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a Government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic Governments of the world. We are now about to accept gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. To fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included:
for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience.
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them....
There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts,-for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America Is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.
Reply to Wilson George Norris, 1917
There are a great many American citizens who feel that we owe it as a duty to humanity to take part in this war. Many instances of cruelty and inhumanity can be found on both sides. Men are often biased in their judgment on account of their sympathy and their interests. To my mind, what we ought to have maintained from the beginning was the strictest neutrality. If we had done this I do not believe we would have been on the verge of war at the present time.
We had a right as a nation, if we desired, to cease at any time to be neutral. We had a technical right to respect the English war zone and to disregard the German war zone, but we could not do that and be neutral. I have no quarrel to find with the man who does not desire our country to remain neutral. While many such people are moved by selfish motives and hopes of gain, I have no doubt but that in a great many instances, through what I believe to be a misunderstanding of the real condition, there are many honest, patriotic citizens who think we ought to engage in this war and who are behind the President in his demand that we should declare war against Germany. I think such people err in judgment and to a great extent have been misled as to the real history and the true facts by the almost unanimous demand of the great combination of wealth that has a direct financial interest in our participation in the war.
We have loaned many hundreds of millions of dollars to the allies in this controversy, while such action was legal and countenanced by international law, there is no doubt in my mind but the enormous amount of money loaned to the allies in this country has been instrumental in bringing about a public sentiment in favor of our country taking a course that would make every bond worth a hundred cents on the dollar and making the payment of every debt certain and sure. Through this instrumentality, and also through the instrumentality of others who have not only made millions out of the war in the manufacture of munitions, etc., and who would expect to make millions more if our country can be drawn into the catastrophe, a large number of the great newspapers and news agencies of the country have been controlled and enlisted in the greatest propaganda that the world has ever known, to manufacture sentiment in favor of war. It is now demanded that the American citizens shall be used as insurance policies to guarantee the safe delivery of munitions of war to belligerent nations. The enormous profits of munition manufacturers, stockbrokers, and bond dealers must be still further increased by our entrance into the war. This his brought us to the present moment. when Congress, urged by the President and backed by the artificial sentiment, is about to declare war and engulf our country in the greatest holocaust, that the world has ever known....
To whom does the war bring prosperity? Not to the soldier who for the munificent compensation of $16 per month shoulders his musket and goes into the trench, there to shed his blood and to die If necessary; not to the brokenhearted widow who waits for the return of the mangled body of her husband; not to the mother who weeps at the death of her brave boy; not to the little children who shiver with cold; not to the babe who suffers from hunger; nor to the millions of mothers and daughters who carry broken hearts to their graves. War brings no prosperity to the great mass of common and patriotic citizens. It Increases the cost of living of those who toil and those who already must strain every effort to keep soul and body together.
War brings prosperity to the stock gambler on Wall street-to those who are already in possession of more wealth than can be realized or enjoyed. [A Wall Street broker] says if we can not get war, “it is nevertheless good opinion that the preparedness program will compensate in good measure for the loss of the stimulus of actual war.” That is, if we can not get war, let us go as far in that direction as possible. If we can not get war, let us cry for additional ships, additional guns, additional munitions, and everything else that will have a tendency to bring us as near as possible to the verge of war. And if war comes do such men as these shoulder, the musket and go into the trenches?
Their object in having war and in preparing for war Is to make money. Human suffering and the sacrifice of human life are necessary, but Wall Street considers only the dollars and the cents. The men who do the fighting, the people who make the sacrifices, are the ones who will not be counted in the measure of this great prosperity he depicts. The stock brokers would not, of course, go to war, because the very object they have in bringing on the war is profit, and therefore they must remain in their Wall Street offices in order to share in that great prosperity which they say war will bring. The volunteer officer, even the drafting officer, will not find them. They will be concealed in their palatial offices on Wall Street, sitting behind mahogany desks, covered up with clipped coupons-coupons soiled with the sweat of honest toll, coupons stained with mothers’ tears, coupons dyed in the lifeblood of their fellow men.
We are taking a step today that is fraught with untold danger. We are going into war upon the command of gold. We are going to run the risk of sacrificing millions of our countrymen’s lives in order that other countrymen may coin their lifeblood into money. And even if we do not cross the Atlantic and go into the trenches, we are going to pile up a debt that the toiling masses that shall come many generations after us will have to pay. Unborn millions will bend their backs in toil in order to pay for the terrible step we are now about to take. We are about to do the bidding of wealth’s terrible mandate. By our act we will make millions of our countrymen suffer, and the consequences of it may well be that millions of our brethren must shed their lifeblood, millions of brokenhearted women must weep, millions of children must suffer with cold, and millions of babes must die from hunger, and all because we want to preserve the commercial right of American citizens to deliver munitions of war to belligerent nations.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
7.2 The Lost Generation ee cummings, Carl Sandberg
A. In paragraph form answer the below questions.
1. How does ee cummings represent the ideal of the “lost generation” of American writers and artists? (use our text as reference, pp. 824)
2. In what ways can the work of cummings be seen as a reaction to the previous 50 years in American life (specifically WWI)?
B. In a paragraph, write a reaction to one or more of cumming’s works (“This makes no sense to me!” is not an adequate answer).
The Lost Generation ee cummings 1925
The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople
-it’s no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than the squarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings;mostpeople are snobs.
Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to mostpeople? Catastrophe unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked out of his hyperexclusively ultravoluptuous superpalazzo,and dumped into an incredibly vulgar detentioncamp swarming with every conceivable species of undesirable organism. Mostpeople fancy a guaranteed birthproof safetysuit of nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they’d improbably call it dying-
you and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough. We are human beings;for whom birth is a supremely welcome mystery,the mystery of growing: the mystery which happens only and whenever we are faithful to ourselves. You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming. Life, for eternal us, is now; and now is much too busy being a little more than everything to seem anything,catastrophic included.
Life,for mostpeople,simply isn’t. Take the socalled standardofliving. What do mostpeople mean by “living”? They don’t mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science,in its finite but unbounded wisdom,has succeeded in selling their wives. If science could fail,a mountain’s a mammal. mostpeople’s wives can spot a genuine delusion of embryonic omnipotence immediately and will accept no substitutes
-luckily for us,a mountain is a mammal. The plusorminus movie to end moving,the strictly scientific parlourgame of real unreality, the tyranny conceived in conception and dedicated to the proposition that every man is a woman and any woman a king,hasn’t a wheel to stand on. What their most synthetic not to mention transparent majesty,mrsandmr collective foetus,would improbably call a ghost is walking. He isn’t an undream of anaesthetized impersons, or a cosmic comfortstation,or a transcendentally sterilized lookiesoundiefeelietastiesmellie. He is a healthily complex,a naturally homogeneous,citizen of immortality. The now of his each pitying free imperfect gesture,his any birth or breathing insults perfected inframortally millenniums of slavishness. He is a little more than everything;he is democracy;he is alive:he is ourselves.
Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are by somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn,a human being;somebody who said to those near him, when his fingers would not hold a brush “tie it into my hand”-
nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false,nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or extraordinary,nothing emptied or filled,real or unreal;nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening, innocent spontaneous,true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden,but actually, flowers which breasts are among ihe very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted;brain over heart, surface:nowhere hating or to fear;shadow,mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making;,only each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno,impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong;never to gain or pause,never the soft adventure of undoom,greedy anguishes and cringing ecstasies of inexistence;never to rest and never to have: only to grow.
Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question
5 31
may my heart always be open to little Buffalo Bill’s
birds who are the secrets of living defunct
whatever they sing is better than to know who used to
and if men should not hear them men are old ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
may my mind stroll about hungry and break onetwothreefourfive
and fearless and thirsty and supple pigeonsjustlikethat
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young Jesus
and may myself do nothing usefully he was a handsome man
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who and what i want to know is
could fail how do you like your blueeyed boy
pulling all the sky over him with one smile Mister Death
32. 33
ladies and gentleman this little girl into the strenuous briefness
with the good teeth and small Life:
important breasts handorgans and April
(is it the Frolic of Century whirl? darkness, friends
one’s memory indignantly protests)
this little dancer with the tightened i charge laughing
eyes into the hair-thin tints
crisp ogling shoulders and the ripe of yellow dawn,
quite too into the women-coloured
large lips always quenched faintly, twilight
wishes you
with all her fragile might to not surmise i smilingly
she dreamed one afternoon glide. I
. . . or into the big vermilion departure
maybe read? swim, sayingly;
of a time when the beautiful most of
her
(this here and This, do you get me?) (Do you think?) the
will maybe dance and maybe sing and i do, world is probably made of
be roses & hello
absitively posolutely dead
like Coney Island in winter (of solongs and, ashes)
Sandberg War Poems
Iron
Guns,
Long, steel guns,
Pointed from the war ships in the name of the war god.
Straight, shining, polished guns,
Clambered over with jackies in white blouses, Glory of tan faces, tousled hair, white teeth,
Laughing lithe jackies in white blouses,
Sitting on the guns singing war songs, war chanties.
Shovels,
Broad, iron shovels,
Scooping out oblong vaults,
Loosening turf and leveling sod.
I ask you To witness - -
The shovel is brother to the gun.
Buttons
I have been watching the war slammed up for advertising in front of the
newspaper office
Buttons - - red and yellow buttons - - blue and black buttons - - are shoved
back and forth across the map.
A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,
And then fixes a yellow button one inch west.
And follows the yellow button with a black button one inch west.
(ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in a red soak along a river edge, Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling death in their throats.)
Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one inch on the war map
here in front of the newspaper office where the freckled-faced young
man is laughing to us.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
8.1 FDR’s Inaugural Address Franklin Delano Roosevelt
A. Select 2 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. In paragraph form answer the below questions.
1. What were the major problems the nation faced according to FDR?
2. How are the two speeches different? (content, tone, approach)
3. What does FDR believe the role of the Federal government should be?
4. To what values and ideals does FDR appeal?
First Inaugural Address Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 4, 1933
I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.
The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States--a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.
If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.
With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.
Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.
I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.
But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis--broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.
We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stem performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.
We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.
In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.
Second Inaugural Address Franklin Roosevelt, January 20th, 1937
When four years ago we met to inaugurate a President, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision--to speed the time when there would be for all the people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. We of the Republic pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it; to end by action, tireless and unafraid, the stagnation and despair of that day. We did those first things first.
Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively we recognized a deeper need--the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever—rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men.
We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster.
In this we Americans were discovering no wholly new truth; we were writing a new chapter in our book of self-government.
A century and a half ago they established the Federal Government in order to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to the American people. Today we invoke those same powers of government to achieve the same objectives.
Our progress out of the depression is obvious. But that is not all that you and I mean by the new order of things. Our pledge was not merely to do a patchwork job with secondhand materials. By using the new materials of social justice we have undertaken to erect on the old foundations a more enduring structure for the better use of future generations.
In that purpose we have been helped by achievements of mind and spirit Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world.
This new understanding undermines the old admiration of worldly success as such. We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life.
For these reasons I am justified in believing that the greatest change we have witnessed has been the change in the moral climate of America.
I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of natural resources. Its hundred and thirty million people are at peace among themselves; they are making their country a good neighbor among the nations. I see a United Stales which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence.
But here is the challenge to our democracy In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens--a substantial part of its whole population--who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.
I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.
I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.
I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.
I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.
It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope--because the Nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law—abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
If I know aught of the spirit and purpose of our Nation, we will not listen to Comfort, Opportunism, and Timidity. We will carry on.
Overwhelmingly, we of the Republic are men and women of good will; men and women who have more than warm hearts of dedication; men and women who have cool heads and willing hands of practical purpose as well. They will insist that every agency of popular government use effective instruments to carry out their will.
Government is competent when all who compose it work as trustees for the whole people. It can make constant progress when it keeps abreast of all the facts. It can obtain justified support and legitimate criticism when the people receive true information of all that government does.
Today we reconsecrate our country to long-cherished ideals in a suddenly changed civilization. In every land there are always at work forces that drive men apart and forces that draw men together. In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go down, as one people.
In taking again the oath of office as President of the United States, I assume the solemn obligation of leading the American people forward along the road over which they have chosen to advance.
While this duty rests upon me I shall do my utmost to speak their purpose and to do their will, seeking Divine guidance to help us each and every one to give light to them that sit in darkness and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
8.2 Cannery Row John Steinbeck
A. Answer the below questions in paragraph form.
1. What does work mean to the average American?
2. What symbols does Steinbeck create which speak to the American experience in the depression?
3. What does literature tell you about the depression that “history” can not?
from Cannery Row John Steinbeck
CHAPTER VIII
In April 1932 the boiler at the Hediondo Cannery blew a tube for the third time in two weeks and the board of directors consisting of Mr. Randolph and a stenographer decided that it would be cheaper to buy a new boiler than to have to shut down so often, In time the new boiler arrived and the old one was moved into the vacant lot between Lee Chong’s and the Bear Flag Restaurant where it was set on blocks to await an inspiration on Mr. Randolph’s part on how to make some money out of it. Gradually the plant engineer removed the tubing to use to patch other outworn equipment at the Hediondo. The boiler looked like an old-fashioned locomotive without wheels. It had a big door in the center of its nose and a low fire door. Gradually it became red and soft with rust and gradually the mallow weeds grew up around it and the flaking rust fed the weeds. Flowering myrtle crept up its sides and the wild anise perfumed the air about it. Then someone threw out a datura root and the thick fleshy tree grew up and the great white bells hung down over the boiler door and at night the flowers smelled of love and excitement, an incredibly sweet and moving odor.
In 1935 Mr. and Mrs. Sam Malloy moved into the boiler. The tubing was all gone now and it was a roomy, dry, and safe apartment. True, if you came in through the fire door you had to get down on your hands and knees, but once in there was head room in the middle and you couldn’t want a dryer, warmer place to stay. They shagged a mattress through the fire door and settled down. Mr. Malloy was happy and contented there and for quite a long time so was Mrs. Malloy.
Below the boiler on the hill there were number of large pipes also abandoned by the Hediondo. Toward the end of 1937 there was a great catch of fish and the canneries were working full time and a housing shortage occurred. Then it was that Mr. Malloy took to renting the larger pipes as sleeping quarters for single men at a very nominal fee. With a piece of tar paper over one end and a square of carpet over the other, they made comfortable bedrooms, although men used to sleeping curled up had to change their habits or move out. There were those too who claimed that their snores echoing back from the pipes woke them up. But on the whole Mr. Malloy did a steady small business and was happy.
Mrs. Malloy had been contented until her husband became a landlord and then she began to change. First it was a rug, then a washtub, then a lamp with a colored silk shade. Finally she came into the boiler on her hands and knees one day and she stood up and said a little breathlessly, “Holman’s are having a sale of curtains. Real lace curtains and edges of blue and pink -$1.98 a set with curtain rods thrown in.”
Mr. Malloy sat up on the mattress. “Curtains?” he demanded. “What in God’s name do you want curtains for?”
“I like things nice,” said Mrs. Malloy. “I always did like to have things nice for you,” and her lower lip began to tremble.
But darling,” Sam Malloy cried, “I got nothing against curtains. I like curtains.”
“Only $1.98,” Mrs. Malloy quavered, “and you begrutch me $1.98,” and she sniffled and her chest heaved.
“I don’t begrutch you,” said Mr. Malloy. “But, darling -for Christ’s sake what are we going to do with curtains? We got no windows.”
Mrs. Malioy cried and cried and Sam held her in his arms and comforted her.
“Men just don’t understand how a woman feels,” she sobbed. “Men just never try to put themselves in a woman’s place.”
And Sam lay beside her and rubbed her back for a long time before she went to sleep.
CHAPTER XXVI
The two little boys played in the boat works yard until a cat climbed the fence. Instantly they gave chase, drove it across the tracks and there filled their pockets with granite stones from the roadbed. The cat got away from them in the tall weeds but they kept the stones because they were perfect in weight, shape, and size for throwing. You can’t ever tell when you’re going to need a stone like that. They turned down Cannery Row and whanged a stone at the corrugated iron front of Morden’s Cannery. A startled man looked out the office window and then rushed for the door, but the boys were too quick for him. They were lying behind a wooden stringer in the lot before he even got near the door. He couldn’t have found them in a hundred years.
“I bet he could look all his life and be couldn’t find us,” said Joey.
They got tired of hiding after a while with no one looking for them. They got up and strolled on down Cannery Row. They looked a long time in Lee’s window coveting the pliers, the hack saws, the engineers’ caps and the bananas. Then they crossed the street and sat down on the lower step of the stairs that went to the second story of the laboratory.
Joey said, “You know, this guy in here got babies in bottles.”
“What kind of babies?” Willard asked.
“Regular babies, only before they’re borned”
“I don’t believe it,” said Willard.
‘Well, it’s true- The Sprague kid seen them and he says they ain’t no bigger than this and they got little hands and feet and eyes”
“And hair?” Willard demanded.
‘Well the Sprague kid didn’t say about hair.”
“You should of asked him. I think he’s a liar.”
“You better not let him hear you say that,” said Joey.
“Well, you can tell him I said it. I ain’t afraid of him and I ain’t afraid of you. I ain’t afraid of anybody. You want to make something of it?” Joey didn’t answer. “Well, do you?”
“No,” said Joey. “I was thinkin’, why don’t we just go up and ask the guy if he’s got babies in bottles? Maybe he’d show them to us, that is if he’s got any.”
“He ain’t here,” said Willard. “When he’s here, his car’s here. He’s away some place. I think it’s a lie. I think the Sprague kid is a liar. I think you’re a liar. You want to make something of that?”
It was a lazy day. Willard was going to have to work hard to get up any excitement. “I think you’re a coward, too. You want to make something of that?” Joey didn’t answer. Willard changed his tactics. “Where’s your old man now?” he asked in a conversational tone.
“He’s dead,” said Joey.
“Oh yeah? I didn’t hear. What’d lie die of?”
For a moment Joey was silent. He knew Willard knew but he couldn’t let on he knew, not without fighting Willard, and Joey was afraid of Willard.
“He committed--he killed himself.”
“Yeah?” Willard put on a long face. “How’d he do it?” “He took rat poison.
Willard’s voice shrieked with laughter. “What’d he think he was a rat?” Joey chuckled a little at the joke, just enough, that is.
“He must of thought he was a rat,” Willard cried. “Did he go crawling around like this-look, Joey-like this? Did he wrinkle up his nose like this? Did he have a big old long tail?” Willard was helpless with laughter.
“Why’n’t he just get a rat trap and put his head in it?” They laughed themselves out on that one, Willard really wore it out. Then he probed for another joke. “What’d he look like when he took it-like this?” He crossed his eyes and opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue.
“He was sick all day,” said Joey. “He didn’t die ‘til the middle of the night. It hurt him.”
Willard said, “What’d he do it for?”
“He couldn’t get a job,” said Joey. “Nearly a year he couldn’t get a job. And you know a funny thing? The next morning a guy come around to give him a job.”
Willard tried to recapture his joke. “I guess he just figured he was a rat,” he said, but it fell through even for Willard.
Joey stood up and put his hands in his pockets. He saw a little coppery shine in the gutter and walked toward it but just as he reached it Willard shoved him aside and picked up the penny.
“I saw it first,” Joey cried. “It’s mine.”
“You want to try and make something of it?” said Willard. “Why’n’t you go take some rat poison?”
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
8.3 Hiroshima
A. Select 4 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Write a paragraph for each justification.
1. Was America justified in using atomic weapons to end World War II?
The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Effects of the Atomic Bombings on the Inhabitants of the Bombed Cities
Manhatten Project Official Report 1946
In both Hiroshima and Nagasaki the tremendous scale of the disaster largely destroyed the cities as entities. Even the worst of all other previous bombing attacks on Germany and Japan, such as the incendiary raids on Hamburg in 1943 and on Tokyo in 1945, were not comparable to the paralyzing effect of the atomic bombs. In addition to the huge number of persons who were killed or injured so that their services in rehabilitation were not available, a panic flight of the population took place from both cities immediately following the atomic explosions. No significant reconstruction or repair work was accomplished because of the slow return of the population; at the end of November 1945 each of the cities had only about 140,000 people. Although the ending of the war almost immediately after the atomic bombings removed much of the incentive of the Japanese people toward immediate reconstruction of their losses, their paralysis was still remarkable. Even the clearance of wreckage and the burning of the many bodies trapped in it were not well organized some weeks after the bombings. As the British Mission has stated, “the impression which both cities make is of having sunk, in an instant and without a struggle, to the most primitive level.”
Aside from physical injury and damage, the most significant effect of the atomic bombs was the sheer terror which it struck into the peoples of the bombed cities. This terror, resulting in immediate hysterical activity and flight from the cities, had one especially pronounced effect persons who had become accustomed to mass air raids had grown to pay little heed to single planes or small groups of planes, but after the atomic bombings the appearance of a single plane caused more terror and disruption of normal life than the appearance of many hundreds of planes had ever been able to cause before. The effect of this terrible fear of the potential danger from even a single enemy plane on the lives of the peoples of the world in the event of any future war can easily be conjectured.
The atomic bomb did not alone win the war against Japan, but it most certainly ended it, saving the thousands of Allied lives that would have been lost in any combat invasion of Japan.
Eyewitness Account
Hiroshima — August 6th, 1945 by Father John A. Siemes, professor of modern philosophy at Tokyo’s Catholic University
Up to August 6th, occasional bombs, which did no great damage, had fallen on Hiroshima. Many cities roundabout, one after the other, were destroyed, but Hiroshima itself remained protected. There were almost daily observation planes over the city but none of them dropped a bomb. The citizens wondered why they alone had remained undisturbed for so long a time. There were fantastic rumors that the enemy had something special in mind for this city, but no one dreamed that the end would come in such a fashion as on the morning of August 6th.
August 6th began in a bright, clear, summer morning. About seven o’clock, there was an air raid alarm which we had heard almost every day and a few planes appeared over the city. No one paid any attention and at about eight o’clock, the all-clear was sounded. I am sitting in my room at the Novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Nagasake; during the past half year, the philosophical and theological section of our Mission had been evacuated to this place from Tokyo. The Novitiate is situated approximately two kilometers from Hiroshima, half-way up the sides of a broad valley which stretches from the town at sea level into this mountainous hinterland, and through which courses a river. From my window, I have a wonderful view down the valley to the edge of the city.
Suddenly--the lime is approximately 8:14--the whole valley is filled by a garish light which resembles the magnesium light used in photography, and I am conscious of a wave of heat. I jump to the window to find out the cause of this remarkable phenomenon, but I see nothing more than that brilliant yellow light. As I make for the door, it doesn’t occur to me that the light might have something to do with enemy planes. On the way from the window, I hear a moderately loud explosion which seems to come from a distance and, at the same time, the windows are broken in with a loud crash. There has been an interval of perhaps ten seconds since the flash of light. I am sprayed by fragments of glass. The entire window frame has been forced into the room. I realize now that a bomb has burst and I am under the impression that it exploded directly over our house or in the immediate vicinity.
I am bleeding from cuts about the hands and head. I attempt to get out of the door. It has been forced outwards by the air pressure and has become jammed. I force an opening in the door by means of repeated blows with my hands and feet and come to a broad hallway from which open the various rooms. Everything is in a state of confusion. All windows are broken and all the doors are forced inwards. The bookshelves in the hallway have tumbled down. Most of my colleagues have been injured by fragments of glass. A few are bleeding but none has been seriously injured. Down in the valley, perhaps one kilometer toward the city from us, several peasant homes are on fire and the woods on the opposite side of the valley are aflame. A few of us go over to help control the flames. While we are attempting to put things in order, a storm comes up and it begins to rain. Over the city, clouds of smoke are rising and I hear a few slight explosions. I come to the conclusion that an incendiary bomb with an especially strong explosive action has gone off down in the valley. A few of us saw three planes at great altitude over the city at the time of the explosion. I, myself, saw no aircraft whatsoever.
Perhaps a half-hour after the explosion, a procession of people begins to stream up the valley from the city. The crowd thickens continuously. A few come up the road to our house. We give them first aid and bring them into the chapel, which we have in the meantime cleaned and cleared of wreckage, and put them to rest on the straw mats which constitute the floor of Japanese houses. A few display horrible wounds of the extremities and back. The small quantity of fat which we possessed during this lime of war was soon used up in the care of the burns. Father Rektor who, before taking holy orders, had studied medicine, ministers to the injured, but our bandages and drugs are soon gone. We must be content with cleansing the wounds.
More and more of the injured come to us. The least injured drag the more seriously wounded. There are wounded soldiers, and mothers carrying burned children in their arms. From the houses of the farmers in the valley comes word: “Cur houses are full of wounded and dying. Can you help, at least by taking the worst cases?” The wounded come from the sections at the edge of the city. They saw the bright light, their houses collapsed and buried the inmates in their rooms. Those that were in the open suffered instantaneous burns, particularly on the lightly clothed or unclothed parts of the body. Numerous fires sprang up which soon consumed the entire district We are concerned about Father Kopp who that same morning, went to hold Mass at the Sisters of the Poor, who have a home for children at the edge of the city. He had not returned as yet
Toward noon, our large chapel and library are filled with the seriously injured. The procession of refugees from the city continues...
Soon comes news that the entire city has been destroyed by the explosion and that it is on fire. What became of Father Superior and the three other Fathers who were at the center of the city at the Central Mission and Parish House? We had up to this time not given them a thought because we did not believe that the effects of the bomb encompassed the entire city. Also, we did not want to go into town except under pressure of dire necessity, because we thought that the population was greatly perturbed and that it might take revenge on any foreigners which they might consider spiteful onlookers of their misfortune, or even spies.
Those that have been brought in are laid on the floor and no one can give them any further care. What could one do when all means are lacking? Under those circumstances, it is almost useless to bring them in. At about four o’clock in the afternoon, a theology student and two kindergarten children, who lived at the Parish House and adjoining buildings which had burned down, came in and said that Father Superior LaSalle and Father Schiffer had been seriously injured and that they had taken refuge in Asano Park on the river bank. It is obvious that we must bring them in since they are too weak to come here on foot
Hurriedly, we gel together two stretchers and seven of us rush toward the city. Father Rektor comes along with food and medicine. The closer we get to the city, the greater is the evidence of destruction and the more difficult it is to make our way. Where the city stood, there is a gigantic burned-out scar. We make our way along the street on the river bank among the burning and smoking ruins. Twice we are forced into the river itself by the heat and smoke at the level of the street.
Frightfully burned people beckon to us. Along the way, there are many dead and dying. On the Misasi Bridge, which leads into the inner city we are met by a long procession of soldiers who have suffered burns. They drag themselves along with the help of staves or are carried by their less severely injured comrades . . . an endless procession of the unfortunate. Abandoned on the bridge, there stand with sunken heads a number of horses with large burns on their flanks. On the far side, the cement structure of the local hospital is the only building that remains standing. Its interior, however, has been burned out It acts as a landmark to guide us on our way.
Finally we reach the entrance of the park. A large proportion of the populace has taken refuge there, but even the trees of the park are on tire in several places. Paths and bridges are blocked by the trunks of fallen trees and are almost impassable. We are told that a high wind, which may well have resulted from the heat of the burning city, has uprooted the large trees. II is now quite dark. Only the fires, which are still raging in some places at a distance, give out a little light
At the far corner of the park, on the river bank itself, we at last come upon our colleagues. Father Schiffer is on the ground pale as a ghost He has a deep incised wound behind the ear and has lost so much blood that we are concerned about his chances for survival. While they are eating the food that we have brought along, they tell us of their experiences. They had the same impression that we had in Nagatsuke: that the bomb had burst in their immediate vicinity. The Church, school, and all buildings in the immediate vicinity collapsed at once. Beneath the ruins of the school, the children cried for help. They were freed with great effort. Several others were also rescued from the ruins of nearby dwellings. Even the Father Superior and Father Schiffer despite their wounds, rendered aid to others and lost a great deal of blood in the process.
In the meantime, fires which had begun some distance away are raging even closer, so that it becomes obvious that everything would soon burn down. Fukai, the secretary of the Mission, is completely out of his mind. He does not want to leave the house and explains that he does not want to survive the destruction of his fatherland. He is completely uninjured. Father Kleinsorge drags him out of the house on his back and he is forcefully carried away.
Beneath the wreckage of the houses along the way, many have been trapped and they scream to be rescued from the oncoming flames. They must be left to their fate. The way to the place in the city to which one desires to flee is no longer open and one must make for Asano Park Fukai does not want to go further and remains behind. He has not been heard from since. In the park, we take refuge on the bank of the river. A very violent whirlwind now begins to uproot large trees, and lifts them high into the air. As it reaches the water, a waterspout forms which is approximately 100 meters high. The violence of the storm luckily passes us by. Some distance away, however, where numerous refugees have taken shelter, many are blown into the river. Almost all who are in the vicinity have been injured and have lost relatives who have been pinned under the wreckage or who have been lost sight of during the flight There is no help for the wounded and some die. No one pays any attention to a dead man lying nearby.
From the other side of the stream comes the whinny of horses who are threatened by the tire. We land on a sand spit which juts out from the shore. It is full of wounded who have taken refuge there. They scream for aid for they are afraid of drowning as the river may rise with the sea, and cover the sand spit. They themselves are too weak to move. The wounded call for water and we come to the aid of a few. Cries for help are heard from a distance, but we cannot approach the ruins from which they come. A group of soldiers comes along the road and their officer notices that we speak a strange language. He at once draws his sword, screamingly demands who we are and threatens to cut us down. Father Laures, Jr., seizes his arm and explains that we are German. We finally quiet him down. He thought that we might well be Americans who had parachuted down. Rumors of parachutists were being bandied about the city. The Father Superior who was clothed only in a shirt and trousers, complains of feeling freezing cold, despite the warm summer night and the heal of the burning city. The one man among us who possesses a coat gives ii to him and, in addition, I give him my own shirt. To me, it seems more comfortable to be without a shirt in the heat. Most of the ruins have now burned down. The darkness kindly hides the many forms that lie on the ground. Only occasionally in our quick progress do we hear calls for help. One of us remarks that the remarkable burned smell reminds him of incinerated corpses. The upright, squatting form which we had passed by previously is still there.
The bright day now reveals the frightful picture which last night’s darkness had partly concealed. Where the city stood everything, as far as the eye could reach, is a waste of ashes and ruin. Only several skeletons of buildings completely burned out in the interior remain. The banks of the river are covered with dead and wounded, and the rising waters have here and there covered some of the corpses. On the broad street in the Hakushima district, naked burned cadavers are particularly numerous. Among them are the wounded who are still alive. A few have crawled under the burnt-out autos and trains. Frightfully injured forms beckon to us and then collapse. An old woman and a girl whom she is pulling along with her fall down at our feet. We place them on our cart and wheel them to the hospital at whose entrance a dressing station has been set up. Here the wounded lie on the hard floor, row on row. Only the largest wounds are dressed. We convey another soldier and an old woman to the place but we cannot move everybody who lies exposed in the sun. It would be endless and it is questionable whether those whom we can drag to the dressing station can come out alive, because even here nothing really effective can be done. Later, we ascertain that the wounded lay for days in the burnt-out hallways of the hospital and there they died.
The magnitude of the disaster that befell Hiroshima on August 6th was only slowly pieced together in my mind. I lived through the catastrophe and saw it only in flashes, which only gradually were merged to give me a total picture. The heat which rose from the center created a whirlwind which was effective in spreading fire throughout the whole city. Those who had been caught beneath the ruins and who could not be freed rapidly, and those who had been caught by the flames, became casualties. As much as six kilometers from the center of the explosion, all houses were damaged and many collapsed and caught fire. Even fifteen kilometers away, windows were broken. It was rumored that the enemy fliers had spread an explosive and incendiary material over the city and then had created the explosion and ignition. A few maintained that they saw the planes drop a parachute which had carried something that exploded at a height of 1,000 meters. The newspapers called the bomb an atomic bomb” and noted that the force of the blast had resulted from the explosion of uranium atoms, and that gamma rays had been sent out as a result of this, but no one knew anything for certain concerning the nature of the bomb.
Thousands of wounded who died later could doubtless have been rescued had they received proper treatment and care, but rescue work in a catastrophe of this magnitude had not been envisioned; since the whole city had been knocked out at a blow, everything which had been prepared for emergency work was lost, and no preparation had been made for rescue work in the outlying districts. Many of the wounded also died because they had been weakened by under-nourishment and consequently lacked in strength to recover. Those who had their normal strength and who received good care slowly healed the burns which had been occasioned by the bomb. There were also cases, however, whose prognosis seemed good who died suddenly. There were also some who had only small external wounds who died within a week or later, after an inflammation of the pharynx and oral cavity had taken place. We thought at first that this was the result of inhalation of the substance of the bomb. Later, a commission established the thesis that gamma rays had been given out at the time of the explosion, following which the internal organs had been injured in a manner resembling that consequent upon Roentgen irradiation. This produces a diminution in the numbers of the white corpuscles.
None of us in those days heard a single outburst against the Americans on the part of the Japanese, nor was there any evidence of a vengeful spirit The Japanese suffered this terrible blow as part of the fortunes of war something to be borne without complaint During this, war, I have noted relatively little haired toward the allies on the part of the people themselves, although the press has taken occasion to stir up such feelings. After the victories at the beginning of the war, the enemy was rather looked down upon, but when allied offensive gathered momentum and especially after the advent of the majestic B-29’s, the technical skill of America became an object of wonder and admiration.
We have discussed among ourselves the ethics of the use of the bomb. Some consider it in the same category as poison gas and were against its use on a civil population. Others were of the view that in total war, as carried on in Japan, there was no difference between civilians and soldiers, and that the bomb itself was an effective force tending to end the bloodshed, warning Japan to surrender and thus to avoid total destruction. It seems logical to me that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of war against civilians. The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good that might result? When will our moralists give us a clear answer to this question?
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
9.1 JFK’s Inaugural Address John F. Kennedy
A. Select 2 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Answer the below questions using paragraph form.
1. How does Kennedy use history throughout his speech?
2. What does JFK say about sacrifice? How would this speech be received today if a president asked the American people to sacrifice for others?
3. Explain the symbolism of “the torch has been passed.”
4. Contrast this speech to the Gettysburg Address.
Inaugural Address John F. Kennedy, January 20th, 1961
Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, reverend clergy, fellow citizens, we observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom—symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning—signifying renewal, as well as change. For I have sworn I before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears I prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.
We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge--and more.
To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do--for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.
To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom—and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.
To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required--not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge--to convert our good words into good deeds--in a new alliance for progress--to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.
To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far out paced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support--to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective--to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak--and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.
We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.
But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course--both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.
So let us begin anew--remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.
Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms--and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.
Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah--to “undo the heavy burdens and to let the oppressed go free.”
And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.
All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.
Now the trumpet summons us again--not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”——a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shank from this responsibility--I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
9.2 Vietnam Lyndon B. Johnson, William Fullbright
A. Select 2 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Select 4 of the below questions and answer them in paragraph form.
1. What are Johnson’s four main arguments for American participation in Vietnam?
2. What were America’s objectives?
3. What was the “dream of his generation” and how was it new?
4. What is the link that Fullbright sees between Detroit and Vietnam?
5. How is Vietnam “incompatible” with American values? How has it created a moral “wasteland?” What values does Fullbright offer?
Speech at John Hopkins University Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965
Over this war, and all Asia, is the deepening shadow of Communist China. The rulers in Hanoi, are urged on by Peking. This is a regime which has destroyed freedom in Tibet, attacked India, and been condemned by the United Nations for aggression In Korea. It is a nation which is helping the forces of violence in almost every continent. The contest in Vietnam is part of a wider pattern of aggressive purpose.
Why are these realities our concern? Why are we in South Vietnam? We are there because we have a promise to keep. Since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Vietnam. We have helped to build, and we have helped to defend. Thus, over many years. we have made a national pledge to help South Vietnam defend its independence. And I intend to keep our promise.
To dishonor that pledge, to abandon this small and brave nation to its enemy, and to the terror that must follow, would be an unforgivable wrong. We are also there to strengthen world order. Around the globe, from Berlin to Thailand, are people whose well- being rests, in part, on the belief that they can count on us it they are attacked. To leave Vietnam to its fate would shake the confidence of all these people in the value of American commitment, the value of America’s word. The result would be increased unrest and instability, and even wider war.
We are also there because there are great stakes in the balance. Let no one think for a moment that retreat from Vietnam would bring an end to conflict. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another. The central lesson of our time is that the appetite of aggression is never satisfied. To withdraw from one battlefield means only to prepare for the next. We must say in Southeast Asia, as we did in Europe, in the words of the Bible: “Hitherto shaft thou come, but no further.”
There are those who say that all our effort there will be futile, that China’s power is such it is bound to dominate all Southeast Asia. But there is no end to that argument until all the nations of Asia are swallowed up.
There are those who wonder why we have a responsibility there. We have it for the same reason we have a responsibility for the defense of freedom In Europe. World War II was fought in both Europe and Asia, and when it ended we found ourselves with continued responsibility for the defense of freedom.
Our objective is the independence of South Vietnam, and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves, only that the people of South Vietnam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way.
We will do everything necessary to reach that objective. And we will do only what is absolutely necessary.
In recent months, attacks on South Vietnam were stepped up. Thus it became necessary to increase our response and to make attacks by air. This is not a change of purpose. It is a change in what we believe that purpose requires.
We do this in order to slow down aggression.
We do this to Increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely borne this brutal battle for so many years and with so many casualties.
And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam, and all who seek to share their conquest, of a very sirTq3le fact: We will not be defeated.
We wiN not grow tired.
We will not withdraw, either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement....
Once this is clear, then it should also be clear that the only path for reasonable men Is the path of peaceful settlement.
Such peace demands an Independent South Vietnam securely guaranteed and able to shape its own relationships to all others, free from outside interference, tied to no alliance, a military base for no other country.
These are the essentials of any final settlement.
We will never be second in the search for such a peaceful settlement in Vietnam.
There may be many ways to this kind of peace:
in discussion or negotiation with the governments concerned; in large groups or in small ones; In the reaffirmation of old agreements or their strengthening with new ones.
We have stated this position over and over again fifty times and more, to friend and foe alike. And we remain ready, with this purpose, for unconditional discussions.
And until that bright and necessary, day of peace we will try to keep conflict from spreading. We have no desire to see thousands die m battle, Asians or Americans. We have no desire to devastate that which the people of North Vietnam have built with toil -and sacrifice. We will use our power with restraint and with all the wisdom we can command. But we will use it....
We will always oppose the effort of one nation to conquer another nation.
We will do this because our own security is at stake.
But there is more to it than that. For our generation has a dream. It is a very old dream. But we have the power and now we have the opportunity to make it come true.
For centuries, nations have struggled among each other. But we dream of a world where disputes are settled by law and reason.
And we will try to make it so.
For most of history men have hated and killed one another in battle. But we dream of an end to war. And we will try to make it so.
For all existence most men have lived in poverty threatened by hunger. But we dream of a world where all are fed and charged with hope. And we will help to make it so.
The ordinary men and women of North Vietnam and South Vietnam-of China an India-of Russia and America-are brave people. They are filled with the same proportions of hate and fear, of love and hope. Most of them want the same things for themselves and their families. Most of them do not want their sons ever to die in battle, or see the homes of others destroyed.
Every night before I turn out the lights to sleep, I ask myself this question: Have I done everything that I can do to unite this country. Have I done everything I can to help unite the world, to try to bring peace and hope all the peoples of the world? Have I done enough?
Ask yourself that question in your home and in this hall tonight. Have we done all we could? Have we done enough?...
The Price of Empire J. William Fullbright, 1967
Standing in the smoke and rubble of Detroit, a Negro veteran said: “I just got back from Vietnam a few months ago, but you know, I think the war is here.”
There are in fact two wars going on. One is the war of power politics which our soldiers are fighting in the jungles of southeast Asia. The other is a war for America’s soul which is being fought in the streets of Newark and Detroit and in the halls of Congress, in churches and protest meetings and on college campuses, and in the hearts and minds of silent Americans from Maine to Hawaii. I believe that the two wars have something to do with each other, not in the direct, tangibly causal way that bureaucrats require as proof of a connection between two things, but in a subtler, moral and qualitative way that is no less real for being intangible. Each of these wars might well be going on in the absence of the other, but neither, I suspect, standing alone, would seem so hopeless and demoralizing.
The connection between Vietnam and Detroit is in their conflicting and incompatible demands upon traditional American values. The one demands that they be set aside, the other that they be fulfilled. The one demands the acceptance by America of an imperial role in the world, or of what our policy makers like to call the “responsibilities of power, or of what I have called the “arrogance of power.” The other demands freedom and social justice at home, an end to poverty, the fulfillment of our flawed democracy, and an effort to create a role for ourselves in the world which is compatible with our traditional values.
Administration officials tell us that we can indeed afford both Vietnam and the Great Society, and they produce impressive statistics of the gross national product to prove it. The statistics show financial capacity but they do not show moral and psychological capacity. They do not show how a President preoccupied with bombing missions over North and South Vietnam can provide strong and consistent leadership for the renewal of our cities. Nor do the statistics tell how an anxious and puzzled people, bombarded by press and television with the bad news of American deaths in Vietnam, the “good news” of enemy deaths- and with vividly horrifying pictures to illustrate them-can be expected to support neighborhood anti-poverty projects and national programs for urban renewal, employment and education. Anxiety about war does not breed compassion for one’s neighbors; nor do constant reminders of the cheapness of life abroad strengthen our faith in its sanctity at home. In these ways the war In Vietnam is poisoning and brutalizing our domestic life. Psychological incompatibility has proven to be more controlling than financial feasibility; and the Great Society has become a sick society.
We are well on our way to becoming a traditional great power-an imperial nation if you will- engaged in the exercise of power for its own sake, exercising it to the limit of our capacity and beyond, filling every vacuum and extending the American “presence” to the farthest reaches of the earth. And, as with the great empires of the past, as the power grows, it is becoming an end in itself, separated except by ritual incantation from its initial motives, governed, it would seem, by its own mystique, power without philosophy or purpose.
That, I believe, is what all the hue and cry is about-the dissent in the Senate and the protest marches in the cities, the letters to the President from student leaders and former Peace Corps volunteers, the lonely searching of conscience by a student facing the draft and the letter to a Senator from a soldier in the field who can no longer accept the official explanation of why he has been sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. All believe that their country was cut out for something more ennobling than an imperial destiny. Our youth are showing that they still believe in the American dream, and their protests attest to its continuing vitality.
The students and churchmen and professors who are protesting the Vietnam war do not accept the notion that foreign policy is a matter of expedients to which values are irrelevant. They reject this notion because they understand, as some of our policy makers do not understand, that it is ultimately self- defeating to “fight tire with tire,” that you cannot defend your values in a manner that does violence to those values without destroying the very thing you are trying to defend. They understand, as our policy makers do not, that when American soldiers are sent, in the name of freedom, to sustain corrupt dictators in a civil war, that when the CIA subverts student organizations to engage In propaganda activities abroad, or when the Export-Import Bank is used by the Pentagon to finance secret arms sales abroad, damage-perhaps irreparable damage-is being done to the very values that are meant to be defended. The critics understand, as our policy makers do not, that, through the undemocratic expedients we have adopted for the defense of American democracy, we are weakening it to a degree that is beyond the resources of our bitterest enemies.
The critics of our current course also challenge the contention that the traditional methods of foreign policy are safe and prudent and realistic. They are understandably skeptical of their wise and experienced elders who, in the name of prudence, caution against any departure from the tried and true methods that have led in this century to Sarejevo, Munich and Dien Bien Phu. They think that the methods of the past have been tried and found wanting, and two world wars attest powerfully to their belief....
At present much of the world is repelled by America and what America seems to stand for in the world. Both in our foreign affairs and in our domestic life we convey an image of violence. Abroad, we are engaged in a savage and unsuccessful war against poor people in a small and backward nation. At home- largely because of the neglect resulting from twenty- five years of preoccupation with foreign involvement or cities are exploding in violent protest against generations of social injustice. America, which only a few years ago seemed to the world to be a model of democracy and social Justice, has become a symbol of violence and undisciplined power. ...
Far from building a sate world environment for American values, our war in Vietnam and the domestic deterioration which it has aggravated are creating a most uncongenial world atmosphere for American ideas and values. The world has no need, in this age of nationalism and nuclear weapons, for a new imperial power, but there is a great need of moral leadership-by which I mean the leadership of decent example. That role could be ours but we have vacated the field, and all that has kept the Russians from filling it is their own lack of imagination.
While the death toll mounts in Vietnam, it IS mounting too in the war at home. During a single week of July 1967, 164 Americans were killed and 1442 wounded in Vietnam, while 65 Americans were killed and 2,100 were wounded in city riots in the United States. We are truly fighting a two-front war and doing badly in both. Each war feeds on the other and, although the President assures us that we have the resources to win both wars, in tact we are not winning either....
An unnecessary and immoral war deserves in its own right to be liquidated; when Its effect In addition is the aggravation of grave problems and the corrosion of values in our own society, Its liquidation under terms of reasonable and honorable compromise is doubly imperative. Our, country is being weakened by a grotesque inversion of priorities, the effects of which are becoming clear to more and more Americans-in the Congress, in the press and in the country at large. Even the Washington Post, a newspaper which has obsequiously supported the Administration’s policy in Vietnam, took note in a recent editorial of the “ugly image of a world policeman incapable of policing itself” as against the “absolute necessity of a sound domestic base for an effective foreign policy,” and then commented: “We are confronted simultaneously with an urgent domestic crisis and an urgent foreign crisis and our commitments to both are clear.”...
While the country sickens for lack of moral leadership, a most remarkable younger generation has taken up the standard of American idealism. Unlike so many of their elders, they have perceived the fraud and sham in American life and are unequivocally rejecting it. Some, the hippies, have simply withdrawn, and while we may regret the loss of their energies and their sense of decency, we can hardly gainsay their evaluation of the state of society. Others of our youth are sardonic and skeptical, not, I think, because they do not want ideals but, because they want the genuine article and will not tolerate fraud. Others-students who wrestle with their consciences about the draft, soldiers who wrestle with their consciences about the war, Peace Corps volunteers who strive to light the spark of human dignity among the poor of India or Brazil, and VISTA volunteers who try to do the same for our own poor in Harlem or Appalachian are striving to keep alive the traditional values of American democracy.
They are not really radical, these young idealists, no more radical, that is, than Jefferson’s idea of freedom, Lincoln’s idea of equality, or Wilson’s idea of a peaceful community of nations. Some of them, it is true, are taking what many regard as radical action, but they are doing it in defense of traditional values and in protest against the radical departure from those values embodied in the idea of an imperial destiny for America.
The focus of their protest is the war in Vietnam and the measure of their integrity is the fortitude with which they refused to be deceived about it. By striking contrast with the young Germans who accepted the Nazi evil because the values of their society had disintegrated and they had no normal frame of reference, these young Americans are demonstrating the vitality of American values. They are demonstrating that, while their country is capable of acting falsely to itself, it cannot do so without internal disruption, without calling forth the regenerative counter force of protest from Americans who are willing to act in defense of the principles they were brought up to believe in.
Now the possession of their souls is being challenged by the false and dangerous dream of an imperial destiny. It may be that the challenge will succeed, that America will succumb to becoming a traditional empire and will reign for a time over what must surely be a moral if not a physical wasteland, and then, like the great empires of the past, will decline or fall. Or it may be that the effort to create so grotesque an anachronism will go up in flames of nuclear holocaust. But if I had to bet my money on what is going to happen, I would bet on this younger generation-this generation who reject the Inhumanity of war in a poor and distant land, who reject the poverty and sham in their own country, this, generation who are telling their elders what their elders ought to have known, that the price of empire is America’s soul and that price is too high.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
10.1 Letters From Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King, Jr.
A. Select two quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Select 3 of the below and answer in paragraph form.
1. Explain MLK’s attitude toward law.
2. What conditions must be met to make breaking a law “civil disobedience?” What are the conditions which make civil disobedience a valid tool for social action?
3. MLK stands “in the middle of two opposing forces.” What are they?
4. “Our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny.” Explain this quote in context.
5. According to MLK, what are the consequences of discrimination?
Letters from Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent, statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I am here because I have organizational ties here.... But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here....l am cognizant of the inter relatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.
In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist negotiation; self-purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham.
There can be no gain saying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case....
On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation. Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham’s economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants — for example, to remove the stores’ humiliating racial signs. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained.
As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community.
Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake the process of self-purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: “Are you able to accept blows without retaliation?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?”...
I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth, just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half- truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “welcomed” in view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation.
For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait!” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet like speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse-and- buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never fell the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.”
But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim;
when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters;
when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society;
when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people:
when you have to concoct an answer for a five- year-old son who is asking, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”: when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”: when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments: when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" ---then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience...
One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.
To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.
All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority, and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.
Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority, group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.
Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.
I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy.
One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to amuse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 9egal and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was 9llegal. It was “Illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish bmthers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s anti-religious laws.
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ,more convenient.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Luke warm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability, it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time Is always ripe to do right.
Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
You speak of our activities in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community.
One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of somebodiness~ that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses.
The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best- known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro’s frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible devil.”
I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need emulate neither the do-nothingism” of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. For there is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the way of nonviolence became an integral part of our struggle. .
If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hail; let him go on freedom rides and try to understand why he must do so.
If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent means, they will seek expression through violence, this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hale or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? . . . Perhaps the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as “dirty nigger-lovers.” Unlike so many of their moderate brothers and sisters, they have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful “action” antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.
In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed....
I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.
Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country, without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation-and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop.
If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness My feets is tired, but my soul is it rest.
They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers.
Yours for the cause of peace and brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
10.2 Generations Jonathan Alter, David Halberstam
A. Select 2 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Select 4 of the below questions and answer them in paragraph form.
1. What is the author’s argument about the influence of the WWI generation on America?
2. Explain and react to the paragraph where the quote “descendants of Superman” can be found.
3. What are the values of the World War II generation? How do you feel they compare to the values of your generation?
4. What made the WWII generation so confident? Use quotes to support your answers.
5. Contrast the America of Eisenhower with the America of Kennedy.
6. What was the impact of Vietnam?
So Long Soldier Jonathan Alter
When John F. Kennedy came to office in 1961, full of talk about “passing the torch,” he described his generation thus-,” Born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.” Thirty-two years later-the rough span of a generation-Kennedy would have been 75 years old. His fellow World War II veterans, symbolized by George Bush, are marching quietly offstage, making way, as they know they must, for their kids: born after the war, tempered by the 1960s, disciplined by nothing more than the knowledge of a hard future.
But before they go, before they motor off into the best-cushioned retirement in history, a pause, please, to look back at some of what the World War II generation wrought for the rest of us. Certainly the veterans themselves are already doing so; as the years pass, they tend to remember more and more about the war, its enormity like some time-release capsule in their minds. And if the immediate postwar decades were not always “The Best Years of Our Lives,” they became among the most momentous in the entire life of the nation. Only the generation that founded the republic and the one that fought the Civil War can claim to have shaped the destiny of the country more than the men and women born in the first third of the 20th century. This month’s transfer of power from Bush to Bill Clinton turns the page. The new chapter is an explosion of discombobulating color, the old was in stark black and white, with good and evil so much easier to discern. Or at least it looked that way, from under the apple tree.
Kennedy and Bush, combat veterans whose presidencies were separated by 30 years, are bookends. These fellow naval veterans might have disliked one another, generational identity only takes you so far. But the farewell speech that Bush gave last month at Texas A&M struck a Kennedyesque tone on America’s role in the world. While Bush may be viewed by history as a reactive president, it was on his watch that the great struggle of his generation-the struggle against totalitarianism seemed to be won.
So why doesn’t it feel like victory.? After all, under the World War II generation, America dominated the world as perhaps no other nation ever has. Having survived the Depression, it beat fascism, built the biggest economy ever, ended America’s feel of artistic inferiority toward Europe, conquered polio, grappled with the issue of race for the first time in 100 years, put men on the moon. Most conspicuous of all, it played world policeman, itself to contain and eventually help undermine communism.
No other generation this century has felt (or been) so Promethean, so godlike in its collective world- bending power,” write William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book “Generations.”
But ultimately the world could not be bent like some piece of 1950s plastic. The descendant of Superman, that generations favorite cartoon character, turned out to be ...Bart Simpson. Arrogance and hypocrisy bred alienation and rebellion. Orthodoxies of both the left and right calcified. Racial and economic justice stalled. Major movements for environmentalism and women’s rights were deferred to the generations that followed.
As it turned out, the men and women who saved America also nearly bankrupted it. First were the entitlements: they’d won the war, right? They were entitled to the fruits, and in the case of the GI Bill, generosity paid dividends many times over. But in recent years, health and retirement benefits have grown to the point where the long-living World War II generation consumes a huge share of the economic pie, burdening their children with debt.
And then there were the trillions spent on arms- far more than necessary (especially in the 1980s), though it was hard to know that when the buildup began. The newsreel playing over and over in the minds of policy makers was the image of Chamberlain capitulating to Hitler at Munich. This was the mental baggage that eventually led to Vietnam. The ends of fighting communism were seen to justify all sorts of unsavory means. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that the ends were nobler than the left admitted; communism was just as inhuman as it was cracked up to be. And the means were meaner than the right admitted; laws were broken and lives ruined in the name of narrow-minded patriotism.
To see how the balance has shifted, compare two dramas about military courts-martial. In Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny,” a character named Greenwald helps convict Captain Queeg but ends up ashamed of it. Queeg deserved better at my hands. I owe him a favor, don’t you see? He stopped Hermann Goering from washing his fat behind with my mother.” Greenwald’s logic-that you “can’t stop a Nazi with a law book”- prevails with the audience. It is exactly that of colonel Jessep, played by Jack Nicholson in the current hit, “A Few Good Men.” He’s the one on the front lines at Guantanamo, facing off against the Communists. But the hero today is Tom Cruise, the Yuppie attorney. The rule of law triumphs over “national security” and military discipline.
Post-cold-war, this makes sense. Yet something connected to the success of a nation has been lost, or at least misplaced. Citizens of other countries have often respected the nobler values of the World War II veterans
- shared sacrifice, hard work, old-fashioned pluck-better than have their own heirs. That’s one reason our competitors have caught up. The challenge, before the World War II generation dies off, is to transmit those values within the United States, to make the odds they overcame in winning the war and preserving the peace a source of some inspiration.
Recall that wartime song- “There’ll be bluebirds oven the white cliffs of Dover / tomorrow ... when the world is free.” The world is, in most places, free—freer than ever, thanks in part to this historic generation. But the bluebirds are barely in sight. The soldiers can’t bring them back; now it’s up to their children.
When the Best And the Brightest Were Young David Halberstam
She sits bestride the world like a Colossus,” wrote the British historian Robert Payne after visiting America in 1948 and 1949. “No other power at any time in the world’s history has possessed so varied or so great an influence on other nations.. . . Half the wealth of the world, more than half the productivity, nearly two thirds of the world’s machines are concentrated in American hands; the rest of world lies in the shadow of American industry. .
It was the generation that caught and rode the great wave of power in the postwar years as America became a Colossus: its members had been children during the Depression, had answered the call of duty during War II, and many had come to their manhood during the war. Those who had survived the war were usually confident of purpose, for they had just with the forces of democracy against the forces of darkness. They returned home to a level of prosperity that exceeded even their own most optimistic wartime dreams. America had become, as if overnight, rich and optimistic in a world that was poor and despairing. It was an age so bountiful that ordinary workers had become for the first time consumers, and now lived as only a relatively small middle class had lived in the past
That same revolution in mass production was taking place in other aspects of life: William Levitt had learned how to mass-produce houses much as Henry Ford had mass-produced cars. All of this energized the society. There had been political democracy in the past; now with the coming of the New Deal there was a greater sense of economic democracy. Suddenly ordinary young Americans, confident of the future, were living far better than their parents, becoming home-owners and soon owning as well in the process two and three cars.
Rarely had any nation attained such broad-based in such a short time. Yet it was a nation still caught in political shadows, some of them genuine, from the bitter problem of dealing with a divided Europe and a threatening Soviet Union, and some of them our own making, as the leaders of one political party were scapegoated by the leaders of the other party for losing to the communist countries that were never ours to begin with. The coming of genuine internationalism to a country as big as America was easier said than done: not only were the architects of the postwar peace determined that the United States replace a diminished Great Britain in the postwar world order, but there was a certain technological inevitability to their vision: the events of Pearl Harbor and the existence of nuclear warheads on intercontinental missiles had ended any real possibility of postwar isolationism. Even so, there was much unresolved in American domestic politics. A large part of the country remained determinedly isolationist. Thus the politics of the nation were curiously anxious and uncertain.
John Kennedy represented the generations first political manifestation. He had been elected in 1960 at the high-water mark of the postwar American abundance: the American economy seemed to be at the zenith of its dynamism after 15 years of unparalleled prosperity. The rest of the world had not yet begun to catch up economically. Kennedy’s election represented stunning generational change. He was 27 years younger than his predecessor, and the even more striking youth of his wife and his small children served to underscore the change taking place. More, it was not just Eisenhower whom he was replacing. Kennedy’s youth and freshness seemed to be in contrast to the other men who had for so long dominated the world scene, Churchill, de Gaulle, Adenauer, men who had come to their maturity during the first world war as Kennedy had come to his during the second war.
Kennedy was young, modern, cool and attractive, always in a rush, it seemed, a senator at 35, a ghost of a presence in the Senate-it bored him being one of 96-before he was out running for the presidency. He had campaigned briskly in the New Hampshire primaries without an overcoat (it was a clandestine operation of sorts, for he wore thermal underwear), the better to show off his youth and his vigor. The nation that summer and fall came to know him through the new magic of television. He had campaigned for the presidency with the expressed idea of running the country as a superpower, wanting to get it, as he said, moving again, as if somehow America had, during the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, become old and dowdy and ground to a halt.
The man he had replaced was the last president born in the 19th century, a victor in the war that had turned America into a superpower. President in this age of affluence and modernity, his boyhood had begun in a starkly different time, in a small Midwestern town that had no sidewalks, no electric lights and no radios. Symbolically, Dwight Eisenhower had turned over power to his successor at the beginning of the jet age, but it was only a year earlier, at the age of 69, that he had taken his own first ride in a jet. Yet Eisenhower had his own optimism about this country and it came from watching America in his lifetime turn away from being a sleepy isolationist nation and become stronger, wealthier and more internationalist.
Kennedy came to power in America the affluent, one with ever-increasing amounts of disposable income; Eisenhower grew up in Abilene at a time when the keepers of the towns handful of shops ran them, Ike later noted, in the certitude that their customers came in to buy only what they needed and nothing more.
The young president himself had run on the theme of getting America moving again and ending a missile gap, though in retrospect America seems to have been running reasonably well, the economy was unconscionably healthy and dramatic change in civil rights was beginning to take place, even if the president himself did not warmly sanction it. Kennedy’s promise to end the missile gap was easy to keep since there was none. If the Democrats in the past had been accused of being soft on communism, then Kennedy had been tougher on the subject of Castro’s Cuba than his opponent, Richard Nixon. Not surprisingly, the Kennedy people (if not the president himself) were disdainful, unnecessarily so, about Eisenhower and his people. They regarded them as being old fogeys.
Rarely had members of a new administration borne such dazzling credentials and been so young. In this new modern age where the pace of life was ever quicker, careers were made more quickly. Most of Kennedy’s people were quick and bright and verbal. Their confidence and self-esteem, based on the success of America during the war, its affluence after the war, the ability of their candidate to defeat an opponent in a time of peace and prosperity and finally, the meteoric quality of their own careers, bordered on arrogance.
They liked to think of themselves as hard-nosed realists and most assuredly their candidate had matched the Republican adversary in anti-communist rhetoric during the campaign. Unfortunately the rhetoric of both sides was excessive and had little in common with the reality of the world; typically the rhetoric exceeded the limits of American power. Neither party had the strength or the will to cap the dynamic of the all-purpose anti- communism of the domestic political debate. The excessive rhetoric on Cuba got Kennedy in trouble almost immediately. They were not even able to exploit the major divisions taking place between the Russians and the Chinese, though they were obvious from 1960 on. In time, our rhetoric impaled us in an unwinnable war in Vietnam, and with that the chance of a generation to lead was effectively destroyed.
If that generation had come to power unusually optimistic about the future, then the succeeding years were hard. The assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the war in Vietnam, and the agony of Watergate wore it down. The optimism of the early civil-rights movement was lost among the cruel social realities of dealing with race in the inner cities. In time, power remained within the generation but passed from the liberals to the conservatives. The rest of the world began to catch up in terms of productivity. That generation that had once seemed so young came to seem old and now passes from power, handing the torch to a new generation led by a young man who was born in August 1946, not only after the second world war, but a year after the Hiroshima bomb.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
APPENDIX A
What Is An American? J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
A. Evaluate the following quotes and write a short personal reaction to
each.
1. “Everything has tended to regenerate them.”
2. “All nations are melted into a new race of men... [who] one day will change the world.”
3. “The American is a new man.”
What is an American? J. HECTOR ST. JOHN DE CREVECOEUR 1782
From: Letters From an American Farmer
In this great American asylum, the poor of Europe have by some means met together, and in consequence of various causes; to what purpose should they ask one another what countrymen they are? Alas, two thirds of them had no country. Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore affliction or pinching penury; can that man call England or any other kingdom his country? A country that had no bread for him, whose fields procured him no harvest, who met with nothing but the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with jails and punishments; who owned not a single foot of the extensive surface of this planet? No! urged by a variety of motives, here they came. Every thing has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode of living, a new social system; here they are become men: in Europe they were as so many useless plants, wanting vegetative mould, and refreshing showers; they withered, and were mowed down by want, hunger, and war; but now by the power of transplantation, like all other plants they have taken root and flourished! Formerly they were not numbered in any civil lists of their country, except in those of the poor; here they rank as citizens. By what invisible power has this surprising metamorphosis been performed? By that of the laws and that of their industry. The laws, the indulgent laws, protect them as they arrive, stamping on them the symbol of adoption; they receive ample rewards for their labours; these accumulated rewards procure them lands; those lands confer on them the title of freemen, and to that title every benefit is affixed which men can possibly require. This is the great operation daily performed by our laws. From whence proceed these laws? From our government Whence the government? It is derived from the original genius and strong desire of the people ratified and confirmed by the crown. This is the great chain which links us all, this is the picture which every province exhibits...
What attachment can a poor European emigrant have for a country where he had nothing? The knowledge of the language, the love of a few kindred as poor as himself, were the only cords that tied him: his country is now that which gives him land, bread, protection, and consequence... What then is the American, this new man? He is either a European, or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater.
Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry which began long since in the east; they will finish the great circle. The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared, and which will hereafter become distinct by the power of the different climates they inhabit. The American ought therefore to love this country much better than that wherein either he or his forefathers were born. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labour his labour is founded on the basis of nature, self—interest; can it want a stronger allurement? Wives and children, who before in vain demanded of him a morsel of bread, now, fat and frolicsome, gladly help their father to clear those fields whence exuberant crops are to arise to feed and to clothe them all; without any part being claimed, either by despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord. Here religion demands but little of him; a small voluntary salary to the minister, and gratitude to God can he refuse these? The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labour, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence. This is an American.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
APPENDIX B
Poems of Industrial America Carl Sandberg
A. Quote at least 1 poem in each category. Then, explain and react to the ideas presented. Notes should be 1.5 - 2 pages in length.
B. Answer the below question using short answer.
1. What is the poet’s vision in each of the following areas?
a. The city
b. Industry and the period if industrialization
c. Immigration and immigrants
d. Americans in general
Poems of the American City
They Will Say
Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this:
You took little children away from the sun and the dew,
And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,
And the reckless rain; you put them between walls
To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,
To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted
For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.
Limited
I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel
coaches holding a thousand people
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women
laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: “Omaha.”
Fish Crier
I know a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with a voice like a
north wind blowing over corn stubble in January.
He dangles herring before prospective customers evincing a joy identical
with that of Pavlowa dancing.
His face is that of a man terribly glad to be selling fish,
terribly glad that God made fish,
and customers to whom he may call his wares from a pushcart.
Happiness
I asked professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.
Population Drifts
New-mown hay smell and wind of the plain made her a women whose ribs had the power of the hills in them and her hands were tough for work and there was passion for life in her womb.
She and her man crossed the ocean and the years that marked their faces saw them haggling with landlords and grocers while six children played on the stones and prowled in the garbage cans.
One child coughed its lungs away, two more have adenoids and can neither talk nor run like their mother, one is in jail, two have jobs in a box factory.
And as they fold the pasteboard, they wonder what the wishing is and the wistful glory in them that flutters faintly when the glimmer of spring comes on the air or the green of summer turns brown:
They do not know it is the new-mown hay smell calling and the wind of the plain praying for them to come back and take hold of life again with tough hands and with passion.
Chicago
Hog butcher for the World,
Tool Maker,
Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted
women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the
gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and
Children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city,
And I give then back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive
And coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against
The wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of density laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart
of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating,
Proud to be hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation
Skyscraper
By day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the sun and has a soul.
Prairie and valley, streets of the city pour people into it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are poured out again back to the streets, prairies and valleys.
It is the men, boys, and girls so poured in and out all day that give the building a soul of dreams and thoughts and memories.
(Dumped in the sea or fixed in a desert, who would care for the building or speak its name or ask a policeman the way to it?)
Elevators slide on their cables and tubes catch letters and parcels and iron
pipes carry gas and water in and sewage out.
Wires climb with secrets, carry light, and carry words.
and tell terrors and profits and loves- - curses
Of men grappling plans of business and questions
Of women in plots of love.
Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock if the earth and hold the
Building to a turning planet.
Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and hold together the
Stone wall and floors.
Hour by hour the hand of the mason and the stuff of the mortar clinch the
Pieces and parts to the shape an architect voted.
Hour by hour the sun and the rain, the air and the rust,
And the press of time running into centuries,
Play on the building inside and out and use it.
Men who sunk the pilings and mixed the mortar are laid in graves where the
Wind whistles a wild song without words.
And so are men who strung the wires and fixed the pipes and tubes and those
who saw it rise floor by floor.
Mamie
Mamie beat her head against the bars of a little Indiana town and dreamed of
Romance and big things off somewhere the way the railroad trains all ran.
She could see the smoke of the engines get lost down where the streaks of steel
Flashed in the sun and when the newspapers came in the morning mail
She knew there was a big Chicago far off, where all the trains ran.
She got tired of the barbershop boys and the post office chatter and the
Church gossip and the old pieces the band played on the Fourth of July
And Decoration Day.
And sobbed at her fate and beat her head against the bars and was going to
Kill herself.
When the thought came to her that if she was going to die she might as well
Die struggling for a clutch of romance among the streets of Chicago.
She has a job now at six dollars a week in the basement of the Boston Store
And even now she beats her head against the bars in the same old way and
Wonders if there is a bigger place the railroads run to from Chicago
Where maybe there is
Romance
And big things
And real dreams that never go smash.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
APPENDIX C
Immigration Atchinson, Antin
A. Select 2 quotes from the reading and in a paragraph for each, explain why these quotes capture the essence of this document.
B. Choose 3 of the below questions and answer them in paragraph form.
1. What themes do both of the main documents have in common?
2. What are three dangers that Atchinson sees associated with the “new immigrant?
3. Should America be a refuge for the “huddled masses?” Justify your answer by quoting the primary source.
4. What was Mary Antin’s first perception of America? How was it formed?
5. Describe and react to the experience her family had in becoming “American.”
6. What does she mean by “the pains of adjustment are as racking as the pains of birth.”
An American Among Americans Mary Antin 1912
I was about ten years old when my father emigrated. I was used to his going away from home, and America did not mean much more to me than ‘Kherson’, or ‘Odessa’, or any other names of distant places. I understood vaguely, from the gravity with which his plans were discussed, and from references to ships, societies, and other unfamiliar things, that this enterprise was different from previous ones; but my excitement and emotion on the morning of my father’s departure were mainly vicarious.
I know the day when ‘America’ as a world entirely unlike Polotzk lodged in my brain, to become the center of all my dreams and speculations. Well I know the day. I was in bed, sharing the measles with some of the other children. Mother brought us a thick letter from father, written just before boarding the ship. The letter was full of excitement There was something in it besides the description of travel, something besides the pictures of crowds of people, of foreign cities, of a ship ready to put out to sea. My father was traveling at the expense of a charitable organization, without means of his own, without plans, to a strange world where he had no friends; and yet he wrote with the confidence of a well-equipped soldier going into battle. The rhetoric is mine. Father simply wrote that the emigration committee was taking good care of everybody, that the weather was fine, and the ship comfortable. But I heard something, as we read the letter together in the darkened room, that was more than the words seemed to say. There was an elation, a- hint of triumph, such as had never been in my father’s letters before. I cannot tell how I knew it I felt a stirring, a straining in my father’s letter. It was there, even though my mother stumbled over strange words, even though she cried, as women will when somebody is going away. My father was inspired by a vision. He saw something - he promised us something. It was this ‘America’. And ‘America’ became my dream.
In after years, when I passed as an American among Americans, if I was suddenly made aware of the past that lay forgotten, - if a letter from Russia, or a paragraph in the newspaper, or a conversation overheard in the street-car, suddenly reminded me of what I might have been, I thought it miracle enough that I, Mash ke, the granddaughter of Raphael the Russian, born to a humble destiny, should be at home in an American metropolis, be free to fashion my own life, and should dream my dreams in English phrases. But in the beginning my admiration was spent on more concrete embodiments of the splendors of America; such as fine houses, gay shops, electric engines and apparatus, public buildings, illuminations, and parades. My early letters to my Russian friends were filled with boastful descriptions of these glories of my new country. No native citizen of Chelsea [Massachusetts] took such pride and delight in its institutions as I did. It required no fife and drum corps, no Fourth of July procession, to set me tingling with patriotism. Even the common agents and instruments of municipal life, such as the letter carrier and the fire engine, I regarded with a measure of respect I know what I thought of people who said that Chelsea was a very small, dull, unaspiring town, with no discernible excuse for a separate name or existence.
The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school. That day I must always remember, even if I live to be so old that I cannot tell my name. To most people their first day at school is a memorable occasion. In my case the importance of the day was a hundred times magnified, on account of the years I had waited, the road I had come, and the conscious ambitions I entertained.
I am wearily aware that I am speaking in extreme figures, in superlatives. I wish I knew some other way to render the mental life of the immigrant child of reasoning age. I may have been ever so much an exception in acuteness of observation, powers of comparison, and abnormal self-consciousness; none the less were my thoughts and conduct typical of the attitude of the intelligent immigrant child toward American institutions. And what the child thinks and feels is a reflection of the hopes, desires, and purposes of the parents who brought him overseas, no matter how precocious and independent the child may be. Your immigrant inspectors will tell you what poverty the foreigner brings in his baggage, what want in his pockets. Let the overgrown boy of twelve, reverently drawing his letters in the baby class, testify to the noble dreams and high ideals that may be hidden beneath the greasy caftan of the immigrant. Speaking for the Jews, at least, I know I am safe in inviting such an investigation.
It was characteristic of the looseness of our family discipline at this time that nobody was seriously interested in our visits to Morgan Chapel. Our time was our own, after school duties and household tasks were done. Joseph sold newspapers after school; I swept and washed dishes; Dora minded the baby. For the rest, we amused ourselves as best we could. Father and mother were preoccupied with the store day and night, and not so much with weighing and measuring and making change as with figuring out how long it would take the outstanding accounts to ruin the business entirely. If my mother had scruples against her children resorting to a building with a cross on it, she did not have time to formulate them. If my father heard us talking about Morgan Chapel, he dismissed the subject with a sarcastic characterization, and wanted to know if we were going to join the Salvation Army next; but he did not seriously care, and he was willing that the children should have a good time. And if my parents had objected to Morgan Chapel, was the sidewalk in front of the saloon a better place for us children to spend the evening? They could not have argued with us very long, so they hardly argued at all.
In Polotzk we had been trained and watched, our days had been regulated, our conduct prescribed. In America, suddenly, we were let loose on the street Why? Because my father having renounced his faith, and my mother being uncertain of hers, they had no particular creed to hold us to. The conception of a system of ethics independent of religion could not at once enter as an active principle in their life; so that they could give a child no reason why to be truthful or kind. And as with religion, so it fared with other branches of our domestic education. Chaos took the place of system; uncertainty, inconsistency undermined discipline. My parents knew only that they desired us to be like American children; and seeing how their neighbors gave their children boundless liberty, they turned us also loose, never doubting but that the American way was the best way. In public deportment, in etiquette, in all matters of social intercourse, they had no standards to go by, seeing that America was not Polotzk. In their bewilderment and uncertainty they needs must trust us children to learn from such models as the tenements afforded. More than this, they must step down from their throne of parental authority, and take the law from their children’s mouths; for they had no other means of finding out what was good American form. The result was that laxity of domestic organization, that inversion of normal relations which makes for friction, and which sometimes ends in breaking up a family that was formerly united and happy.
This sad process of disintegration of home life may be observed in almost any immigrant family of our class and with our traditions and aspirations. It is part of the process of Americanization; an upheaval preceding the state of repose. It is the cross that the first and second generations. must bear, an involuntary sacrifice for the sake of the future generations. These are the pains of adjustment, as racking as the pains of birth. And as the mother forgets her agonies in the bliss of clasping her babe to her breast, so the bent and heart-sore immigrant forgets exile and homesickness and ridicule and loss and estrangement, when he beholds his sons and daughters moving as Americans among Americans.
Seminar Notes
All answers should be as specific as possible, and unless otherwise stated, given from the point of view from the author. Full credit will be awarded for direct use of the primary source.
USE DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE PRIMARY MATERIAL.
APPENDIX D
Nightmare At Noon Stephen Vincent Benet
A. Provide a commentary on the below using specific quotes to illustrate
your ideas.
1. Benet’s view on the American character and personality.
2. Cultural images and symbols.
3. American values.
4. Connections between the past and present.
5. Relevance to modem issues or ideas.
Nightmare at Noon Stephen Vincent Benet
There are no trenches dug in the park, not yet.
There are no soldiers falling out of the sky.
It’s a fine, clear day, in the park. It is bright and hot.
The trees are in full, green, summer-heavy leaf.
An airplane drones overhead but no one’s afraid.
There’s no reason to be afraid, in a fine, big city
That was not built for a war. There is time and time.
There was time in Norway and time, and the thing feil,
When they woke, they saw the planes with the black crosses.
When they woke, they heard the guns rolling in the street.
They could not believe, at first. It was hard to believe.
They had been friendly and thriving and inventive.
They had had good arts, decent living, peace for years.
Those were not enough, it seems.
There were people there who wrote books and painted pictures,
Worked, came home tired, liked to be let alone.
They made fun of the strut and the stamp and the stained salute,
They made fun of the would-be Caesars who howl and foam.
That was not enough, it seems. It was not enough.
When they woke, they saw the planes with the black crosses.
There is grass in the park. There are children on the long meadow
Watched by some hot, peaceful nuns. Where the ducks are fed
There are black children and white and the anxious teachers
Who keep counting them like chickens. It’s quite a job
To take so many school-kids out to the park,
But when thejve eaten their picnic, they’ll go home.
(And they could have better homes, in a rich city.)
but they won’t be sent to Kansas or Michigan
At twenty4our hours’ notice,
Dazed, bewildered, clutching their broken toys,
Hundreds and hundreds filling the blacked-out trains.
Just to keep them safe, just so they may live not die.
Just so there’s one chance that they may not die but live,
That does not enter our thoughts. There is plenty of time.
In Holland, one hears, some children were less luckyIt was hard to send them anywhere in Holland.
It is a small country, you see. The thing happened quickly.
The bombs from the sky are quite indifferent to children.
The macbins-gunners do not distinguish. In Rotterdam
One quarter of the city was blown to bits.
That included, naturally, ordinary buildings
With the usual furnishings, such as cats and children.
It was an old, peaceful city, Rotterdam,
Clean, tidy, fall of flowers.
But that was not enough, it seems.
It was not enough to keep all the children safe.
It was ended in a week, and the freedom ended.
There is no air-raid siren yet, in the park.
All the glass still stands, in the windows around the park.
The man on the bench is reading a Yiddish paper.
He will not be shot because of that, oddly enough.
He will not even be beaten or imprisoned,
Not yet, not yet.
You can be a Finn or a Dane and an American.
You can be German or French and an American,
Jew, Bohunk, Nigger, Mick - all the dirty names
We call each other - and yet American.
We’ve stuck to that quite a awhile.
Go into Joe’s Diner and try to tell the truckers You belong to a Master race and you’ll get a laugh.
What’s that brother? Double-talkt
I’m a stranger here myself but it’s a free country.
It’s a free country . . .
Oh yes, I know the faults and the other side,
The lyncher’s rope, the bought justice, the wasted land.
The scale on the leaf, the borers in the corn,
The finks with their clubs, the gray sky of relief,
All the long shame of our hearts and the long disunion.
I am merely remarking - as a country, we try.
As a country, I think we try.
They tried in Spain but the tanks and the planes won out.
They fought very well and long.
They fought to be free but it seems that was not enough.
They did not have the equipment. So they lost.
They triad in Finland. The resistance was shrewd,
Skillful, intelligent, waged by a free folk.
They tried in Greece, and they threw them back for a while
By the soul and spirit and passion of common men.
Call the roll of fourteen nations. Call the roll
Of the blacked-out lands, the lands that used to be free.
But do not call it loud. There is plenty of time.
There is plenty of time, while the bombs on London fall
And turn the world to wind and water and fire.
There is time to sleep while the firebombs fall on London.
They are stubborn people in London.
We are slow to wake, good-natured as a country.
(It is our fault and our virtue.) We like to raise
A man to the highest power and then throw bricks at him.
We don’t like war and we like to speak our minds.
We’re used to speaking our minds. There are certain words,
Our own and others’, we’re used to - words we’ve used,
Heard, had to recite, forgotten,
rubbed shiny in the pocket, left borne for keepsakes,
Inherited, stuck away in the back-drawer,
In the locked trunk, at the back of the quiet mind.
Liberty, equality, fraternity.
To none will we sell, refuse or deny, right or justice.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
I am merely saying - what if these words pass?
What if they pass and are gone and are no more,
Eviscerated, blotted out of the world?
We’re used to them, so used that we half-forget,
The way you forget the looks of your own house
And yet you can walk around it, in the darkness.
You can’t put a price on sunlight or the air,
You can’t put a price on these, so they must be easy-
They were bought with belief and passion, at great cost.
They were bought with the bitter and anonymous blood
Of farmers, teachers, shoemakers and fools
Who broke the old rule ,and the pride of kings.
And some never saw the end and many were weary,
Some doubtful, many confused.
They were bought by the ragged boys at Valrny mill,
The yokels at Lexington with the long light guns
And the dry New England faces,
The iron barons, writing a charter out
For their own iron advantage, not the people,
And yet the people got it into their hands
And marked it with their own sweat.
It took long to buy these words.
It took a long time to buy them and much pain,
Thenceforward and forever free.
Thenceforward and forever free.
No man may be bound or fined or slain till he has been judged by his peers.
To form a more perfect Union.
The others have their words too, and strong words, Strong as the tanks, explosive as the bombs.
The State is all, worship the State!
The Leader is all, worship the Leader!
Strength is all, worship strength!
Worship, bow down or die!
I shall go back through the park to my safe house,
This is not London or Paris.
This is the high, bright city, the lucky place,
The place that always had time.
The boys in their shirtsleeves here, the big, flowering girls,
The bicycle-riders, the kids with the model planes,
The lovers who lie on the grass, uncaring of eyes,
As if they lay on an island out of time,
The tough kids, squirting the water at the fountain,
Whistled at by the cop.
The dopes who write “Jimmy’s a dope” on the tunnel walls.
These are all quite safe and nothing will happen to them,
Nothing will happen, of course.
Go tell Frank the Yanks aren’t coming, in Union Square.
Go tell the new brokers’ story about the President.
Whatever it is. That’s going to help a lot.
There’s time to drink your highball - plenty of time.
Go tell fire it only burns in another country,
Go tell the bombers this is the wrong address,
The hurricane to pass on the other side.
Go tell the earthquake it must not shake the ground.
The bell has rung in the night and the air quakes with it.
I shall not sleep tonight when I hear the plane.
-----------------------
Phrases to Avoid!
“Everyone has their own opinion”
“It doesn’t matter-people will do what they want to anyway”
“I don’t know why, I just know that it is true”
“How would you feel if it was you . . .”
Make the distinction of what should be true, and what actually is true!
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