Ch 203 midterm online

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson delivered "The Divinity School Address" at Harvard on July 15, 1838, by invitation. The address was first published in August 1838, by James Munroe, in an edition of 1,000 copies, which sold quickly. It first appeared in England as part of the collection Orations, Lectures, and Addresses (London: H.G. Clarke) in 1844, and was included in Nature; Addresses, and Lectures (later titled Miscellanies; Embracing Nature, Addresses, and Lectures), published in Boston by Munroe in 1849. It was included in 1876 in the first volume (Miscellanies) of the Little Classic Edition of Emerson's writings; in 1883 in the first volume (Nature, Addresses, and Lectures) of the Riverside Edition; in 1903 in the first volume (Nature, Addresses, and Lectures) of the Centenary Edition; and in 1971 in the first volume (Nature, Addresses, and Lectures) of the Harvard-published Collected Works. A Danish edition of the address appeared in 1856, the first separate English edition in 1903. The Unity Publishing Company issued it in 1884, and reprinted it many times. The American Unitarian Association published editions of it in 1907 and 1938. "The Divinity School Address" has been printed in numerous popular collections of Emerson's writings, among them the 1940 Modern Library The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (edited by Brooks Atkinson), the 1946 The Portable Emerson (edited by Mark Van Doren), the 1965 Signet Classic Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (edited by William H. Gilman), and the 1983 Library of America Essays & Lectures (selected and annotated by Joel Porte). Emerson draws upon the physical reality of the present moment in opening "The Divinity School Address." He describes the lushness of nature in high summer (the address was delivered in the middle of July) and acknowledges the perfect loveliness of the physical world. Man under the summer stars is like a young child, and the world is his toy. But Emerson quickly turns away from the material and takes up universal laws, which dwarf the significance of nature's beauty and prompt questions about the world and its order. He proceeds to answer these questions in the first part of the address by reiterating ideas developed at length in Nature, thus laying the groundwork for what he will say about the state of religion at the current time." A beauty more "secret, sweet, and overpowering" than that of nature is apparent when man opens himself to "the sentiment of virtue." Man then sees the divine and universal that encompass his existence, and knows that his place in the larger picture assures him a limitless capacity for goodness. When man strives to apprehend the absolutes of right, truth, and virtue, he is in harmony with God's creation of the universe for that very purpose, and he pleases God. The "sentiment of virtue" is identified as "reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws," which are revealed through experience of the world and through life. Universal laws cannot be fully envisioned or articulated, but are evident in our character and actions. The "sentiment of virtue" is at the heart of religion. Emerson holds up intuition as the means of perceiving the laws of the soul, which are timeless and absolute, not subject to current values and circumstances. Goodness and evil are instantly rewarded or punished in the enlargement or diminishment of the man who practices them — external reward and punishment are beside the point. Man is God to the degree that he is inwardly virtuous. In subordinating himself to the expression of the divine virtue that speaks through him, he knows himself and realizes his capabilities. As he does so, he acts in accordance with the workings of the universe, and his efforts to understand and exercise virtue are reinforced. Emerson asserts that the human soul, in its ability to elevate itself, has the power to determine whether it will go to heaven or hell — that is, there is nothing predetermined about the ultimate fate of the soul. All of this is true because of the unity of man and nature in the divine mind (the , although here, as in Nature, Emerson does not so refer to it). Because the divine is intrinsically perfect, Emerson suggests, goodness is real, while evil — the absence of goodness — is not an absolute quality in and of itself. Goodness is identified with life; evil, with death. In straying from goodness, a man progressively loses his connection with the divine, is diminished, and — from a universal point of view, if not physically — ceases to exist. The religious sentiment brings joy and makes sense of the world for us, empowers and deifies us. Through the religious sentiment, a man understands that goodness is within him, that he and every other man enjoys a direct relationship with God through intuitive Reason, and that virtue cannot be attained by emulating other men. All of society's forms of worship — Oriental as well as western — were founded on an original direct understanding of God by man. Emerson emphasizes the importance of intuition to the individual in achieving the religious sentiment, stating that it cannot be received "at second hand," and stresses that the process takes place through inspiration or revelation rather than learning. If religion is not based on this intuitive individual connection with the divine, the church is meaningless, man's importance is reduced, and the inner drive to achieve the true religious sentiment is perverted into rejection of a direct relationship with God. "Miracles, prophecy, poetry, the ideal life, the holy life" then are present through religion only historically, in its ancient intuitive origin, but not as it currently exists. Emerson points to the established Christian church as an illustration of this decline of religion from what it was and should be." Jesus, Emerson declares, "belonged to the true race of prophets." He saw and lived the inherent relationship between God and man, perceived the human soul as the outlet of the universal soul, and consequently accorded man his proper greatness. In his life, he demonstrated the agency of God through men. But the example of Jesus has been misused by the church, which quickly came to deny his humanity and to focus upon "the idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric" instead. The church has offered false miracles in place of the miracles of human life that Jesus himself recognized, and it has replaced inner perception of truth and goodness with externally imposed commandments. Emerson then explores two errors in the administration of Christianity as an institution. Firstly, rather than promoting the doctrine of the soul as it applies to all, Christianity raises Jesus up above other men. The soul "knows no persons," Emerson writes, but indiscriminately invites each man "to expand to the full circle of the universe." Jesus has been made into a kind of eastern monarch, his name associated with official, formal titles that obscure his original position as "friend of man." If we accept this view of Jesus and subordinate our own importance to his, we do not recognize our ability also to enter into the divine. The approach that takes God out of man weakens man; that which reveals God within strengthens man. If God is not within, then there is no reason for man's existence, and he will "decease forever." Jesus and the prophets — the "divine bards" — only serve to remind us that our intuitions of the divine do not emanate from us, but from God. Ordinary men tend to exaggerate the importance of a "great and rich soul" like Jesus, and not to see that they themselves can elevate by "coming again to themselves, or to God in themselves." Emerson points out that the current "vulgar tone of preaching" denigrates Jesus as much as it does the rest of mankind. It isolates Jesus and discounts the warmth and vigor that characterized his life and words. Secondly, Emerson examines the failure of traditional Christianity to acknowledge as its source "Moral Nature, that Law of laws, whose revelations introduce greatness, — yea, God himself, into the open soul." Consequently, men think that revelation happened long ago, once and for all, "as if God were dead," instead of being always possible for every individual. This belief makes it difficult for the minister to preach with meaning and to offer inspiration. Because he is obliged to preach a religion that has been formalized and codified, he cannot preach the primacy of the soul. Because "the seer is a sayer," the minister's words do not satisfy his own inner (although sometimes unrecognized) need to impart vision of the "beauty of the soul" to others; nor do they satisfy the innate craving of the members of his congregation to realize their own personal connection to God. Emerson deplores the death of faith and the lifelessness of the church, and he urges his audience of new preachers embarking upon pastoral careers to restore truth, the soul, and intuitive revelation to the church. The barrenness of inherited religion must be acknowledged, and ministers must accept their true and exalted function. The preacher's particular office is to express the applicability of the moral sentiment to the duties of life, to help his parishioners relate the ideal to experience. Emerson laments how infrequently the preacher helps man to see "that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God," and points out that we ourselves, sitting in church on Sunday, come to a better understanding of God than the preacher offers. Religious formalism leaves us empty. The preacher who does not convey his own humanity and the truth that he has gleaned from life says nothing that we need to hear.

According to his report, John Smith sees the native peoples near Jamestown as the equals of the English. True or False

False

John Winthrop

Suffolk, England—died April 5 [March 26], 1649, Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony [U.S.]), first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the chief figure among the Puritan founders of New England. Background and early life Winthrop's father was a newly risen country gentleman whose 500-acre (200-hectare) estate, Groton Manor, had been bought from Henry VIII at the time of the Reformation. Winthrop thus belonged to a class—the gentry—that became the dominant force in English society between 1540 and 1640, and he early assumed the habit of command appropriate to a member of the ruling class in a highly stratified society. At age 15 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. At age 17 he married the first of his four wives—Mary Forth, daughter of an Essex squire—and the next year the first of his 16 children was born. Like many members of his class, Winthrop studied law, served as justice of the peace, and obtained a government office; from 1627 to 1629 he was an attorney at the Court of Wards and Liveries. For more than 20 years Winthrop was primarily a country squire at Groton, with no discernible interest in overseas colonization. He was an ardently religious person. From his early teens Winthrop threw himself into scriptural study and prayers, and gradually he trained himself into a full-fledged Puritan, convinced that God had elected him to salvation—or, in Puritan terms, to "sainthood." His religious experience reinforced his elitist outlook, but it also made him a social activist. Like other prominent Puritans, Winthrop dedicated himself to remaking, as far as possible, the wicked world as he saw it, arguing that "the life which is most exercised with tryalls and temptations is the sweetest, and will prove the safeste." During the late 1620s, Winthrop felt increasingly trapped by the economic slump that reduced his landed income and by Charles I's belligerent anti-Puritan policy, which cost him his court post in 1629. When, in 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Company obtained a royal charter to plant a colony in New England, Winthrop joined the company, pledging to sell his English estate and take his family to Massachusetts if the company government and charter were also transferred to America. The other members agreed to these terms and elected him governor (October 20). Journey to America As Winthrop sailed west on the Arbella in the spring of 1630, he composed a lay sermon, "A Modell of Christian Charity," in which he pictured the Massachusetts colonists in covenant with God and with each other, divinely ordained to build "a Citty upon a Hill" in New England, with "the eyes of all people" on them: If we 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 byword throughout the world; we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all believers in God; we shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us, till we are forced out of the new land where we are going. Some critics have seen Winthrop as a visionary utopian while others have seen him as a social reactionary, but most obviously he was urging his fellow colonists to adopt the combination of group discipline and individual responsibility that gave Massachusetts such immediate and lasting success as a social experiment. For the remaining 19 years of his life, Winthrop lived in the New England wilderness, a father figure among the colonists. In the annual Massachusetts elections he was chosen governor 12 times between 1631 and 1648, and during the intervening years he sat on the court of assistants or colony council. His American career passed through three distinct phases. On first arrival, in the early 1630s, he did his most creative work, guiding the colonists as they laid out a network of tightly organized towns, each with its church of self-professed saints. Winthrop himself settled at Boston, which quickly became the capital and chief port of Massachusetts. His new farm on the Mystic River was much inferior to his former estate at Groton, but Winthrop never regretted the move, because he was free at last to build a godly commonwealth. Opposition against him built up after a few years, however, as dissidents kept challenging Winthrop's system in the mid- and late 1630s. He was nettled when the freemen (voters) insisted in 1634 on electing a representative assembly to share in decision making. He found Roger Williams's criticism of church-state relations intolerable, though he secretly helped Williams to flee to Rhode Island in 1636. And he took it as a personal affront when numerous colonists chose to migrate from Massachusetts to Connecticut. Conflict with Anne Hutchinson Hutchinson, Anne [Credit: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers Memorial Edition by Elbert Hubbard, 1916]The greatest outrage to Winthrop by far, however, came when Anne Hutchinson, a mere woman, gained control of his Boston church in 1636 and endeavoured to convert the whole colony to a religious position that Winthrop considered blasphemous. It was he who led the counterattack against her. His victory was complete. Hutchinson was tried before the general court—chiefly for "traducing the ministers"—and was sentenced to banishment. Winthrop wrote about the event in his journal in 1637: The Court...charged her with diverse matters, as her keeping two public lectures every week in her house...and for reproaching most of the ministers (viz., all except Mr. Cotton) for not preaching a covenant of free grace, and that they had not the seal of the Spirit, nor were able ministers of the New Testament; which were clearly proved against her....And, after many speeches to and fro, at last she...vented her revelations; among which...that she had it revealed to her that she should come into New England, and should here be persecuted [presented], and that God would ruin us and our posterity, and the whole state, for the same. So the Court proceeded and banished her. Later Hutchinson was tried before the Boston church and formally excommunicated. She established a settlement on Aquidneck Island (now Rhode Island) in 1638 and four years later, after the death of her husband, settled on Long Island Sound. Winthrop sanctimoniously noted her tragic misfortunes—her deformed stillborn baby and her murder by Indians—as proof of God's judgment against heretics. By 1640 Winthrop had become the custodian of Massachusetts orthodoxy, suspicious of new ideas and influences and convinced that God favoured his community above all others. With the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, many New Englanders returned home to fight against Charles I. Winthrop, however, stayed on in America, and he criticized the course of the Puritan Revolution. His own political philosophy was best summed up in a speech of 1645, in which he defined the magistrates' authority very broadly and the people's liberty very narrowly. But Winthrop was never a petty tyrant; the colonists respected and loved him to the end. His tender side is best revealed by the loving letters he exchanged with his third wife, Margaret, who was his helpmate from 1618 to 1647. The most notable of his sons, John Winthrop the Younger (1606-76), was a talented scientist and governor of Connecticut. Later descendants have figured prominently in American politics, science, and business. After struggling six weeks with "a feverish distemper," he died, age 61, in the spring of 1649. By force of character Winthrop had persuaded the colonists to adopt many—though by no means all—of his pet social and political ideas. The detailed journal that he kept during his years in America is a prime source for the early history of Massachusetts, and his copious file of correspondence and memoranda gives an exceptionally full impression of his activities and personality.

Thomas Paine

This website contains these four works of Thomas Paine, pamphleteer, patriot, dreamer (1737-1809) • COMMON SENSE (1776) Paine's call to arms for America. • THE AMERICAN CRISIS (1776-77) "These are the times that try men's souls." • THE RIGHTS OF MAN (1791-92) Paine's reply to an attack on the French Revolution by Edmund Burke. • AGE OF REASON (1794, 1795, 1807) Paine's biting Deist criticism of the Bible and the church. In three parts. Thomas Paine "These are the times that try men's souls." This simple quotation from Founding Father Thomas Paine's The American Crisis not only describes the beginnings of the American Revolution, but also the life of Paine himself. Throughout most of his life, his writings inspired passion, but also brought him great criticism. He communicated the ideas of the Revolution to common farmers as easily as to intellectuals, creating prose that stirred the hearts of the fledgling United States. He had a grand vision for society: he was staunchly anti-slavery, and he was one of the first to advocate a world peace organization and social security for the poor and elderly. But his radical views on religion would destroy his success, and by the end of his life, only a handful of people attended his funeral. Brief Biography On January 29, 1737, Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England. His father, a corseter, had grand visions for his son, but by the age of 12, Thomas had failed out of school. The young Paine began apprenticing for his father, but again, he failed. So, now age 19, Paine went to sea. This adventure didn't last too long, and by 1768 he found himself as an excise (tax) officer in England. Thomas didn't exactly excel at the role, getting discharged from his post twice in four years, but as an inkling of what was to come, he published The Case of the Officers of Excise (1772), arguing for a pay raise for officers. In 1774, by happenstance, he met Benjamin Franklin in London, who helped him emigrate to Philadelphia. historic marker in Philadelphia His career turned to journalism while in Philadelphia, and suddenly, Thomas Paine became very important. In 1776, he published Common Sense, a strong defense of American Independence from England. He traveled with the Continental Army and wasn't a success as a soldier, but he produced The American Crisis (1776-83), which helped inspire the Army. This pamphlet was so popular that as a percentage of the population, it was read by orread to more people than today watch the Super Bowl. But, instead of continuing to help the Revolutionary cause, he returned to Europe and pursued other ventures, including working on a smokeless candle and an iron bridge. In 1791-92, he wrote The Rights of Man in response to criticism of the French Revolution. This work caused Paine to be labeled an outlaw in England for his anti-monarchist views. He would have been arrested, but he fled for France to join the National Convention.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau

(1803-1882) Key texts: Nature and the essay "Self-Reliance," among others Unitarianminister Rejection of organized worship for the individual recognition of the divine Especiallythroughnature(God's creation) Too free-thinking for Harvard

Margaret Fuller

(1810-1850) Well-educated,andcivic- minded: ran salons for women to discuss ideas about reform Editor and writer Arguedformorefluid understanding of gender "WrongsofAmericanWomen" suggests need for women's fulfillment through professions

Henry David Thoreau

(1817-1862) Acolyte of Emerson Famous for living at Walden Pond outside Concord Application of Emerson's principles to life "CivilDisobedience"as text of protest against control Direct influence on leaders of non-violent protest

Helen Hunt Jackson

(1830-1885) Responsetosqueezingoutof Native American "IndianReformMovement" Litanyofbrokentreatiesand ill treatment Restorationofrepresentation rights Movetoallotprivateproperty and agriculture Sets stage for next century of self-determination

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

1815-1902 Risestoleadershipatthe Seneca Falls Convention Primary author of the "Declaration of Sentiments" Formal invocation of the US Declaration of Independence Grievances toward men, not Britain Rejection of Beecher's subordinate-but-equal position

Douglass doesn't know what slavery is until he learns to read. True or False

False

Images produced by artists in the nineteenth century were free of ideological baggage and simply represented the images of America. True or False

False

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards was a revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Protestant theologian. His i

Mary Rowlandson

Mary Rowlandson, née White, later Mary Talcott was a colonial American woman who was captured by Native Americans during King Philip's War and held for 11 weeks before being ransomed.

Native American tales and oral tradition

Oral storytelling serves a variety of functions. In addition to entertainment, stories can serve educational purposes—teaching both ecological knowledge, history, and law. Stories can also have important spiritual functions. Many oral traditions weave together multiple functions, so that it is not always possible to delineate an educational story from a spiritual or ceremonial one. Different nations have different protocols regarding their oral traditions. There can be different rules for when, how, and to whom and by whom stories are told. A common example is that some stories are only told during particular seasons—when animals are hibernating, for instance. Another important feature to oral stories is that many are closely tied to the region and landscape of the community. For instance, stories can be told about particular land formations, climate, or plants and animals. Such stories reflect deep understanding and knowledge about land. Another feature of stories is that they also describe the relationships between individuals and the larger community, creating a sense of belonging and balance between forces. Oral stories can adapt and change over time. For instance, although one might argue that oral traditions not told in original Native languages might be inauthentic, it can also be argued that translated or adapted stories that serve important functions to the cultural livelihood of a people are still "authentic." Because these stories are still part of a culture, they might be even more relevant and authentic than older transcriptions of oral stories by ethnographers. While in the past anthropologists have sought to record and collect stories in order to preserve them—what is called salvage ethnography—today there is a broader recognition of the importance of respecting storytellers' traditional protocol and conducting ethical research that serves the communities to whom the stories belong. Now that we've considered some of the features, let's focus on the common types of stories that appear in Native American oral traditions. These include creation stories, etiological stories, and trickster stories. Creation stories should be familiar to you: any story that explains the origins or emergence of something. Most often, creation stories explain how particular groups or communities of people came into existence. We all have creation stories, whether they take the form of religious myths or historical accounts; even scientific explanations, when assembled into a narrative, become a kind of creation story. A major function of creation stories is to help provide us with a sense of identity. They can also convey ethical values about how we should interact with others, including nonhuman beings and the environment. Several of the stories we are reading and viewing this week count as creation stories. For example, consider the Paiute story "Big Fish" as told by Richard Blaver. This story not only explains the formation of different landscapes, but as the fish travels from lake to lake spawning different fish, different groups become identified by which type of fish they eat, yet they are all linked in kinship through the fish. Meanwhile, in some versions of the Paiute Stone Mother story, the children who are separated and head in different directions become different groups of people. Etiological stories (sometimes called "just-so" stories) explain how something got to be the way it is. Many times, they explain natural phenomena. We can see this in several stories: "Stone Mother" explains how Pyramid Lake came to be, while "Salt" explains why salt can be found near St. Thomas. Finally, trickster stories are educational and entertaining stories featuring a trickster figure. In many traditions this figure takes the name and form of animals considered to be clever. In Northwest nations, for instance, Raven is a trickster who steals the sun. In our stories for this week, Coyote is the most prominent trickster. While trickster figures commit hilarious failures or mix-ups, sometimes their actions end up benefiting humankind or at least provide teachings for those listening to the stories. In "Bungling Host," for example, Coyote fails to provide food the same way his guests can. Perhaps Coyote's failures are meant to caution listeners against assuming that the skills of others can be easily imitated (then again, it might simply mean Coyote is a terrible cook). As you think about how stories fit these categories, you should notice that oftentimes a story can fit more than one category. For instance, "Coyote and Pine Nut" is a good example of an etiological tale explaining why pine nuts can be found in one place and junipers in another, but at the same time it can be seen as a trickster tale because Coyote tries to imitate Wolf but his attempt produces different results. As you read and listen to the stories selected for this unit, you'll notice the focus on stories of Native Americans whose traditional homelands are in the Great Basin. The land now called Nevada features several Native communities, including the Washoe, The Northern and Southern Paiute, and the Western Shoshone. These stories serve as a local example of the rich Native traditions and histories that exist throughout North America.

The Enlightenment

The Declaration of Independence is an ecstatic document of the Enlightenment if ever there were one. It is an Enlightenment text because from start to finish it is a single, sustained argument about the perceived abuse of the colonists by the British. Not only does it render a sound argumentative basis for the way that government ought to work—which gives it a great deal of rhetorical power—it prepares a list of some twenty-eight specific grievances against the British. As empirical evidence, the grievances are hard to ignore, and so support breaking away from England. And yet, it does all this with immense economy, compacting all these ideas down into their most potent form, as if to bind up the frustrations the colonists felt. The Declaration therefore is like a waiting explosion, a manifestation of the colonists' willingness to go to war for their freedom—it is a measure of their dedication to the severity of such mistreatment. Rather than an invitation to address the issues, the Declaration is a statement about the change in the course of world politics in that it deliberated on the rational basis for a split. Additionally, and somewhat ironically, Thomas Jefferson (the primary author of the Declaration) used Britain's own Declaration of Rights from 1689 as a stepping off point. In this way, the Declaration is a product of sustained study, brought about by deliberation on reasoned causes as well as effective means drawn from history. Though signed as the various members of the colonial delegations were able to get to the document, by weight of tradition the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration on July 4, 1776 and so marked "the Fourth of July" as the date of US independence. The occasion of the new country's liberation was an opportunity for many to get their voices heard. While the political elite argued over vexed and controversial political points—not the least of which was the debate over whether the states or the federal government should have more control over the nation's destiny, a debate that would rise again and contribute to civil war some eighty years later—others attempted to have more basic questions about the nation's destiny answered. One of these was actually a member of elite herself: Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, who himself was author of the preamble to the Declaration, shepherd of its passage in the Continental Congress, first Vice President of the United States, and second President. Despite, John Adams's central position in the early republic's government, Abigail Adams had little to publicly contribute to debates about the formation of the new government. Nonetheless, she had staunch political views of her own—she was almost violently opposed to slavery—and it is understood that she wielded a great deal of moral influence over John in their private discussions and, when he was away in Congress, in her correspondence with him. It is during this time that she drafts an early plea for women's rights in the letter dated from March 31, 1776. In the letter, Adams says with great forthrightness that those seeking to start a new country would be well served to forge a place for women in the new republic. Though she is nonspecific in what she would see as the proper rights that ought to be granted to women, it's striking that in the moment where the country's independence was as yet uncertain (the Declaration's publication was still three months off), Adams was already thinking about what the new nation should look like in its legal structure. Of course, no matter how much John appreciated his wife's views, they were no match for the sexism dominant in the era that would absent-mindedly squelch women's opinions. Her calls (among others) went unheeded, and women's rights—first among them the right to vote in federal elections—were withheld for over 140 years. Similarly, the moment of revolution was seized on by those attempting to find a space for African American self- determination. Among these, the Calvinist minister Lemuel Haynes was perhaps the most eloquent. Born to a white mother and African father, Haynes was given over to an indenture that expired when he turned twenty, at which point he joined the colonial militia and fought for independence. After the Declaration was issued, Haynes wrote the essay "Liberty Further Extended" in the spirit of the Declaration, using a portion of the Declaration as an epigraph and going so far as to cop some of its language in his own essay. Though Haynes had not yet attended school and become practiced in writing, it is nonetheless clear that he is thinking through the issues of slavery and human rights for black people. For Haynes, the rights that the Declaration so richly describes as relating to "all men" should literally apply to all people—and not just white men. In this way, Haynes's document shows us the extent to which arguments about the possibility of racism and sexism in the founding documents are to some extent true, because there were writers in the era who plainly took such limited language use to task. More than this, Haynes remains a remarkable figure because he—as well as the freedwoman Phyllis Wheatley—resolutely demonstrate the beginnings of African American literary culture in the United States, a heritage that would become empowering during the Black Arts movements in the 1970s. For all their attempts at creating a more just nation after the revolution, it's clear that concerns tied directly to women's and minority races rights weren't included in the founders' vision as there is no language in the Constitution explicitly making room for them. This likely has less to do with the overt racism and sexism that some would like to pin on the founders (though there was a good deal of demonstrable, rationalized, and historically-acceptable racism and sexism in their personal writing). Rather, it likely had to do with the extreme difficulty of mustering basic consensus when founding an entire country. This isn't to excuse the lack of space for women and minorities, but rather to acknowledge just how difficult forming the first federal government was. In fact, it was so difficult that the first constitutional document—the Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781— lasted just eight short years. Throughout its use—as well as during the debates held at the Constitutional Congress in 1787—the entire project of American centralized democracy could have been scrapped. Various factions, like the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, argued over how strong a role the federal government ought to have in the affairs of this confederation of states. This lasting divide between central and diffuse government is one of the reasons the United States has states at all—a term we normally use to define sovereign nations: we like the idea that individual governmental districts (our states) maintain so much autonomy, though at various points in our history the balance has shifted back and forth. Likewise, the issue of slavery repeatedly reared its head in their deliberations, as did questions about all sorts of rights. By way of compromise, anything that wasn't essential to the function of the government was left out. In other words, taken by itself, the ratified original version of the Constitution that went into effect in 1789 was a slim document that laid out only the most basic structural description for the federal document. This included the two houses of Congress, the three branches of government and their various powers, the system of checks and balances we rely on to keep the peace, and the schemes by which representation would take place via election. It is a frame, and this is all. Almost immediately, however, individual additions were made in the form of amendments, the first ten of which constitute what we call the Bill of Rights. These rights pertain to the various freedoms we think of as absolute in the United States, but were so controversial among the Constitution's various framers and Convention representatives that they could not be made part of the Constitution proper. Each of them—from freedom of speech through the limits on the federal government's powers—comes out of a particular historical exigency that the founders thought necessary to protect the individual from the government—limits that made American constitutional law markedly different from the British parliamentary form that was nearly absolute and which they had just overthrown. For example, the Third Amendment prohibits the housing of federal troops in private homes without consent, a response to the British army's taking over private homes during the Revolution. The idea that the US military would take over one's home and other private property to house and feed troops would be unheard of today, and so one might wonder why it even needed to be an amendment. But it's the very fact of the deep embeddedness of some of our rights that we could even think of taking them for granted. There is much more about the Constitution than could ever be said in even a single course, and you're encouraged to engage your intellect in some of the debates surrounding it—after all, it shapes your very existence in fundamental ways. What you might consider as you read through it, however, is how delicate this balance must have been, that in a moment of great uncertainty, as various parties and state delegations threatened to leave the table or gridlock the proceedings with their own petty differences, and without the benefit of modern communications or computers and data sharing—and not even the benefit of air conditioning during an incredibly hot season—a small group of Americans were able to set aside their differences enough to forge the entirety of a country's government in just one summer. And what is more, the basic structure they created not only has remained largely unchanged at its core for more than 225 years, but it was created with such foresight as to allow enough flexibility to make space for future generations' changing conceptions of what makes an American as well. In each case, the need for Enlightenment reason prevailed as one needed to negotiate complex arguments about what mattered in the founding moments of US history. And, while we might take issue from our modern standpoint about whether the founding documents made the right choices—as the unheard voices demonstrate—it's nonetheless remarkable how quickly the nation was set up, in our watching the transition from excitement to maturity between the Declaration and Constitution. With that, we end this lecture.

Mary Rowlandson seems to suffer from some manner of illness or infirmity as a result of her experiences. What does it most closely resemble? a. obsessive-compulsive disorder b. extreme sexual dysfunction c. typhoid fever d. post-traumatic stress disorder e. narcolepsy

post-traumatic stress disorder

Frederick Jackson Turner

(1861-1932) Cultural historian, environmental determinist Closing of frontier (1890) as time of reflection "FrontierThesis" Establishment of robust American character from frontier Closingmeansanuncertainfuture Exclusion of any non-white, non- urban views Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) Responsetosqueezingoutof Native American "IndianReformMovement" Litanyofbrokentreatiesand ill treatment Restorationofrepresentation rights Movetoallotprivateproperty and agriculture Setsstagefornextcenturyof self-determination

Catherine Beecher

1800-1878 Familyofprogressives Bestselling author of domestic texts (Treatise was her first) Arguedforthesocial subordination of women... ...butleadersinthehome Appeals to Christianity and the so- called natural order of things Placesallresponsibilityfor home—and children—on mothers

Maria W. Stewart

1803-1879 Identifies trouble with women's opportunity as imbricated with race Access to domestic sphere also conditioned by class Highlights role of black women's labor in liberating white women

Transcendentalism Reviewed

An philosophical approach to understanding the new reality of the United States Individualism and self-reliance rather than received wisdom Abolitionist tendency Focus on place plant the roots of environmentalism

Sojourner Truth

Circa 1797-1883 Urges for space for all women Need to conceptualize equality among all women in order to conceptualize quality between the sex Presages issues in twentieth- century women's

The Workingmen's Party

IndustrialRevolutionandquality of life issues Intensificationoffinance capitalism in the United States AddressofWorkingmen'sParty of Charlestown, Massachusetts "Realproducers"criticismof finance Frontierasplaceto increase profit escape

The Frontier and its Context

Land expansion Louisiana Purchase (1803): opening of real frontier Lewis and Clark Expedition Texas and California Migration to the West and its endless space 1890 Census: frontier closes Identity formation: rugged individualism

Transcendentalism: Tenets

Multidisciplinary philosophical school Ties to Romanticism in Britain... ...and Emanuel Swedenborg's Protestantism Individual connection to the world and reason Focus on the nonhuman—nature Personal rationality versus formal education Literary effects

A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE DESTRUCTION OF THE INDIES

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies[2] (Spanish: Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias) is an account written by the Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas in 1542 (published in 1552) about the mistreatment of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in colonial times and sent to then Prince Philip II of Spain.[1] He wrote it for Charles I of Spain.[1] One of the stated purposes for writing the account is his fear of Spain coming under divine punishment and his concern for the souls of the Native peoples.[citation needed] The account is one of the first attempts by a Spanish writer of the colonial era to depict examples of unfair treatment that indigenous people endured in the early stages of the Spanish conquest of the Greater Antilles, particularly the island of Hispaniola.[citation needed] Las Casas's point of view can be described as being heavily against some of the Spanish methods of colonization, which, as he describes, inflicted a great loss on the indigenous occupants of the islands. He described extensive use of torture, murder, and mutilation against the Natives by the Spaniards. His account was largely responsible for the passage of the new Spanish colonial laws known as the New Laws of 1542, which abolished native slavery for the first time in European colonial history and led to the Valladolid debate.[citation needed] The images described by Las Casas were later depicted by Theodor de Bry in copper plate engravings that helped expand the Black Legend against Spain. It was republished in 1620, by Jan Evertszoon Cloppenburch, alongside the book Origin and progress of the disturbances in the Netherlands by Dutch historian Johannes Gysius.[1]

Captain John Smith

A member of the expedition that established the English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, Captain John Smith was the elected leader of the colony in 1608-1609. His firm leadership brought the colony through much hardship. Returning to England in 1609, Smith devoted himself to promoting the colonies and pub- licizing his own exploits. In the following passage Smith offers his impressions of the Chesapeake Indians as part of his general descrip- tion and promotion of Virginia. SOURCE: Captain John Smith. Works: 1608-1631. Edited by Edward Arber, The English Scholars' Library, No. 16, (Birmingham, 1884), pp. 63-67. The land is not populous, for the men be fewe; their far greater number is of women and children. Within 60 miles of James Towne there are about some 5000 people, but of able men fit for their warres scarse 1500. To nourish so many together they have yet no means, because they make so small a benefit of their land, be it never so fertill. 6 or 700 have been the most [that] hath seen together, when they gathered themselves to have surprised Captaine Smyth at Pamaunke, having but 15 to withstand the worst of their furie. As small as the proportion of ground that hath yet beene discoverd, is in comparison of that yet unknowne. The people differ very much in stature, especially in language, as before is expressed. Since being very great as the Sesquesahamocks, others very little as the Wighcocomocoes: but generally tall and straight, of a comely proportion, and of a colour browne, when they are of any age, but they are borne white. Their haire is generally black; but few have any beards. The men weare halfe their heads shaven, the other halfe long. For Barbers they use their women, who with 2 shels will grate away the haire, of any fashion they please. The women are cut in many fashions agreeable to their yeares, but ever some part remaineth long. They are very strong, of an able body and full of agilitie, able to endure to lie in the woods under a tree by the fire, in the worst of winter, or in the weedes and grasse, in Ambuscado in the Sommer. They are inconstant in everie thing, but what feare con- straineth them to keepe. Craftie, timerous, quicke of apprehension and very ingenuous. Some are of disposition feareful, some bold, most cautelous, all Savage. Generally covetous of copper, beads, and such like trash. They are soone moved to anger, and so mali- tious, that they seldome forget an injury: they seldome steale one from another, least their conjurors should reveale it, and so they be pursued and punished. That they are thus feared is certaine, but that any can reveale their offences by conjuration I am doubtful. Their women are carefull not to bee suspected of dishonesty with- out the leave of their husbands. Each household knoweth their owne lands and gardens, and most live of their owne labours. For their apparell, they are some time covered with the skinnes of wilde beasts, which in winter are dressed with the haire, but in sommer without. The better sort use large mantels of deare skins not much differing in fashion from the Irish mantels. Some imbrodered with white beads, some with copper, other- painted after their manner. But the common sort have scarce to cover their nakednesse but with grasse, the leaves of trees, or such like. We have seen some use mantels made of Turkey feathers, so prettily wrought and woven with threeds that nothing could bee discerned but the feathers, that was exceeding warme and very handsome. But the women are alwaies covered about their midles with a skin and very shamefast to be seene bare. They adorne themselves most with copper beads and paint- ings. Their women some have their legs, hands, breasts and face cunningly imbrodered with diverse workes, as beasts, serpentes, artificially wrought into their flesh with blacke spots. In each eare commonly they have 3 great holes, whereat they hange chaines, bracelets, or copper. Some of their men weare in those holes, a small greene and yellow coloured snake, neare halfe a yard in length, which crawling and lapping her selfe about his necke often times familiarly would kiss his lips. Others wear a dead Rat tied by the tail. Some on their heads weare the wing of a bird or some large feather, with a Rattell. Those Rattels are somewhat like the chape of a Rapier but lesse, which they take from the taile of a snake. Many have the whole skinne of a hawke or some strange fowle, stuffed with the wings abroad. Others a broad peece of cop- per, and some the hand of their enemy dryed. Their heads and shoulders are painted red with the roote Pocone braied to powder mixed with oyle; this they hold in somer to preserve them from the heate, and in winter from the cold. Many other formes of paintings they use, but he is the most gallant that is the most monstrous to behould. Their buildings and habitations are for the most part by the rivers or not farre distant from some fresh spring. Their houses are built like our Arbors of small young springs bowed and tyed, and so close covered with mats or the barkes of trees very handsome- ly, that notwithstanding either winde raine or weather, they are as warme as stooves, but very smoaky, yet at the toppe of the house there is a hole made for the smoake to goe into right over the fire. Against the fire they lie on little hurdles of Reedes covered with a mat, borne from the ground a foote and more by a hurdle of wood. On these round about the house, they lie heads and points one by thother against the fire: some covered with mats, some with skins, and some starke naked lie on the ground, from 6 to 20 in a house. Their houses are in the midst of their fields or gardens; which are smal plots of ground, some 20, some 40, some 100, some 200, some more, some lesse. Some times from 2 to 100 of these houses [are] togither, or but a little separated by groves of trees. Neare their habitations is little small wood, or old trees on the ground, by reason of their burning of them for fire. So that a man may gallop a horse amongst these woods any waie, but where the creekes or Rivers shall hinder. Men women and children have their severall names accord- ing to the severall humor of their Parents. Their women (they say) are easilie delivered of childe, yet doe they love children verie dearly. To make them hardy, in the coldest mornings they wash them in the rivers, and by painting and ointments so tanne their skins, that after year or two, no weather will hurt them. The men bestowe their times in fishing, hunting, wars, and such manlike exercises, scorning to be seene in any woman like exercise, which is the cause that the women be verie painefull and the men often idle. The women and children do the rest of the worke. They make mats, baskets, pots, morters, pound their corne, make their bread, prepare their victuals, plant their corne, gather their corne, beare all kind of burdens, and such like....

Catherine Beecher

A treatise on domestic economy Book by Catharine Beecher Beecher's philosophy was that men should dominate the broad political and economic spheres, and women should have complete control of the household, rearing of children, and education

Lemuel Haynes

After the American Revolution, Haynes began to write extensively, criticizing the slave trade and slavery. He also began to prepare sermons for family prayers and write theologically about life. The Scripture, abolitionism, and republicanism impacted his published writings. Haynes argued that slavery denied black people their natural rights to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Paralleling the recent American experience with oppression to the slave experience, Haynes wrote: "Liberty is equally as precious to a black man, as it is to a white one, and bondage as equally as intolerable to the one as it is to the other". When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, the implications of "all men are created equal" for America's slaves was uncertain, at least to the delegates to the Continental Congress, many of whom (like Jefferson) owned slaves themselves. There was no doubt about the Declaration's meaning to many free and enslaved African Americans, however. Lemuel Haynes was a former indentured servant, a Massachusetts minuteman and Continental soldier, and a Calvinist evangelical who was born to a white woman and African-American man. He wrote "Liberty Further Extended" (1776), one of the most remarkable documents of the Revolutionary era, as a direct response to Jefferson's Declaration, which Haynes quoted on the first page of the treatise. In it, he made a soaring Christian case for the abolition of slavery. Like many antislavery critics, Haynes used Acts 17:26, "[God] hath made of one blood all nations of men" (KJV), as the basis for his argument that the principles of liberty applied to people of all races. Jefferson opened the door to this argument in the Declaration by basing human equality on our common creation by God. "Liberty is equally as precious to a black man, as it is to a white one, and bondage equally as intolerable to the one as it is to the other," Haynes reasoned. He railed against the hypocrisy and violence of slave owning and the slave trade in a supposedly Christian land, asking "what will you do in that day when God shall make inquisition for blood? He will make you drink the vials of his indignation which like a potable stream shall be poured out without the least mixture of mercy." Sometime around the beginning of the Revolution Haynes had experienced an evangelical conversion, and then fell under the tutelage of "New Divinity" pastors, Calvinist theological successors of Jonathan Edwards. "Liberty Further Extended," though unpublished, was likely encouraged by and circulated among some of those pastors. In 1785 Haynes received ordination, and for three decades he served white-majority churches in Vermont, before finally leaving his congregation in 1818, probably due to factionalism exacerbated by his precarious position as a black pastor of a white church. He died in 1833, with his epitaph reading "Here lies the dust of a poor hell-deserving sinner, who ventured into eternity trusting wholly on the merits of Christ for salvation." Certain scholars and pastors have known about and admired Haynes for some time (I briefly discuss Haynes in my books God of Liberty and The Great Awakening), but he has not achieved anything like the kind of fame claimed by his predecessors Jonathan Edwards or George Whitefield. Because of Haynes' remarkable career, and his trenchant criticism of slavery, he deserves that kind of notoriety among Calvinists and evangelicals today.

Virginia's slave laws

An act preventing negroes from bearing arms. An act defining the status of Mulatto Bastards.An act declaring that Baptism does not bring freedom. An act declating how negroes belonging to interstates shall be disposed of. An act for preventing insurrections among slaves.

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A renowned polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat.

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus, loom large as within the national imagination of the United States. If you're a graduate of American primary school, you are likely familiar with the rhyme "in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" and with the ship names the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María. You may also have some familiarity with Bartolomé de las Casas, who decried the atrocities committed by the colonizers against indigenous populations. Even though these figures did not take part in the colonization of lands that would become the United States, they offer important parallels with later colonial establishments. For example, the Spanish conquest of the West Indies was used to justify the dispossession of Native peoples in the United States under what became known as the doctrine of discovery: the idea that land discovered by European colonial powers is legally theirs. While you may already be familiar with these figures, by studying the texts they produced, you will have a better understanding of the ways in which colonialism has shaped the history of the Western Hemisphere. In particular, you will see how these texts represent colonial ideologies, particularly the ways in which power was exercised through appeals to European Christianity and monarchies. Of course, Columbus's voyages were not the first instance of contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. One well-documented example is the arrival of Vikings in the tenth century to what is now Newfoundland and Labrador. Yet the long-term sea voyages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries initiated a new era of global trade and history as well as the rapid expansion of colonialism by European powers. As is well known, Columbus's voyage was to establish clear trade routes to Asia. Columbus' mistaken assumption that he had found a route to the East is reflected to this day in the misnomer "Indians" to refer to Native Americans. Columbus's voyages took place within the context of Spain and Portugal vying for control of lands they discovered through maritime explorations. Meanwhile, Pope Alexander VI issued several papal bulls or edicts that basically drew a line in the Atlantic and gave lands west of the line to Spain. In one of these bulls, called the Inter Caetera, Alexander explains that his purpose in doing this is to encourage the spread of Christianity, "that in our times especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and everywhere increased and spread, that the health of souls be cared for and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself." Indigenous activists continue to call for the Vatican to revoke the Inter Caetera in light of the annihilation of Indigenous peoples and the destruction of their cultures as a result of colonization. In Columbus's letter to the King and Queen of Spain, we see similarly stated goals of conversion, but these references take a backseat to his emphasis on the resources to be obtained. Columbus's letter works to persuade the monarchy to continue funding further voyages, with a particular emphasis on the goods that are available for the taking. When you read the letter you will notice the repeated reference to desirable plants, spices, and perhaps above all, gold. By emphasizing these resources, the Spanish were practicing what we'll call extractive colonialism. This form of colonialism differs from settler colonialism in that the primary goal is to extract goods and resources from a colony, rather than to settle a population. In Columbus's letter, you can see extractive colonialism at work. In addition to spices, gold, and other goods, Columbus also mentions the availability of slaves. Notice in particular the references to resources and the depictions of submissive Natives: how do their portrayals serve Columbus's purpose? For example, he describes the weapons they have, careful to note that they do not possess iron, thereby implying that they would be easy to subdue. He also describes them as intelligent yet simple, as when he describes their interest in bartering gold for "trifles" like string. Obviously, this portrayal judges Native behaviors according to Spanish standards. Such depictions of charmingly innocent Natives continued through European colonial traditions, encapsulated in Rousseau's figure of the "noble savage." As colonization progressed, this portrayal alternated with another trope, the barbaric and violent savage. Continue to notice these two portrayals in the weeks ahead. Notice too how the instances where Columbus focuses on language. He mentions that the Natives speak mutually intelligible dialects, which he points out will make it easier to convert them to Christianity. Indeed, language is an important tool for colonization. The first act Columbus describes in his letter is renaming the islands with Spanish names, such as renaming Guanahani with the name San Salvador. The phenomenon called the Columbian Exchange describes the transfer of plants, animals, and technologies between continents. This includes germs; European diseases brought onshore caused widespread epidemics and many deaths. The stark declines in population were exacerbated by the increasingly brutal treatment of Native populations by Spanish colonizers. Such hostility can be seen in the decades following Columbus's first voyage. In 1513, colonizers began using a document called the Requerimiento (or "Requirement"). This document reflects the colonizer's belief in their superiority as Christians. The Requerimiento, read aloud to Natives in Spanish (and thus, many times without their comprehension) demanded that the Natives submit to the Church and to the King and Queen of Spain, for which they would receive "love and charity" and would live "without servitude." However, should they not submit, the document asserts that the Spanish shall force them into obedience to the Church and will make slaves of men, women, and children, take all the goods they can, and "shall do all the harm and damage that we can." The Requerimiento also absolves the Spanish of any blame for deaths or losses caused. In short then, the document served as an efficient strategy to justify extractive colonization. This strategy of domination paved the way for the encomienda system in the new world, which forced Natives into servitude, hard labor supposedly exchanged for benevolent paternalism on behalf of the colonizing forces. Native people were divided among various Spanish rulers, who were expected to teach them Spanish, Christianity, and "civilization." In reality, natives were abused, tortured, and killed in the quest to gather resources, gold in particular, which despite Columbus's assertions in his letters was in scarce supply in the Caribbean. Natives were tasked with providing a certain amount of gold to their encomendero and if they failed could be beaten, their hands cut off, or killed.

Bartolomé de las Casas

Despite the sense of Spanish superiority, there were Spaniards who protested the treatment of the Natives. Most famous among these are Bartolome de Las Casas, a Dominican priest wrote to expose the atrocities committed by the Spaniards in the name of the Crown and Church. Las Casas begins his treaty by asserting the divine rule of kings, but he qualifies his recognition of authority by calling on the duty of kings to right wrongs. He describes the devastation the Spaniards have caused, including driving Native populations to near extinction. This "tyrannical warfare and bondage" must cease, he warns, or he fears God will wreck vengeance on Castile/Spain, the country he still loves. Las Casas represents an early example of revisionist history, and he was met with resistance by others who argued that Indians were naturally inferior or childlike and therefore were meant to be slaves. This strategy of appealing to naturalized differences in order to dehumanize others is repeated time and again in situations of oppression. Notice, too, the way that Las Casas uses the terms Spaniards and Christians interchangeably. By using the term Christian he is pointing out the hypocrisy of colonizers. The protest by Las Casas and others resulted in some legal reform related to colonial practices, yet the horrors of conquest wore on. By reading these original documents, it should become clear as to why many Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere protest the annual celebration of Columbus Day, and why there are calls to replace it with Native Americans' or Indigenous People's Day. We should also, however, be careful in reading Columbus and Las Casas' documents together to resist the tendency to demonize Columbus and valorize Las Casas, as such simplifications can overlook important nuances to the history of colonization in the Western Hemisphere. It is also crucial to once again acknowledge the complexity of Native cultures both before and after the arrival of European colonial regimes. Despite centuries of colonization, Native peoples remain, and many Native cultures are revitalizing. The next lecture will look at more recent movements by Native Americans, who used colonial histories to develop creative and powerful resistance movements.

Chief Powhatan

I am now grown old and must soon die, and the succession must descend in order, to my brothers, Opitchapam, Opechancanough, and Kekataugh, and then to my two sisters, and their two daughters. I wish their experience was equal to mine, and that your love to us might not be not be less than ours to you. Why should you take by force that from us which you can have by love? Why should you destroy us who have provided you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and fly into the woods. And then you must consequently famish by wrongdoing your friends. What is the cause of your jealousy? You see us unarmed and willing to supply your wants if you come in a friendly manner; not with swords and guns as to invade an enemy. I am not so simple as not to know that it is better to eat good meat, lie well, and sleep quietly with my women and children; to laugh and be merry with the English, and, being their friend, to have copper, hatchets, and whatever else I want, than to fly from all, to lie cold in the woods, feed upon acorns, roots and such trash, and to be so hunted that I cannot rest, eat, or sleep. In such circumstances, my men must watch, and if a twig should but break, all would cry out, "Here comes Captain Smith." And so, in this miserable manner to end my miserable life. And, Captain Smith, this might soon be your fate too through your rashness and unadvisedness. I, therefore, exhort you to peaceable councils, and above all I insist that the guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy and uneasiness, be removed and sent away.

Maria W. Stewart

Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879) was one of the first American women to leave copies of her speeches. The address below is her second public lecture. It was given on September 21, 1832 in Franklin Hall in Boston, the meeting site of the new England Anti-Slavery Society. Although as an abolitionist, she usually attacked slavery, in this address she condemns the attitude that denied black women education and prohibited their occupational advancement. In fact she argues that Northern African American women, in term of treatment, were only slightly better off than slaves. Why sit ye here and die? If we say we will go to a foreign land, the famine and the pestilence are there, and there we shall die. If we sit here, we shall die. Come let us plead our cause before the whites: if they save us alive, we shall live—and if they kill us, we shall but die. Methinks I heard a spiritual interrogation—'Who shall go forward, and take off the reproach that is cast upon the people of color? Shall it be a woman? And my heart made this reply —'If it is thy will, be it even so, Lord Jesus!'

The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence is an ecstatic document of the Enlightenment if ever there were one. It is an Enlightenment text because from start to finish it is a single, sustained argument about the perceived abuse of the colonists by the British. Not only does it render a sound argumentative basis for the way that government ought to work—which gives it a great deal of rhetorical power—it prepares a list of some twenty-eight specific grievances against the British. As empirical evidence, the grievances are hard to ignore, and so support breaking away from England. And yet, it does all this with immense economy, compacting all these ideas down into their most potent form, as if to bind up the frustrations the colonists felt. The Declaration therefore is like a waiting explosion, a manifestation of the colonists' willingness to go to war for their freedom—it is a measure of their dedication to the severity of such mistreatment. Rather than an invitation to address the issues, the Declaration is a statement about the change in the course of world politics in that it deliberated on the rational basis for a split. Additionally, and somewhat ironically, Thomas Jefferson (the primary author of the Declaration) used Britain's own Declaration of Rights from 1689 as a stepping off point. In this way, the Declaration is a product of sustained study, brought about by deliberation on reasoned causes as well as effective means drawn from history. Though signed as the various members of the colonial delegations were able to get to the document, by weight of tradition the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration on July 4, 1776 and so marked "the Fourth of July" as the date of US independence. Drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is at once the nation's most cherished symbol of liberty and Jefferson's most enduring monument. Here, in exalted and unforgettable phrases, Jefferson expressed the convictions in the minds and hearts of the American people. The political philosophy of the Declaration was not new; its ideals of individual liberty had already been expressed by John Locke and the Continental philosophers. What Jefferson did was to summarize this philosophy in "self-evident truths" and set forth a list of grievances against the King in order to justify before the world the breaking of ties between the colonies and the mother country. We invite you to read a transcription of the complete text of the Declaration.

Letter to King Ferdinand of Spain, describing the results of the first voyage

The published Latin versions of the letter are almost all titled "Letter of Columbus, on the islands of India beyond the Ganges recently discovered". The term "India beyond the Ganges" (India extra Gangem) was the archaic term frequently used by earlier geographers (e.g. Ptolemy) to refer vaguely to Southeast Asia (roughly from Burma down to the Malay peninsula); the Indian subcontinent proper was referred to as "India within the Ganges" (India intra Gangem).[8] Thus the islands of "India beyond the Ganges" claimed to have been reached would roughly correspond to modern Indonesia or thereabouts. The earlier printed Spanish edition bears no title, nor does the manuscript copy of the letter to the Catholic monarchs (Libro Copiador).[9] In the letter, Christopher Columbus does not describe the journey itself, saying only that he traveled thirty-three days and arrived at the islands of "the Indies" (las Indias), "all of which I took possession for our Highnesses, with proclaiming heralds and flying royal standards, and no one objecting". He describes the islands as being inhabited by "Indians" (Indios). In the printed letters, Columbus relates how he bestowed new names on six of the islands. Four are in the modern Bahamas: (1) Sant Salvador (for which he also gives the local name, Guanaham in the Spanish edition and Guanahanin in the Latin letter; modern English texts normally render it as Guanahani), (2) Santa Maria de Concepcion, (3) Ferrandina (Fernandinam in the Latin version, in modern texts Fernandina), and (4) la isla Bella (given as Hysabellam in the Latin version, and La Isabela in modern texts).[10] He also names (5) La Isla Juana (Joanam in Latin, modern Cuba) and (6) the island of La Spañola (Hispana in the Latin letter, modern Hispaniola). In the letter, Columbus says that he believes Juana is actually part of the continental mainland (terra firme) of Cathay (Catayo, archaic for China), even though he also admits some of the Indians he encountered informed him that Juana was an island. Later in the letter, Columbus locates the islands at the latitude of 26°N, a fair bit north of their actual location ("es distinta de la linea equinocial veinte e seis grados"). (Note: in the Copiador version, Columbus makes no mention of the latitudes nor the native name Guanahanin.) The six islands of the Indies, woodcut from the 1494 Basel edition of Columbus's letter In his letter, Columbus describes how he sailed along the northern coast of Juana (Cuba) for a spell, searching for cities and rulers, but found only small villages "without any sort of government" ("no cosa de regimiento"). He notes that the natives usually fled when approached. Finding this track fruitless, he decided to double-back and head southeast, eventually sighting the large island of Hispaniola, and explored along its northern coast. Columbus exaggerates the size of these lands, claiming Juana is greater in size than Great Britain ("maior que Inglaterra y Escocia juntas") and Hispaniola larger than the Iberian peninsula ("en cierco tiene mas que la Espana toda"). In his letter, Columbus seems to attempt to present the islands of the Indies as suitable for future colonization. Columbus's descriptions of the natural habitat in his letters emphasize the rivers, woodlands, pastures, and fields "very suitable for planting and cultivating, for raising all sorts of livestock herds and erecting towns and farms" ("gruesas para plantar y senbrar, para criar ganados de todas suertes, para hedificios de villas e lugares"). He also proclaims that Hispaniola "abounds in many spices, and great mines of gold, and other metals" ("ay mucha especiarias y grandes minas de oros y otros metales"). He compares lush and well-watered Hispaniola as more favorable to settlement than mountainous Cuba. Columbus characterizes the native inhabitants of the Indies islands as primitive, innocent, without reason ("like beasts", "como bestias"), and unthreatening. He describes how they go about largely naked, that they lack iron and weapons, and are by nature fearful and timid ("son asi temerosos sin remedio"), even "excessively cowardly" ("en demasiado grado cobardes"). Hispaniola Indians offering Columbus's men piles of gold in exchange for their shoelaces (illustration from Theodor de Bry, 1594) According to Columbus, when persuaded to interact, the natives are quite generous and naïve, willing to exchange significant amounts of valuable gold and cotton for useless glass trinkets, broken crockery, and even shoelace tips ("cabos de agugetas"). In the printed editions (albeit not in the Copiador version) Columbus notes that he tried to prevent his own sailors from exploiting the Indians's naïveté, and that he even gave away things of value, like cloth, to the natives as gifts, in order to make them well-disposed "so that they might be made Christians and incline full of love and service towards Our Highnesses and all the Castilian nation". Columbus makes particular note that the natives lack organized religion, not even idolatry ("no conocian ninguna seta nin idolatria"). He claims the natives believed the Spaniards and their ships had "come down from heaven" ("que yo...venia del cielo"). Columbus notes that the natives of different islands seem to all speak the same language (the Arawaks of the region all spoke Taíno), which he conjectures will facilitate "conversion to the holy religion of Christ, to which in truth, as far as I can perceive, they are very ready and favorably inclined". Possibly worried that his characterization might make it appear that the natives are unsuitable for useful labor, Columbus notes that the Indians are "not slow or unskilled, but of excellent and acute understanding". He also notes that the "women appear to work more than the men". Columbus lands in Hispaniola, some natives flee, others trade. Woodcut from 1494 Basel edition of Columbus's letter. Notice the depiction of the oar-driven galley in the foreground - an early European interpretation of the Indian canoe, as per Columbus's description.[11] Columbus's physical descriptions are brief, noting only that the natives have straight hair and are "not black like Ethiopians". They go around usually naked, although sometimes they wear a small cotton loincloth. They often carry a hollow cane, which they use to both till and fight. They eat their food "with many spices which are far too hot" ("comen con especias muchas y muy calientes en demasía"; in the Copiador version Columbus refers to a red hot chili pepper by its Taíno name, agís). Columbus claims the Indians practice monogamy ("each man is content with only one wife"), "except for the rulers and kings" (which can have as many as twenty wives). He confesses he is uncertain if they have a notion of private property ("Ni he podido entender si tenian bienes proprios"). In a more detailed passage, Columbus describes the Indian oar-driven canoe (canoa, the first known written appearance of this word, originally from the Taíno language). Columbus compares the Indian canoe to the European fusta (small galley). Towards the end of the letter, Columbus reveals that local Indians told him about the possible existence of cannibals, which he refers to as "monsters" ("monstruos"). This is a probable reference to the Caribs from the Leeward Islands, although neither the word "cannibal" nor "Carib" appears in the printed editions (however, in the Copiador letter, he claims the "monsters" come from an island called "Caribo", Dominica?). Columbus says the monsters are reported to be long-haired, very ferocious, and "eat human flesh" ("los quales comen carne humana"). Columbus has not seen them himself, but says that local Indians claim the monsters have many canoes, and that they sail from island to island, raiding everywhere. However, Columbus proclaims disbelief in the existence of these "monsters", or rather suggests this is likely just a local Indian myth pertaining to some distant Indian seafaring tribe who are probably not unlike themselves ("I regard them as of no more account than the others", "yo no los tengo en nada mas que a los otros"). Columbus connects the monsters story to another local legend about a tribe of female warriors, who are said to inhabit the island of "Matinino" east of Hispaniola ("first island of the Indies, closest to Spain", Guadaloupe?). Columbus speculates that the aforesaid canoe-borne monsters are merely the "husbands" of these warrior women, who visit the island intermittently for mating.[12] The island of women reportedly abounds in copper, which the warrior-women forge into weapons and shields. Distribution of Arawaks, Caribs, and Guanajatabey in the West Indies, c. 1492 Lest his readers begin to get wary, Columbus rounds off with a more optimistic report, saying the local Indians of Hispaniola also told him about a very large island nearby which "abounds in countless gold" ("en esta ay oro sin cuenta"). (He doesn't give this gold island a name in the printed letters, but in the Copiador version, this island is identified and named as "Jamaica".) In the printed letters, Columbus claims to be bringing back some of the gold island's "bald-headed" inhabitants with him. Earlier in the letter, Columbus had spoken also of the land of "Avan" ("Faba" in the Copiador letter), in the western parts of Juana, where men are said to be "born with tails" ("donde nacan la gente con cola") - probably a reference to the Guanajatabey of western Cuba. The Libro Copiador version of the letter contains more native names of islands than the printed editions.[13] For instance, in the Copiador letter, Columbus notes that island of "monsters" is called "Caribo", and explains how the warrior-women of Matinino send away their male children to be raised there.[14] It also refers to an island called "Borinque" (Puerto Rico), unmentioned in the printed editions, that the natives report to lie between Hispaniola and Caribo. The Copiador letter notes Juana is called "Cuba" by the natives ("aquéllos llaman de Cuba"). He also gives more details about the gold island, saying it is "larger than Juana", and lying on the other side of it, "which they call Jamaica", where "all the people have no hair and there is gold without measure" ("que llaman Jamaica; adonde toda la gente della son si cabellos, en ésta ay oro sin medida").[15] In the Copiador letter, Columbus suggests that he is bringing normal (full-haired) Indians back to Spain who have been to Jamaica, who will report more about it (rather than bringing the island's own bald-headed inhabitants, as claimed in the printed letters). Construction of the fort at La Navidad, Hispaniola, from the 1494 Basel edition of Columbus' letter Columbus also gives an account of some of his own activities in the letters. In the letter, he notes that he ordered the erection of the fort of La Navidad on the island of Hispaniola, leaving behind some Spanish colonists and traders. Columbus reports he also left behind a caravel - evidently covering up the loss of his flagship, the Santa María. He reports that La Navidad is located near reported gold mines, and is a well-placed entrepot for the commerce that will doubtlessly soon be opened with the Great Khan ("gran Can") on the mainland. He speaks of a local king near Navidad whom he befriended and treated him as a brother ("y grand amistad con el Rey de aquella tierra en tanto grado que se preciava de me lhamar e tener por hermano") - almost certainly a reference to Guacanagaríx, cacique of Marién.[16] In the Copiador version (but not the printed editions), Columbus alludes to the treachery of "one from Palos" ("uno de Palos"), who made off with one of the ships, evidently a complaint about Martín Alonso Pinzón, the captain of the Pinta (although this portion of the Copiador manuscript is damaged and hard to read).[17] The Copiador version also mentions other points of personal friction not contained in the printed editions, e.g. references to the ridicule Columbus suffered in the Spanish court prior to his departure, his bowing to pressure to use large ships for ocean navigation, rather than the small caravels he preferred, which would have been more convenient for exploring. At the end of his printed letter, Columbus promises that if the Catholic Monarchs back his bid to return with a larger fleet, he will bring back a lot of gold, spices, cotton (repeatedly referenced in the letter), mastic gum, aloe, slaves, and possibly rhubarb and cinnamon ("of which I heard about here"). Columbus ends the letter urging their Majesties, the Church, and the people of Spain to give thanks to God for allowing him to find so many souls, hitherto lost, ready for conversion to Christianity and eternal salvation. He also urges them to give thanks in advance for all the temporal goods found in abundance in the Indies that shall soon be made available to Castile and the rest of Christendom. The Copiador version (but not the printed Spanish or Latin editions) also contains a somewhat bizarre detour into messianic fantasy, where Columbus suggests the monarchs should use the wealth of the Indies to finance a new crusade to conquer Jerusalem, Columbus himself offering to underwrite a large army of ten thousand cavalry and hundred thousand infantry to that end. The sign off varies between editions. The printed Spanish letter is dated aboard the caravel "on the Canary Islands" on February 15, 1493. ("Fecha en la caravela sobra las yslas de Canaria a xv de Febrero, ano Mil.cccclxxxxiii"), and signed merely "El Almirante", while the printed Latin editions are signed "Cristoforus Colom, oceanee classis prefectus" ("Prefect of the Ocean fleet"). However, it is doubtful Columbus actually signed the original letter that way. According to the Capitulations of Santa Fe negotiated prior to his departure (April 1492), Christopher Columbus was not entitled to use the title of "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" unless his voyage was successful. It would be highly presumptuous for Columbus to sign his name that way in February or March, when the original letter was drafted, before that success was confirmed by the royal court. Columbus only obtained confirmation of his title on March 30, 1493, when the Catholic monarchs, acknowledging the receipt of his letter, address Columbus for the first time as "our Admiral of the Ocean Sea and Vice-Roy and Governor of the islands which have been discovered in the Indies" ("nuestro Almirante del mar Océano e Visorrey y Gobernador de las Islas que se han descubierto en las Indias").[18] This suggests the signature in the printed editions was not in the original letter, but was an editorial choice by the copyists or printers.[19] In the Copiador version there are passages (omitted from the printed editions) petitioning the monarchs for the honors promised him at Santa Fe, and additionally asking for a cardinalate for his son and the appointment of his friend, Pedro de Villacorta, as paymaster of the Indies. The Copiador letter signs off as "made in the sea of Spain on March 4, 1493" ("Fecha en la mar de España, a quatro días de março"), a stark contrast to the February 15 given in the printed versions. There is no name or signature at the end of the Copiador letter; it ends abruptly "En la mar" ("At sea"). In the printed Spanish editions (albeit not in the Latin editions nor the Copiador), there is a small postscript dated March 14, written in Lisbon, noting that the return journey took only 28 days (in contrast with the 33 days outward), but that unusual winter storms had kept him delayed for an additional 23 days. A codicil in the printed Spanish edition indicates that Columbus sent this letter to the "Escribano de Racion", and another to their Highnesses. The Latin editions contain no postscript, but end with a verse epigram added by Leonardus de Cobraria, Bishop of Monte Peloso.

Anne Bradstreet's poetry suggests that women were of lesser stature than men in the Puritan world. True or False

True

Parts One and Two of Franklin's autobiography were written, respectively, before and after the Revolution True or False

True

The Fifth Amendment clearly indicates that a person does not have to testify in court simply because he or she doesn't want to. True or False

True

The Gettysburg Address mentions the war itself explicitly. True or False

True

The Land-Grant Act requires that any school brought into being under its aegis teach "agriculture." True or False

True

The second set of amendments (Amendments 11 through 27) are known as the Bill of Enumerated Freedoms True or False

True

The US Constitution

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Women's abilities to take care of the home are praised in which early feminist work? a. A Treatise on Domestic Economy b. "Why Sit Ye Hear and Die?" c. "Ar'n't I a Woman?" d. "The Wrongs of American Women, the Duties of American Women" e. "The Declaration of Sentiments"

a. A Treatise on Domestic Economy

Although it is considered the first organized American philosophical movement, Transcendentalism was heavily influenced by a. Emanuel Swedenborg b. John Calvin c. Martin Luther d. Jan Huss e. Morgan Freeman

a. Emanuel Swedenborg

The tone of Part One of Franklin's autobiography is generally a. energetic and youthful b. pious in the Presbyterian way c. measured and civic-oriented d. hesitant and secretive e. exploitative and violently pro-Catholic

a. energetic and youthful

Thoreau is jailed for a. refusing to pay the portion of his taxes that would fund the Mexican American War b. ignoring the right-of-way granted to carriages in the road c. squatting on Emerson's land d. defiling the statue of an eminent Concord town elder e. not doffing his hat when approached by the Concord constabulary

a. refusing to pay the portion of his taxes that would fund the Mexican American War

Who or what does Douglass say he learns about the institution of slavery from? a. The Bay Psalm Book b. The Columbian Orator c. a biography of George Washington d. the Bible e. a local newspaper

b. The Columbian Orator

The commanding officer of the African American unit in Glory a. becomes the General of the Grand Army of the Republic b. dies in battle with his soldiers c. is killed by his soldiers because he is a racist d. commits suicide in a Confederate prison cam e. dies of starvation and dysentery in a Confederate prison camp

b. dies in battle with his soldiers

What does Thomas Paine mean by "common sense"? a. superstition and intuition b. fact and argument c. faith and charity d. ancient folklore and wisdom

b. fact and argument

The "century of dishonor" cited in her title is a reference to Helen Hunt Jackson's feelings about a. Native Americans' treatment of white settlers b. white Americans' treatment of Native Americans c. the government's treatment of Asian immigrants who built the railroads d.Mexico's treatment of white Americans in the borderlands e. white Americans' treatment of Mexicans in the borderlands

b. white Americans' treatment of Native Americans

According to the lecture, in the English model of colonial exploration, individuals a. worked for the crown directly and took order from the king in order to enrich him b. undertook a conquest of New Spain c. worked under a charter in order to enrich themselves via a corporation d. took orders directly from the Archbishop of Canterbury to help convert the "heathen" native peoples e. enslaved the native inhabitants

c. worked under a charter in order to enrich themselves via a corporation

Mary Rowlandson lived in the Massachusetts Bay colony. True or False

true

John L. O'Sullivan

• (1813-1895) • Coins the term "manifest destiny" • Mexican-American War • God's granting the United States the full extent of the American continent • Christian duty to subdue the wilderness • Manifest destiny as applied to any situation in which the United States could acquire more land territory

Cult of Domesticity • Ideological belief that women's proper place was in the home, taking care domestic tasks, and tending children • For its time, an empowering role, progressive • Domestic sphere as distinct from, but equal to men's public sphere • Creation of the cultural inertia we have to deal with today

• Ideological belief that women's proper place was in the home, taking care domestic tasks, and tending children • For its time, an empowering role, progressive • Domestic sphere as distinct from, but equal to men's public sphere • Creation of the cultural inertia we have to deal with today