mofrye – American History to 1877

April 30, 2014

The CSA: A Review

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While watching The Confederate States of America, my expectations and predictions differed from the movie. Although all of it was speculation, the writers of the movie seemed to focus more on the dominance of race and seemed to forget about the other factors that would happen in a major transition of leadership and ideologies. As Max said in his post, “The Accuracies in ‘The Confederate States of America,'” the movie played up the south to be a “wholly racist region of the country,” which we know is in fact not true.

Mostly, I did not expect to see that there were still slaves in modern times, because after new technologies were introduced, slave labor became obsolete and not economically beneficial. One thing I found interesting was the “mass exodus” discussed: how many Enlightenment thinkers and woman’s rights activists moved to Canada to “escape” the new country’s ideologies. One can’t help but think that there would be an eventual transition of ideas and beliefs associated with the changing times and technologies, not that the same core ideas would last to the 21^st century.

Another point I found interesting was the discussion of what happened to Lincoln after General Grant surrendered to General Lee and ended the war. Lincoln allegedly sought help from Harriet Tubman in an attempt to cross the border into Canada, but the two were caught and Tubman hanged. Lincoln spent his final days exiled and had an interview prior to his death, where he stated that he “wished he had really cared about freeing the slaves,” which is somewhat historically correct. One can’t help but think that even if Lincoln had not freed the slaves, wouldn’t some president or rogue state do so soon after him?

There are several questions that I still have in regards to the movie. The “commercials” shown in the Confederate State’s of America documentary were not only absurd, but also silly. Although, I can’t decide whether they are silly because they are actually absurd, or silly because I don’t think I could ever imagine living in a world like that. Another question that bothers me with the movie is what happened to the northerners during the time that the southern states were putting their leaders into power? We saw that there were some major figures that moved north into Canada, but what about the rest? Were there not any revolts? And what happened to the rest of the blacks in North America? Were there not any revolts from them?

The Confederate States of America’s most hilarious accusation were their alleged aggressions against Canada. It seemed that everything that happened in the movie was just a reversal of how they are today. But personally, I think that even if they south had “won” the civil war, things would have eventually turned out similar to what they are today. There is too much advancement in technology and around the world to believe otherwise.

April 15, 2014

International Politics of Slavery

In Inhuman Bondage, Davis discusses how international politics shaped the way slavery was perceived and addressed during the times of the abolitionist movements. Between Great Britain freeing slaves that they came across by sea, and the Northern states pushing for change, the South was in a bind.

On the international scale, Britain was pressuring the US, along with other nations, and to abolish slavery by freeing the slaves that the Southern states had purchased, without compensation. Davis described Britain’s actions as “a deep-rooted hate for anything America represented” (272). There were even some hints of war from Secretary of State Daniel Webster to the British if they were not compensated accordingly for the slaves that had ben freed. Britain and the US came to an agreement favoring the states and Britain paid reparations.

If the International pressure wasn’t bad enough for the Southern states holding tight onto slavery, the Northern abolitionists were pushing that the new territory to be admitted to be a free state, in an effort to throw off the 11 free/11 slave state balance in their favor. The Missouri Compromise was a major deal in determining the future of slavery in the states, yet the North saw the compromise as a defeat. The rift between North and South only grew larger as time went on, and eventually led the US to the Civil War.

The dependency the Southern states had on slavery due to labor, along with the newer idea that blacks were physically inferior to whites, shaped the political ideologies of Southern politicians in the early 1800s. Politics affected everyone; as Greg pointed out in his post, Southern politics even influenced groups such as Irish Catholics, just so they could gain a stature higher than slaves. International and national pressure for the gradual emancipation of slaves and abolition proved just how deeply the slavery impacted Southern politics.

April 13, 2014

Commentary on Ask a Slave

First, I really enjoyed the “Ask a Slave” web series. The woman who played Lizzie Mae did a fantastic job of making sure things were in the correct time period. The questions she was asked were if not hysterical, but sad. If those had been actual questions that she was asked while acting as a slave, then the level of knowledge that people have of American history is astounding. Too many people know too little of the nation’s early years.

There were several instances in the webisodes where Lizzie Mae and/or another character would discuss and/or criticize the real life figures they were discussing. They brought to like several myths about the presidents and about slave life that were not true.

It seems as though many people today have trouble understanding the way slaves lived and the severity of the meaning of the word slavery. It seems as though many people are either not learning the history or choosing to not acknowledge the brutality of it. This could lead to be dangerous, because people not caring about something as cruel as slavery could lead them to be impartial to other things in the present.

February 19, 2014

Revolutionary Freedom

America was formed on the basis of freedom for all. One new bit of information that I learned from reading Davis’ Inhuman Bondage was that the “white colonists rose in revolt against what they perceived as British effort to ‘enslave’ them” (144). This being said, there is a double standard in how the revolutionaries perceived their oppression and how they oppressed their own slaves. How it is that men who so desperately wanted to be free were able to “own” another human being as property? Isn’t that what the whole point of what the revolution was about, so that Great Britain could not “own” the colonists anymore? As our classmate brought to our attention in “Freedom at Last?” how could we as a new nation base our constitution on freedom for all men, when slavery still existed and was such a large part of the economy? All of these questions are ones that I would have loved to ask to out forefathers and revolutionaries.

During the revolution, slaves were often entrusted with weapons and enlisted to fight. Or, slaves would manage to escape during the wartime and were enlisted to fight against their previous owners. Some owners who enlisted their own knew that their slaves would not want to fight for their owners freedom when they in turn would not get their own. Some owners went as far as promising their slaves their freedom if they chose to fight for their masters’.

I thought Davis did an excellent job in depicting how slaves were treated and their feelings during the Revolutionary War. I was surprised but enlightened at the fact that the revolution, based on the idea of freedom for all, was not in fact “freedom for all”.

February 10, 2014

Introduction of Racism in the Chesapeake Colonies

In this week’s readings concerning the Chesapeake colonies, I found the section on slaves to be quite interesting. Especially after having read Inhuman Bondage and learning how badly the slaves were treated, reading about how some slaves in the Chesapeake colonies were able to own land and vote seems strange. The reading even discusses how the most successful freed black slave named Anthony Johnson took his white neighbors to court after they had lured away his slave (154).

The concept of racism was not fully developed yet during that time, and as Beth Wright described in her post “Power Dynamics in the Southern Colonies”, “slaves [became] a uniting factor with the idea of color rather than wealth [to be] the preliminary divider for status” after the surge of African slaves were imported into the colonies. Due to the increase, African culture became more conspicuous and alarmed the slave masters. Because of this, stricter laws were placed on slaves and the rights of freed slaves disappeared almost entirely. Slavery as we know it today appears, or at least in the Chesapeake colonies, to have come from a more economic view that then transitioned into racism, rather than purely out of hatred itself.

Although class distinction was a large part of the culture of the Chesapeake colonies, the difference between whites and blacks later became the “key marker of identity” (157). As the racial boundaries grew, so did the difference between the elite whites and the poor white. Ordinarily, the richest white families owned the majority of the land and the bottom third of the white population owned none (157). Because of this, the poor families could not compete with the rich white families in production of tobacco because the rich whites had slaves to do the job, only increasing the economic and racial divides.

January 29, 2014

State of the Union Address

President Obama’s Address to the country last night began with stories of hard working Americans who represent the country as a whole. Especially during the beginning of his speech, and also throughout, the President used pathos to make himself appeal to the average citizen. The way in which he chose stories of empowerment and success when describing the new Health Care, military support, and education reforms shows similarities to when the English colonists were attempting to persuade their fellow English to join them in the New World by exaggerating the truth and only describing the good of the colony, and not the bad.

The main point of Obama’s speech was to express his concern for the unemployed and to create more jobs. In England during the colonization period, there were plenty of people to work but not enough jobs, and in the colonies, there was plenty of work but not enough people to fill all of the jobs. Unemployed English moved to the New World upon the promises of jobs and prosperity. It seems as though the country has now come full circle, since corporations move overseas and put many out of work. The unemployment state could be compared to that of England during the colonization period, yet the jobs have now started to come back from overseas.

Obama also made the push in his speech for immigration reform. Immigrants founded this country; in school it seems that students are taught that Europeans solely shaped the United States. Yet from reading Inhuman Bondage, one would see that in fact African immigrants played just as large of a part in shaping the country, although brought against their will in the form of slavery.

In all, this country has come far from what it was in the colonization days in a short amount of time. The United States is a young country, but recognized as the worlds dominate power. The issues that Obama described and promised to fix in his speech were all hot issues now, but many stemmed or were similar to issues that had been around since the days of colonization.