wimacdade – American History to 1877

April 30, 2014

Cheap Laughs or Necessary Consideration?

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Like my classmates who posted on the film below, I also was just struck by the extreme racism of The Confederate States of America. I think that Leslie brings up a good point that touches on the legitimate possibility that this racism pervades our society today. Although it is not as over as a TV advertisement for slaves, our society does in fact still have traces of racism and prejudice against people of color–as seen in the past few days in the NBA (L.A. Clippers owner, Donald Sterling, made racist comments that were leaked to the public).

I think we have to keep this whole film in perspective and keep in mind that it is a mockumentary. However, it is also vital to think about the likelihood of slavery still existing today if the Confederacy had won the Civil War. By following the same timeline of actual historical events, the film does establish the idea that certain events would have occurred differently had the Confederacy won. Economic turmoil in 1929 with the Great Depression was aided by a renewed Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Emily mentions that the attacks on Pearl Harbor happened on December 7, 1941 but in the alternate history, the C.S.A. attacks Japan on this date. It is silly to think that these attacks would have occurred on the same day as Pearl Harbor but it does beg the question as to what the role of our country would have been if the southern states had won.

On one hand I see the film as a low-budget attempt to get a quick buck out of cheap laughs and absurdity. The commercials featured in the mockumentary were quite ridiculous and the basic attention to detail seemed lacking at some points. However, I also think that the film touches on certain aspects that are important to consider. As Leslie asks in his post, what if the Confederacy had won? Maybe too obviously seen, this is the central question to be analyzed. Would certain events have even happened and moreover would slavery still exist today? I would like to hope that slavery would not exist and that a movement would have occurred after a hypothetical Confederate victory. However, we as historians have difficulty interpreting the “what if” and can only draw upon what did happen. This may be the key reason why the film seems so ridiculous and over the top.

April 23, 2014

Sectionalism on the Rise

In chapter 23 of The Rise of American Democracy, Wilentz effectively covers the synthesis of legal cases occurring under the judicial supremacy of justices like Roger B. Taney and four other Democratic justices in the Supreme Court. Dred Scott v. Sanford quickly became emblematic of the rising sectionalism in America along pro and anti slavery lines, which saw a geographical divide between the north and south.

This reading also touched upon the rise in judicial supremacy, exercised by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. Like Emily mentions in her post, I did not know how comprehensive the decision of Dred Scott v. Sanford was in synthesizing many different pieces of legislation and behind-the-scenes players including the Missouri Compromise and President Buchanan. As Wilentz develops in his coverage the Supreme Court case, there were pervasive political and sectional undertones to the debate on the issues central to the decision facing Taney and fellow justices, mainly:

Were Dred Scott and other black Americans legal citizen of Missouri and the United States, thus allowing them to bring a case to court?
Was the Missouri Compromise in danger of violating the Constitution by prohibiting slavery north of the 36′ 30″ line?
Did previously enslaved peoples gain freedom by living in a free state for a longer period of time?

Emma touches on the growing sectionalism at the time based upon differing opinions on superior economic practices. Political figures like Stephen Douglas and President Buchanan further polarized the growing divide between the north and south, which as many posts have alluded to, set up for the tensions calling for war.

April 14, 2014

Ignorance in America

The Ask a Slave web series does an incredible job at portraying the ignorance of so many Americans when it comes to distinguishing fact from fiction regarding history. I myself am guilty of thinking I know something but in reality am just basing my knowledge on a secondhand account full of embellishment or opinion. As Alex mentions in his post, Azie Dungey who uses the moniker Lizzie Mae, effectively captures likely sentiments of slaves at the time with sarcasm and witty responses. I find this to be a necessary critique of Americans’ perceptions of history and more specifically of slavery in the early first century of the United States.

I thought it was interesting and effective to include the “hometowns” of the different people asking questions to emphasize that these people are Americans. It may seem hard for us to imagine that these questions are from real people. I think the fact that the videos maintain the appearance of reality with the question and answer style, albeit coming from different time periods, the hometown aspect further grounds this ignorance in our country as a huge problem. One of the best portions of the series was in Episode 3 when Peter Mencken from St. Louis, MO claimed that “slavery isn’t that bad” saying that it is industrious work where you can get room and board. This is seriously concerning that Americans have not come to the realization that slavery was an absolutely gruesome atrocity waged against people of color.

Aside from the obvious disregard for realities of slavery in early history of the United States, this series demonstrates the overall lack of awareness that many Americans possess when thinking about history. One woman asked how many bathrooms Mount Vernon had and another. The general method of researching/thinking about history has become much more apparent for us this semester but we forget that many Americans are simply unaware of this process to think of the certain events and institutions in a historical context free from an interpretation in contemporary terms. I totally agree with Max when he says that our school system does a disservice to our children and teens when hiding our blemishes and focusing solely on the successes and positive aspects of American history. Furthermore, I think as a whole we laud our forefathers as being heroic men of honor and oftentimes overlook their pitfalls and their position as mere humans that are capable of error. The Ask a Slave series is a concise, comical approach to illuminating the aforementioned ignorance and false perceptions of slavery and American history.

February 19, 2014

Unnoticed Tension in Revolution

I found Gordon Wood’s ideas in his piece Radical Possibilities of the American Revolution to be a good reminder that sometimes the unstated obvious can provide new revelations about history. Reminding us that there was “no mass poverty, no seething social discontent, no grinding oppression”, the sentiment established in the Taylor readings of a successful colonization process is revisited (Wood 110). The foreground for political participation at this time came at the whim of the gentry elite. The reading describes this as encouragement from above to participate in politics, which seems to be derived from the upper class desire to gain even more independence and wealth at the expense of the lower classes.

Furthermore, he parallels a number of social groups experiencing the revolution differently. For instance, Wood mentions the social assault between the couriers and the patriots. These opposing groups seemed to provide a basis for the desired political system of the elite gentry. The paper also makes the connection between the independence that these colonists were fighting for and the continued dependence, which the disenfranchised peoples at the time were experiencing. Specifically, women and African Americans experienced the fight for independence without the benefit of independence.

Wood evokes another paradoxical relationship when relating how the aristocratic landholders in the colonies were fighting for independence (something they had a substantial amount of compared to the lower class colonists) from fellow aristocrats in England. This seemed to be a classic case of the rich getting richer and establishing themselves as the “natural aristocracy” while the poor fell to the wayside. This is not to discount the fight waged for independence in the war to come but as Wood points out there is much more to the equation than seems at first glance. There seems to be social tension within the colonies themselves, although it may have gone unnoticed by the lower-middle classes.

As Alex writes in his post from early today, there is a “broad spectrum” of factors to be considered when looking at the revolution occurring in America. I found the approach that Wood takes to be very interesting and very novel as compared to the other readings regarding the political and social environment surrounding the revolution.

February 16, 2014

Freedom at a Cost

This chapter shows the progression of the colonists from a people marginally dependent on the English to a unified group fully embracing the idea of independence. The beginning of the chapter covers the expansionary efforts of the British government but then Taylor dives into explaining the underlying tensions between the colonists and the crown. Citing examples such as the Paxton Boys slaughtering of Indians at Conestoga, Taylor elicits a general feeling of tension from this time period. However, the tension between the groups led to a general feeling of unification within the groups. As Max mentions in his post from February 15, the colonists were experiencing attitudes of unity while under the recently overbearing rule of the British.

John Adams’ concerns about the precedent set by royal taxes, namely the Stamp Act, seems to have laid the groundwork for the American Dream that Max mentions in his post (442). The American Dream in its most basic form is the hope and belief that anyone can “make it” if they work hard enough. Although, this notion is constantly challenged in today’s society, the British attempts to assert authority ultimately formed the American attitude of independence and embrace of the potential for social mobility.

Starkly contrasting the British acceptance of inequality, the owning of lands by a large portion of the population (not including slaves) allowed the colonists to garner a newfound sense of independence. Furthermore, I found Taylor’s perception of slavery as “labor for a master without reaping the rewards” to be very interesting phrasing to describe the colonists and the British (442). To broaden this definition of slavery to include “independent” colonists as slaves if they did not own land seemed like a very novel idea. As we have discussed in previous posts, slavery was not necessarily along racial lines but developed into that based on economic motivations.

Without trying to oversimplify this idea, it seems necessary to mention that the colonists’ embrace of this independence and lack of reliance on the British allowed them to begin the process of breaking away from the crown. Many of the colonies to the north such as Nova Scotia and Quebec still relied on the British government to hold up their economies. However, the thirteen colonies to the south were on the brink of civil war with the British. Thomas Jefferson’s quote at the end of this chapter describing America as an “’empire of liberty,’ by and for the white citizenry” was a mindset that setup the colonies for success in gaining the initial freedom from Britain but also set the colonies up for a civil war nearly a hundred years later–a cost that we will soon see to be magnanimous.

February 9, 2014

Class and Color in the Chesapeake

Taylor’s piece on the Chesapeake in Chapter 7 definitively traces the emergence of racism in the early colonies. Beginning with an account of the class tensions among settlers in Virginia, the chapter exposes the subjugation of people based on social status rather than race. Among the four levels of hierarchy in society—the king, the provincial government, the county court and the family household—there was an underlying class order whereby the few land elite at the top controlled an enormous portion of the wealth. White landowning men retained a great deal of patriarchal power in the household and also governing power in the community.

The labor necessary to sustain a reasonable crop production for these landowners was dependent on the class of white indentured servants. The cost for a white indentured servant was significantly less than that of an African slave. Therefore, in the beginning of the 17^th century, white indentured servants were almost exclusively the laborers of tobacco and maize farms in the Chesapeake colonies. However, the short terms of these servants (usually only a couple of years) were sufficient to pay off their passage from England to the New World. When the servant completed their term, they were often granted “freedom dues” which were settlement packages of land. Therefore, the name servitude is an apt way of distinguishing this type of work from slavery—which became a lifelong period of service around the second half of the 16^th century.

Due to greater incentives to remain in England, namely higher real wages, the demand of servants in the Chesapeake region went unfulfilled. The farmers had to look elsewhere for laborers and quickly found an alternative in the slave trade. I thought the inclusion of Anthony Johnson’s story provided an effective preface to the drastic change in race relations. This often-overlooked account of a black slave-owner becomes quickly overshadowed by the subjugation of black people in America to a position below even the lowest classes of white colonists. The shift in the servant class, as Dana mentions in his post on February 9^th, permitted all whites to be unified based upon skin color. In using the word “kinship”, Dana seems to illuminate the traces of a central divide contributing to the Civil War. As I expect to see in the later part of this class, many supporters of the Confederacy were united as kin in this acceptance of racism and slavery. Furthermore, Taylor reminds us that racial solidarity accompanied the growing inequality among whites Virginia. To a certain extent, this sense of unification by race diminished the common class white colonists’ concern with class disparity.

This reading provides a very nice foundation for our study of slavery in this class. As Taylor mentions, “A dark skin became synonymous with slavery, just as freedom became equated with whiteness” (Taylor 157). As simple as this observation may seem, it is very telling of the emergence of a new people placed under subjugation. Also it is interesting to trace the underpinnings of racism in America back to this change in servitude caused by a strengthening English economy (see above—real wages increase).

January 29, 2014

‘Opportunity for All’

President Obama’s State of the Union Address was largely centered on employment, economic growth, and “opportunity for all” in America. In light of our class discussion on Davis today, I found myself comparing the job creation mentioned in the speech to the enslavement of Africans in colonial America. In modern-day America, many writers and critics claim that there are still leaps and bounds to cover before everyone is provided with equal opportunities. Leading me to my next point of comparison surrounding inequality. As ‘opportunity for all’ is a major pillar of the Democratic Party and for Obama himself, the President spoke mostly to the middle-class American—a class today that makes up the majority of our population.

In comparing this to the socioeconomic demographics of colonial times, the middle class seemed much more present in the North based upon descriptions in our readings. As Dana mentioned in his post on January 26, life did not seem that bad for enslaved peoples (in comparison). Many were able to gain freedom and even employ their own slaves one day, which I guess could be similar to Obama’s idea of working hard, taking responsibility and getting ahead because of it. This idea of ‘opportunity for all’ may have been more realistic in the North for both enslaved Africans and lower-middle class craftsmen. However, in the South it seems as though the opportunity existed only for the select few at the top—i.e. the white landowning males.

Income inequality in the south was much greater due to the obvious reason of the white farmer becoming immensely rich from cash crops like tobacco while the enslaved Africans underwent subjugation, cruel conditions, and unequal treatment. This notion of hard work being the only thing necessary to get ahead may have been more true for slave-owning landholders of Virginia and South Carolina colonists. Yet, for enslaved Africans their fate seemed ultimately sealed by the time they took their first steps on American soil. It is an interesting parallel to consider Davis’ notion that freedom was achieved through slavery in colonial times mentioning “black slavery was basic and integral to the entire phenomenon we call ‘America'”(Davis 102). Yet the consistent treachery of morals and lack of compassion for human beings of a different color begs the question of how much was too much.

I think the obvious answer, by most standards, is that slavery went too far in its subjugation of Africans creating an immense disadvantage for the entire race. Furthermore, the sheer magnitude of the divide between the rich and the poor is astounding. Moreover, modern day protests like Occupy Wall Street in 2011 demonstrate our contemporary view of inequality, which looks quite meager in comparison to the class disparity in southern Colonial America. Although black slave labor was “indispensable” to the successful boom in growth for America, the short-term costs came at the hand of the black men and women. However, the argument presents itself that the unbearable costs paid by the colonial slaves led not just to the freedom of the white man, but eventually of the African slaves as well—after all, is it not enormously impressive that the man delivering the State of the Union is black. The fundamental aspect of our country, which makes it so great, is the fact that our fates are not sealed, but rather it is indeed a land of opportunity.