Dr. Shrout – Page 3 – Popular Politics in Early America

October 16, 2013

The Power of the Cherokee Women

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Theda Purdue’s “Cherokee Women” is a piece that asserts a somewhat unheard of view regarding the power of women during colonial times. Radically different from the colonial/European view of the subservience of women, Cherokee females actually possessed a significant matrix of power within their society. One abstract way in which Cherokee women possessed power over the rest of their culture was during menstruation (30). Cherokee’s viewed menstrual blood as that of an unborn child, which could bring about unknown change in society. They feared this change because they did not know whether it would be good or bad, making the unknown their true tormentor (34).

With the common European and colonial portrayal of women in mind, I was shocked to read about women possessing this type of power within society. At first I thought it might just be an abnormality but, as I read further, Purdue asserts more claims regarding the power of Cherokee women. They alone had the right to abandon a new born if it was sickly, if anyone else did then it would be constituted as murder (33). To really cap it all off, Purdue quotes an eighteenth century trader named Alexander Longe which says “I have this to say that the women rules the roost and wears the breeches and sometimes will beat their husbands within an inch of their lives” (45). This statement alone encompasses the entirety that was Women’s power in the Cherokee nation. They were not subservient to men but instead, a balancing factor, with both genders performing their duties as needed to better the tribe as a whole. Unfortunately for the Cherokee women, as Europeans took more of a foothold within the American lands these equal rights began to shift into more of a reflection of European culture. Cherokee women lost their right to actively participate in government, farm, and have that same power they had before European arrival.

As there have not been any other posts this week to respond to, I would like to take this time to comment on how Perdue’s piece compliments my own research on the Cherokee nation. Her description of the Cherokee’s adoption of a republican directly corresponds to efforts of the people to show themselves as cultured in an attempt to avoid removal. This same idea connects to the alteration of women’s power within the tribe, as this shift is simply another way in which the Cherokee people hoped to portray themselves as peaceful and sophisticated individuals, rather than the savages that some whites coined them as. Throughout the beginning to mid nineteenth century, the Cherokee openly expressed these changes within their own newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix, in what could be viewed as a plea to both the United States Government and the rest of the nation to cease their efforts in removal. It is clear how important this land was to the people, as they were willing to radically alter their own customs to conform to white standards in order to maintain their place in the country. Unfortunately, the very people who spurred these publicized efforts into existence ended up signing over the Cherokee land to the United States, disregarding the will of the rest of the tribe for what they viewed as a lost effort.

October 9, 2013

Contemplating Religious Revival Ruling Rochester

I found Johnson’s A Shopkeeper’s Millennium to be an extremely revealing work of social history about the religious revival in Rochester in the early 1830s. Johnson does an effective job of demonstrating the “Shopkeeper’s Millennium” as a period in which middle class merchants held enormous economic and social power in Rochester as a result of millenarian religious revival. Johnson’s argument that Charles Finney’s religious revival was the basis for a redefinition of politics, labor, and social life is convincing because of his ability to demonstrate that the conversions of the 1830s produced societal reforms that were unlike those of the 1820s that pitted working men against their employers. Rather, this movement underscored a “war on sin” that removed any explicit attacks between the bourgeoisie and the working class and instead focused on the “evils” that plague all men (115). I believe Johnson only augments this claim when he adds that the communal nature of revivals “shattered old divisions” of class and established new communities (101). This creates a clear distinction in Johnson’s writing between what appears to be a struggle identified by Marxist theories in the 1820s and one of religious sentiments in the succeeding decade.

In Johnson’s final chapter, however, I felt his argument began to unravel. While he previously focused on the tenets and religious effects of Finney’s revival, Johnson proceeds to discuss revival and conversion in Rochester as an economic agent to provoke change in the city. For example, he writes “the most powerful source of the working man’s revival was the simple, coercive fact that wage earners worked for men who insisted on seeing them in church” (121). Statements like these imply that conversion by laborers could have been a mere means to acquire a job or steady income, as opposed to a change in fundamental values and beliefs. This is in direct contrast with Johnson’s previous claims about the revival’s legitimacy because it calls into question the true effect religion had in reshaping nineteenth century Rochester. Rather, it emphasizes manipulations of religion to receive desirable economic results. In his afterword, Johnson tries to cover up this implication when he states “the revival was not a capitalist plot” (141). However, when writing this, Johnson is referring to only those men who dictated social change in Rochester, the middle class businessmen, and continues to ignore exploration of any significant depth behind motivations of those experiencing the change, the working class wage laborers. While those participating in revivals could have thoroughly believed what they publicly professed, the working class laborers very easily could have accepted those same beliefs as merely a small price to pay to insure stable living.

With respect to my colleagues, I agree with most of what has been argued. Specifically, I agree with Ben that many of the inferences made by Johnson were plausible and his ample evidence behind these claims – particularly in examples like those of the extended families that helped to precipitate early business in Rochester – only helped to push his thesis. With that being said I also understand Price’s remarks about Johnson’s sweeping generalizations. One example that struck me occurred at the end of the book where Johnson writes “workmen no longer listened when proprietors spoke” (140). However, we were already told that the dissonance between employer and employee emerged from the increased privatization of their lives, not from a lack of listening (57). While these statements are likely dramatized and used more to provoke an image than used as fact, they did make me wary to trust all the claims advanced by Johnson in A Shopkeeper’s Millennium.

October 9, 2013

The Heart and Soul of The United States States: Rochester, New York

In Paul E. Johnson’s “A Shopkeeper’s Millenium,” he tries to make a case for the connections between politics, religion, and the market in relation to the religious revival that occurred in Rochester, New York in the late 1820s to early 1830s. At times, the connection is brought to light, like when he states “The political dividing line was not social class but family jealousies compounded by religion and geographic origins” (65). This quote relates back to his discussion regarding the feud between the Rochesters and the Bucktails in both a political and religious sphere. Yet, statements such as these are actually the only places the connections are made clear. Most of the piece is a dense narrative that mentions a series of people, their origins, their work, who they were associated with, and so on. It is easy to find yourself five pages into a chapter and be completely unaware as to what Johnson is arguing at that moment. Without the occasional sentence declaring a connection between one of the three ideas, it is easy to not see the association at all, which I believe hurts Johnson’s argument in the piece as a whole.

Though Johnson’s piece does suffer from this flaw, it is nice to see my hometown gaining some recognition for once. An interesting piece that I noticed in “A Shopkeeper’s Millennium” that has continued to this day is the business associations amongst relatives. Johnson mentions how most of the first men to settle and cultivate business in Rochester did so through family connections (25). This idea is continued further, as Johnson asserts that businesses were also brought into existence through in-law connections or close personal friendships (27). In today’s Rochester, this same idea has continued. A number of law firms are family run between brothers. Even more so than this, the biggest business to come out of Rochester, Wegmans, is completely family run through relatives and in-laws. For instance, Danny Wegman’s step-son-in-law is head of Wegmans’ liquor department throughout all of its stores. It’s somewhat nice to see how the connections that spurred Rochester’s growth in the early 19^th century is the thing that is still keeping the city a profitable place to live.

In response to Ben’s post on Johnson’s choice to use Rochester for this type of study, I completely agree. As Ben describes in his post, “Rochester was also a blend of so much of the rest of the country” (Benjamin Hartshorn, Philadelphia, PA). This statement could not be more accurate to describe Rochester during the early 19^th century. Being an inland city, it featured many of the characteristics that city would that was distant from the ocean, like focusing on agriculture. Yet, by having the Erie Canal, it connected Rochesterians to major cities like New York through the Hudson River, and the rest of the country and world from there. This city also featured a visible diversity in the classes of people that resided within the city’s bounds. From the wealthy land owners down to the unskilled laborers, Rochester had it all (still does too). Being a blend of the rest of the United States, Rochester was a great choice by Johnson to study regarding the effects of the Second Great Awakening. Though, as I said before, his study features some flaws because of the lack of clear connections between his central ideas.

October 7, 2013

Some interesting historical confluences

Firstly, today is the 250th anniversary of George III’s proclamation of 1763, which created the boundary line prohibiting American colonial settlement in the west of Britain’s North American territories. You can read a few takes on the global significance of the proclamation here.

Secondly, here is an interesting article on several Colorado counties debates about whether to secede, form a new state, or join Wyoming, suggesting that the debates about secession that characterized 1790s Pennsylvania are alive and well today.

October 2, 2013

The Whiskey Rebellion as a Head of the Hydra

After reading Part III of Slaughter’s The Whiskey Rebellion, despite his eloquent narration of arguably every event leading up to and culminating in the Whiskey Rebellion, I was left largely unsatisfied by the conclusions he made, or for that matter failed to make, with regards to the event he considers an overlooked turning point of American culture. While successfully revealing the complexity of the rebellion through his analysis of the conflict through the eyes of both the frontiersmen of the West and policymakers of the East, Slaughter ends his book weakly. As discussed in class, he ultimately rests the book on a hesitant claim that the “liberty-order paradigm” is the most effective method of summarizing the Whiskey Rebellion. In addition, on pages 182-183 Slaughter writes off a list of how events that led up to the Whiskey Rebellion could have transpired differently and potentially eliminated conflict. However, amidst his string of “what if” musings, Slaughters misses an opportunity to answers questions about why the “string of tragic ironies and coincidences” did occur (183). For example, what might have been the motivations behind summoning the indicted distillers to Philadelphia? Or, why did the Mingo Creek militia feel the need to capture the federal marshal summoning the distillers to court? Slaughter, in his attempt to forge an extraordinarily thorough commentary on the Whiskey Rebellion, misses the mark in several facets and leaves many interesting historical questions unanswered.

Fortunately, after reading Linebaugh and Rediker’s article “The Many Headed Hydra,” I found a handful of broader questions about the motivations and implications of eighteenth century uprisings, like the Whiskey Rebellion, have been answered. In a convincing piece, Linebaugh and Rediker demonstrate that revolutionary motivation and discourse had been fostered since the 1740s with the Knowles Riot (225). More importantly for discussing the Whiskey Rebellion, however, is their Linebaugh and Rediker’s assertion of a “many-sided struggle against confinement” as an organizing theme in popular revolt of the eighteenth century (244). This argument is further supported in The Whiskey Rebellion through the paradigms that Slaughter generously provides in his book. In illustrating the Whiskey Rebellion as a conflict of East versus West, upper class versus lower class, Federalist versus Antifederalist, and the like we see that the rebellion was in many ways a struggle from many sides. Moreover, it is well documented throughout Slaughter’s book that the frontiersmen felt their rights were being encroached upon with the excise tax on whiskey, fostering a feeling of confinement. Linebaugh and Rediker’s conclusions are further reinforced when taking into account the ethnic tensions of the Whiskey Rebellion as frontiersmen often constituted diverse groups of both white Americans and immigrants, emphasizing the multi-ethnic movements that pervaded rebellion in the eighteenth century (225).

With this in mind, I would challenge AJ’s claim that Washington and Hamilton could have averted crisis had they set aside their personal grudges with the West. Could doing this have settled some tensions? Undoubtedly it could have. On the other hand, as portrayed in Linebaugh and Rediker, revolts like the Whiskey Rebellion were many-sided affairs. Slaughter’s book supports this as his reluctance to definitively choose a “best” framework in which to view the Whiskey Rebellion emphasizes the complexity of the layered tensions in the affair. While a struggle of liberty versus order may have ceased with the retreat of Washington or Hamilton, frontiersmen would still have held their grievances, and several other paradigms of conflict would have remained unresolved. While the obstinacy of Washington and Hamilton definitely facilitated the materialization of the Whiskey Rebellion, the struggle to mend relations with the central government had endured for so long that the confinement felt by the frontiersmen would likely have come to its tipping point regardless of the actions taken by the President and his Secretary of the Treasury.

October 2, 2013

Washington's Attacks on the Liberties of the People

Thomas P. Slaughter’s “The Whiskey Rebellion” presents the Whiskey Rebellion as the idea of liberty v. order. In support this idea, Slaughter presents a particular series of quotes by President Washington on the rebellious frontiersmen. In summary, Washington states that the democratic factions of the Whiskey Rebellion were out to destroy the order of the government, but luckily, the army of the constitution was there to stifle their attempts (221). Washington’s comments against these factions not only disagree with their course of action but, also somewhat attack the liberty of the people.

As is described in The Federalist #10, factions are nothing more than a person’s expression of their liberty. They come about as a result of the vast number of opinions that various men have throughout a republic. Generally, they a good thing, as they represent the ideas of different groups of people, which all come together to vote on the country’s directive. In terms of their negative effect on liberty, it only occurs when the faction becomes so large that it becomes the majority and infringes on the rights of groups of people. This was not the case for the Whiskey Rebellion though, as the rebellious individuals only sought to maintain the liberties they saw as endangered, not interfere with other peoples’ rights.

Yet, Washington seems to have viewed the factions under the Whiskey Rebellion as a true threat to the order of America. He, as well as his class (elites) seemed to have felt threatened by the frontier rebels. Though the frontiersmen were only expressing their rights as history had shown them to do, Washington and the elites did not enjoy their authority being threatened. In portraying Washington’s statements as he did, Slaughter seemingly frames the American government as an Oligarchy, where the few rule the many, suppressing their voice. It also shows Washington as an enemy against liberty, which most would not believe to be the case but, his statements about factions indicate otherwise. Regardless of if Washington was or was not a proponent for liberty in his own right, he is cast as a defender of order, similar to the role of his former enemy, the British, a few years prior.

After reading Aj’s post, I would have to agree with him that part of this conflict developed out of Hamilton’s own personal vendetta against the frontiersmen. It seemed as though he kept pushing and pushing, rather than actually allowing the republican system to take affect and let the complaints of the people be heard. Furthermore than this though, it was also Washington’s disdain for Frontiersmen that also pushed this rebellion to the brink. Slaughter had previously described Washington as a man who had many ill feelings towards frontiersmen after spending some of his younger years amongst them. From how Slaughter portrays certain actions by Washington, like sending somewhat fake peace delegates to Pittsburgh while also constructing his army, it appears that Washington had his own agenda at heart, rather than the country’s. Like Hamilton, if Washington had put aside his own conflict with Westerners, this conflict could have been abated sooner without as much effort as had to take place. Though only a few men were killed, this event marks the efforts of elites attempting to act on their own ambitions over what could have been best for the people as a whole.

September 26, 2013

Slaughter Slaughtering the Whiskey Rebellion?

This week’s reading of Slaughter’s The Whiskey Rebellion– to paraphrase the thoughts of several of my colleagues – was undoubtedly a work marked by thorough research and writing. While I agree with Ian, AJ, and CT in saying that Part II of The Whiskey Rebellion was indeed dense, I think Slaughter did this intentionally to demonstrate the complex narrative that culminated in the Whiskey Rebellion. This way he forces us to realize that the rebellion was not a mere short-lived affair often written off as an honorable mention in a list of the historical turning points of the United States. Rather, he argues that the Whiskey Rebellion was the product of continued and escalated tensions between various groups of people throughout the young nation, and – at least through the first two sections – that it was nothing short of a miracle that the country did not split amidst the conflict. This collectively contributes to his broader argument that the Whiskey Rebellion, particularly because of the conflicts harbored within the affair, should be thought about as a defining moment in the course of American history.

With that being said, I think Slaughter’s attempt to provide such a vivid, detailed account of the events preceding the Whiskey Rebellion ultimately leaves his work vulnerable to several criticisms. His writing, especially so in Part II, seems to become a pattern. As Slaughter begins to place every group, ideology, or concern into a contest with a conflicting group, ideology, or concern, the work quickly became monotonous for me and lost some persuasive value. His constant pitting of East vs. West, rich vs. poor, big business vs. small business, educated vs. uneducated, liberty vs. order, Federalist vs. Antifederalist, etc. dilutes the effectiveness of his argument. While revealing that the origin of the Whiskey Rebellion cannot be neatly pointed to a single cause, Slaughter’s constant pairings lead to a superficial understanding of each of the potential causes he emphasizes.

Moreover, the strategy pursued by Slaughter has made his narrative very dry, thereby losing some his argument’s persuasiveness. There are times when Slaughter hints at aligning with the frontiersmen at the time, as on page 112 when he writes “The excise constituted a unique threat because it embodied in one law so many evils.” However, instead of continuing this narrative and emphasizing the abuses the national government were making upon the West, Slaughter quickly turns away from this argument to present an objective account of what transpired leading up to the Whiskey Rebellion. I believe Slaughter’s book would have become more persuasive had he chose a side in his monograph. Rather, he leaves us with what might amount to an almanac of events and conflicts leading up to the rebellion with commentary, but no adamant opinions or analyses. His constant back and forth with pairings, people, and occasional scholarly interpretation only leads – as many of my colleagues are likely willing to agree – to confusion among his readers.

My last point of contention with Slaughter is that he seems to have a faint idea of the image he wants to portray of Alexander Hamilton. While Hamilton was one of the key figures of the Whiskey Rebellion, Slaughter fails to characterize Hamilton with respect to the context of his book. At times, Hamilton appears to be a man looking out for the best interest of the United States – a mediator of sorts – trying, as seen on page 145 “to avoid conflict between collectors and distillers who honestly misunderstood the law.” However, only pages earlier, Slaughter appears to write about Hamilton as something of an antagonist, a man who “In every respect…defined his views on taxation in opposition to the ideology shared by friends of liberty” (140). This is only exacerbated by the point made by Ian that men like Washington and Hamilton believed 80 percent of frontiersmen were disloyal to the American government. This leads me to question whether Slaughter intends to depict Hamilton as a hero, a villain, or perhaps if Slaughter even thought about how he to represent Hamilton at all. While I do not have the answers to these questions, I do think that in Part II of The Whiskey Rebellion Slaughter took on a project much too vast for the 81 pages he allotted for it.

September 24, 2013

A Reflection of the American Revolution

From our second section of reading on Thomas P. Slaughter’s The Whiskey Rebellion, a certain by the frontiersmen caught my attention. This quote is; “the government was competent to every end but that single one by which alone it can benefit us, the protection of our territorial rights” (163). This seemed like a very strong assertion by frontiersmen towards the United States government but, was not something new to the American people. Only a few decades earlier, a great number of colonists were making similar statements regarding the oppressive rule by the British government. I noticed one striking difference between the two revolutionary statements, that in support of the government.

Throughout most of the lead up to the American Revolution, the colonists remained loyal to the King of England. For Ben Franklin, it took his utter embarrassment at the hands of the British nobility in 1774 to sway his allegiance, but until that point he was a loyal subject. Quite differently, Slaughter points out how he believes that both George Washington and Alexander Hamilton probably believed about 80 percent of frontiersmen disloyal to the American Government (156). This is a shocking difference in support for the government but, it goes to show the type of spirit that was in the air. The frontiersmen had learned from past events that mere petitions and acts of civil disobedience were not enough to implement change. Instead, one must revolt against the country that had abused their allegiance, partaking in violence to secure their liberties. Except, the only problem with this mindset lay in the fact that the country these frontiersmen wished to split from was not an ocean away but, was right next store, ready to maintain an intact nation.

Though I do enjoy Slaughter’s book a lot, after reading the second section I have noticed a continual problem in the piece. As a side- effect of Slaughter’s exuberant amount of research, his work becomes too dense. I have found myself countless times trying to remember who was who in terms of people, or where this event fit into the overall picture. It became quite a taxing practice for the first two sections and I can only imagine it will continue. As a result of this issue, one gets lost in trying to identify the significant number of characters and events, rather than understanding the ideas that are being argued for in the piece. Though great detail is generally a good thing to have in a piece like this, the use of it in the way Slaughter has actually takes away from understanding his specific arguments.

Rather than responding to a fellow classmates post today, I would actually like to respond to our heated debate that took place in class. A specific point I would like to answer would be Mr. Christopher Talevi’s regarding his statement about frontiersmen invading Native American land. I do see his point regarding how it was wrong for frontiersmen to continue pushing westward but, the issue was not the morality of the issue at the time but, how to deal with it. These frontiersmen were a part of the United States regardless of their actions, which meant it was the country’s duty to protect them. Instead of adequately protecting them from hostile natives, as many were, the government proposed an excise tax that would only weaken the already struggling western folk. This action only goes to support the frontiersman’s quote above regarding the failures of the national government in their protection. It was no longer a matter of right and wrong in terms of invasion but, how was the newly constructed government going to defend its people from a threat.

September 18, 2013

Tension in an Unfree Society

In “Reading the Runaways,” David Waldstreicher shows us how early America was structured in a hierarchy based on what degree of freedom a person had. Obviously, a wealthy white male would be an example of someone who was completely free while an African slave would be at the other end of that spectrum. However, people like indentured servants or slaves of mixed race (who would therefore be lighter skinned and more able to “pass” as white should they escape) would fall somewhere in between the two. Waldstreicher discusses how some slaves, especially more skilled ones, were allowed to go out and seek their own work, giving them a certain degree of freedom, and also making the possibility of escape more likely.
Waldstreicher talks about how unfree people who escaped would try and pass themselves off as free by imitating a more free type of person by taking on the specific qualities of a more free person, such as different clothing, hairstyle, and emphasis on any valuable skills they may have possessed. Slave owners knew this, and therefore any ads for runaway slaves would point out what clothes they were thought to have, their skills, and a multitude of other things aside from their bare-bones physical appearance. Waldstreicher paints a picture, therefore, of an uneasy world in which Americans were constantly on the lookout of anyone suspicious who may be passing themselves off as a more “free” person than they really are. By observing those around them and looking for signs that a person may in fact be “unfree,” the free people exerted a certain kind of power over the unfree in their watchfulness. In his post for this week, Ian Solcz discusses that idea and does a great job of putting it in a modern perspective by comparing that watchfulness to the way people today observe and judge those with tattoos or other forms of body art.
While Waldstreicher focuses on people’s vigilence in their looking out for those less free than them, Thomas P. Slaughter in the first chapter of Whiskey Rebellion reverses that somewhat and focuses on how less free members of society were always on the lookout for any kind of abuse from people above them (or more “free” than them). In that chapter, Slaughter focuses on how upset people, generally those in poorer, more rural regions, would get about the idea of internal taxes, both in England and America. For example, he starts by discussing how the rural parts of England, along with Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, were always the ones most upset my Parliament’s attempts to tax internally. (12) On pages 17-20, he discusses how angry American colonists (who were themselves at the time a fringe part of the British Empire far removed from the true power center in London) became over internal taxes in the lead up to the Revolution in the 1760s. In his post this week, Ben Hartshorn discusses the language of that anger, specifically how colonists conflated internal taxes with a form of slavery being imposed on them.
Waldstreicher and Slaughter both show us that the political atmosphere in early America (and Britain) was one of hyper-awareness of both others’ and their own status in a society where each rung on the hierarchy meant a lesser degree of freedom. It makes sense that American colonists thought of themselves as slaves when they sensed a group of people above them in the British hierarchy (those in Parliament) treating them unfairly would call themselves slaves. After all, they would look at anyone below themselves on the ladder as somewhat of a slave, so what else would they call it when they were suffering from unfair taxation imposed by those above them on that same ladder? Both Waldstreicher’s article and the first chapter of Whiskey Rebellion give great insight into the role of freedom in the structure of early American society.

September 18, 2013

Enslavement by Visible Markings

In “Visible Bodies: Power, Subordination, and Identity in the Eighteenth- Century Atlantic World,” Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton comment on how many slaves and black slaves made efforts to change their appearance for the better. By wearing the “cast of clothing” of their masters, or changing their dialect in some manner, runaway slaves were able to better blend into society (45). Yet, there were many markings that slaves struggled to hide, which identified them for who they were. Things such as scars from whips, brands (even on the face), and early tattoos were all legitimate signifiers of a person’s status in colonial America.

These “mutilations” were unique to the person and therefore, easy to describe in runaway ads. Outside of brands being specific only to slaves, Morgan and Rushton point out that tattoos specifically were connected to troublesome individuals of the lower class (49). For instance, in one ad a tattoo is used as the main identifying characteristic of the fifteen year old thief in question (49). Morgan and Rushton also further elaborate on how inscriptions of various sorts (tattoos) were prevalent on the arms of runaway slaves, making them easier to identify. They were not very detailed but, they were the epitome of a sign that a person with one was an individual of suspicion.

This depiction of body art as another identifying characteristic of slaves struck me as something that has continued into our culture. Though we do not have slaves, it is a common thought amongst many in our society that visible tattoos are associated with lower class individuals. For instance, many tattoos in inner city areas are used as identifiers for various gangs, just like they once were associated with slaves. As I myself have a piece of artwork on my back, I have a problem with scholars connecting tattoos to criminals in such a negative way. Yet, after thinking about it, I realized that my choice of placement for my piece was influenced by these societal conceptions of tattoos. I did not want my body art to negatively influence my image in any walk of life, which is why I hid it on my back. With my own decision in mind, I recognized that our culture has not changed much in terms of physical alterations. People still look down on tattoos, with many giving disgusted looks to individuals with visible artwork. It must be a demeaning feeling for these people, just like it was for the slaves of colonial America, with their skin color being their first “mark.”

In Mr. Benjamin Hartshorn’s response for this week, he comments on the idea of different degrees of freedom in reference to the enslavement the colonists and British felt under their government’s oppressive taxes. After giving this some thought, I realized how both these people’s feelings of enslavement is not too different from the feeling people with visible tattoos experience. Though at first glance, this may seem like a stretch but, if you look at it in a certain way, the idea is made clear. Both the British and American colonists were free people but, they suffered under the weight of excise taxes placed upon their goods. A restriction was placed upon what kind of goods they could buy “freely,” which dictated their choice of purchase. Though tattoos are a voluntary act, they also carry a similar weight of “unfreedom.” People with visible tattoos are discriminated against in office settings, primarily being forced to cover up their markings. Also, thanks to society’s idea of what these tattoos mean, the people with them are continually watched by the citizens around them. In both groups, the people themselves are “free,” in that they can make their own decisions. Yet, their amount of freedom is limited by the forces around them which they have little control over, creating a feeling of enslavement.