behartshorn – Popular Politics in Early America

November 19, 2013

Shaping History

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I found Frederick Douglass’s idea that the postwar era may be defined and controlled by whichever side could best shape interpretations of the war to be very compelling. He understood that it is almost more important to control how the story is told than the story itself. Douglass’s argument that the people could not lose memory of the real issues and purposes of the fight rings true when thinking about many other historical situations.

Christopher Columbus is usually portrayed as the explorer who heroically though the Earth was round and discovered America. After doing more research into Columbus and his expeditions though, one finds that he had many flaws (such as the ruthless way he treated the Natives that he encountered once in America). This example goes well with Frederick Douglass’s point because the narrative of the war could very easily have been shifted if the South were allowed to tell the story by alone (like one of my roommate’s insistence on calling it “the war of Northern aggression”).

Douglass’s understanding of the idea that, “people and nations are shaped and defined by history,” is very advanced. I only know of a few men in history that have been as aware of this idea (Thomas Jefferson comes to mind because of his prolific writing and record keeping). Furthermore, I think that Douglass took it upon himself to make sure history remembered him so that he could tell the tale of slavery and freedom from the perspective of his people. Last semester, I read one of his autobiographies in an American History class; so obviously his ideas have been passed down just like he was hoping for.

I think that it is crucial when talking about Douglass and his opinions to keep them in context. This was, obviously, a time before Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Douglass, a former slave, was in the unique position to really talk to all African-Americans through his speeches and testimonies. Douglass understood that what he said was going to be read about by the rest of the country because of the man he had become. With this power, Douglass took it upon himself to continue the crusade for his people. He felt the best way to do this was to make sure that the Civil War was remembered for its causes and results. Anthony John Pignone (Olney, Maryland) makes a different argument. He contends that Douglass’s view on the war may be skewed because he did not fight in the war. While I think this is a valid concern, I believe that Frederick Douglass was not trying to discount the perils and bravery of the actual fighting, he was merely trying to protect the legacy of emancipation and the future of his people. I understand what AJ is saying, but I think that Douglass was more focused on how future generations would remember the war than the war experience itself.

November 12, 2013

Mary Ryan's Efficient Argument

I thought Mary P. Ryan’s article on antebellum women in Utica, New York was one of the more convincing and thorough pieces we have read so far. I think it was organized excellently and used its sources very well. “The Power of Women’s Networks: A Case Study of Female Moral Reform in Antebellum America” made an effective argument about how women came together and the powers that they did and did not have.

Ryan begins with a quick historiography of arguments made about women and power in the antebellum era. She then introduces the American Female Reform Society and proposes that the association “offers an excellent opportunity to examine the relationship between women’s power and the history of the sex/gender system. It may illuminate the nature, sources, and ambiguous historical impact of women’s efforts to exert influence on society at large” (67). Next, Ryan narrows in on the Utica Society. Dave “Big Wave” Sierra points out that it must be noted that her use of the Utica Society is very specific to the time and place. Ryan explains how Utica’s population, social and class makeup, and economy lent itself to the many associations that formed in the town. After establishing that associations had a strong hold on most social aspects of the society, Ryan does an excellent job of explaining why Utica women had more power in these associations than expected. The detailed backstory of how the Utica Female Reform Society sprang up and gained members really sold me on the idea that this town is an interesting case of women being able to exert power outside the home in the antebellum period.

Ryan then went into a minutely detailed description of how the association operated to exert influence over the sexual behavior of society. She discussed how the women were trying to better society as well as protect their own interests (usually as mothers). Ryan argues that these dual interests allowed women to establish a direct, collective, organized effort, which aimed to control behavior and change values in the community at large” (73). In order to make these claims, Ryan uses her sources extremely well. She gives specific newspaper articles, meeting minutes, and individual testimonies to show how these women organized and came together to gain power. I did feel, though, that some of her more empirical arguments were thin. Ryan also did a good job of showing the influence of these women with the narrative about the debate between the Society and the city’s clerks. This story did a good job of illuminating how women in these various associations had the ability (when working together) to bring flaws in society to light. Overall, I think that Ryan’s argument was strong because of her organization and effective use of sources. While towards the end of the piece, she tries to use Utica to generalize a little too much for my taste, I still believe that it was an efficient argument.

One, Eli Caldwell’s makes an extremely interesting point with his comparison of joke-telling moralities with the way the Female Moral Reform Society behaved. It did seem like the women just did not realize that their push for sexual purity would also put them down in different aspects of society. He concedes that maybe the women thought that once they cleaned up society, they could separate themselves. I agree with that, but would also add that at this time the idea of our modern day feminism did not really exist. I would maybe even argue that women of this era rarely wished or pushed for the complete equality that we see currently. This, though, is a very broad statement, and I am sure that it could possibly be easily countered with more research.

November 5, 2013

Bowery Street

Bowery Street should have been the title of the second half of Sean Wilentz’s book, Chants Democratic. Wilentz’s detailed description of working class life in Antebellum New York City can be followed through the rise and changes of Bowery Street. Wilentz described the street as a, “plebian boulevard, the workingmen’s counterpart to fashionable Broadway” (257). It is almost seems like the Atlantic City to Las Vegas. It was built in the mid-1820s and by the early 1830s it was a swinging street with food, drinks, dancing, and entertainment. Much of what Wilentz described about Bowery Street, he could use to describe the bigger picture of the working class.

The theater on Bowery Street is the first place where the street becomes an obvious microcosm of working class life. The crowded theatre with prostitutes up in the third acted just as the working class would be expected to. Wilentz details about the crowd, “fortified by drink, armed with an arsenal of peanut shells and rotten vegetables, the Boweryites felt perfectly at home and interrupted the action on the stage at will” (258). This can be paralled with the mobs that form during the Crisis of 1836. Armed with drink, fire, and hundreds of men, the mobs would use systematic violence and symbolic attacks to get their point across. Furthermore, the crowds almost rioting when English actors acted superior and smug on stage ties in nicely with Wilentz’s descriptions of the Nativist views that were prevalent during the coming decade. The racial tensions that took place on stage also offer a look at the views of many working classmen. The set-piece minstrel shows “took racism for granted” and were extremely popular with the lower-class audience. These shows also gave the working class a chance to criticize and laugh at the aristocratic plantation owners and other “dimwitted” upper class leaders (259).

In the next chapter, after the Panic of 1837, the street changes dramatically. The workers have less spending money and struggling to find work. As the temperance push becomes greater, many men are found on Bowery Street and brought to the weekly experience meetings to become sober. The classic Bowery Theater shows that used to be filled with debauchery and partying are moved to temperate theaters as the Washingtonians seem to be taking over the city. Wilentz could have emphasized how this shift in theaters and action on the street symbolized the working class change of life after the Panic. All in all, Bowery Street seems to be a good indication of what the working class is up to at any given time.

Maxwell Paul Reihmann (Cincinnati, Ohio) makes several interesting points about the Washingtonian Temperance movement. It seems like they were able to be so effective because of their acceptance of all religions. Instead of pushing sobriety and religion on their converts, they just stressed a better life filled with steady meals and hope. Max also makes a great comparison with the Women’s Rights Movement later in the century. His point about the outspoken minority is a good one. Another example of the outspoken minority working today is the push for the legalization of gay marriage. A small minority of people feels strongly about it and is pushing our country to change for the better.

October 29, 2013

Determining Intent

Dr. Shrout said once in class that the hardest thing for a historian to determine is intent. Sara C. Fanning attempts to do just this in “The Roots of Early Black Nationalism: Northern African Americans’ Invocations of Haiti in the Early Nineteenth Century”. Fanning’s thesis is basically that freed black men and women in the north were inspired by the success that Haiti had as an independent black nation after their violent revolution. Fanning uses examples of this success in Haiti as evidence to further her point. By doing so though, she must try to determine the intentions of many people.

Fanning dedicates a section to analyzing why Thomas Jefferson cut ties with Haiti. She surmises that it may have been done to secure Louisiana and Florida from Napoleon or because he was upset that the Haitians shared his same republican ideologies and philosophical outlook. It is really impossible to ever know for sure. Yet, Fanning’s detailed thought process is shown and is fairly convincing.

Throughout the rest of the article, Fanning makes statements that imply that she is determining intent. She says, “they hoped…” and “African Americans who learned of the freedom afforded to black men would have looked upon Haiti as…”. Some of her conclusions about intentions are more reasonable than others. When she discusses how many of the African Americans who immigrated to Haiti returned home, she argues that it was because of cultural differences and problems with Haiti. While this reasoning is fairly sound, it struck me as a little bit of her trying to reason and justify her argument, as opposed to a more concrete answer or evidence.

Fanning does a thorough job of pointing out what made Haiti appealing to African Americans, but I felt that she lacked any real evidence of African Americans noting how they were inspired by Haiti. While I understand that the basis of her argument was that the African Americans surely noticed what was going on in Haiti, it may have been helpful if she had found more concrete sources backing this up. Overall, Fanning’s article is an excellent hypothesis with great details and ideas. It just contained a little bit too much assuming for me. Then again, without some assumptions a historian would struggle to write much of anything. So, in the end, I guess I’ll give Fanning my stamp of approval (whatever that may mean to her).

Hank Updegrave (New York State) raises some interesting questions in his post. His point about Fanning not paying enough attention to the early instability in Haiti is very valid. He brings up the issues of those who returned after going to Haiti and the inevitable tension between black people and those of a mixed race. This is a solid point that I had not thought about. Fanning definitely should have attempted to explain how African Americans would have seen these issues as she did about so many other things. So now, after reading Henry’s blog, I’m back on the fence about Fanning.

October 22, 2013

A Detailed Look at the Reasons For Slaves to Revolt

Eugene Genovese’s “Slave Revolts in Hemispheric Perspective” is a detailed analysis of why slave revolts in the Old South were much rarer than in other slave-holding areas. It is clear that Eugene is very well-versed on slave revolts and his research appears to be immense. I enjoyed how he approached the question of why large-scale slave revolts occurred in some areas, but not others. He provided several conditions that made slave revolts more favorable such as blacks outnumbering whites, economic struggles, the number of slaves approaching two hundred per farm, and political instability among the ruling class. Next, Genovese explores some of these conditions in particular and describes how specific situations accentuated his points.

I particularly liked how Genovese described how political divisions could affect the potential for slave revolts. Genovese showed how the United States (specifically the elite Southern slave holders) held the appearance of one big unified structure. While European countries were constantly at war with each other (which dictated that they turn their enemies’ slaves against them), the United States was on the other side of the Atlantic with a centralized government capital located far north. I just think that this reasoning was very effective because it showed a major contrast between the American states and the European powers that struggled to keep slave revolts down.

I also thought that Genovese’s analysis of the leaders of the major slave-revolts in the U.S. was strong. He took us into the minds and backgrounds of Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, and Nat Turner. He showed why each was fit as a slave-revolt leader. Vesey, in particular, had the credentials to lead. He spoke several languages, was well read politically, he had an outstanding group of men directly below his command, and had visited many countries while he was still a slave. Genovese did a good job of showing how these men were qualified to lead, which then made me realize that the lack of slave revolts may be due to a lack of these over-qualified leaders.

Genovese mentions the slaves’ religion a few times throughout the piece. He does an excellent job of explaining how the American slaves developed their own sort of Christianity that did not exactly promote rebellions. The slaves morphed their traditional African folk beliefs into a new Christianity of “love and mutual support,” that emphasized their value as human beings and encouraged an attitude of survival.

Overall, I think that Genovese’s article was detailed and explained exceedingly well. I do not think that his organization was first-rate, but once I followed where he was going, I bought his arguments.

Ian Solcz (Rochester, NY) makes an interesting point at the end of his post next week. He compares and contrasts white and black rebellions and revolutions that we have studied thus far in class. I think he touches on an excellent point of freedom of speech. Slaves lacked the freedom to speak out against their condition, which is obviously a severe handicap for them. Yet, Ian says that their only option left to speak out was through rebellion. While rebelling was probably the most obvious and effective way, I believe that there were other things that slaves could do as well. Teaching each other to read and write, slowing down their pace of work, and organizing networks of communication with other slaves are just a few things that they could do to fight back. Ian makes a good point, I just think that there were more options (not great options though), than he lets on to.

October 9, 2013

Rochester Was the Right Choice

I believe that Paul Johnson’s decision to use Rochester, New York as his focus case study was an excellent decision for many reasons. First, as Dr. Shrout mentioned in class, it is illogical and inconvenient to do a detailed and lengthy study like this with multiple communities. The records that Johnson uses are specific to the locality, and therefore he would have had to travel often to do a study with multiple communities. I like that Johnson admits that Rochester may not be the most representative community for the subject of the great awakening. Rochester is not the typical revival story, but it is such an extraordinary one that we can learn so much from studying it.

Another reason Rochester is a smart place to study is because Charles Finney spent so much time there. The Second Great Awakening took place all over the United States, but what I remember about the revivals from high school history textbooks is the burned-over region in New York and Charles Finney. Using a place that Finney preached at for so long makes sense to me because I view him as the most famous and accomplished Second Great Awakening minister.

Rochester was also a blend of so much of the rest of the country. It was the first major inland city. Yet, the canal kept it connected to the powerful cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and even London. At the same time it was connected with the country side. There was also a large amount of diversity in wealth and professions. You had the wealthy land owning farmers who gave Rochester its name and beginnings and there was the growing intercity community that consisted of master workers and shopkeepers along with a fluid and ever-changing group of journeyman craftsmen. Johnson gives us insight into all the different types of people living in Rochester so that we are able to see the diversity and how each class of people made their religious decisions.

Paul Johnson also did a good job balancing specifics with generalizations. He gives individual stories of families that began the city (like Colonel Rochester’s family) and of poor, orphaned men who became the extremely wealthy in Rochester (like Thomas Kempshall and Abelard Reynolds). He balanced this with good statistics and charts that allowed him to make broader generalizations. On the religious side, he gave specific examples of converts with charts of profession and percent change (of church membership). This allowed him to make inferences about why groups of merchants, master shoemakers, doctors, or lawyers did or did not convert with Finney. I found that most of the inferences that he made, I bought. For example, Johnson wrote about the reasons that so many master workmen converted, yet these reasons did not explain why lawyers also had a high conversion rate. Johnson explained this high conversion rate with details about Finney’s past as a lawyer and how most lawyers were politicians that could not resist the church. Overall, I thought that Johnson did a good job using specific details from his research in Rochester to make generalizations and explain some of the reasons for the huge revival in the city.

Price makes several great comments in his blog this week. The only part I disagree with is his criticism of Johnson’s generalizations and simplifications. While I do agree that some of Johnson’s statements may have oversimplified things, I think that it is alright to do that in a historical paper. It is impossible to study every single person in the town. Johnson studied a few specific people and statistics, and then this allowed him to make broader generalizations. The nature of historical studies will not account for every example. Price argues that Johnson didn’t take into account all of the nuances of the town. I see his point, but I believe that the nature of this topic and history itself doesn’t allow for Johnson to view all the nuances.

September 18, 2013

The Usage of the Word 'Slave'

After finishing our readings for Tuesday of this week and comparing them with the early chapters of Thomas Slaughter’s, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution, I noticed contrasts in the use of the word ‘slave’. In the first chapter of Slaughter’s book he states, “During the seventeenth century (in England), opponents denounced the excise tax as ‘the Devil’s remedy’ and the ‘high road to slavery’” (13). Later on when the American protests against the Stamp Act are being discussed Slaughter writes, “Some Americans believed that when Parliament sought ‘to establish stamp duties and other internal taxes’ for the colonies, it threatened to reduce Americans to ‘the miserable condition of slaves’” (21). These quotes, from both English and American men, are very interesting when put looked at next to the very real use of the word slavery in our previous readings.

Almost all of the runaway slave advertisements use the world slave. They are publishing reports of their missing property and referring to them as slaves. Therefore, it is striking that, presumably similar, men would describe their situation involving Parliament and internal taxes as a threat to “reduce them to the miserable condition of slaves”. My first thought is that the men who used slavery to describe tax conditions where simply using hyperbole. They were trying to drum up support against the oppressive government and using the word ‘slave’ was striking enough to grab attention. I figured that this was probably true for most of the situations where the slavery was used in Slaughter’s book.

Mr. Michael Lamoureux, in his blog, discusses how the slaves were described as property and objects. Slave masters described human beings just as I would if I lost a cell phone and described it as an ‘old, white, iPhone’. Michael does a good job discussing the ambiguity found in some of the ads. He makes an excellent point that with some of the ads, it seems very possible that any black man could be returned to an owner for a reward. This could, unfortunately, very well happen to a freed black man. Michael’s thoughtful and creative argument led me to think about the levels and degrees of freedom that we discussed in class on Tuesday.

As I continued to think about our talk in class about ‘unfreedom’ and the Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton article and David Waldstreicher’s piece, I realized that there may have been more to the usage of ‘slaves’ by white men than just hyperbole for effect. We discussed how there were people in America that were not just free or enslaved, instead there were degrees to people’s freedom. Most people were in a constant battle to protect whatever freedoms they had against an ever-infringing society. Using this rationale and line of thinking, it seems more plausible that some Americans truly did believe that losing the right to local internal tax levying could very well lead to a form of slavery. An American, Stephen Hopkins, argued that allowing Parliament all of the central authority would, “threaten the property and hence the freedom of the colonists. They who have no property, can have no freedom, but indeed are reduced to the most abject slavery” (22). It seems that some Americans were afraid to lose money unfairly to a government and in turn property and in turn their freedom. So while it seems ironic and self-centered for a white man to use the term slavery, it is very possible that they were truly afraid of becoming enslaved (to a certain degree) by British Parliament and excise taxes.

September 11, 2013

Riots Tell the Whole Story

Wayne Lee’s look into riots in pre-revolutionary North Carolina, in “Crowds and Soldiers in Revolutionary North Carolina”, is an excellent example of popular politics. Lee is able to use specific examples of rioting and mob violence to demonstrate a greater understanding for the world in which these North Carolinians lived. Lee begins by telling the reader the background and European makeup of the colony. Then he discusses what riots and mobs were like in England, Scotland, and Germany. This allows Lee to make the argument, after discussing specific North Carolina riots, that the shape and rules of mob violence had not changed very much. As Lee is going through the specific North Carolina riots though, the reader is able to extract information about this world that would not be found in ordinary history textbooks on formal politics.

During the Enfield Riots discussion, I was able to learn about how land was granted and distributed through the Privy Council in England to individual Lords who then sold or rented the land. They hired men to act as the landlords in their stead. The relationship between the squatters and Francis Corbin was also very interesting. Corbin’s dishonesty and corruption allowed his victims to act as if they had the law on their side. When they captured Corbin and walked him seventy miles, they made him sign formal documents to reimburse the people and correct his mistakes. They acted with a sense of legality and formality that I would not have expected from rural farmers in North Carolina in the 1750s. This helps Lee make the argument that North Carolina rioters behaved very similarly to Englanders. Yet, while making this point, I was able to learn more about how the average man lived, operated, and thought in North Carolina.

Furthermore, in the Sugar Creek War section there are many insights into the daily life of these men. Punishments such as being tied at the neck and heels and whipping were discussed. The North Carolina men who whipped their persecutors are described as innovative by Lee as whipping was not used during English or Scottish riots. It is interesting then, that Lee discusses how whipping was typically associated with slavery. Together, these ideas are an example of the growth of a unique American culture. Through Lee’s insights on the North Carolina riots, we are able to accumulate more knowledge of their society as a whole.

As Ian Solcz discussed in his blog, newspapers played a significant role in popular American politics. Similarly to riots, newspapers allow us now to understand more about the culture and society of early America. As Ian says, “Without the papers, the various drunken banquet toasts that were so important in terms of the stance of different parties would have been lost in the night’s events, rather than becoming a rallying point for members” (Solcz, Rochester, NY). Newspapers and stories about riots are two of the more effective ways that one can garner facts about how average Americans lived. Newspapers are effective because they are better preserved and widely distributed. Riot tales are effective because they are interesting stories. Moreover though, riots were one of the most common ways that average Americans could make noise and affect society as a whole. Therefore, by researching riots, one can learn a lot about the people. Overall, while Lee was making interesting points about riots, he was also able to use his research and findings to further the readers understanding of popular and common life in early North Carolina.

September 4, 2013

The Different Ways to Tell a History

After reading the introduction to Beyond the Founders and discussing it in class on Tuesday, I was very interested to see how the rest of our readings would approach writing about history. Martha Hodes’ “Four Episodes in Re-creating a Life” and Jeffrey L. Pasley’s “The Cheese and the Words: Popular Political Culture and Participatory Democracy in the Early American Republic” both wrote about early American history effectively, but with vastly different methodologies.

Martha Hodes’ exploration into the vaguely narrated life of Eunice Richardson was a bold piece that attempted to fill in some historical blanks. While some of her pieced in evidence seemed far-fetched (such as, “Miss Clara is the same madcap as ever, Eunice wrote of her young daughter in 1864, invoking the common Caymanian manner of address. Had Eunice just received a letter from the sea captain, asking after the children, the unwittingly echoed that West Indian turn of phrase in a letter to her mother?”), the thought process and research that she put into the piece are interesting, creative, and thorough. She followed the story as far as she could, as she traveled throughout the country and visiting the same towns and buildings that Eunice once knew. While it’s hard to say one way or another if Hodes’ thesis has sufficient support, this type of historical writing and research interests me very much. Hodes used creativity in her piece that I have rarely seen before in a history class. Writing about Thomas Jefferson (who filed and recorded his prolific writing so well) would not require this sort of reconnaissance work. Yet, as we talked about in class and AJ Pignone wrote extensively about in his blog, the best way to get a full history of a time period is through a careful combination of the major players and those who were more silenced. As AJ says, “history doesn’t come in squares and circles, it takes many different shapes and sizes, so why should we look at the early republic any differently?” (AJ Pignone, Olney, MD). “Four Episodes” is certainly a different shape and is critical to retelling and interpreting history in the best, most accurate way.

Jeffrey Pasley’s article about the famous (or infamous, as Federalist sympathizers would say) mammoth cheese from Chesire, Massachusetts told the story of early American politics in a way that hardly mentioned the founders. Pasley made some very interesting points about how common people worked to have a political voice. Whether it was through cheese, bread, newspapers, parades, toasts, or votes, Pasley discussed how American factions operated and thrived before organized political parties. I found Pasley’s points about newspapers very remarkable as he writes, “After 1800, no serious political activist thought that anything could be accomplished without newspaper support in as many places as possible, and at times they equated the maintenance of a newspaper with the actual existence of a party, faction, or movement” (41). There was then good information and research showing how newspapers (such as The Sun) influenced and shaped local and national politics. His statements on newspapers stress that they were just as influential and important to politics as Jefferson and Washington were. This is another example of how different shapes and pieces of the puzzle are necessary to get the full history of something. While certainly not as widely read as a biography about Benjamin Franklin would be, articles like Hodes’ and Pasley’s are crucial to the historical tale.

August 29, 2013

Jill Lepore's Historiography

Jill Lepore’s article “People Power: Revisiting the Origins of American Democracy” reads like a brief historiography of some of the more prominent takes on the history of the American Democratic movement. Lepore does a solid job of organizing and chronicling the changes in historical thought about our democracy over time.

Lepore has portrayed the debates and arguments over the American Democracy as becoming much more complicated as time has progressed. The first book, Mabel B. Casner and Ralph Henry Gabriel’s “The Rise of American Democracy,” seems simple in its writing and intent. The play at the end of the book is used to demonstrate the theme that frontier land and hardworking men were largely responsible for the rise of the political system.

Lepore then sets up a contrast between Noah Webster and Thomas Jefferson that is also representative of the conflicting views of the Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans. As the Federalists begin to lose ground, Jefferson’s beloved farmers gain more power and say in the government. This is something that really ticked off Webster. H believed that he had more to lose than small, poor farmers and therefore his vote should weigh more.

Lepore does a nice job of bringing in Alexis de Tocqueville’s opinions on equality and democracy. Tocqueville is such a widely read opinion that it is crucial for Lepore to include him in this historiography. The arguments made by Frederick Jackson Turner and Sean Wilentz contradict each other on the importance of the West and the frontier struggle to the development of American Democracy. While Turner’s argument glorifying the brave men who trekked out West is noble, Wilentz seems to make a stronger point that urban workers were the most democratic element of Jacksonian America.

Wilentz’s use of major political figures intertwining with less prominent men is a smart way to approach such a broad topic. Wilentz knows that in order to fully understand history, a careful balance of the big and small must struck. If this balance is made successfully, a reader or a student will be able to best learn about the past. They will receive the fullest possible idea of history and how people really lived. This will give us in the present, the best tools necessary to, as Casner and Gabriel wrote, “strive to learn not to repeat these errors. The generations which lived before us left us a heritage of noble ideals; let us hold fast to these” (1).