Fredrick Douglas has always been a character that I have admired for his intellectual ability but after the reading for today I am not so sure if I feel the exact same way about him.\u00a0 Max points out in his work the general hypocrisy of Douglass through \u201chis strong support of the Republican party which often abandoned black and while attacking individualistic northerners who wished to forget was issues while preaching self reliance to African Americans.\u201d (MARIEHEMANN).\u00a0 Now Douglass is a man who certainly built his own success out of the terrible lot life had given him.\u00a0 Douglass taught himself to read and write while working as a slave and would use these tool to aid the black community.\u00a0 I can understand why he would feel Reconstruction of the South would be unnecessary as he is an example of what someone can make out of themselves with little to no help.\u00a0 This of course leads me to one of my favorite debates I have had in a Davidson class, \u201cwhat was the war fought over?\u201d\u00a0 Douglass like most Americans believe that the war primarily was about slavery, I believe that the Civil War is falls somewhere in between the greatest game of chicken (regarding a group of people threatening something, in this case the South seceding) and a general over appreciation for someone\u2019s role in a society (I believe the South thought that the North would be crippled without the raw goods and crops they provided).\u00a0 Now Douglass is not wrong \u00a0thinking the war is about slavery, remember most people would see that as the biggest issue, but is certainly wrong to state as Henry put it \u201cthose who shape historical interpretations of the Civil War should be the ones to shape the fate of African-Americans in the post-war period.\u201d<\/p>\n
I get that Douglass was upset that this idea of Reconstruction was put into play right away, but what did he expect would happen? Was the South to suffer forever because they had an ideological difference that many considered \u201cbad?\u201d\u00a0 It is this that makes me question Douglass for his hypocrisy.\u00a0 Douglass is proof that there is more to meet the eye as his life challenges every claim that blacks were second class citizens due to their inferior intellectual nature.\u00a0 It is now his turn to let members of the South prove that they can function in a society that does not treat blacks poorly.<\/p>\n
A point that many of my classmates have made a comment on his an idea AJ brings up in his blog regarding Douglass being less credible because he did not participate in the war as a soldier.\u00a0 To that comment I look towards a character like Ben Franklin.\u00a0 To my knowledge he was not a soldier in the American Revolution, yet some of his views and rhetoric on the revolution are the most popular writings from that time period.\u00a0 \u00a0Douglass could have been held in the same light as Franklin but due to his simply \u201cwrong\u201d views regarding reconstruction and who should dictate the way we view the war to an extent wallows a state of irrelevancy because his work simply doesn’t appeal to the right audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fredrick Douglas has always been a character that I have admired for his intellectual ability but after the reading for today I am not so sure if I feel the exact same way about him.\u00a0 Max points out in his work the general hypocrisy of Douglass through \u201chis strong support of the Republican party which … <\/p>\n