American

Culture
Lecture 1
Syllabus
4 March: Mysterious Beginnings: From Roanoke to Jamestown, Plymouth, and Salem
18 March: 1619. The Beginning of the Nation between Democracy and Slavery
1 April: American Frontiers: Cowboys, Missionaries, Hispanics and Indians
15 April: Race in American: The Old South and the Civil War
20 May: Race in American II: From Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter
3 June: American Culture and Diversity: From the American Dream to Contemporary
Conflicts
Course Requirements
Attendance: 70% (4 out of 7)

Mark:
- Active Participation (10%)
- Research paper (40%) – DUE 20 May 2024
- Exam (50%)

BONUS: QUIZ
Research paper
Write a short research paper in which you analyze and American cultural product of your choice
(book, movie, video game etc.) from a cultural and historical perspective.
Make sure your paper:
• has a clear introduction, in which you mention your choice of cultural product, why it is
interesting to analyze, your claim (what you want to prove)
• includes a theoretical section in which you define your terms
• includes an analysis section in which you bring arguments which directly support your claim,
including examples from the adaptation chosen
• has a clear conclusion, summarizing your findings and how you arrived at them
• concludes with a bibliographical list of the works you cited in the paper consisting of at least 4
titles (2 theoretical texts from the course, the cultural product, and at least one additional book
or article)
Formatting requirements:
• 1000 words, 2.5 margins, TNR 12, 1.5 line spacing, Harvard citation style
Columbian conquest
What happened in 1492?

... Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

He landed on an island in the

Caribbean (today Haiti).

On his second voyage, he founded

the first European settlement in
America, La Isabela (after Queen
Isabella I of Spain) – failed colony.
John Vanderlyn – The Landing of Columbus (1842-1847)
The Pre-Columbian Era
• The first Americans are believed to have
arrived in North America over 12,000 years
ago.

• They crossed a land bridge that existed

between Asia and North America in the area
that is now the Bering Straits.
The Pre-Columbian Era
• Pueblos and Navajos in the Southwest tell how their
forebears experienced perilous journeys through
other worlds before emerging from underground.

• The Iroquois trace their ancestry to a pregnant

woman who fell from the “sky world”
 From Paleo-Indians to Empires - Mesoamerica
• Paleo-Indians followed the principle of reciprocity—the
mutual bestowing of gifts and favors—rather than the
notion that one party should accumulate profits or power at
the expense of the other
• maize agriculture was highly developed by 2500 B.C.E.
• After 2000 B.C.E., some Mesoamerican societies
produced crop surpluses that they traded to less
populous, non-farming neighbors.
• the largest early state, Teotihuacán – declined in the 8th
century
• The Maya (7th -15th century) developed a calendar, a
numerical system, and a system of phonetic, hieroglyphic
writing
• 15th century - two mighty empires arose: the Aztecs and Sun Pyramid in Teotihuacán
the Incas
North-American People on the Eve of
European Contact
• How many Native Americans lived in the
Americas when the Europeans arrived?

 the Western Hemisphere numbered about

75 million people
 between 7 - 10 million unevenly
distributed across North America

• North American Indians grouped

themselves in several hundred nations and
tribes, and spoke hundreds of languages
and dialects.
The Southwest
• Ancestral Pueblo culture originated in about 1st century in
the Four Corners area where Arizona, New Mexico,
Colorado, and Utah.

• A distinguishing characteristic of Ancestral Pueblo culture

was its architecture.
Cliff Palace - Colorado

• Ancestral Pueblo villages consisted of extensive

complexes of attached apartments and storage rooms,
along with kivas—partly underground structures in which
male religious leaders conducted ceremonies.

• declined in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries because of

drought
 The Eastern Woodlands

• By 1200 B.C.E., about five thousand people lived at Poverty Point on the lower
Mississippi River
• mound-building culture
Adena and Hopewell cultures
• Adena emerged in the Ohio valley
around 400 B.C.E. After 100 B.C.E.

• Adena culture evolved into a more

complex and widespread culture known
as Hopewell

• Hopewell elites were buried with

thousands of freshwater pearls or
copper ornaments or with sheets of
mica, quartz, or other sacred
substances.
 Mississippian
culture

• The first full-time farmers in the East

• Mississippian centers, numbering hundreds or even thousands of people, arose around
open plazas.
• Large platform mounds adjoined the plazas, topped by sumptuous religious temples and
the residences of chiefs and other elites.
• After C.E. 900, Mississippian centers formed extensive networks
• The largest, most powerful such system centered on Cahokia, located near modern St.
Louis, Missouri
Video 1
• Watch the following scene from Pocahontas (1995) and answer the following
questions:
a) How is Native American society shown in this scene?
b) What is the role of men? And of women?
c) How is family portrayed?
d) Which spiritual beliefs do they hold? What is the role of dreams? What is
the role of nature?
e) How are ancestors seen?
f) Which community practices are shown?
Common values
• bound together primarily by kinship
• nuclear families (a husband, a wife, and their biological children) never stood alone
• in most cultures, young people married in their teens, usually after engaging in
numerous sexual relationships
• some societies were matrilineal
• Native American warfare generally remained minimal, with rivals seeking to
humiliate one another and seize captives rather than inflict massive casualties or
conquer land
• Conflicts solved through gift giving
• women did most of the cultivating in farming societies  power in the community
• collective ownership of land
Common values
• the conviction that all nature was alive, pulsating with spiritual power
• dreams and visions  access to spiritual power
• collective power-seeking rituals such as the Sun Dance, performed by Indians
of the Plains and Great Basin
• Native American societies demanded a strong degree of cooperation.
• Using physical punishment sparingly, if at all, Indians punished children
psychologically, by public shaming
• Exacting familial or community revenge was a ritualized way of restoring order that
had broken down
• The principle of reciprocity was central to Native Americans. Reciprocity involved
mutual give-and-take
 Mysterious Beginnings. From
Roanoke to Jamestown, Plymouth,
and Salem.
Foundational American Values
Food for Thought

• Why did exploration begin in the 15th Century?

• Which country/empire began colonization?

• What were the benefits of colonization?

• How did the slave trade begin?

• When did the English start colonizing the New World?

Portuguese Empire
Slave trade
Why was America ‘discovered’?
The First Explorers
• 1492 – Cristopher Columbus – island in the Caribbean–
Isabella – failed
• 1502 – first successful settlement – Santo Domingo
• 1519 – Hernando Cortes – into the mainland – the new
empire of Spain superimposed over the Aztec empire
• 1532 – Portugal – Brazil – the largest slave importing
center in the world
• Amerigo Vespucci – chronicler – where the name comes
from
• Cattle farming, silver mining, sugar cane on plantations
• 20 mio Natives -> 2 mio Natives left (by some estimates
there were as many as 75 mio in the Americas)
Why did the English want to go to America?
• To get rich fast
• To flee religious persecution
• As punishment for illegal acts

- 1598 – “banishment beyond the realm”

“our land abounding with swarms of idle persons, which having no
means of labor to relieve their misery, do likewise swarm in lewd and
naughtie practices, so that if we seek not some ways for their foreign
employment, we must supply shortly more prisons and corrections for
their bad conditions.” (New Britannia)
English Explorers
• 1497 - John Cabot (Venetian in service of Henry VII of
England)
• 1578 - Humphrey Gilbert – patent from Queen
Elizabeth I “discover and occupy” lands “not
possessed by any Christian Prince”
• 1584 – Walter Raleigh (who had piqued the Queen’s
interest with tobacco smoke) – Roanoke
• 1585 – Raleigh knighted after bringing two Native
Americans (Manteo and Wanchese)
The lost Roanoke colony
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjmXzYdxuTQ
Why did John White return
to England?

What was the name of John

White’s granddaughter and
why is she important?

Why did John White take so

long to come back to
Roanoke?

What happened to the

Roanoke colony? Which
clue did the leave behind?

What do you think

happened to Roanoke?
What was their life like on the new continent?
1. How did they travel?
2. Were there more men or more women?
3. What was the weather like?
4. What did they eat?
5. What kind of problems did they encounter?
6. How did they want to get rich?
7. Where did they live?
8. Which laws did they have to follow?
Jamestown and Pocahontas • 1607 – Jamestown – the
first permanent English
settlement in America

• Named after James I

• The Virginia Company

• 2/3 settlers died

• Captain John Smith

• John Rolfe – tobacco –

married to Pocahontas

• First Africans in the New

World
Plymouth
• 1620 – a group of Puritans
(the Pilgrims) came abroad
the Mayflower and landed at
New Plymouth

• 1621 - Plymouth feast and

thanksgiving was prompted by
a good harvest, which the
Pilgrims celebrated with
Native Americans, who helped
them get through the previous
winter – the tradition of
Thanksgiving (holiday)
The Mayflower Compact
In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten,
the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by
the Grace of God, of England, France and Ireland, King, Defender
of the Faith, e&. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and
Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King
and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern
parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually in
the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine
ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better
Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends
aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame,
such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and
Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and
convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we
promise all due submission and obedience. In Witness whereof
we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the
eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, King
James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of
Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620.
A City upon a Hill
We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness,
patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make other’s conditions our
own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having
before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the
same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord
will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his own people, and will
command a blessing upon us in all our ways. So that we shall see much more of his
wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with.
We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to
resist a thousand of our enemies; when he shall make us a praise and glory that
men shall say of succeeding plantations, “the Lord make it likely that of New
England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of
all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we
have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall
be made a story and a by-word through the world.
Salem
• the third Puritan expedition –
landed in 1628

• 1692 - Salem witch trials, 19

people hanged
1619. DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY. TOWARDS A NEW
NATION.
LECTURE 3
COLONIAL SOCIETIES
JAMESTOWN: THE FIRST PERMANENT SETTLEMENT

• 1607 – Jamestown – the first permanent

English settlement in America
• Named after James I
• The Virginia Company
• 2/3 settlers died
• Captain John Smith
• John Rolfe – tobacco – married to
Pocahontas
• First Africans in Virginia in 1619
COLONIAL SOCIETIES
CHESAPEAKE SOCIETY

 tobacco boom of the 1620s - the English colonies on the Chesapeake Bay (Virginia and Maryland) - the first to
prosper in North America
 plantations - isolated
 Virginia – Protestant
 Maryland – Lord Baltimore – Catholic - Act for Religious Toleration, or Toleration Act (1649)
 tobacco sustained a sharp demand for labor that lured about 110,000 English to the Chesapeake from 1630 to
1700 – 80% male – indetured servants
 the increasing demand for land to extend tobacco production and to accommodate newcomers created conflicts
with Native Americans – Bacon’s Rebellion (1776)
 Need for labor – racial slavery  3 stages (Maryland first defined slavery as a lifelong, inheritable racial status in
1661. Virginia - in 1670)
COLONIAL SOCIETIES
PURITAN NEW ENGLAND

 New England - the next colonial region to prosper in

North America.
 Plymouth + after 1630 - a massive Puritan-led “Great
Migration” to New England began - the colonies of
Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, and Rhode
Island
 John Winthrop – “a city upon a hill”
 Little resistance from Natives at the beginning; later: King
Philip’s War (1675–1678)
 Slavery not common
 1692 - Salem witch trials  marked the decline of
Puritan societies, but their values lived on
COLONIAL SOCIETIES
THE MIDDLE COLONIES

• between the Chesapeake and New England, two non-English nations

established colonies (see Figure).
• New Netherland and New Sweden
• England seized New Netherland from the Dutch in 1664 and carved New
York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania out of the former Dutch territory
• In 1681, Charles II paid off a huge debt by making a supporter’s son,
William Penn, the proprietor of the last unallocated tract of his
American domain
• Pennsylvania (Penn’s woods) – Quakers – “religious freedom”
 NEW FINANCIAL POLICY OF THE BRITISH
GOVERNMENT

 (needed money to support empire)

1.The Sugar Act (1764) - increased duties on imported sugar + textiles,

coffee, wines and indigo.
It doubled the duties on foreign goods reshipped from England to the
colonies + forbade the import of foreign rum and French wines

2.The Currency Act (1764) - prohibiting colonists from issuing any legal
tender paper money threatened to destabilize entire colonial economy of both
industrial North + agricultural South, thus uniting the colonists against it.
3.The Quartering Act (1765) - required colonies to
provide royal troops with provisions and barracks

4.The Stamp Act (1765)

(all printed materials were taxed, including: newspapers,
pamphlets, bills, legal documents, licenses, almanacs, dice
and playing cards) - eventually nullified.

Colonies: feared that the new taxes would make trading

difficult (wanted to exercise their own control)
 The British troops might crush their civil liberties (while
they had come there to escape political repression)
 NO TAXATION WITHOUT
REPRESENTATION!

1765 – Stamp Act Congress (representatives from 9 colonies) –

New York City
→ resolution to King George + English Parliament [“no taxation
without representation”]
↓↓↓
The Act is repealed BUT Townshend Acts – 1767:
tax on tea + other goods → Customs officers + British soldiers
are sent to Boston to collect the taxes
 MASSACRE & TEA PARTY

March 5, 1770: 5 Bostonians killed (“The

Boston Massacre”) → taxes removed

1773: East India Company – granted

monopoly on exported tea → The Boston
Tea Party (disguised as Indians, the patriots
boarded a British merchant ship & threw the
tea overboard)

The Patriots (wanted to break free from the

British Empire) ↔ The Loyalists (loyal to
the Crown)
 The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783)

1st Continental
Congress
2nd Continental
Congress
Congress of the
Confederation
 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
JULY 4TH, 1776

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form
of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence,
indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for
light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a
long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their
right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new
Guards for their future security.
THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION VS THE
CONSTITUTION

 The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 original states of the United
States of America that served as its first constitution. → created a weak government which led to many problems
 Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in response to a debt crisis → the need for a new document
 The Constitution, originally comprising seven articles, delineates the national frame of government. Its first three
articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, whereby the federal government is divided into three
branches → ratified in 1788
 THE BILL OF RIGHTS

 Amendment 1
- Freedom of Religion, Speech, and the Press
 Amendment 2
- The Right to Bear Arms
 Amendment 4
- Protection from Unreasonable Searches and Seizures
 Amendment 5
- Protection of Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property
 Amendment 6
- Rights of Accused Persons in Criminal Cases
 Amendment 10
- Undelegated Powers Kept by the States and the People
 American
Frontiers
Westward Expansion. The Missouri Compromise. Indian Removal.
 American
Myths
Watch the short cartoon.

What is the character trying to achieve?

What is the environment like?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOWzPaHpq_s
Thomas
Jefferson
● “all men are created equal”

● “their inferiority is not the

effect merely of their condition
of life”
 Jeffersoniasism
• Thomas Jefferson is a controversial figure in American history (genius + slaveholder)
• guided by his philosophy of government, later known as Jeffersonianism
• did not believe that blacks and whites could live permanently side by side in American
society  he feared American society would destroy itself from within
• regarded cities as breeding grounds for mobs and as menaces to liberty  supported
farmers who worked their own land
• worried that high taxes, standing armies, and corruption could destroy American liberty
by turning government into the master rather than servant of the people  he wanted
state governments to retain authority
• BUT he uses federal power for one very important thing: the Louisiana Purchase (1803)
 Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Lewis and Clark Expedition from August 31, 1803, to September 25, 1806, also known
as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the
newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase (1803).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zipu94cIgNo

How do you think this expedition contributed to the image of the American West?
What is Westward Expansion?
Westward expansion, the 19th-century movement of settlers
into the American West, began with the Louisiana
Purchase and was fueled by the Gold Rush, the Oregon
Trail and a belief in “manifest destiny.”

The new land was organized into territories and then states
The Treaty of Paris (1783)
Louisiana Purchase (1803)
Annexation of Texas (1845)
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)
John Gast – American Progress (1872)
 19th-Century Bonanzas

Mining  California Gold Rush (1848 -1855), Alaska

(1890s-1912)

Cattle herding  cattle raised in the West, sold in

the North for profit -> dependent on railroads

Farms  Wheat boom (1870s-1880s), California citrus

(“Sunkist”)

Homestead Act of 1862 - land in the West granted to

any US citizen willing to settle on and farm the
land – ideal of the “yeoman farmer”
What happened to the Native Americans?
Charles II decreed in 1672 that that
Americans should “get and continue
the friendship and assistance of the
Indians and make them useful with
without force or injury”

The enslavement of Natives was

forbidden “upon any occasion or
pretense whatsoever”

The Indian Removal Act was signed by

Andrew Jackson in 1830.
The Trail of
Tears

• a series of forced relocations of Native Americans between 1830 and 1850 by the United
States government

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if-BOZgWZPE
 The Missouri
Compromise
● In 1819  11 free and 11 slave states
● The admission of Missouri as a slave state
would upset this balance to the advantage
of the South.
● Equally important, Missouri was on the
same latitude as the free states  a
precedent for the extension of slavery into
the northern part
● the legislation prohibited slavery north of
the 36°30′ parallel except for Missouri
● states admitted to the Union in pairs (one
slave state + one free state) - to maintain
the balance of power between North and
South
 RACE IN
AMERICA I
The Old South, Slavery, and the Civil War
What do you know about
slavery?
◦ Watch the following video and answer the
questions:
 Why is the master upset?
 What is the relationship between the
master and the female slave?
 Why does the mistress of the plantation
encourage her husband to punish the
slave?
 Why does he not do it himself ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EeC-A0UIPg
King Cotton and Slavery in the Old South
◦ In the 19th century, cotton replaced sugar as the world’s
major crop produced by slave labor
◦ In the South, cotton replaced tobacco as the most profitable
◦ Because the early industrial revolution centered on factories
using cotton as the raw material to manufacture cloth,
cotton had become by far the most important commodity
in international trade.
◦ The South’s strength rested on a virtual monopoly of cotton,
the South’s “white gold.”

 loans to buy land, NO industrialization

 Social Groups in the White domestic

South staff

artisans
◦ Only 12 percent owned twenty or more slaves, and
only 1 percent had a hundred or more
field hands
◦ There were several groups of whites: planters,
small slaveholders, yeomen farmers, poor
whites
◦ Slaves were classified into the domestic staff
(butlers, waiters, seamstresses, laundresses, maids,
and gardeners), the pasture staff (shepherds,
cowherds, and hog drivers), outdoor artisans
(stonemasons and carpenters), indoor artisans
(blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, spinners, and
weavers), and field hands.
 The proslavery argument
◦ Northerners often charged that slavery twisted the entire social structure of the South out of shape
◦ The enslavement of blacks, they alleged, robbed lower-class whites of the incentive to work, reduced them
to shiftless misery, and rendered the South a throwback in an otherwise progressive age
◦ Between 1830 and 1860, southern writers constructed a defense of slavery as a positive good rather
than a necessary evil.
◦ Southerners answered northern attacks on slavery as a backward institution by pointing out that the slave
society of ancient Athens had produced Plato and Aristotle and that Roman slaveholders had laid the basis
of Western civilization.
◦ They invoked the Bible, especially St. Paul’s order that slaves obey their masters.
◦ Clergy: slavery = opportunity to display Christian responsibility toward one’s inferiors, and it helped
blacks develop Christian virtues like humility and self-control
◦ Proslavery writers: the real intention of abolitionists - to destroy the family as much as slavery by
undermining the “natural” submission of children to parents, wives to husbands, and slaves to masters
 Life under slavery
◦ a few masters were benevolent, BUT they
wanted to make a profit
◦ the masters hired and paid the overseers to
get as much work as possible out of the
slaves
◦ the benevolent master came to expect
grateful affection from his slaves and then
interpreted that affection as loyalty to the
institution of slavery
A typical day
◦ the typical slave worked on a large farm or plantation with at least ten fellow bond servants
◦ In smaller units, each slave had a daily or weekly quota of tasks to complete
◦ On large cotton and sugar plantations, more closely supervised and regimented gang labor
prevailed
◦ Regardless of the season, the slave’s day stretched from dawn to dusk
◦ After a sparse breakfast, slaves marched to the fields. Slave men and women worked side by side
in the fields.
◦ Female slaves who did not labor in the fields toiled at other tasks like washing, cooking, and taking
care of the children.
◦ When darkness made fieldwork impossible, slaves transported cotton bales to the gin house,
gathered up wood for supper fires, and fed the mules.
◦ When the day’s labor finally ended, they slept in log cabins on wooden planks.
Punishment and Control
◦ The disciplining and punishment of slaves were
often left to white overseers and black drivers rather
than to masters.
◦ The barbaric discipline meted out by their
subordinates twinged the conscience of many
masters
◦ Most justified it as their Christian duty to ensure the
slaves’ proper “submissiveness”
◦ repulsive brutality
The Slave Family
◦ Slave owners had powerful incentives to encourage slave
marriages: to bring new slaves into the world and to discourage
slaves from running away
◦ The law did not recognize or protect slave families
◦ The reality, one historian has calculated, was that in a lifetime,
on average, a slave would witness the sale of eleven family
members
◦ The marriage of a slave woman gave her no protection against
the sexual demands of a master nor, indeed, of any white
◦ Slave women who worked in the fields were usually separated
from their children by day
◦ When slave women took husbands from nearby (rather than
their own) plantations, the children usually stayed with the
mother
Slave resistance
◦ fears of slave insurrections haunted the Old South
 the memory of the massive black insurrection
that had destroyed French rule in Haiti in the 1790s
◦ Nat Turner’s 1831 insurrection in Virginia was the
only slave rebellion that resulted in the deaths of
whites
◦ slaves could try to escape to freedom in the North.
Some former slaves, among them Harriet Tubman
and Josiah Henson, made repeated trips back to the
South to help other slaves escape.
◦ the “Underground Railroad”
The Underground Railroad
◦ What was the Underground Railroad?
◦ Which codes were used for the people involved in it and why?
◦ What happened in 1850?
◦ What role did Canada play in this process?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beTd8RW0ozg

◦ What role did Harriet Tubman play in the Underground Railroad?

◦ What was her nickname and why?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmsNGrkbHm4
 The Crisis of the Union
◦ The Mason-Dixon Line, between Maryland and Pennsylvania,
eventually became the dividing line between slavery and freedom.
◦ The Missouri Compromise (1820) - prohibited slavery north of
the 36°30′ parallel except for Missouri
◦ As part of a compromise proposed by Henry Clay, a harsher
fugitive slave law was enacted.
◦ The publication in 1852 of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle
Tom’s Cabin aroused wide northern sympathy for fugitive slaves
◦ Dred Scott v. Sandford  the Court held that the United States
Constitution was not meant to include American citizenship for
people of African descent, regardless of whether they were
enslaved or free, and so the rights and privileges that the
Constitution confers upon American citizens could not apply to
them
The Presidential Election of
1860
◦ The majority in Southern + Border states
voted against Lincoln
◦ The North – supported him → won
↓↓↓

◦ The Confederate States of America (South

Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama,
Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia,
Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina)

◦ 11 states – voted to leave the Union →

Secession
The Civil War (1861-1865)
◦ The Union (North) vs The Confederates (South)

◦ Election of 1864: Lincoln wins a second mandate (after the

capture of Atlanta & other victories)

◦ April 5, 1865: general Robert E. Lee is forced to abandon

Richmond (the Confederate capital) + surrender to general
Ulysses S. Grant (followed by all Confederate forces)

◦ April 14, 1865: Lincoln assassinated at Ford’s Theater (D.C.)

by the Virginia actor John Wilkes Booth
The Meaning of the War
◦ Lincoln’s priorities: to keep the United States one country + to rid the nation
of slavery
→ January 1, 1863: Emancipation Proclamation – freedom to all slaves in areas
still controlled by Confederacy
→ Gettysburg = largest battle ever fought on American soil (Confederates =
defeated)
→ November 19, 1863 – The Gettysburg Address – maybe the most famous
address in American history)
The 620,000 soldiers who lost their lives nearly equaled the number of American
soldiers killed in all the nation’s earlier and later wars combined.
The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln
(1863)
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for
those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and
dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work
which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before
us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish
from the earth.
Sojourner Truth
◦ Who was Sojourner Truth and why was she important to American history?
◦ What is the main argument of the speech “Ain’t I a woman”?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-HfiryNoXY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry_i8w2rdQY
THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA AND THE Race in America II
ROAD TO CIVIL RIGHTS
WHAT WORDS ARE MISSING?
Listen to the song and fill in the gaps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGY9HvChXk

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh
RECONSTRUCTION POLITICS, 1865–1868
political conflict dominated the immediate years following the Civil War
through the 13th Amendment, all states guaranteed the freedmen some basic rights—to
marry, own property, make contracts, and testify in court against other blacks
in 1863, Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction - southern states to
rejoin the Union if at least 10 percent of those who had cast ballots in the election of 1860
would take an oath of allegiance to the Union and accept emancipation
Lincoln’s plan excluded some southerners from oath-taking, such as Confederate officials and
military officers.
Such persons would have to apply for presidential pardons.
After Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson became president
PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION
Presidential Reconstruction took effect in the summer of 1865
as under Lincoln’s plan, Confederate civil and military officers would still be
disqualified from office, as would well-off ex-Confederates - those with taxable
property worth $20,000 or more.
disqualified Southerners applied in droves for pardons, which Johnson handed out
liberally
by the end of 1865, all seven states had created new civil governments that in
effect restored the status quo from before the war
all seven states took steps to ensure a landless, dependent black labor force: they
passed “black codes” to replace the slave codes
CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION
southern blacks’ status now became the major issue in Congress
against Johnson’s veto, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was passed by Congress to suppress the
black codes
in April 1866, Congress adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, which declared that all persons
born or naturalized in the United States were citizens of the nation and of their states and that
no state could abridge their rights without due process of law or deny them equal protection
of the law
congress also passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867
the governments formed under Congressional Reconstruction were unique, because black men,
including exslaves, participated in them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x_m1EkyB_E
the Freedmen’s Bureau helped exslaves
the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) guaranteed all male citizens’ right to vote
THE KU KLUX KLAN
in 1866, six young Confederate war veterans in Tennessee formed a social club, the Ku Klux
Klan, distinguished by elaborate rituals, hooded costumes, and secret passwords.
by the election of 1868, when black men could first vote, Klan dens had spread to all
southern states.
Klansmen embarked on night raids to intimidate black voters.
no longer a social club, the Ku Klux Klan was now a terrorist movement and a violent arm of
the Democratic Party.
the original Klan of the Reconstruction South eventually faded, but in 1915 hooded men
gathered at Stone Mountain, Georgia, revived it.
D. W. Griffith’s glorification of the original Klan in his 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation
provided further fuel.
 THE BIRTH OF A NATION - A
LANDMARK OF FILM HISTORY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBzDH-Vwzy4

- How are the black representatives portrayed?

THE IMPACT OF EMANCIPATION
emancipated slaves faced daunting handicaps.
they had no property, tools, or capital; possessed meager skills; and more than 95 percent
were illiterate.
emancipation stirred waves of migration within the former Confederacy
many migrants eventually returned to their old locales, but they tended to settle on
neighboring plantations rather than with former owners.
freed blacks’ desire for independence also fostered growth of black churches
blacks organized their own schools, which the Freedmen’s Bureau soon supervised
to freed blacks everywhere, landownership signified economic independence; “forty acres
and a mule”
planters and freedmen began experimenting with new labor schemes, including the division
of plantations into small tenancies  sharecropping
REDEEMING THE SOUTH
white southerners rejected the prospect of
racial integration, which they insisted would
lead to racial amalgamation
Democrats shared one goal: to oust
Republicans from office
sometimes violent actions were used to
intimidate black voters
“Redemption,” the word Democrats used
to describe their return to power, brought
sweeping changes
TURNING BACK THE CLOCK
white southerners used indirect means such as literacy tests (a test of the ability to
read), poll taxes (a tax paid to vote), and property requirements (which restricted
the right to vote to those who owned property) to disfranchise blacks
lynching became the ultimate enforcer of southern white supremacy
through the 1880s and 1890s, about a hundred blacks were lynched annually in the
United States, mainly in the South
the Supreme Court similarly abandoned African-Americans
in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the justices upheld a Louisiana law requiring
segregated railroad cars.
racial segregation was constitutional, the Court held, if equal facilities were made
available to each race
LYNCHING
Look at the postcards on the handout. A lynching postcard is a postcard bearing the
photograph of a lynching—a vigilante murder usually motivated by racial hatred—
intended to be distributed, collected, or kept as a souvenir. Often a lynching postcard
would be inscribed with racist text or poems. Lynching postcards were in widespread
production for more than fifty years in the United States; although their distribution
through the United States Postal Service was banned in 1908.

- Why do you think lynching became a source of entertainment?

- What kind of attitude do the persons writing the postcards show?
THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ethsl1NwP-M

- Do you think the apology changes anything?

EMMETT TILL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYiI7j6GW68