Review 2 - Night

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self- Reliance (1841)

Background
 Born in 1803, the son of a conservative Unitarian minister.
 Father died when he was eight, leaving family in meager
circumstances.
 Influenced by an eccentric aunt, who encouraged his education and
broadminded thinking.
 Attended Harvard at age 14, graduating at 18 and working as a
schoolmaster before studying theology.
 Ordained as junior pastor of Boston’s Second Church (1829) where
Cotton and Increase Mather preached more than a century before.
 Married Ellen Tucker who died of tuberculosis sixteen months later.
 Resigned his pastorate in 1932, because of his skepticism with the theological doctrines such
as the Lord’s Supper.
 Traveled to Europe meeting well-known writers, Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Thomas
Carlyle.
 Moved to Concord, Massachusetts, began lecturing and writing.
 Married Lydia Jackson; fathered four children. His first born, Waldo, died in 1842 at age 5.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self- Reliance (1841)
Additional Background
 Believed in individualism, non-conformity, and the need for harmony between

man and nature. A proponent of abolition.
 His first book, Nature (1836), influenced by a range of idealistic philosophies,
confirmed his future as a prose writer -- establishing him as the center of the
Transcendental Movement.
 Self Reliance is his most famous collection of essays. These essays were
gathered from his journals and lectures and covered a period of years. The
earliest essay from 1832, the year he left the pulpit.
 Contributed to the Transcendentalists’ magazine, The Dial, serving as editor
from 1842-1844.
 Known as a key figure in the “New England Renaissance” [helping American
Literature find it’s place in world literature].
 Gained recognition for his poetry [collected in 1846].
 An inspiration for many writers, especially Henry Thoreau and Walt Whitman.
Map of Concord
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self- Reliance (1841)

Main Points
 Self reliance can be defined as the bringing into the light one’s inner views
on what is true and meaningful, and in the process enriching an entire
community through diversity.
• “The power which resided in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what
that is which he can do, nor does he know until he tries.”
• Emerson calls for greater self-reliance, “a new respect for the divinity in man,”
bringing “revolutionary” change in all relations – religion and prayer, education and
literature, pursuits, modes of living, property and views, and associations.
• In Emerson’s time, America still looked to Europe for its art, architecture,
literature, instead of developing it’s own. He believed that by adopting the talent of
another, one could only claim only half possession. He was critical of Americans for
not using their God-given individuality to become more than mere imitators.
Main Points
 True happiness and fulfillment can only come through

a recognition of one’s own uniqueness, talent and
effort.
• Envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide. It’s only when a person puts his heart
into his work and does his best that he is truly happy and at peace.
• Do not be ashamed to speak your unique thoughts, “divine idea[s]” rather

than quoting the words of some former “saint or sage”. Roses do not make
reference to former roses, but “exist [perfectly] with God today.”
• Actions should be genuine, honest and natural. Don’t be afraid of being

inconsistent -- genuine action will explain itself over time, just as the zigzag path
of a ship’s voyage seen over a distance straightens itself.
Main Points
 Truth comes from within and lies beyond or

“transcends” the knowledge we obtain from our senses.
Trust in the truth, in your intuition.
• Accept your place in the world and do not cower in a corner,
hemmed in by conformity. Be a nonconformist. An infant
conforms to no one. The world conforms to it.
• Do not give to causes that you do not believe in, just because
you feel society expects it. Trust yourself.
• There will be those who think they know your duty better than
you do. Trust yourself.
• Do not be concerned about what others think. Trust that you

have the innate wisdom from God within.
• Become intuitive and in touch with yourself. “Nothing is at last

sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
Emerson’s Birthplace

Main Points
 Emerson advocates independence not only of thought
but also of action. Society continually changes, do not
let these changes encumber your virtue.
• When a man builds a coach, he loses the use of his feet. If one uses
crutches, he loses muscle support. He wears a watch and forgets how to tell
time by the sun.
• Emerson believed that reliance on property and the government to protect

it was a lack in self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves at
things too long and now measure each other by what he has not by what he
is.
• Emerson describes dependence on foreign goods as leading to a “slavish

respect for numbers.”
• Emerson recognized men’s gamble with Fortune, gaining and losing all, but
concludes that nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-
Reliance (1841)
Historical Significance
 Self-Reliance [1841], had a great impact on Emerson’s society, becoming his most well-known essay.
Self-Reliance, together with Nature, established Emerson as a writer and lecturer. He became
regarded as the founder of the Transcendental movement, a distinctly American philosophy
emphasizing optimism, individuality, and mysticism. He was one of the most influential literary
figures of the nineteenth century.
 As a result of the new philosophy introduced in Self-Reliance, America developed literature and art
uniquely different from any other country in the world and established for the first time America’s
place in the world of art and literature. Emerson, through his writing of Self-Reliance, had an impact
on future generations also. He became an inspiration to such writers as Walt Whitman and Henry
David Thoreau. Today, portions of Self-Reliance have been so quoted that many are now cliché. The
philosophy of individual independence has, to some extent, become the American way.
 Self-Reliance had a significant impact not only on American writers and artists, but also on Unitarians
and the liberally religious opening them to science, Eastern religions and a naturalistic mysticism. In
addition to group impact, Self-Reliance, had an impact on the individual American, inspiring him to
listen to and heed the still, small voice of God within.
 The impact of Self-Reliance and the subsequent Transcendental movement was one of supreme
importance extending a challenge to Americans to use their God-given talents for the betterment of
the individual and thus the community. It proved to be a positive, lasting, truly American change.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Young American
Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Born May 25, 1803 Boston, MA - Died April 27, 1882 Concord, MA.
• American essayist, philosopher, and leader of the
Transcendentalist movement in the early 19th century.
• In October 1817, at fourteen, Emerson went to Harvard College
and was appointed the Freshman's President.
• Tutored and taught during the winter vacation at his Uncle Ripley's
school in Waltham, Massachusetts.
• Over the next several years, Emerson made his living as a
schoolmaster, then went to Harvard Divinity School.
• Anonymously published his first essay, Nature, in September 1836.
• August 31, 1837, Emerson delivered his now-famous Phi Beta
Kappa address, "The American Scholar".
• He was denounced as an atheist, and a poisoner of young men's
minds for discounting Biblical miracles and proclaiming that, while
Jesus was a great man, he was not God.
Emerson on Slavery in 1844
• His involvement with the antislavery movement grew as slavery escalated during
the 1840s and early 1850s.
• Emerson’s fears concerning its expansion grew, and he acquired a deep

admiration for the abolitionist movement.
• He delivered his first public antislavery address in 1844, a commemoration of the

British emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies.
Main Points
• 1. Railroad Iron is a magician’s rod, in its power to evoke the
sleeping energies of land and water.
– “But I have abstained too long from speaking of that which led
me to this topic,- [the railroad’s] importance in creating an
American sentiment.”
– “..increased acquaintance it has given the American people..”
– “..reduced England to a third of its size..”
– “..in this country it has given a new celerity to time..”
– “There is no American citizen who has not been stimulated to
reflection by the facilities now in progress of construction for
travel and transportation of goods in the United States.”
Main Points (cont.)

• 2. The uprise and culmination of the new power of
Commerce is of most significance to the American at this
hour.
– “From Washington, ..’the city of magnificent distances,’

through all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country of
beginnings, of projects, of designs, and expectations. It has no
past: all has an onward and prospective look.”
– “We concoct eleemosynary systems, and it turns out that our
charity increases pauperism. We inflate our paper currency,
repair commerce with unlimited credit, and are presently
visited with unlimited bankruptcy”.
Main Points (cont.)

• “The History of commerce..is the record of this benficent
tendency….Trade, a plant which grows wherever there is peace, as soon as
there is peace, and as long as there is peace..”
• “It is a new agent in the world, and one of great function; it is a very
intellectual force.”
• “Trade goes to make the governments insignificant, and to bring every

kind of faculty of every individual that can in any manner serve any
person, on sale… This is good and this the evil of trade, that it would put
everything into market, talent, beauty, virtue, and man himself…”
• “Trade… We design it thus and thus; it turns out otherwise and far better.”
Main Points (cont.)
• “Gentlemen, the development of our American internal resources, the

extension to the utmost of the commercial system, and the appearance of
new moral causes which are to modify the state, are giving an aspect of
greatness to the Future, which the imagination fears to open.”
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1848)
Thoreau was a transcendentalist.
Transcendentalism: A literary and
philosophical movement, associated
with Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Margaret Fuller, asserting the
existence of an ideal spiritual reality
that transcends the empirical and
scientific and is knowable through
intuition.
Source: Excerpted from The American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition
Copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Electronic version licensed from Lernout & Hauspie
Speech Products N.V.
• Essayist, poet, and Transcendentalist
• Born to a pencil maker in Concord, Mass. July 12,
1817
• Went to Concord Academy and then to Harvard
• Loved the outdoors
• Best known for his book Walden
• Other jobs teacher and pencil maker
• Once went to chapel in a green coat “because the
rules required black”
• Refused to pay his poll tax
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
(1848)
“He [Thoreau] is a singular character — a young man
with much wild original nature still remaining in him;
and so far as he is sophisticated, it is in a way and
method of his own. He is as ugly as sin, long-nosed,
queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and somewhat
rustic, although courteous manners, corresponding
very well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of
an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him
much better than beauty.” ---Nathaniel Hawthorne,
distinguished American novelist
"He [Thoreau] had a great contempt for those

who made no effort to gauge accurately their
own powers and weaknesses, and by no
means spared himself, of whom he said that a
man gathers materials to erect a palace, and
finally concludes to build a shantee with
them." --Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher
and Thoreau’s friend and mentor
“Under a government which
imprisons any unjustly, the true Thoreau dedicated his life to the exploration of
place for a just man is also a nature — not as a backdrop to human activity but
prison…. Cast your whole vote, not a as a living, integrated system of which you and I are
strip of paper merely, but your whole simply a part. --Randall Conrad, Director of the
influence.” --Henry David Thoreau Thoreau Project
MAIN POINT 1: Thoreau prefers a

laissez-faire government, but he does
not call for abolishing government.
Rather he wants a better government.
• “That government is best which governs

least…”
• “…I ask for, not at once no government,

but at once a better government.”
MAIN POINT 2: Most men serve the state

mechanically and do not freely exercise
moral judgment about their service.
“The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men

mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They
are the standing army, and the militia, jailers,
constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases
there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment
or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a
level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden
men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve
the purpose.”
MAIN POINT 3: It is man’s duty to

wash his hands of wrong.
“It is not man’s duty, as a matter of course, to
devote himself to the eradication of any…wrong;
he may still properly have other concerns to
engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his
hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer,
not to give it practically his support. If I devote
myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I
must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them
sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get
off him first, that he may pursue his
contemplations too.”
MAIN POINT 4: Order, Civil Government, and
the rule of the majority (i.e. democracy)
sometimes prevents people from doing the
right thing.
“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or
shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until
we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at
once? Men generally, under such a government as this,
think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded
the majority to alter them. They think that, if they
should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil.
But it is the fault of the government itself that the
remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why
is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform?
Why does it not cherish its wise minority?”
MAIN POINT 5: Any man more right than his
neighbors constitutes a majority because he
has God on his side, and he should act
immediately to wash his hand of wrong.
If a government is maintaining unjust laws, people

should at once effectually withdraw their support,
both in person and property, from the government.
They should “not wait till they constitute a majority
of one, before they suffer the right to prevail
through them. I think that it is enough if they have
God on their side, without waiting for that other
one. Moreover, any man more right than his
neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.”
MAIN POINT 6: One honest man can change
the state by standing up to it.
“…if one thousand, if on hundred, if ten men whom

I could name,—if ten honest men only, —ay, if one
HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts,
ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw
from this copartnership, and be locked up in the
county jail therefore, it would be the abolition of
slavery in America. For it matters not how small
the beginning may seem to be: what is once well
done is done forever. But we love better to talk
about it: that we say is our mission.
MAIN POINT 7: A man can change an unjust
system by refusing to be unjust, and by
being entirely willing to make a sacrifice.
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly,

the true place for a just man is also a prison…. Cast
your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but
your whole influence.”
“A minority is powerless while it conforms to the

majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is
irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.”
MAIN POINT 8: Blood spilt is lamentable,

but wounding one’s conscience is worse.
Suppose blood should flow when standing

up to the government or the majority in
refusal to consent to unjust laws. “Is there
not a sort of blood shed when the
conscience is wounded? Through this
wound a man’s real manhood and
immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an
everlasting death.”
MAIN POINT 9: The state should
respect the individual.
“The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy,
from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress
toward a true respect for the individual…. There will
never be a really free and enlightened State until the
State comes to recognize the individual as a higher
and independent power, from which all its own power
and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
I please myself with imaging a State at least which
can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the
individual with respect as a neighbor; which even
would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if
a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it,
nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of
neighbors and fellow-men.”
George Bancroft (1800-1891)
The Progress of Mankind (1854)
Transcendentalism: A literary and
philosophical movement, associated with
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret
Fuller, asserting the existence of an ideal
spiritual reality that transcends the
empirical and scientific and is knowable
through intuition.
George Bancroft
Point 1: Americans and their political system have discovered

how to bring to bear the Divine mind, and thus we are destined
for greatness.
…the condition of our race is one of growth or of decay. It is the glory

of man that he is conscious of this law of his existence. (We great
Americans choose growth.)
The progress of man consists in this, that he himself arrives at the

perception of truth. The Divine mind, which is its source, left it to be
discovered, appropriated and developed by finite creatures.
In this great work our country holds the noblest rank…. Our land
extends far into the wilderness, and beyond the wilderness; and while
on this side of the great mountains it gives the Western nations of
Europe a theatre for the renewal of their youth, on the transmontane
side, the hoary civilisation of the farthest antiquity leans forward
from Asia to receive the glad tidings of the messenger of freedom.
The islands of the Pacific entreat our protection, and at our suit the
Empire of Japan breaks down its wall of exclusion….
George Bancroft
Point 2: In order to progress, each

individual must contribute to the whole,
and the whole of society is more
intelligent than the wisest individual.
In order to advance human progress, it is

every individual’s responsibility “to
contribute some share to the general
intelligence. The many are wiser than the
few; the multitude than the philosopher;
the race than the individual; and each
successive generation than its
predecessor….”
George Bancroft
Point 3: Historians study God’s work, and history is the study’s of

man’s progress.
At the foot of every page in the annals of nations, may be written, “God
reigns.”
…It is because God is visible in History that its office is the noblest
except that of the poet.
Of all pursuits that require analysis, history…stands first. It is equal to
philosophy; for as certainly as the actual bodies forth the ideal, so certainly
does history contain philosophy. It is grander than the natural sciences; for its
study is man, the last work of creation, and the most perfect in its relations
with the Infinite.
In surveying the short period since man was created, the proofs of
progress are so abundant, that we do not know with which of them to begin,
or how they should be classified. He is seen in the earliest stages of society,
bare of abstract truth, unskilled in the methods of induction, and hardly
emancipated from bondage to the material universe. How wonderful is it,
then, that a being whose first condition was so weak, so humble, and so
naked, and s of whom no monument older than forty centuries can be found,
should have accumulated such fruitful stores of intelligence, and have
attained such perfection of culture!
George Bancroft
Point 4: “The human mind tends not only toward unity, but
UNIVERSALITY.”
The world is just beginning to take to heart this principle of the

unity of the race, and to discover how fully and how beneficently it
is fraught with international, political, and social revolutions.
Frederick
Douglass
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

Background
• The son of a slave woman and an unknown white man
• Born in February of 1818 as "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey“
• Escaped from slavery and married Anna Murray in 1938, he changed his name to
Frederick Douglass
• He became a speaker for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society
• William Lloyd Garrison became his mentor, but later would disagree him Garrison
on issues such as the constitution and the dissolution of the Union
• Douglass wrote an autobiography titled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,
an American Slave, Written By Himself in 1845
• He also published his own four page weekly paper called the North Star
• He conferred with Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and recruited northern
blacks for the Union Army. After the War he fought for the rights of women and
African Americans alike.
• He passed away in 1895
• In 1852, he was invited to give a speech celebrating the Fourth of July.

The celebration of the Fourth of July is
hypocritical and contradictory.
– “Fellow-Citizens Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak
her today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national
independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural
justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?”
– “I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high
independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.”
– “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
– “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to
him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which
he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted
liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds
of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted
impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers
and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and
solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -
a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is
not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are
the people of these United States, at this very hour.”
Slavery is unjust and against the Constitution. I
should not have to argue this point.
– “What point in the anti-slavery creed would you like me to argue? On what branch of the
subject do the people of this country need light?”
– “Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of
his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is
that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation,
as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of
justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans,
dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom?
speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to
make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man
beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.”
– “Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody
doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their
government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave.
There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man
(no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of
these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.”
Freedmen have proven themselves just as
capable as white men. They deserve liberty.
– “For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the

Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting
and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses,
constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron,
copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and
cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among
us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and
teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises
common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale
in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving,
acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and
children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s
God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave,
we are called upon to prove that we are men!”
The time for persuasive arguing that slavery is
wrong has passed, now is the time for the
harsh reality.
– “Oh had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s

ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting
ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and
stern rebuke.”
– “The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the

conscience of the nation must be roused; the
propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy
of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against
God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”
My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
Frederick Douglass
MAIN POINTS:
1. Slavery dehumanizes by destroying the family unit. It undermining family values of both slaves and
slave owners.
The practice of separating children from their mother, and hiring the latter out at distances too great to
admit of their meeting, except at long intervals, is a marked feature of the cruelty and barbarity of the slave
system. But it is in harmony with the grand aim of slavery, which, always and everywhere, is to reduce man
to a level with the brute. It is a successful method of obliterating from the mind and heart of the slave, all
just ideas of the sacredness of the family, as an institution.
…My poor mother, like many other slave-women, had many children, but NO FAMILY!
Slavery has no use for fathers, as it does away with families. Slavery has no use for either fathers or
families, and its laws do not recognize their existence in the social arrangements of the plantation.
He [the master] can be father without being a husband, and may sell his child without incurring reproach,
if the child be by a woman in whose veins courses one thirty-second part of African blood.
…[T]he fact remains, in all its odiousness, that, by the laws of slavery, children, in all cases, are reduced to
the condition of their mothers. This arrangement admits of the greatest license to brutal slaveholders, and
their profligate sons, brothers, relations and friends, and gives to the pleasure of sin, the additional
attraction of profit.
My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
Frederick Douglass
2. Education of slaves was dangerous to slave owners because it empowered slaves

and could possibly lead to their freedom.
Mr. Auld promptly forbade continuance of her instruction; telling her, in the first
place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it was also unsafe, and could only lead to
mischief. (Douglass’ masters’ response to his wife teaching Douglass to read the Bible)
…If you learn him now to read, he’ll want to know how to write; and, this
accomplished, he’ll be running away with himself.
It was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery, against which my
youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit: the white man’s
power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man. “Very well,” thought I;
“knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition; and
from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom…
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
1813- Harriet Ann Jacobs is born

1819- Harriet’s mother dies and she realizes she is a slave
1825- Harriet Jacobs mistress dies and she becomes the slave to Dr. Flint’s 3 year old daughter
1828- Dr. flint begins to harass Harriet and tries to sexually take advantage of her
1829- Harriet and Mr. Sands son is born and the baby and Harriet move in with her grandmother
1831- Harriet and Mr. Sands daughter is born
1835- Harriet escapes and goes into hiding in the attic of her grandmothers house
1842- Harriet Jacobs escapes to the North
1844- Harriet moves to Boston with her 2 children
1849- Harriet moves to Rochester, New York, while Dr. Flint’s daughter continues searching for her
1852- Harriet finds out her owner is in New York, so she flees to California to join her brother. She
becomes free when Cornelia Willis, her employer and friend, buys her freedom for $300
1853- Harriet’s grandmother dies; she begins to write about her experiences in anonymous letters
to a New York paper. Later she starts her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
1858- She finishes her book, and travels to England to try to sell her story
1861- Harriet’s book is published
1897- Harriet Jacobs dies on March 7, in Washington D.C.
Main Points:
1) A slave was property and no legal rights, and therefore a slave could not go against
their master’s will, even sexual affairs.
But he was my master. I was compelled to live under the same roof with him---where
I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of
my nature. He told me I was his property; that I must subject to his will in all things.
My soul revolted against the mean tyranny. But where could I turn for protection?
No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress. In
either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, for violence, or even
from death; all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men.
2) The people in the North would not ever believe what was taking place in the South,
and they would not put up with it.
Surely, if you credited one half the truths that are told you concerning the helpless
millions suffering in this cruel bondage, you at the north would not help to tighten
the yoke. You surely would refuse to do for the master, on your own soil, the mean
and cruel work which trained bloodhounds and the lowest class of whites do for him
at the south.
Main Points:
3) The mistress will end up hating the slave girl the most. If a slave is beautiful, jealousy
and hatred could make her a victim of her slave owner.
She listens to violent outbreaks of jealous passion, and cannot help understanding what
is the cause. She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon she will learn to
tremble when she hears her master’s footfall. If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it
will prove her greatest curse. That whish commands admiration in the white woman
only hastens the degradation of the female slave.
4) Sex between master and slave represent unequal power relationship, which is often
exploited to the benefit of the master and the detriment of the slave.
My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing
by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him. If I went out for a
breath of fresh air, after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me. If I knelt by
my mothers grave, his dark shadow fell on me even there. The light heart which nature
had given me became heavy with sad forebodings........
Main Points:
5) A slave had no recourse against violations, and was often in a situation of isolation and
loneliness.
I longed for some one to confide in…..But Mr. Flint swore he would kill me, if I was not
as silent as the grave. Then although my grandmother was all in all to me, I feared her
as well as loved her…..I was very young and felt shamefaced about telling her such
impure things, especially as I knew her to be very strict on such subjects.
6) The wives of the slave owners often also suffered from the unequal relations between
their slave-master husbands and his female slaves. Moreover, she often blamed the slave
for her husband’s infidelity.
I had entered my sixteenth year, and every day it became more apparent that my
presence was intolerable to Mrs. Flint. Angry words frequently passed between her and
her husband. He had never punished me himself, and he would not allow any body else
to punish me. In that respect, she was never satisfied; but, in her angry moods, no
terms were to vile for her to bestow upon me. Yet I, whom she detested so bitterly, had
far more pity for her than he had, whose duty it was to make her life happy. I never
wronged her; and one word of kindness from her would have brought me to her feet…
Main Points:
7) Southern woman often looked at her husbands-slave children as unwanted objects,

who didn’t deserve any special treatment, and might preferably be sold.
…..Southern woman often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little
slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it. They regard such children as
property, as marketable as the pigs on the plantation; and it is seldom that they do
not make them aware of this by passing them into the slave-trader’s hands as soon as
possible, and thus getting them out of their sight.
Alexander Hamilton Stephens
Slavery and the Confederacy
Main Point 1: The new Constitution is

similar to the old only better
• “All the great principles of Magna Charta are
retained in it. No citizen is deprived of life, liberty or
property, but by the judgment of his peers, under the
laws of the land. The great principle of religious liberty,
which was the honor and pride of the old Constitution,
is still maintained and secured.”
• “So, taking the whole new Constitution, I have not
hesitancy in giving it as my judgment, that it is
decidedly better than the old.”
• Main Point 2: With the Independence of the Confederate
States of America, the South will no longer suffer from the
oppressive tariffs of the United States’ federal government.
• “The old thorn of the tariff, which occasioned the cause

of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed
forever from the new…”
• “The cost of the grading, the superstructure and
equipments of our roads was borne by those who
entered upon the enterprise…”
• “The true principle is to subject commerce of every
locality to whatever burdens may be necessary to
facilitate it.”
Main Point 3: Slavery is the cause of the split of
the Union
• “…African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in
our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture
and present revolution. JEFFERSON anticipated this, as the “rock upon
which the old Union would split”…What was conjecture with him, is now
realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon
which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas
entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the
formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the
African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in
principle, socially, morally, and politically.”
• “Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the
assumption of the equality of the races. This was an error. It was a sandy
foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it-when the “storm
came and the wind blew, it fell.” (Matthew 7:27)
Main Point 4: Slavery is the “cornerstone” of the
Confederacy
“Our new Government is founded upon exactly the
opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone
rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal
to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the
superior race, is his natural and moral condition.
[Applause] This, our new Government, is the first, in
the history of the world, based upon this great
physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
“It is upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is
firmly planted.”
Anti-Lincoln Political Ad, 1964
Main Point #5: Northerners are fanatics.

“Those at the North who still cling to these errors with a zeal above
knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an
aberration of the mind; from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity.”
Main Point #6: Northerners are trying to make equal what the Creator has made
unequal.
• “They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled
to equal privileges and rights, with the white man. If their premises were
correct, their conclusions would be logical and just; but their premises being
wrong, their whole argument fails. They were attempting to make things
equal which the Creator had made unequal.”
• “The truth of the Negro’s inferiority “has been slow in the process of its
development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.”
Main Point 8: The people of the confederacy are

peaceful people, but do not try to coerce them.
• “Our object is Peace, not only with the North, but
with the world… The ideal of coercing us, or
subjugating us, is utterly preposterous.”
Main Point 9: If we stay true, we will succeed.

• “If…we are true to ourselves, true to our cause,
true to our destiny, true to our high mission, in
presenting to the world the highest type of
civilization ever exhibited by man—there will be
found in our Lexicon no such word as FAIL.”
FAST DAYS SERMONS
1861
B.M. Palmer
M.J. Raphall
Henry W. Beecher
Fast Day Sermons
• In 1860 Pres. Buchanan called upon the
nations ministers to lead their congregations
in a day of fasting.
• Church leaders from around the nation lead

sermons discussing their stands on slavery and
the possible succession of the south.
Rev. B.M. Palmer
• From New Orleans, was one of the leading

members of the Presbyterian church in the
south.
Slavery a Devine Trust: Duty of the
South to Preserve and Perpetuate it.
• God gave us slavery, and is trusting us to keep

it going.
• “My own conviction is, that we should at once

lift ourselves, intelligently, to the highest
moral ground, and proclaim to all the world
that we hold this trust from God…”
Slavery is essential for our nations self-
preservation.
• This system of servitude supports our material

inertest.
• Our wealth is in land and the people who tend

it.
• For production to be certain, we must have

certain labor
The worst foes of the black race are those
who have intermeddled on their behalf.
• We know better than others that every attribute of

their character fits them for dependence and
servitude
• “…no calamity can befall them greater than the loss

and protection that thy enjoy under this patriarchal
system…”
• Freedom would be their doom

It is a duty which we owe… to the civilized
world.
• Not just America but the world has come to

depend on slavery to deliver products.
• “Strike now a blow to this system of labor, and

the world itself totters at the stroke..”
Slavery was given from God…Society is trying
to take it away.
• “Under this specious cry of reform, it demands

that every evil be corrected, or society
become a wreck-the sun must be stricken
from the heavens, if a spot is found on his
disk…”
Rabbi M.J. Raphall
• Head of the Jewish Synagogue of New York

Bible View of Slavery
• “The New Testament nowhere, directly or indirectly,
condemns slaveholding”
• God gave the ten commandments… when it is

commanded that the Sabbath of the lord is to bring
rest to “Thy male slave and thy female slave”
• Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house… or his

male slave, or his female slave.
What gives you the right to condemn
slavery?
“Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job the men whom the
Almighty conversed… and whom He
vouchsafed to give the character of “perfect,
upright, and fearing God” were all slave
holders.
In their time slavery was lawful and wasn’t a

sin…. “When and by what authority did you
draw that line?”
Rev. Henry W. Beecher
• Was one of the most prestigious church men

in the United States
• Minister to the prestigious Plymouth Church

of Brooklyn
The whole nation is guilty
• “ The sins of a nation are always the sins of a certain
central passion… but they are the same sins…”
• “The corrupt passion which lead in the Southern

States to all the gigantic evil of slavery, in Northern
cities break out in other forms…”
• Slavery started in the South because they loved

money…. And the North went against its morals
because of their love for money.
• Were these theological divisions
irreconcilable?
• Does the Bible condemn or support the

institution of slavery?
• According to each of these ministers, what

was the moral responsibility of a religious
person in January 1861?
Abraham Lincoln
1809-1865
The Gettysburg Address
• Born 1809 in Kentucky to uneducated farmers

in a one room log cabin (making him the first
President born outside of the 13 colonies)
• Elected to Illinois General Assembly in 1834
• Elected to US House of Representatives in 1846
• Elected 16th President (first Republican) of the US in
1861
Other facts about ‘Ole Abe
• Mother died when he was 9 years old. Became very
close to step-mother.
• Formal education was only 18 months. Very well
read and mostly self educated.
• Skilled in wrestling and using an axe.
• Stood 6 ft. 4 in. tall.
• Married to Mary Todd, whose family owned slaves.
• Had four sons. Only one survived into adulthood,
Robert Lincoln.
Historical Context
Battle of Gettysburg
o Battle was July 1-July 3, 1863 in Gettysburg,

Pennsylvania
o Approximately:
163,000 soldiers fought the battle
7,500 were killed
27,000 were wounded
11,100 were captured or missing
o The southern forces were defeated
The Gettysburg Address
Delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
15,000 spectators were in

attendance
Main Points
 Our forefathers founded a nation in liberty on the proposition

that “all men are created equal”. This war is testing the nation on
its endurance of that premise.
 It would be improper to dedicate and hallow these grounds to the

dead. Instead, we should dedicate the living to the work of
preserving the nation.
 The men did not die in vain, but died so the people could have
freedom and a government that shall endure.
Frederick Jackson Turner
• Born in Portage, Wisconsin, in 1861.
• His father was journalist by trade and local historian
which piqued Turner's interest in history
• Graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1884
• Turner decided to become a professional historian,
and received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University
in 1890.
• He was a teacher at the University of Wisconsin from
1889 to 1910, when he began to teach at Harvard.
• He retired in 1924 but continued his research until his
death in 1932.
The Significance of the Frontier in American History
• Turner's major contribution to American history was to argue

that the frontier past best explained the distinctive history of
the United States.
• He first delivered this lecture to a gathering of historians in
1893 at Chicago, which was the site of the World's Columbian
Exposition which was an enormous fair to mark the four-
hundredth anniversary of Columbus' voyage.
• Although almost totally ignored at the time, Turner's lecture
eventually gained such wide distribution and influence that a
contemporary scholar has called it "the single most influential
piece of writing in the history of American history."
The Significance of the Frontier in American
History
• Three years before Turner's frontier thesis, the U.S. Census
Bureau had announced the disappearance of the “frontier
line”.
• Turner took this "closing of the frontier" as an opportunity to
reflect upon the influence the frontier had exercised.
– “The peculiarity of American institutions is the fact that they have
been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding
people-to the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a
wilderness, and in developing at each area of progress out of the
primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the
complexity of city life.”
History
• The American Frontier and European frontier
differ.
– Turner described the European frontier as “a
fortified boundary line running through dense
populations.”
– Turner describes the American frontier as “that it
lies on the hither edge of free land”
History
• Turner observed how Europeans entered the continent and
how it changed them.
– First it finds settlers in “European dress, industries, tools, modes of
travel, thought.”
– “It takes him from the railcar and puts him in the birch canoe”
– “It strips off the hunting garments of civilization and arrays him in the
hunting shirt and the moccasins.”
– “It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois…”
– “Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a
sharp stick..”
– “…at the frontier the environment is at first too strong for the man. He
must accept the conditions in which it furnishes, or perish, and so he
fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trails
History
• Turner believed that “the most important effect of
the frontier has been in the promotion of democracy
here and in Europe.”
• “As has been indicated the frontier is productive of
individualism.”
• “Complex society is precipitated by the wilderness
into a kind of primitive organization, based on
family.”
• “The tendency is anti-social.”
• “It produces antipathy to control, and particularly to
direct control…”
• “The frontier individualism has been from the
beginning promoted democracy.”
History
• Turner believed the frontier led to a strong
sense of nationalism.
• -”The frontier promoted the formation of a
composite nationality for the American
people.”
• -The experiences of the frontiersmen gave
them commonality and association with other
migrants during westward expansion.
History
• Again now, four centuries from the

discovery of America, at the end of a
hundred years of life under the
Constitution, the frontier has gone, and
with its going has closed the first period
of American history.
Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life
POINT 1: DO NOT LIVE A LIFE OF IDELNESS; A STRENUOUS

LIFE IS MUCH MORE REWARDING AND NOBLE.
• I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous
life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of
success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who
does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these
wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
• We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies
victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a
friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual
life.
• A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life
which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.
• The man must be glad to do a man's work, to dare and endure and to labor; to keep
himself, and those dependent on him. The woman must be the housewife, the
helpmeet of the homemaker, the wise and fearless mother of many healthy children.
POINT 2: ONLY THROUGH STRIFE AND STRENUOUS AND
DARING EFFORT WILL WE ACHIEVE NATIONAL GREATNESS.
• …it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall
ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.
POINT 3: WEAKNESS IS THE GREATEST OF CRIMES. OUR NATION
HAS A RESPONSIBILTY TO BRING THE HALF-CAST NATIONS OF
THE WORLD GOOD GOVERNMENT. IF WE DO THIS WE WILL BE
GREAT, AND IF WE DO NOT WE WILL CEDE THE OPPORTUNITY TO
“BOLDER AND STRONGER PEOPLES.”
• We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease
within our borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond them, sunk in scrambling
commercialism; heedless of higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil and risk, busying ourselves
only with the wants of our bodies for the day, until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of
question, what China has already found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself into
a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations
which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really great people,
we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world.
• The guns that thundered off Manila and Santiago left us echoes of glory, but they also left us a
legacy of duty. If we drove out a mediaeval tyranny only to make room for savage anarchy, we
had better not begun the task at all. It is worse than idle to say that we have no duty to perform,
and can leave to their fates the islands we have conquered. Such a course would be a course of
infamy. It would be followed at once by utter chaos in the wretched islands themselves. Some
stronger, manlier power would have to step in and do the work, and we would have shown
ourselves weaklings, unable to carry to successful completion the labors that great and high-
spirited nations are eager to undertake.
POINT 3 (CONTINUED): WEAKNESS IS THE GREATEST OF

CRIMES. OUR NATION HAS A RESPONSIBILTY TO BRING THE HALF-
CAST NATIONS OF THE WORLD GOOD GOVERNMENT. IF WE DO THIS
WE WILL BE GREAT, AND IF WE DO NOT WE WILL CEDE THE
OPPORTUNITY TO “BOLDER AND STRONGER PEOPLES.”
• The Philippines offer a yet graver problem. Their population includes half-caste and
native Christians, warlike Moslems, and wild pagans. Many of their people are utterly unfit
for self-government and show no signs of becoming fit.
• Resistance [in the Philippines] must be stamped out. The first and all-important work to
be done is to establish the supremacy of our flag. We must put down armed resistance
before we can accomplish anything else, and there should be no parleying, no faltering, in
dealing with our foe. As for those in our own country who encourage the foe, we can afford
contemptuously to disregard them; but it must be remembered that their utterances are
not saved from being treasonable merely by the fact that they are despicable.
• [We must send out there only good and able men.... [They] must show the utmost tact
and firmness, remembering that, we such people as those with whom we are to deal,
weakness is the greatest of crimes, and that next to weakness comes lace of consideration
for their principles and prejudices.
William Graham Sumner, What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)
Background
• He grew up in Hartford, Connecticut
• Is the son of a working class English immigrant
• After graduating from Yale, he became a minister
• Returned to Yale as a professor of political and social
science
• He is known for his provocative ideas, rigorous
intellectual standards and staunch moral conviction
Social Darwinism
• Sumner became one of the leading
proponents of laissez-faire and social
darwinism
Main Points
• A person that doesn’t contribute to society is a
burden on society
– “a man who is present as a consumer, yet who does not
contribute either by land, labor, or capital to the work of
society, is a burden”
• Every person has a responsibility to take care of
themselves, to mind their own business
– “every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is,
to take care of his or her own self. This is a social duty.”.
Main Points Cont.

• The state can not make any money, they can
only give money to one person by taking it
away from another
– “these conflicts are rooted in the supposed reality
that one group wins on the expense of another
group. The gains of some imply the losses of
others. The path of achievement in society is trod
over the well being of others.”
The social structure is based on contract
• “A society based on contract is a society of

free and independent men, who form ties
without favor or obligation, and co-operate
without cringing or intrigue.”
And that of the Forgotton Man

• “He is not, technically, “poor” or “weak”; he
minds his own business, and makes no
complaint. Consequently the philanthropists
never think of him, and trample on him…..”
Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
Thorstein Veblen’s Background

• Born Toston Bunde Veblen on July 30, 1857 in Cato, Wisconsin to two Norwegian immigrants.
• He was the sixth of twelve children.
• Veblen graduated in 1880 from Carleton College, Minnesota.
• In 1884, he received his Doctorate in Philosophy from Yale.
• For seven years Veblen read books by volume on the farm in Minnesota, while he
recuperated from malaria.
• In 1891 Veblen enrolled as a graduate student in economics at Cornell.
• Had an “appointment” at Stanford, but was asked to leave.
• A year later he moved to the University of Chicago, where he stayed for 14 years as a faculty
member.
• In 1911, he joined the University of Missouri, but did not like it very much, but stayed until
1918.
• 1918, he moved to New York and was editor of “The Dial”
• In 1919 he helped found “The New School” (The New School for Social Research) and stayed
their until 1926.
• In 1927, he moved back to Palo A lto where he had property there, and ironically died a mere
3 months before the crash of the U.S. stock market, which brought on The Great Depression.
Thorstein’s Views
• Thorstein was an economist who disagreed with the views of Social
Darwinism.
WHAT IS SOCIAL DARWINISM?

• Social Darwinism is a theory that competition among all individuals,
groups, nations, or ideas drives social evolution.
• More commonly known with Darwinism: “Survival of the Fittest”
• Majority of the Social Darwinist were wealthy, and Veblen saw them as
“social parasites and hindrances to human evolution.”
• Veblen thought that this was just greed and laziness and their wealth was
not to "benefit all others”
Main Point #1
• The Leisure class is sheltered
from economic exigencies.
“The exigencies of the struggle for the means of life are less exacting for this class
than for any other; and as a consequence of this privileged position we should
expect to find it one of the least responsive of the class of society to the demands
with the situation makes for a further growth of institutions and a readjustment to
an altered industrial situation.”
“The exigencies of the general economic situation of the community do not freely
or directly impinge upon the members of this class.”
“They are not required under penalty of forfeiture to change their habits of life
and their theoretical views of the external world to suit the demands of an altered
industrial technique, since they are not in the full sense of an organic part of the
industrial community.”
Main Point #2
• The Leisure Class IS the Conservative Class.
“The conservatism of the wealthy class is so obvious a feature that it has
even come to be recognized as a mark of respectability.”
“Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and

conversely, innovation, being a lowered class phenomenon, is vulger.”
“So that even in cases where one recognizes substantial merits of the case
for which the innovator is spokesman-as may easily happen if the evils
which he seeks to remedy are sufficiently remote in point of time or space
or personal contact-still one cannot but be sensible of the fact that the
innovator is a person with whom it is at least distasteful to be associated,
and from whose special constant one must shrink. Innovation is bad form.”
Main Point #3
• The Leisure class acts to make the
lower class conservative.
“From this proposition it follows that the institution of a
leisure class acts to make the lower classes conservative by
withdrawing from them as much as it may of the means of
sustenance, and so reducing their consumption, and
consequently their available energy, to such a point as to
make them incapable of their efforts required for the learning
and adoption of new habits of though.
“The accumulation of wealth at the upper end of the
pecuniary scale implies privation at the lower end of the
scale.”
Main Point #4
• Conspicuous consumption is one of the main
elements in the standards of decency.
“The imperative example set by the upper class in fixing the canons of
reputability fosters the practice of conspicuous consumption.”
“The prevalence of conspicuous consumption as one of the main elements
in the stand of decency among all classes is of course not traceable wholly
to the example of the wealthy leisure class, but the practice and the
insistence on it are not doubt strengthened by the example of the leisure
class.”
Main Point #5
• Progress is hindered by underfeeding and
excessive physical hardship.
“Consequently it follows that progress is hindered by underfeeding
and excessive physical hardship, no less effectually than by such a
luxurious life as will shut out discontent by cutting off the occasion for
it.”
“The abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are entirely
absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance, are conservative
because they cannot afford the effot of taking thought for the day
after to-morrow; just as the highly prosperous are conservative
because they have small occasion to be discontented with the
situation as it stand today.”
Main Point #6
• The Institution of a leisure class hinders
cultural development.
“The institution of a leisure class hinders cultural development
immediately (1) by the inertia proper to the class itself. (2) through
its prescriptive example of conspicuous waste and of conservatism,
and (3) indirectly through that system of unequal distribution of
wealth and sustenance on which the institution itself rests…”
Main Point #7
• The Leisure class constantly retards
adjustment to the environment.
“The leisure class, in the nature of things, consistently acts to retard that
adjustment to the environment which is called social advance or
development.”
“The institution of a leisure class, by force of class interest and instinct,
and precept and prescriptive example, makes for the perpetuation of the
existing maladjustment of institution, and even favours a reversion to a
somewhat more archaic scheme of life; a scheme which would be still
farther out of adjustment with the exigencies of life under the existing
situation even than the accredited, obsolescent scheme that has come
down from the immediate past.”
Veblen was the son of Norwegian immigrants, and he grew up in rural

Minnesota.
He did not learn to speak English until he was a teenager.
He received a B.A. from Carleton College in 1880 and a Ph.D. in

philosophy from Yale in 1884. At Yale, he developed a friendship with his
sociology professor, William Graham Sumner, and wrote his doctoral
thesis on Immanuel Kant in the area of Moral Philosophy.
In 1882, he started to teach political economy at the University of

Chicago. He became known as a brilliant and eccentric thinker and an
unconventional teacher. At the University of Chicago he gained a
reputation as an insightful social critic, and it was during his years in
Chicago that he wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class.
He taught political economy and later became editor of the Journal of
Political Thought.
He taught at Stanford from 1906-1909 and at the
University of Missouri from 1911-1918.
In 1919 he became a founding member of the New

School for Social Research in New York.
He died in 1929 of heart disease.

Main Point 1: The leisure class is
conservative, finding no reason to support
changes, because they enjoy the status quo
and are little affected by economic pressures.
The exigencies of the struggle for means of life are less
exacting for [the leisure] class than for any other; and as a
consequence of this privilege position we should expect to
find it one of the least responsive of the classes of society
to the demands which the situation makes for a further
growth of institutions and a readjustment to an altered
industrial situation. The leisure class is the conservative
class.
…exigencies do not readily produce in the members of this

class, that degree of uneasiness with the existing order
which alone can lead any body of men to give up views and
methods of life that have become habitual to them. The
office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard
the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent….
Main Point 2: Conservatism
is decorous and respectable.
Innovation is vulgar.
•This conservatism of the wealthy class is so obvious a feature that it has even
come to be recognized as a mark of respectability. Since conservatism is a
characteristic of the wealthier and therefore more reputable portion of the
community, it has acquired a certain honorific or decorative value. It has
become prescriptive to such an extent that an adherence to conservative views
is comprised as a matter of course in our notions of respectability; and it is
imperatively incumbent on all who would lead a blameless life in point of social
repute. Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and
conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar.
•…progress is hindered by underfeeding and excessive physical hardship, no

less effectually than by such a luxurious life as will shut out discontent by
cutting off the occasion for it. The abjectly poor, and all those persons whose
energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance, are
conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day
after tomorrow; just as the highly prosperous are conservative because they
have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands today.
•From this proposition it follows that the institution of a leisure class acts to
make the lower classes conservative by withdrawing from them as much as it
may of the means of sustenance, and so reducing their consumption, and
consequently their available energy, to such a point as to make them incapable
of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new habits of thought.
Main Points 3: The example of the leisure class fosters conspicuous
consumption, which diverts resources away from sustenance of the lower
classes.
•The prevalence of conspicuous consumption as one of the main elements in the

standard of decency among all classes is of course not traceable wholly to the example
of the wealthy leisure class, but the practice and the insistence on it are no doubt
strengthened by the example of the leisure class. The requirements of decency in this
matter are very considerable and very imperative; so that even among classes whose
pecuniary position is sufficiently strong to admit a consumption of goods considerably in
excess of the subsistence minimum, the disposable surplus left over after the more
imperative physical needs are satisfied is not infrequently diverted to the purpose of a
conspicuous decency, rather than to added physical comfort and fullness of life.
Moreover, such surplus energy as is available is also likely to be expended in the
acquisition of goods for conspicuous consumption or conspicuous boarding. The result is
that the requirements of pecuniary reputability tend (1) to leave but a scanty
subsistence minimum available for other than conspicuous consumption, and (2) to
absorb any surplus energy which may be available after the bare physical necessities of
life have been provided for. What is a living wage? Why
is there starvation?
Main Point 4: Since the leisure class discourages
change, it hinders evolutionary progress.
…the leisure class, in the nature of things, consistently acts to

retard that adjustment to the environment which is called social
advance or development. The characteristic attitude of the class
may be summed up in the maxim: "Whatever is, is right" whereas
the law of natural selection, as applied to human institutions,
gives the axiom: "Whatever is, is wrong." Not that the institutions
of today are wholly wrong for the purposes of the life of today, but
they are, always and in the nature of things, wrong to some
extent. They are the result of a more or less inadequate
adjustment of the methods of living to a situation which prevailed
at some point in the past development.
The institution of a leisure class, by force or class interest and
instinct, and by precept and prescriptive example, makes for the
perpetuation of the existing maladjustment of institutions, and
even favors a reversion to a somewhat more archaic scheme of
life; a scheme which would be still farther out of adjustment with
the exigencies of life under the existing situation even than the
accredited, obsolescent scheme that has come down from the
immediate past.
Seneca Falls Convention, Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
1. All women are created equal.

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal…”
2. Women, too, are given certain unalienable rights by God.

“…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”
3. When under oppression, women have the right to refuse allegiance to their government and lobby for a
better one that grants equality.
“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who
suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a 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.”
4. Men have repeatedly harmed and dominated women.

“The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward
woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let
facts be submitted to a candid world.”
5. Because women are equal, but because they have been oppressed, they should be immediately admitted
as full American citizens.
“…because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most
sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which
belong to them as citizens of these United States.”
Main Points
Women declared their independence and inalienable

Rights: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
• “We insist that [women] have immediate admission to the

rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the
United States.”
• “…Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under
this government, and such is now the necessity which
constrains them to demand the equal station to which they
are entitled.”
Main Points
Men have created a social and political tyranny over women by not recognizing
their civil liberties.
“He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to
lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.”
• “He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.”
• “He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.”
• “He has withheld from her rights which are given the most ignorant and degraded men- both natives and foreigners.”
• “He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.”
• “He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.”
• “In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her
master.”
• …if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be
made profitable to it.” 1
Horatio Storer, The Origins of the Insanity in Women (1865)
1. Mental disease in women results from a disturbance in their

reproductive system.
“That in women mental disease is often, perhaps generally,
dependent upon the functional or organic disturbance of the
reproductive system.”
2. These mental disorders coincide with women’s menstrual cycles.

“That in women…mental disease is usually coincident with the
catamenial [menstrual] establishment.”
3. Therefore, focusing only on the disorder is like only treating the

symptoms. The disease – the dysfunctional reproductive system –
must be cured to ensure a healthy patient.
4. “…it is just as unscientific here, and generally as futile, to treat primarily

the mental disturbance, which is usually a symptom only or a
consequence…”
The Origins of Insanity in Women, Horatio Storer (1865)
Main Points
1. His propositions:
Mental disease (insanity) in women is due to their reproductive systems.
Mental disease is made worse by menstruation
To treat mental disease (insanity) in women, you must believe the above theories.
2. Storer wanted to cure insane women.

“The necessity of removing a cause to prevent or to cure its effect is as decided in
mental pathology as in physical. We recognize it everywhere else; we must
recognize it in the treatment of insane women…”
3. Storer’s view of women was preconceived and warped.

“…they have become habitually thievish, profane, or obscene, despondent
or self-indulgent, shrewish or fatuous…”
Storer felt like women needed to be sheltered and protected. For them to have their
own views and feelings was wrong. Being passionate or sexually aggressive was
something that needed to be taken care of. Nymphomania was a term used only
to describe obsessive sexual desires in women.
4. As the weaker sex, women are more vulnerable to their passions.

“The attacks of this (sexual desire) were clearly coincident with the menstrual
period, and so extreme that the patient could with difficulty restrain herself from
soliciting the approach of the other sex.”
Upon treatment (removal of the ovaries, menstrual pain, potassium monoxide), the
“morbid desires” stopped.
The sexual desires for men were normal, sexual desires in women had to be treated.
Why?
Fourteenth Amendment
to The U.S. Constitution:
“No State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States; nor
shall any State deprive any person
of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor deny to
any person within its jurisdiction
the equal protection of the laws.”
Myra Colby Bradwell
James
• Born in 1831 in Manchester, Vermont. Bradwell
• In 1852 Myra married James B. Bradwell, an Englishman who had immigrated to

the United States and studied law in Memphis Tennessee.
• In 1854, the Bradwells moved to Chicago, where James opened a law office and
eventually became a judge of the Cook County Court.
• Myra began to study law to help her husband as his assistant. She later decided Myra Colby
to open a practice of her own. Bradwell
• In 1868 Myra founded a weekly legal newspaper called the Chicago Legal News.
With Bradwell servicing as both editor and business manager, the Chicago Legal
News quickly became a success.
• In 1869, after passing the state bar examination, Bradwell applied to the Illinois
Supreme Court for admission to the bar. The court rejected her application on the
grounds that as a married woman she “would be bound neither by her express
contracts nor by those implied contracts which it is the policy of the law to create
between attorney and client.” She reapplied, but the court rejected her again, this
time because she was a woman, regardless of her marital status. The Court ruled,
"God designed the sexes to occupy different spheres of action, and that it belonged
to men to make, apply and execute laws, was regarded as an almost axiomatic
truth."
• She appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1873 upheld the Illinois
decision, saying that it could not interfere with each state’s right to regulate the
granting of licenses within its borders.
Bradwell v. The State of Illinois
(1873), U.S. Supreme Court
Main Point 1
(Majority Decision written by
Justice Miller):
Citizenship does not give one
the right, under the
fourteenth amendment, to
practice law in the courts of
a state.
“We agree with [counsel] that there Myra Bradwell
are privileges and immunities
belonging to citizens of the United
States, in that relation and
character, and that it is these and
these alone which a State is
forbidden to abridge. But the right to
admission to practice in the courts
of a State is not one of them. This
right in no sense depends on
citizenship of the United States.” p.
84.
Justice Samuel Freeman Miller
Main Point 2 (Concurring Opinion by Justice Bradley): Men and women are
very different. Women are naturally timid and delicate and there are many
occupations for which they are unfit. Man is woman’s protector and
defender.
…[T]he civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide
difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man
is, or should be, woman's protector and defender. The natural and proper
timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for
many of the occupations of civil life. p. 85.
Main Point 3 (Concurring Opinion by Justice

Bradley): Women belong to the domestic sphere,
and should not adopt a career distinct and
independent from that of her husband.
The constitution of the family organization, which
is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in
the nature of things, indicates the domestic
sphere as that which properly belongs to the
domain and functions of womanhood. The
harmony, not to say identity, of interests and
views which belong, or should belong, to the
family institution is repugnant to the idea of a
woman adopting a distinct and independent
Justice Bradley
career from that of her husband. p. 85.
Main Point 4 (Concurring Opinion by Justice
Bradley): God has given women the role of
wives and mothers. This is a natural law to
which we must adapt, and not be persuaded
by exceptional cases.
The paramount destiny and mission of
woman are to fulfill the noble and benign
offices of wife and mother. This is the law of
the Creator. And the rules of civil
society must be adapted to the general
constitution of things, and cannot be based
upon exceptional cases. p. 85.
• In the 1875 case Minor V. Happersett, the Court ruled against women
suffrage in Missouri on the basis that the Fourteenth Amendment does not
add to the privileges and immunities of a citizen, and that historically
“citizen” and “eligible voter” have not been synonymous.
• About a hundred years later, the Court began employing the Fourteenth
Amendment as a way of overturning gender-discriminatory state laws. In
doing so, however, it would typically use the "equal protection" clause,
rather than the clause cited in Bradwell, "privileges and immunities."
• In 1882, the Illinois legislature passed a law guaranteeing all persons,
regardless of sex, the right to select a profession as they wished. Although
Bradwell never reapplied for admission to the bar, the Illinois Supreme
Court informed her that her original application had been accepted. As a
result, she became the first woman member of the Illinois State Bar
Association; she was also the first woman member of the Illinois Press
Association. On March 28, 1892, she was admitted to practice before the
U.S. Supreme Court.
• In addition to her efforts to win admission to the bar, Bradwell played a role
in the broader women's rights movement. She was active in the Illinois
Woman Suffrage Association and helped form the American Woman
Suffrage Association. She was also influential in the passage of laws by the
Illinois legislature that gave married women the right to keep wages they
earned and protected the rights of widows.
• Bradwell died February 14, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois.
Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (1920).
Background
• Born: Sep. 14, 1879, 6th out of 11 children.
• Sanger believed the reason her mother died at age 50 was because
of 18 pregnancies.
• In 1896 Sanger entered Claverack College and Hudson River
Institute, she then attended White Plains Hospital’s nursing
program in 1900.
• Published The Woman Rebel in March of 1914 and was indicted in
August of 1914 for obscenity laws because of its urging women to
use contraceptives
• Sanger returned to U.S. to face charges, charges were dropped
because 5 yr. old daughter died unexpectedly of pneumonia.
• In October 1916, first birth control clinic Brownsville, Brooklyn , only
to be closed down 9 days later.
Background (cont.)
• She formed the National Committee on Federal
Legislation for Birth Control in 1929 in order to
lobby for legislation to allow physicians to legally
provide women with contraceptives
• She helped form the International Planned
Parenthood Federation in 1952 and served as its
first president until 1959.
• The 1965 Supreme Court ruling in Griswold v.
Connecticut allowed married couples to legally
acquire birth control.
• Margaret Sanger died on October 6, 1966.
Main points
• 1. Birth control is the concrete foundation for
improving civilization and diminishing the evils of
society.
– “The creators of over-population are the women,
who, while wringing their hands over each fresh
horror, submit anew to their task of producing the
multitudes who will bring about the next tragedy of
civilization.”
– “She was replenishing the ranks of the prostitutes,
furnishing grist for the criminal courts and inmates for
prisons.”
Main points
(cont.)
• 2. Birth control is the way for women to
attain basic freedom.
– “They [women] are determined to decide for
themselves whether they shall become mothers,
under what conditions and when.”
– “Through birth control she will attain to voluntary
motherhood. “ “Having attained this, the basic
freedom of her sex, she will cease to enslave
herself and the mass of humanity.”
Main points (cont.)

• 3. Women need to educate themselves on the
issue of birth control. Doing so will diminish
unwanted pregnancies and solve many of
humanities weaknesses.
– Famine, tyrannies, insane, slums, and war.
– “She cannot pay it with palliatives-with child labor
laws, prohibition, regulations of prostitution and
agitation against war.”
– “War, famine, poverty and oppression of the workers
will continue while woman makes life cheap.” “They
will cease only when she limits her reproductively and
human life is no longer a thing to be wasted.”
3rd main point cont.

• “The problem of birth control has arisen from
the effort of the feminine spirit to free itself
from bondage. Women herself has wrought
that bondage through her reproductive
powers and while enslaving herself has
enslaved the world.”
Main points (cont.)

• 4. Birth control is primarily a woman’s problem.
– “Within her is wrapped up the future of the race-it is
hers to make or mar.” “It is woman’s duty as well as
her privilege to lay hold of the means of freedom.”
– “In an ideal society, no doubt, birth control would
become the concern of the man as well as the
woman.”
– “Man has not only refused any such responsibility, but
has individually and collectively sought to prevent
woman from obtaining knowledge by which she could
assume this responsibility for herself.”
4th main point cont.

– “ The task is hers. It cannot be avoided by excuses,
nor can it be delegated. It is not enough for women
to point to the self-evident domination of man. It
makes no difference that she does not formulate
industrial systems nor that she is an instinctive
believer in social justice. In her submission lies her
error and her guilt.”
– “She goes through the vale of death alone, each time
a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor
the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her
right to decide whether she will endure it.”
– “Birth control is a woman’s problem. The quicker she
accepts it as hers and hers alone, the quicker will
society respect motherhood. The quicker, too, will the
world be made fit a place for her children to live.”
• Margaret Sanger “revolutionized” America more than
anyone else has. She opened the minds of others to
women's rights to choose when and how many children to
have. By giving women the opportunity to make choices
about motherhood she reduced the amount of evils in
humanity. What would the world be like if there were not
birth control? Can you imagine the crime rate, the
depletion of resources, famine, and other tribulations if
there was no control of the population. By introducing a
method to control the population, Sanger enhanced the
value of life for those who wanted children and those who
did not. Life became more of a gift for those who had the
opportunity to choose when to have children.
Thousands gathered in Paris, Texas, for the 1893 lynching of
Henry Smith.
Thousands gathered in Paris, Texas, for the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
MAIN POINTS
• For more than thirty years Negroes were killed without
due process.
– “During these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in
cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution.”
• Race Riots
• Unjust Suffrage
• Violators of white women
• The government did nothing to stop brutal lynchings of

Negroes.
– “The government which had made the Negro a citizen found itself unable to
protect him. It gave him the right to vote, but denied him the protection
which should have maintained that right.”
Main Points Continued
• After Negroes were given emancipation, White

women from the north began teaching the
negroes despite allegations by southern white
women that these negroes were violent.
– “ Before the world adjudges the Negro a moral monster, a vicious assailant of
womanhood and a menace to the sacred precincts of home, the colored people
ask the consideration of the silent record of gratitude, respect, protection, and
devotion of the millions of the race in the South, to the thousands of northern
white women who have served as teachers and missionaries since the war…”
Main Points Continued
• The Negroes were helpless in the fight against
the white men.
– “The white man’s victory soon became complete by fraud,

violence, intimidation, and murder. The franchise vouchsafed to the
Negro grew to be a “barren ideality,” and regardless of numbers, the
colored people found themselves voiceless in the councils of those
whose duty it was to rule.”
Spectacle lynching. The Burning and Lynching of
Jesse Washington, Waco Texas 1916.
Although accurate figures on the lynching of blacks are
lacking, one study estimates that in Texas between 1870
and 1900, extralegal justice was responsible for the
murder of about 500 blacks—only Georgia and Mississippi
exceeded Texas’s numbers in this grisly record. Between
1900 and 1910, Texas mobs murdered more than 100
black people. In 1916 at Waco, approximately 10,000
whites turned out in holiday-like atmosphere to watch a
mob mutilate and burn a black man named Jesse
Washington. (Source: Calvert, De Leon and Cantrell, The
History of Texas, pp. 189, 261-262.)
Booker T. Washington
Main Point: We should concentrate on
work and progress. Blacks and whites
need stop fighting, agitating and
relocating. The South will progress if
we work together. We only hurt
ourselves by fighting.
THE MESSAGE FOR BLACKS: Work hard, and do not agitate for
equality. Start at the bottom and work your way up.
Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic

service, and in the professions. …when it comes to business…, it is
in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the
commercial world…. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap
from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of
us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in
mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and
glorify common labour and put brains and skill into the common
occupations of life…. No race can prosper till it learns that there is
as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the
bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.
The wisest among my race understand
that the agitation of questions of social
equality is the extremist folly, and that
progress in the enjoyment of all the
privileges that will come to us must be
the result of severe and constant
struggle rather than of artificial forcing.
However, working together does not
necessary include socializing together.
THE MESSAGE FOR WHITES: We are a loyal and humble people
who serve you well if you treat us well. It is in your interest to
encourage and help black people.
Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you
know, whose fidelity and love you have tested….. Cast down your
bucket among these people who have without strikes and labor wars
tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and
cities, brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, just to
make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the
South. Casting down bucket among my people, helping and
encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to
education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy
your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and
run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as
in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most
patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world
has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing
your children, watching by the sickbed of your mothers and fathers,
and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in
the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion
that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives,….
[We will interlace ] our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life
with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one.
THE MESSAGE FOR WHITES: If white people insist on keeping
the Negro down, they will only be hurting themselves.
Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward,
or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall constitute
one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one-
third its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the
business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a
veritable body, of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort
to advance the body politic.
Stamp commemorating Booker T.

Washington
Issue Date: April 7, 1940
SIGNIFICANT FINE POINT FOR BOTH RACES: We do not have to
socialize together, but we should work together for the common
cause of development.
In all things that are purely social we call be as separate as the

fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
W.E.B. Du Bois, Strivings of the Negro People (1897)
Main Points:
1. Being a problem [i.e. being an black person in 19th

c. America] is a disturbing experience, compelling
one to always take other people’s estimation of them
in consideration and creating a double-
consciousness.
[T]he Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil,

and gifted with second-sight in this American world,--
a world which yields him no self-consciousness, but
only lets him see himself through the revelation of
the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this
double-consciousness, this sense of always looking
at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring
one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in
amused contempt and pity.
2. The African American feels his duality of being both African
and American.
One ever feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two souls,

two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in
one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being
torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of
this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to
merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging
he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish
to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the
world and Africa; he does not wish to bleach his Negro blood in a
flood of white Americanism, for he believes — foolishly, perhaps,
but fervently — that Negro blood has yet a message for the
world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both
a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by
his fellows, without losing the opportunity of self-development.
3. The end of the Negro’s striving is “to be a co-worker in the

kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, and to
husband and use his best powers.
3. Prejudice and discrimination keep the freedman oppressed.
The freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.
Whatever of lesser good may have come in these years of
change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the
Negro people….
4. Americans, including white Americans, should appreciate

the Negro race.
Work, culture, and liberty,--all these we need, not singly, but

together; for to-day these ideals among the Negro people are
gradually coalescing, and finding a higher meaning in the
unifying ideal of race,--the ideal of fostering the traits and
talents of the Negro, not in opposition to, but in conformity
with, the greater ideals of the American republic, in order
that some day, on American soil, two world races may give
each to each those characteristics which both so sadly lack.
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Niagara Movement, (1905)
1. We should meet, despite the existence of other

organizations for Negroes.
2. We must complain about common wrongs toward

blacks.
We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint,

ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of
dishonesty and wrong—this is the ancient,
unerring way to liberty, and we must follow it.
(p. 100)
3. In not a single instance has the justice of our

demands been denied, but then come the
excuses.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self- Reliance (1841)

 Believed in individualism, non-conformity, and the need for harmony between

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self- Reliance (1841)

 True happiness and fulfillment can only come through

• Do not be ashamed to speak your unique thoughts, “divine idea[s]” rather

• Actions should be genuine, honest and natural. Don’t be afraid of being

 Truth comes from within and lies beyond or

• Do not be concerned about what others think. Trust that you

• Become intuitive and in touch with yourself. “Nothing is at last

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self- Reliance (1841)

• Emerson believed that reliance on property and the government to protect

• Emerson describes dependence on foreign goods as leading to a “slavish

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson on Slavery in 1844

• Emerson’s fears concerning its expansion grew, and he acquired a deep

• He delivered his first public antislavery address in 1844, a commemoration of the

Main Points (cont.)

– “From Washington, ..’the city of magnificent distances,’

Main Points (cont.)

• “Trade goes to make the governments insignificant, and to bring every

Main Points (cont.)

• “Gentlemen, the development of our American internal resources, the

"He [Thoreau] had a great contempt for those

MAIN POINT 1: Thoreau prefers a

• “That government is best which governs

• “…I ask for, not at once no government,

MAIN POINT 2: Most men serve the state

“The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men

MAIN POINT 3: It is man’s duty to

If a government is maintaining unjust laws, people

“…if one thousand, if on hundred, if ten men whom

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly,

“A minority is powerless while it conforms to the

MAIN POINT 8: Blood spilt is lamentable,

Suppose blood should flow when standing

Point 1: Americans and their political system have discovered

…the condition of our race is one of growth or of decay. It is the glory

The progress of man consists in this, that he himself arrives at the

Point 2: In order to progress, each

In order to advance human progress, it is

Point 3: Historians study God’s work, and history is the study’s of

The world is just beginning to take to heart this principle of the

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

• In 1852, he was invited to give a speech celebrating the Fourth of July.

– “For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the

– “Oh had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s

– “The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the

2. Education of slaves was dangerous to slave owners because it empowered slaves

1813- Harriet Ann Jacobs is born

7) Southern woman often looked at her husbands-slave children as unwanted objects,

Main Point 1: The new Constitution is

• “The old thorn of the tariff, which occasioned the cause

Anti-Lincoln Political Ad, 1964

Main Point #5: Northerners are fanatics.

Main Point 8: The people of the confederacy are

Main Point 9: If we stay true, we will succeed.

• Church leaders from around the nation lead

• From New Orleans, was one of the leading

• God gave us slavery, and is trusting us to keep

• “My own conviction is, that we should at once

• This system of servitude supports our material

• Our wealth is in land and the people who tend