O
Olmsted, Fredrick Law
Designed Central Park in
Manhattan, New
York, New York. His son was influential in the development of
national
parks. Link to
Fredrick
Law Olmsted, Jr's biography.
Oregon
Trail
1842-1860s - In
1842, the
Oregon Trail became an important route to western settlement. Thousands
of pioneer wagons concentrated in the town of Independence (Missouri)
and
then started their long journey to Oregon country. Link
Oregon
Treaty (1846)
The United
States
and Great Britain had joint occupation of Oregon country, which at the
time included today's states of Oregon and Washington. When
expansionist
James K. Polk became President (1845), he defiantly asserted the
American title to the whole of Oregon territory. Polk however was not
likely
to risk a war with Great Britain. His ambition was to annex California
which could lead to a war with Mexico. The British government had their
own domestic worries. Under Lord Aberdeen's responsibility, the British
government proposed to extend the international boundary along latitude
49°N to Puget Sound, and Polk accepted. On June 15, 1846 the Oregon
treaty was ratified. Thus was completed the last section of the
3000-mile
frontier between Canada and the US.
Ostend Manifesto
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761555881¶=28#p28
Saturday
5 October 2002
In the same year [1854],
Pierre Soule,
Pierce's diplomatic representative to Spain, tried unsuccessfully to
purchase
Cuba from Spain. This purchase had become desperately important to the
South, because Cuba had slaves and uprisings had taken place there. The
South feared that to avoid a successful slave revolution, such as the
one
François Dominique Toussaint Louverture had led in Haiti, Spain
might free the Cuban slaves. Whether or not Soule shared this fear, he
made a high-handed move that turned out to be an appalling blunder. He
met at Ostend (Oostende), Belgium, with James Buchanan, who was
diplomatic
representative to Britain, and John Y. Mason, the diplomatic
representative
to France. They drafted a document known as the Ostend Manifesto, which
declared that if Spain refused to sell Cuba to the United States, the
United
States would seize the island as its only defense against the threat of
slave revolution or slave emancipation in Cuba. The document caused an
uproar both at home and abroad, and Pierce was forced to disclaim it.
However,
the bungled diplomacy put an end to all hope of acquiring Cuba.
P
Party
system
(emergence of a)
(Knupfer
57)
As early as the 1820s,
American politics
became more and more dominated by parties instead of being the business
of statesmen who like Clay, allegedly worked in the tradition of the
Founding
Fathers, i.e. compromise, mutual affection, concessions, for the common
good. Allegiance to one's party (partyism) tended to replace unionism.
Also, party strife sometimes replaced sectionalism. A major issue for
national
parties (the Whigs, the Democrats) was to avoid sectionalism within
their
parties. The issue of slavery finally split the Democratic party with
many
northern Democrats leaving the party to join the Republican party
(1854).
PIKE, Zebulon
source: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/PP/fpi19.html.
Accessed 25 Janaurary 2005.
PIKE,
ZEBULON MONTGOMERY (1779-1813).
Zebulon Montgomery Pike, United States army officer and Western
explorer, was born on January 5, 1779, at Lamberton, now a part of
Trenton, New Jersey, the son of Isabella (Brown) and Zebulon Pike, a
veteran of the American Revolution and a lieutenant colonel in the
United States army. After receiving some education in New Jersey and
Pennsylvania, young Pike entered his father's regiment, the Third
United States Infantry, as a cadet. Pike was commissioned as a second
lieutenant in the Second Infantry regiment on March 3, 1799. An ardent
federalist, he was involved in the public whipping of a Republican
newspaper editor at Reading, Pennsylvania, on June 24, 1799.
Nevertheless, he was promoted to first lieutenant on November 1, 1799.
In 1801 he married Clarissa Brown; several children were born to the
marriage, but only one reached maturity. On April 1, 1802, Pike
transferred to the First Infantry. In 1805
Gen. James Wilkinsonqv ordered Pike to the upper Mississippi Valley to
seek the source of the river and to exert American authority over the
region. Pike left St. Louis on August 9 of that year and, with twenty
enlisted men, traveled by keelboat and sled as far north as Leech Lake,
Minnesota, which he mistakenly identified as the source of the
Mississippi. Returning to St. Louis on April 30, 1806, he was
dispatched on a second exploring expedition, this time to locate the
sources of the Red and the Arkansas rivers and to explore Spanish New
Mexico. Leaving St. Louis on July 15, 1806, this expedition took him
across the western prairies, which he believed would contain the
westward flow of the American people, "our citizens being so prone to
rambling and extending themselves, on the frontiers." While en route to
the Spanish borderlands Pike was promoted to captain on August 12. In
the present state of Colorado, on November 23, he sighted and attempted
without success to scale the peak which now bears his name and then
ventured southward toward the Rio Grande, reaching one of its
tributaries in February 1807. He was taken into custody by Spanish
troops and escorted to Santa Fe and then to Chihuahua for questioning
by Gen. Antonio Salcedoqv before being allowed to return east under
military guard. On his return trip, Pike crossed Texas by way of the
Old San Antonio Roadqv to reach Nachitoches, Louisiana. He and his men
were exceptionally well treated by their Spanish captors, but his notes
and papers were taken from him. They resided in the Mexican archives
until they were discovered by Herbert Eugene Bolton,qv who published
them in the American Historical Review in 1908. The Mexican government
subsequently returned the papers, and they are now in the Archives
Division of the Adjutant General's Office.
Pike has been suspected of complicity with the Aaron Burr
conspiracy to establish an empire in the Southwest, carved from the
Spanish provinces of northern Mexico and the western United States, but
no firm evidence supports those charges. He remained, however,
outspoken in his resistance to the democratization of the army during
the Thomas Jefferson administration, but was one of only three
federalist officers to accept promotion and transfer into a new
regiment when Jefferson expanded the army in 1807. Pike was appointed
major of the new Sixth Infantry regiment on May 2, 1808, and then
lieutenant colonel of the Fourth Infantry on December 31, 1809. Pike
published the journals of his explorations in 1810, supplemented with
his correspondence with General Wilkinson, his speeches to the Indians,
and detailed descriptions of the land through which he traveled, as An
Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi and through
the Western Parts of Louisiana. Appearing as it did, four years before
the publication of the journals of Lewis and Clark, Pike's book
provided the American public with its first written description of the
trans-Mississippi West. He was appointed deputy quartermaster general
of the army on April 3, 1812, serving until July 3 of that same year.
With the outbreak of the War of 1812 in June, Pike was promoted to
colonel of the Fifteenth Infantry on July 6, 1812. On March 12, 1813,
he was appointed brigadier general and inspector general and adjutant
general of the army. He was killed in action at the storming of York,
(now Toronto), Canada, on April 27, 1813, when the enemies' powder
magazine exploded.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Theodore J. Crackel, Mr. Jefferson's Army:
Political and Social Reform of the Military Establishment, 1801-1809
(New York: New York University Press, 1987). Francis B. Heitman,
Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army (2 vols.,
Washington: GPO, 1903; rpt., Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1965). W. Eugene Hollon, The Lost Pathfinder: Zebulon Montgomery Pike
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1949). Donald Jackson, ed., The
Journals of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, with Letters and Related Documents
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966). Milo Milton Quaife, ed.,
The Southwestern Expedition of Zebulon M. Pike (Chicago: Donnelley,
1925). Dudley Goodall Wooten, ed., A Comprehensive History of Texas (2
vols., Dallas: Scarff, 1898; rpt., Austin: Texas State Historical
Association, 1986).
Thomas W. Cutrer
Pluralism
(political)
A condition marked
by the
multiplicity of religions, ethnic groups, autonomous regions, or
functional
units within a single state; or a doctrine that holds such a
multiplicity
to be a good thing. [The new South Africa] The alternative is a unitary
state where one religion or ethnicity is dominant and the central
government
rules everywhere [China (Tibet)]. Pluralism can be an adaptation to an
existing and unavoidable multiplicity for the sake of peace
(toleration)
or it can be a programme aimed at sustaining cultural difference,
conceived
as a good in itself or as the legitimate product of communal
self-determination.
A considerable variety of institutional arrangements are consistent
with
pluralism in either of these senses, including decentralized government
(federalism), functional autonomy (particularly with regard to
education
and family law), and voluntary association. The hard questions posed by
political pluralism mostly have to do with its limits. It isn't only a
multiplication of groups but also of loyalties that pluralism
legitimizes.
And in the case of individual men and women, multiplication is also
division.
Attachment and obligation are both divided: what then is the individual
to do when their various versions come into conflict? At what point is
division incompatible with a common citizenship? States committed to
pluralism
will set this point fairly far along the continuum that extends from
unity
to disintegration. None the less, they are likely to defend some
significant
commonalities: a single public language or a civic education for all
children
or a 'civil religion' with its own holidays and ceremonies [In
ìLaî
Reunion: French, école laïque, 14th July].
Political pluralism also
refers
to the existence of legal opposition parties or competing interest
groups
in a unitary state, where what is pluralized is not culture or religion
but political opinions and conceptions of material interest. The ruling
group, whatever its character, concedes that its ideas about how to
govern
are not the only legitimate ideas and that its understanding of the
common
good must incorporate some subset of more particular understandings.
M.WALZ.
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, © Oxford University Press 1995
< Xrefer.com
Pluriethnicity
ìPluriethnicityî
refers to the issue of ethnicity in a society that comprises several
ethnic
groups (Reunion, South Africa, the United States, Canada, Great
Britain,
Ö) (FD). The word seems to have (French?) Canadian origins.
Strictly
speaking, "pluralism" could be used instead.
Political parties
link
http://db.education-world.com/perl/browse?cat_id=4135
Populism
A form of politics
which
appeals to people to exercise direct pressure on governments and
'emphasises
the virtues of the uncorrupt and unsophisticated common people against
the double-dealing and selfishness to be expected of professional
politicians.
. . It can therefore manifest itself in left, right or centrist forms'
(B and S). Third candidates in US Presidential elections often run
populist
campaigns (e.g. Ross Perot 1992).(David Pepper, Modern
Environmentalism
An Introduction (London Routledge, 1997, 327 passim)
Postmodernism
... 'the overall
character
or direction of experimental tendencies in Western arts, architecture
since
the 1940s or 1950s and particularly more recent developments associated
with post-industrial society' (B and S). More generally, and by
extension,
postmodernism denies the validity or feasibility of the 'Enlightenment
project', and that there are universal principles which are worth
striving
for. There are no valid totalising truths or universal political
ambitions,
so ideologies like liberalism or socialism will lead only to the
negative
results for humankind that they ostensibly set out to avoid.
Postmodernism
celebrates the equal validity of all points of view and all movements
and
periods. It also denies that there are deep underlying economic, social
or any other structures and universal principles at work which explain
what we see in the world around us. What we see on the surface of
society
is all there is: 'superficial' images and experiences are the reality
of
life. Postmodernism is an 'amorphous body of developments marked by
eclecticism,
pluriculturalism and often a post-industrial high-tech frame of
reference
coupled with a sceptical view of technical progress' (8 and S).(David
Pepper, Modern
Environmentalism: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1997, 327 passim)
ENLIGHTENMENT [PROJECT]
In
order to
understand what
postmodernism is about it is essential to understand what modernity
means
for the social sciencesand this is linked to what is deemed to be the
“enlightenment
project”. The age of enlightenment ushered in human rationalityas the
source
of knowledge, thus encouraging the rejection of previous authorities
such
as the church or custom. This newacceptance of human rationality became
linked to science as the key to understanding the natural and social
worlds,
and led toa search to understand causality and to the belief that human
rationality would lead to a more enlightened age, a progressiveage
characterized
by human liberation. These beliefs shape social sciences by giving
science
a privileged position in the pursuitof truth, encouraging the search
for
sets of concepts to provide a framework for understanding social life
regardless
of particularsocial situations or time and the acceptance of
“metanarratives”
(large and abstract social theory including sociology) assuperior to
other
narrative accounts about society. Much of this is apparent in some of
the
works of Karl Marx. Marxian theory isa large metanarrative about the
historical
development of western societies such that it includes all stories
about
society andbecause of its claim to be based on scientific observation
and
its use of a conceptual framework (modes of production, relationsof
production)
it claims a privileged position and a universal nature (it is to apply
to all capitalist societies). Further, it is claimedthat by using the
metanarrative
the consciousness of workers can be enhanced (corrected) and an age of
liberation will follow.Modernity or the enlightenment project is
reflected
in “positivism”, the importance of the “scientific method”, the belief
thatsocial science can be used to better society (Emile Durkheim is
very
explicit about this) and the sweeping away of the subjectivebeliefs of
“ordinary actors”.
See Also:
DECONSTRUCTION
| METANARRATIVE | POSITIVISM | POSTMODERN |
Source : http://socialsciencedictionary.nelson.com/SocialDict.asp?page=4&alpha=E&criteria=&TOS=
Predestination
(the
Puritan belief in)
This doctrine was
first
elaborated by John Calvin and then adopted by Congregationalists,
Presbyterians,
and a variety of other religious groups. Calvin held that human beings
were innately sinful--utterly depraved by inheriting the original sin
of
Adam and Eve, the biblical parents of the human race.
But Calvin also taught that
God,
in his infinite mercy, would spare a small number of "elect"
individuals
from the fate of eternal hellfire that all mankind, owing to their
corrupt
natures, justly deserved. That elect group of "saints" would be
blessed,
at some point in their lives, by a profound sense of inner assurance
that
they possessed God's "saving grace." This dawning of hope was the
experience
of conversion, which might come upon individuals suddenly or gradually,
in their earliest youth or even in the moments before death. It is
important
to emphasize to students that, in the Calvinist scheme, God decided who
would be saved or damned before the beginning of history--and that this
decision would not be affected by how human beings behaved during their
lives. The God of Calvin (and the Puritans) did not give "extra
credit"--nor,
indeed, any credit--for the good works that men and women performed
during
their lives.
(http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/tserve/tserve.htm)
(See
whole text of the webpage only.)
Progressive
era
The Progressive Era (1890-1912) was
dominated by
Theodore Roosevelt
and characterized by social reforms and struggle against the privileges
of industrialists and the corruption of the political class. It was an
age of dominated by democratic ideals, morality and reform on the part
of middle class ìprogressives.
Puritanism in New
England
link http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl310/purdef.htm
Puritan
experiment
The Puritans of
New England
wanted to build "a city upon a hill" (John Winthrop, 1630), i.e. a new
society based on puritan principles, to be a model for the rest of the
world. It was the Puritan experiment: if their society worked and
became
prosperous, it would be a sign of God's approval. They could then feel
entitled to lead the world to redemption and salvation. (See Bremer,
Francis
J. The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to
Edwards.
Hanover, New Hamphire: University Press of New England, 1976.)
R
Raleigh,
Sir, Walter (?1552 - 1618) - Eldorado
In the 1580s he organized
several
voyages of discovery along the Atlantic seaboard of North America, but
an attempt to colonize a region named Virginia (in honour of Queen
Elizabeth,
the Virgin Queen) was unsuccessful. In 1592 Raleigh fell out of favour
with the queen after marrying Elizabeth Throgmorton, one of her ladies
in waiting, and in 1595 set off on a fruitless search for the legendary
Eldorado supposedly to be found in Guyana. On his return he played a
distinguished
part in the Cádiz expedition (1596) and also fought the Spanish
in the Azores (1597). In 1603, however, Raleigh was accused of
conspiring
against James I and was imprisoned in the Tower (see main plot). There
he remained until 1616, when he was released for the purpose of
undertaking
a second voyage in search of Eldorado. The expedition ended in the
English
destruction of a Spanish settlement, and on his return to England
Raleigh
was executed. His literary works include The Discovery of the Empire of
Guyana (1596), the History of the World (1614), and poetry.
Market House Books
Dictionary
of British History, © Market House Books Ltd 1987 ©
2002
xrefer
Ratification of
the
Constitution
Constitution
making and the process of ratification - Same
page on this website
Article VII
of the Constitution stated that "The
Ratification
of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the
Establishment
of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same." Below
are
the dates of ratification and entry into the Union of the original
thriteen
states:
1 Delaware, Dec 7, 1787
2 Pennsylvania, Dec 12, 1787
3 New Jersey, Dec 18, 1787
4 Georgia, Jan 2, 1788
5 Connecticut, Jan 9, 1788
6 Massachusetts, Feb. 6, 1788
7 Maryland, April 28, 1788
8 South Carolina, May 23, 1788
9 New Hampshire, June 21, 1788
_______________________________
10 Virginia, June 25, 1788
11 New York, July 26, 1788
12 North Carolina, Nov. 21, 1789
13 Rhode Island, May 29, 1790
Reclamation
Act (1902)
The Reclamation Act of
1902
provided for irrigation projects which would deliver to each farmer
ample
water for 160 acres because the Homestead Act of 1862 provided settlers
with a quarter section of land -160 acres. In fact, most of the
land
meant to go to isolated pioneers fraudulently went to railroad, mining
and lumbering companies.
The Reclamation act of 1902 was
passed to transform the arid West into a garden
thanks to dams on the Colorado and the Columbia and irrigation.
It
made the continuation of Jeffersonian agrarianism possible in the
arid West beyond the
100th
meridian.
Reconstruction
Reconstruction
began in
1865 right at the end of the Civil Waróthe War between the
States
as it is called in the Southóto last until 1877. It was, roughly
speaking, the Reconstruction of the South after the war according to
Northern,
and more especially Republican principles.
It has totally dominated
American
arts and letters from the 1890's until the 195O's. One cannot
understand
the literature of the South if one doesn't know what Reconstruction is
about. Moreover, one cannot possibly study the race problem or the
black
question or the South even today if one does not understand what forces
were at work on the American scene after the Civil War.
Presidential
and Congressional Reconstruction Plans
Presidential
Reconstruction
In the spring of 1865,
the Civil War came to an end, leaving over 620,000 dead and a
devastating path of destruction throughout the south. The North now
faced the task of reconstructing the ravaged and indignant Confederate
states. There were many important questions that needed to be answered
as the nation faced the challenges of peace:
Who would direct the process of Reconstruction? The South itself,
Congress, or the President?
Should the Confederate leaders be tried for treason?
How would the south, both physically and economically devastated, be
rebuilt? And at whose expense?
How would the south be readmitted and reintegrated into the Union?
What should be done with over four million freed slaves? Were they to
be given land, social equality, education, and voting rights?
On April 11, 1865,
two days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender, President Abraham Lincoln delivered
his last public address, during which he described a generous Reconstruction policy and urged
compassion and open-mindedness throughout the process. He
pronounced that the Confederate states had never left the Union, which
was in direct opposition to the views of Radical Republican Congressmen
who felt the Confederate states had seceded from the Union and should
be treated like “conquered provinces.”
On April 14, Lincoln held a
Cabinet meeting to discuss post-war rebuilding in detail. President
Lincoln wanted to get southern state governments in operation before
Congress met in December in order to avoid the persecution of the
vindictive Radical Republicans. That
same night, while Lincoln was watching a play at Ford’s Theatre, a
fanatical Southern actor, John Wilkes Booth, crept up behind
Lincoln and shot him in the head.
Lincoln died the following day, leaving the South with little
hope for a non-vindictive Reconstruction.
The absence of any provisions in the Constitution that could be applied
to Reconstruction led to a disagreement over who held the authority to
direct Reconstruction and how it would take place. Lincoln felt the
president had authority based on the constitutional obligation of the
federal government to guarantee each state a republican government.
Even before the war had ended, Lincoln
issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in 1863,
his compassionate policy for dealing with the South. The Proclamation
stated that all Southerners could be pardoned and reinstated as U.S.
citizens if they took an oath of allegiance to the Constitution and the
Union and pledged to abide by emancipation. High Confederate officials,
Army and Navy officers, and U.S. judges and congressmen who left their
posts to aid the southern rebellion were excluded from this pardon. Lincoln’s Proclamation was called the “10
percent plan”: Once 10
percent of the voting population in any state had taken the oath, a
state government could be put in place and the state could be
reintegrated into the Union.
Two congressional factions formed over
the subject of Reconstruction. A majority group of moderate
Republicans in Congress supported Lincoln’s position that the
Confederate states should be reintegrated as quickly as possible. A minority group of Radical
Republicans--led by Thaddeus Stevens in the House and Ben Wade and
Charles Sumner in the Senate--sharply rejected Lincoln’s plan, claiming
it would result in restoration of the southern aristocracy and
re-enslavement of blacks. They wanted
to effect sweeping changes in the south and grant the freed slaves full
citizenship before the states were restored. The influential group of
Radicals also felt that Congress, not the president, should direct
Reconstruction.
In July 1864, the Radical Republicans
passed the Wade-Davis Bill in response to Lincoln’s 10 percent plan.
This bill required that more than 50 percent of white males take an
“ironclad” oath of allegiance before the state could call a
constitutional convention. The bill also required that the state
constitutional conventions abolish slavery. Confederate officials or
anyone who had “voluntarily borne arms against the United States” were
banned from serving at the conventions. Lincoln pocket-vetoed, or refused to
sign, the proposal, keeping the Wade-Davis bill from becoming law. This
is where the issue of Reconstruction stood on the night of Lincoln’s
assassination, when Andrew Johnson became president.
In the 1864 election, Lincoln chose
Andrew Johnson as his vice presidential running mate as a gesture of
unity. Johnson was a War Democrat from Tennessee, a state on the
border of the north-south division in the United States. Johnson was a
good political choice as a running mate because he helped garner votes
from the War Democrats and other pro-Southern groups.
Johnson was born to
impoverished parents in North Carolina, orphaned at an early age, and
moved to Tennessee. Self-educated, he rose through the political ranks
to be a congressman, a governor of Tennessee, and a United States
senator. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Johnson was the only senator
from a seceding state who remained loyal to the Union. Johnson's
political career was built on his
defense of small farmers and poor white southerners against the
aristocratic classes. He was heard saying during the war, “Damn
the Negroes, I am fighting those traitorous aristocrats, their masters.”
Unfortunately, Johnson was unprepared for the presidency thrust upon
him with Lincoln’s assassination. The Radical Republicans believed at
first that Johnson, unlike Lincoln, wanted to punish the South for
seceding. However, on May 29, 1865, Johnson issued his own
reconstruction proclamation that was largely in agreement with
Lincoln’s plan. Johnson, like
Lincoln, held that the southern states had never legally left the
Union, and he retained most of
Lincoln’s 10 percent plan.
Johnson’s plan went further than Lincoln’s and excluded those
Confederates who owned taxable property in excess of $20,000 from the
pardon. These wealthy Southerners were the ones Johnson believed led
the South into secession. However, these Confederates were allowed to
petition him for personal pardons. Before the year was over, Johnson,
who seemed to savor power over the aristocrats who begged for his
favor, had issued some 13,000 such pardons. These pardons allowed many
of the planter aristocrats the power to exercise control over
Reconstruction of their states. The Radical Republicans were outraged
that the planter elite once again controlled many areas of the south.
Johnson also called for special state conventions to repeal the
ordinances of secession, abolish slavery, repudiate all debts incurred
to aid the Confederacy, and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment [Abolition of slavery
1865]. Suggestions
of black suffrage were scarcely raised at these state conventions and
promptly quashed when they were. By the time Congress convened in
December 1865, the southern state conventions for the most part had met
Johnson’s requirements.
On December 6, 1865, Johnson announced that the southern states had met
his conditions for Reconstruction and that in his opinion the Union was
now restored. As it became clear that the design of the new southern
state governments was remarkably like the old governments, both
moderate Republicans and the Radical Republicans grew increasingly
angry.
The Black Codes
When Congress convened in December
1865, the legislative members from the newly reconstituted southern
states presented themselves at the Capitol. Among them were Alexander
H. Stephens--who was the ex-vice-president of the Confederacy--four
Confederate generals, five colonels, and several other rebels. After
four bloody years of war, the presence of these Confederates infuriated
the Congressional Republicans, who immediately denied seats to
all members from the eleven former Confederate states.
Adding to the controversy, the new
southern legislatures began passing repressive “Black Codes.”
Mississippi passed the first of these laws designed to restrict the
freedom of the emancipated blacks in November 1865. The South intended
to preserve slavery as nearly as possible in order to guarantee a
stable labor supply.
While life under the Black Codes was an improvement over slavery, the
codes identified blacks as a separate class with fewer liberties and
more restrictions than white citizens. The details of the Codes varied
from state to state, but some universal policies applied. Existing
black marriages were recognized, blacks could testify in court cases
involving other blacks, and blacks could own certain kinds of property.
In contrast, blacks could not serve on a jury and were not allowed to
vote. They were barred from renting and leasing land and in many states
could not carry firearms without a license. The Codes also had strict
labor provisions. Blacks were required to enter into annual labor
contracts and could be punished, required to forfeit back pay, or
forced to work by paid “Negro catchers” if they violated the contract.
Vagrants, drunkards, and beggars were given stiff fines, and if they
could not pay them, they were sentenced to work on a chain gang.
Most former slaves lacked capital and marketable skills and had only
manual labor as a means of support. The black activist Frederick
Douglass explained: "A former slave was free from the individual
master, but the slave of society. He had neither money, property, nor
friends. He was free from the old plantation, but he had nothing but
the dusty road under his feet."
Thousands of freedmen became
sharecropper farmers, which led them to becoming indentured servants,
indebted to the plantation owner and resulting in generations of people
working the same plot of land.
The situation in the south left
Northerners wondering what they had gone to war for, since blacks were
essentially being re-enslaved. Even
moderate Republicans started to adopt the views of the more radical
party members. Johnson’s lenient Reconstruction plan, along with
the South’s aggressive tactics, led Congress to reject Johnsonian
Reconstruction and create the Joint Committee on Reconstruction.
Congressional Reconstruction
A clash between President Johnson and
Congress over Reconstruction was now inevitable. By the end of
1865, Radical Republican views had gained a majority in Congress, and
the decisive year of 1866 saw a gradual diminishing of President
Johnson’s power.
In June of 1866, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction determined that,
by seceding, the southern states had forfeited “all civil and political
rights under the Constitution.” The Committee rejected President
Johnson’s Reconstruction plan, denied seating of southern legislators,
and maintained that only Congress could determine if, when, and how
Reconstruction would take place. Part of the Reconstruction plan
devised by the Joint Committee to replace Johnson’s Reconstruction
proclamation is demonstrated in the Fourteenth Amendment.
Northern Republicans did not want to give up the political advantage
they held, especially by allowing former Confederate leaders to reclaim
their seats in Congress. Since the
South did not participate in Congress from 1861 to 1865, Republicans
were able to pass legislation that favored the North, such as the
Morrill Tariff, the Pacific Railroad Act, and the Homestead Act.
Republicans were also concerned
that the South’s congressional representation would increase since
slaves were no longer considered only three-fifths of a person. This
population increase would tip the congressional leadership to the
South, enabling them to perpetuate the Black Codes and virtually
re-enslave blacks.
The strained relations between Congress and the president became
increasingly apparent in February 1866 when President Johnson vetoed a
bill to extend the life of the
Freedmen’s Bureau. The Freedmen’s Bureau had been established in
1865 to care for refugees, and now Congress wanted to amend it to
include protection for the black population. Although the bill had
broad support, President Johnson claimed that it was an
unconstitutional extension of military authority since wartime
conditions no longer existed. Congress did override Johnson’s veto of
the Freedmen’s Bureau, helping it last until the early 1870s.
Striking back, Congress passed the
Civil Rights Bill in March 1866. This Bill granted American
citizenship to blacks and denied the states the power to restrict their
rights to hold property, testify in court, and make contracts for their
labor. Congress aimed to destroy the
Black Codes and justified the legislation as implementing
freedom under the Thirteenth Amendment. Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Bill, which
prompted most Republicans to believe there was no chance of future
cooperation with him. On April 9, 1866, Congress overrode the
presidential veto, and from that point forward, Congress frequently
overturned Johnson’s vetoes.
The Republicans wanted to ensure the principles of the Civil Rights Act
by adding a new amendment to the Constitution. Doing so would keep the
Southerners from repealing the laws if they ever won control of
Congress. In
June 1866, Congress sent the proposed Fourteenth Amendment,
which in the context of the times was a radical measure, to the states
for ratification:
It acknowledged state and federal
citizenship for persons born or naturalized in the United States.
It forbade any state to diminish the “privileges and immunities” of
citizenship, which was the section that struck at the Black Codes.
It prohibited any state to deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property without “due process of law.”
It forbade any state to deny any person “the equal protection of the
laws.”
It disqualified former Confederates from holding federal and state
office.
It reduced the representation of a state in Congress and the Electoral
College if it denied blacks voting rights.
It guaranteed the federal debt, while rejecting all Confederate debts.
All Republicans agreed that no state would be welcomed back to the
Union without ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment. In contrast,
President Johnson recommended that the states reject it. Johnson’s home
state of Tennessee was the first to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment,
while the other 10 seceded states rejected it. During this same time, bloody race riots
erupted in several southern cities, adding fuel to the
Reconstruction battle. Radical Republicans blamed the indiscriminate
massacre of blacks on Johnson’s policies.
The congressional election of 1866 widened the divide between President
Johnson and Congress. President
Johnson embarked on a “swing around the circle” tour where he
gave speeches at various Midwestern cities to rally the public around
his policy of lenient Union recognition for the southern states. His
tour was a complete failure as
he exchanged hot-tempered insults with the critics in the crowd. To
counter Johnson’s rhetoric, Congressional Republicans took to “waving the bloody shirt”--appealing
to voters by reminding them of the sacrifices the Union made during the
Civil War. When the congressional election was complete, the Republicans won more than the
two-thirds majority in the House and the Senate that they needed to
override any presidential vetoes.
If the southern states had been willing to adopt the Fourteenth
Amendment, coercive measures might have been avoided. On March 2, 1867, Congress passed the
Military Reconstruction Act, which became the final plan for
Reconstruction and identified the new conditions under which the
southern governments would be formed. Tennessee was exempt from the Act
because it had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment.
This legislation divided the former
Confederacy into five military districts, each occupied by a Union
general and his troops, whom Southerners contemptuously called “bluebellies.” The officers had
the power to maintain order and protect the civil rights of all persons. The southern states were required to
ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and adopt new state constitutions
guaranteeing blacks the right to vote in order for their
representatives to be admitted to Congress and military rule to end
(which paved the way for easy ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment
later). However, the Act did not go as
far as giving freedmen land or education at federal expense.
Although peacetime military rule seemed contrary to the spirit of the
Constitution, the Supreme Court allowed it. The hated “bluebellies”
remained until the new Republican regimes were firmly established in
each state. It was
not until 1877 that the last federal troops left the south.
Radical Republicans were still concerned that once the states were
re-admitted to the Union, they would amend their constitutions and
withdraw black suffrage. They moved to safeguard their legislation by
adding it to the federal Constitution with the Fifteenth
Amendment. The amendment
prohibited the states from denying anyone the right to vote “on account
of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In 1870,
the required number of states had ratified the amendment, and it became
part of the Constitution.
The Fifteenth Amendment did not
guarantee the right to vote regardless of sex, which outraged feminists
like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Equally disappointing
to feminists was the fact that the Fourteenth Amendment marked the
first appearance of the word “male” in the Constitution. Efforts to
include female suffrage in the Fifteenth Amendment were defeated, and
50 years passed before an amendment to the Constitution granted women
the right to vote.
While most of the southern states had quickly ratified the Fifteenth
Amendment under pressure from the federal government, Democratic Party
dominance in those states assured the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments were largely ignored. Literacy
tests and poll taxes were often used to keep blacks from voting.
Intimidation and lynching were also
common means to keep blacks from the polls. Full suffrage for blacks was not realized
until 1965.
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was
the last congressional Reconstruction measure. It prohibited racial discrimination in
jury selection, transportation, restaurants, and "inns, public
conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public
amusement." It did not guarantee equality in schools, churches, and
cemeteries. Unfortunately, the Act lacked a strong enforcement
mechanism, and dismayed Northerners did not attempt another civil
rights act for 90 years.
Read
more ... on AP Study Notes site (Johnson eimpeachment, carpet baggers
and more)
RED RIVER
EXPEDITION.
The
Red River expedition of 1806 was the first major scientific probe into
the American West to be led by civilian scientists and include an
academically trained naturalist. As part of his master plan for the
exploration of the West, President Thomas Jefferson considered the Red
River expedition second in importance only to Lewis and Clark's
investigation of the Missouri and Columbia rivers. Though it was billed
as a scientific survey, the Red River expedition had strong commercial
and diplomatic overtones and became both an element in the boundary
dispute with Spain and a source of embarrassment for the Jefferson
administration as the Burr conspiracy
unfolded. By sending an American
force up the Red River Jefferson hoped to confirm reports that the Red
might provide a commercially viable watercourse to Santa Fe, to woo the
region's Indians to the American camp, and to test the Louisiana
Purchase's disputed western border with New Spain.
Secretary of War Henry
Dearborn and Natchez scientist William Dunbar were responsible for
directing the expedition. Planning for the mission, which Jefferson
called his "Grand Excursion" to the Southwest, began in 1804, and
Dunbar made a trial reconnaissance up the Ouachita River during the
winter of 1804-05. Extensive personnel searches produced Thomas
Freeman, an experienced astronomer and surveyor, as field leader
and
Peter Custis, a medical student
at the University of Pennsylvania and
protégé of noted naturalist Benjamin Barton Smith, as
naturalist and ethnographer. Capt. Richard Sparks, a forty-five-man
military contingent, and French and Indian guides were employed to
escort the civilian scientists in their ascent of the Red. Congress
appropriated $5,000 for the Red River expedition in 1805, and by late
April 1806, when the contingent left Natchez, expenses had grown to
$11,000, or three times the original funding of Lewis and Clark.
The dream of tracing a water
route to the southern Rockies and winning the Indians to the American
side was cut short by political machinations culminating in armed
Spanish intervention. Hoping to provoke an international confrontation
for personal gain, James Wilkinsonqv had informed Spanish officials of
the American designs on the Red River area. While the Americans poled
their way up the river, two Spanish military expeditions marched to
intercept them. Freeman and Custis entered the Red River on May 2,
1806, and left Natchitoches on June 2. They were 615 miles up the river
on July 28, when they met a Spanish force under the command of
Francisco Viana,qv who ordered them to turn back. By August 1 the
Americans were heading down the river. The expedition's turning point
in what is now Bowie County, Texas, is still known as Spanish Bluff.
Though the expedition's
failure caused political embarrassment for the Jefferson
administration, the bloodless confrontation between American explorers
and Spanish troops failed to trigger the war that Wilkinson and Aaron
Burrqv had hoped for. The diplomatic uproar caused Spain to pursue a
less confrontational policy, which effectively opened up the Red River
country to American traders. Diplomatic tensions resulting from the Red
River episode persuaded Jefferson to abandon an excursion up the
Arkansas River that had been planned for 1807. The scientific
achievement of the Red River expedition was overshadowed by the more
dramatic discoveries of Lewis and Clark and obscured in the controversy
over the expedition's premature termination. The principal lasting
contributions of the Red River expedition were the documents left by
its leaders. As records of nineteenth-century scientific exploration,
Freeman's journal and Custis's natural history catalogues provide
valuable information on the Indian life and ecology of the Red River.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Dan L. Flores,
"The Ecology of the Red River in 1806: Peter Custis and Early
Southwestern Natural History," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 88
(July 1984). Dan L. Flores, ed., Jefferson and Southwestern
Exploration: The Freeman and Custis Accounts of the Red River
Expedition of 1806 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984).
Dan L. Flores
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of
Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "RED RIVER
EXPEDITION," http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/RR/upr2.html
(accessed January 25, 2006).
Republican
experiment
The Puritans of New England
wanted
to be "city upon a hill" and a model for the rest of the
world.
It was the Puritan experiment:
if
their society worked and became prosperous, it would be a sign of
God's
approval. America became the laboratory for the world again
with
the Enlightenment,
i.e.
the philosophical and political movement of the 18th century
that propounded democracy and human rights instead of
the
medieval notion of the body politic and monarchy as the basis of human
societies. It was a republican experiment this time. It was
generally
believed that such a system would not work, especially on a large
scale.
But the young American Republic thrived and Americans, in the wake of
the
Puritans of the 17th century and the Founding Fathers of the
18th century came to believe that
America could lead the
world on the way to democracy. It was the
Manifest
Destiny of America to spread the ideals of the
Enlightenment --representative
government, political liberty, human rights--to the American
continent
and possibly farther. The ideals of the Enlightenment were thus
essential
in the making of Manifest Destiny. (FD)
It was generally believed at
the
time of the American Revolution that democracy could not work,
especially
on a large scale--a republic. It was believed that bribery and
corruption
inevitably led republics to dictatorship. But Americans were determined
to show the world that a large-scale republic could work. It was the
republican
experiment. Jefferson's agrarianism,
the
Constitution
(1787)
and the Bill
of Rights
(1791) were decisive factors.
The Founding Fathers launched an
experiment not only in representative democracy, but also an experiment
in large scale democracy--a republic. The ideas of the Enlightenment
were possibly appealing to European intellectuals, but few people
thought
they could work in practice. The principle of a representative
democracy,
i.e. electing representatives to decide in your place was possibly
acceptable
by the elite, but to apply this principle and make it work for all male
citizens sounded like rebellion against the established order.
Moreover,
a large scale republic had never worked before. Perhaps a new country,
separate from Europe, could try and test such ideas. Indeed, some
Europeans
saw America as a place where to start anew: "By the eighteenth century
the European Enlightenment had developed a view of America as a special
place where human society might begin anew, uncorrupted by Old World
institutions
and ideas" (William Earl Weeks, Building the Continental Empire:
American
Expansion From the Revolution to the Civil War (Chicago: Ivan R.
Dee,
1996) 61.
Once the Founding Fathers had
established
their institutions with a constitution for each state (1776) and the
Articles
of Confederation (1777) soon to be replaced by the Constitution
(1787-1790),
they had founded a new social order based on natural rights--equality,
individual freedom-- the separation of powers, justice for all. Of
particular
importance was the fact that the principles that were the foundation of
the American republic were thought to be universal, applicable to all
men
in the rest of the world. This gave the Founding Fathers, more exactly
the Jeffersonians, an excuse and a justification for territorial
expansion.
Republican
party (creation of )
The Whigs were
the
party of the wealthy. The Democrats were the spiritual
heirs
of Jefferson and his agrarian values: simplicity, frugality,
virtue.
In 1854, dissatisfied with their partyís stance on the
issue
of slavery,
northern Democrats, and former Whigs founded
the Republican Party. Yhe same year, the disorganized remnants of the [Free-Soil]
party
were absorbed into the newly formed Republican Party, which
carried the Free-Soil idea of opposing the expansion of slavery one
step
further by condemning slavery as a moral evil as well.
Political
parties
Republicanism
From Wikipedia,
the free
encyclopedia. http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Republicanism
Republicanism is the
political
theory that holds that the best form of government is a republic.
The term republic most commonly
means the system of government in which the head of state is elected
for
a limited term, as opposed to a constitutional monarchy.
Republicanism
in this sense is support for the abolition of constitutional
monarchies.
This sense is particularly important in countries such as Australia,
where
the abolition of the monarchy is a major political issue; and also
countries
such as the United Kingdom, where republicanism has never experienced
much
popular support, but nonetheless has been a significant minority
position.
Another, older and less
commonly
used definition of the term, uses the term "republic" to describe what
is more commonly called a representative democracy; it restricts
the
term "democracy" to refer only to direct democracy. See democracy for
further
discussion of this term usage and its history.
Republicanism
in the United States
According to the older definition
of the term, the United States of America is a republic, not a
democracy.
(Although most people, including most Americans, call it a democracy,
they
are using the modern definition, not the older one referred to here). This
usage
of the term republic was particularly common around the time of
the
American Founding Fathers. The authors of the U.S. Constitution
intentionally chose what they called a republic for several reasons.
For
one, it is
impractical to collect votes from every citizen on
every political issue. In theory, representatives would be more
well-informed
and less emotional than the general populace. Furthermore, a
republic
can be contrived to protect against the "tyranny of the majority."
The Federalist Papers
outline
the idea that
pure democracy is actually quite dangerous, because it
allows a majority to infringe upon the rights of a minority. By
forming
what they called a Republic, in which representatives are chosen in
many
different ways (the President, House, Senate, and state officials are
all
elected differently), it is more difficult for a majority to control
enough
of the government to infringe upon a minority.
Rostow's
(1960)
influential model of 'stages of economic growth'
These described how
'traditional'
societies (with 'primitive' technologies and spiritual attitudes to
nature),
'develop' to 'pre-conditions for economic take off' (like that
experienced
in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Western Europe). 'Take off'
follows,
where new industries and entrepreneurial classes emerge. In 'maturity'
steady economic growth outstrips population growth, then a 'final stage
of high mass consumption' allows the emergence of social
welfare.Source:
Pepper, David. Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction. New
York:
Routledge, 1996, p. 98.
S
Salad
bowl
In recent decades,
the melting
pot model has been criticized even denied. American society it is
argued,
is not one people, but different ethnic and or minority groups linked
together
by the Constitution like in a salad bowl the same sauce links
different,
visible ingredients.
Hence the notion of "hyphenated
American." E.g. ìItalian-Americanî. JFK used to
say that America is ìa nation of nationsî. Somehow, each
American
would carry on a dual identity expressed by an adjective followed by a
hyphen and ìAmericanî. (French-American, Native American,
but African American).
Salutary Neglect
Roughly speaking,
the Trade
and Navigation Acts which were harmful to colonial trade were not
enforced.
This is what has come to be called "Salutary Neglect". Smuggling was
ignored,
graft, bribery, corruption were widely spread. Why did England tolerate
such evasion of the law? Because of the presence of France--England's
arch
enemy in North America. War was bound to break out, so the English
government
could not create a hostile spirit in America against England by
enforcing
tax-laws. Indeed, the French and Indian War (1754-1763) put an end to
French
occupation in Louisiana, then in Canada (treaty of Paris:1763)
Sectionalism
An
exaggerated
devotion to the interests of a region. Often refers
to the oppositions between the North and South of the United States,
especially in the antebellum period. (Syn. sectional antagonism)
Segregation
The separation of
a social
or esp. racial group from others, as by laws against using the same
schools,
hotels, buses. (Longman)
Separatism
The ambition of a
minority
to form its own sovereign state. See nationalism, secession.
Xrefer
Slave narratives
http://search.eb.com/blackhistory/micro/551/33.html
accessed 23 June 2003
slave narrative,
American literary genre consisting of a
former slave's
memoir of
daily plantation life, his sufferings as a slave, and his eventual
escape
to freedom. The narratives are filled with humorous anecdotes
of the deception and pretenses that the slave was forced to
practice
in order to ingratiate himself with the master, expressions of religious
fervour
and superstition, and, above all, a pervasive longing for
freedom,
dignity, and self-respect.
The first example of the slave
narrative, A
Narrative of the
Uncommon Sufferings and Surprising Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a
Negro
Man, appeared in Boston in 1760. This was followed by other
early examples, such as A Narrative of the Lord's Wonderful
Dealings
with J. Murrant, a Black, Taken Down from His Own Relation (1784)
and The
Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African
(1789).
In the early and mid-19th century, when
their publication
was encouraged by the Abolitionists, the accounts, many of them
based
on oral relations, multiplied. Although some of these
narratives,
such as Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (1869), are
factual
autobiographies, many others were influenced or sensationalized by
the
writer's desire to arouse sympathy for the Abolitionist cause. Such
reworkings and interpolations are usually obvious. In some cases, such
as The Autobiography of a Female Slave (1856) by Mattie
Griffith,
the account was entirely fictitious. The slave-narrative genre
reached
its height with Frederick Douglass'
classic
autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,
an American Slave (1845).
In the first half of the 20th century a number
of folklorists
and anthropologists
compiled documentary narratives based on recorded interviews with
former
black slaves. A notable compilation of such narratives is B.A. Botkin's
Lay My Burden Down (1945). In the second half of the 20th century the
growth
of black cultural consciousness stimulated a renewed interest in slave
narratives as the embodiment of the slaves' point of view of a
much-discussed
social institution.
Slavery
Go http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/black_voices/black_voices.cfm
See these pages on this website
The Origins
of New World Slavery
Slave Culture
Social
Darwinism
Application of Darwin's
evolutionary
scheme of nature to the historical development of human
societies,
especially in the spheres of economics and geopolitics. The ideas of
competition
for (allegedly) scarce resources, struggle for existence and survival
of
the fittest are emphasised with approval, as the processes
whereby
species are improved. Social Darwinism draws heavily on concepts of
society
developed by Malthus and Herbert Spencer.(David Pepper,
Modern
Environmentalism: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1997, 327 passim)
Social Darwinism claimed
that
some races are superior and inferior races will eventually disappear so
that it is wrong for a government to interfere with the laws of nature.
Social Darwinism owes much to an
English
philosopher, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) who was the
single
most influential Anglophone thinker of the latter part of the
nineteenth
century. Spencer thought all societies necessarily evolved from
barbarism to civilization through
three distinct stages: the first,
anarchic savagery, evolved into despotic militarism,
which
in turn became industrial capitalism. At the same time,
he
believed strongly in the virtue of struggle and "the
survival
of the fittest," the evocative phrase he invented in response
to Darwin. Struggle, for Spencer, was the very essence of progressive
evolution,
biological and historical. Any state intervention, especially welfare
reform,
in the advanced stage was hopelessly self-defeating as it made the
lower
classes lazier and prevented the invigoration of desire and enterprise
overall. When laissez-faire capitalism had become
universal,
struggle would consist in peaceful competition. Stephanson
81-2.
Spoils system
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia.
(http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system)
The spoils system
was
a method of appointing officials to the government of the United States
of America based on political connections rather than on impersonal
measures
of merit. The name was derived from the phrase "to the victor go the
spoils".
It was a contentious feature of
the
presidencies of Andrew Jackson, who introduced it as a democratic
measure
informed by his understanding of the nature of party politics and
democracy.
He considered that popular election gave the victorious party a mandate
to select officials from its own ranks. The spoils system was closely
linked
to the new party system which he was instrumental in creating,
generally
known to scholars as the "second party system" (the first being the
system
which emerged in the aftermath of the ratification of the American
Constitution).
Opponents considered it vulnerable to incompetence and corruption.
The system was formally ended
in
1883 with the passage of the Pendleton Act. This introduced the concept
of a separate government and civil service to American governance. The
government would continue to be formed by the party of the winner of
the
Presidential election. The civil service was separated out; appointment
to it was based on merit and not tied to any particular government, a
state
of affairs that continues today.
The separation between
political
activity and the civil service was made stronger with the Hatch Act
which
prohibited federal employees from engaging in political activities.
T
Tariff of abominations (1828)
See this link
Three fifths compromise
A compromise
settled the
question of the representation of slaves during the framing of the
Constitution
(Philadelphia, 1787). It was the three fifths compromise: five slaves
equaled
3 free persons for representation and taxation. As for the slave trade,
Congress was not to change anything until 1808, when Senate prohibited
further importation of slaves. As for the Native Americans they were
simply
referred to as "the foreign nations."
Simply put, "a popularly
elected
House with representation based on population (including slaves to
be
counted at three-fifths their actual number)..." was created along
with the Senate.
Triangular Trade
Let's take an
example: a
ship carrying fish and lumber from New England in colonial times
(before
1776) would set sail to England, where the fish and lumber would be
sold
and handicraft and factory goods bought. Then , instead of sailing back
to New England, the ship would sail to the West Indies (les Antilles)
in
order to sell handicraft and manufactured goods and buy sugar and
molasses.
Then the ship would sail back to New England to sell the sugar and
molasses.
The trip of that ship would thus form a triangle hence the name for
this
kind of trade.
Turner's
"Frontier
Thesis"
Turner's
main
works
source:
http://www.members.home.net/reaslink/jeffersn.htm
(Link may be dead.)
In 1893, historian Frederick
Jackson Turner gave an address to the American Historical Society
in
which he presented what was to become known as the "frontier thesis":
that
the most potent shaping force in American history was the
open,
westward-moving frontier; that the colonist who had to deal with
the
primitive conditions of the frontier shed the baggage of Old World
institutions,
including those of the urban East; and that, in so doing, a "new
man"
emerged ó practical and inventive, resourceful, inquisitive,
and highly individualistic; and through the way in which the colonist
adapted
to the frontier there evolved social, political and cultural
institutions
that were uniquely American.
The
frontier
was defined as the point at which agricultural settlement met wilderness,
"the
hither edge of free land". ... At this juncture of
civilization
and nature ó a point of truth ó the environment exacted
adaptations
that took precedence over inherited cultural forms forging, in the
process, new responses to new needs. As the frontier pushed further
west,
and the influence of Europe receded accordingly, it was these new forms
that became, in turn, the basis of further adaptations, so that what
evolved
was progressively different, progressively more American. The
institution
of greatest importance that was shaped in this way was democracy
ó in its particular, American version, not born of any
preconceived
theory, nor transported from Europe. "It came stark and strong and full
of life out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each
time
it touched a new frontier." .... The availability of free land was
a
key element in this evolution for it provided a safety-valve
against
any threat of social or economic oppression to the east; in the free
lands
of the frontier there was always re-affirmation of equality through
economic
security. The frontier was a force not only against privilege but
against
exclusion in other ways. Unlike the predominantly English
landowners
of the South and Northeast, the West took in immigrants from other
parts
of Europe and so became a more diverse society, a mix of different
nationalities
and religions that became more representative of American society as a
whole. The East had become a replay of Old World ways, the South had
its
slavery problem, but the West was free to all comers who would
escape
oppression of any kind; it was thus the breeding-ground of truly
democratic
institutions.
For Turner, as for
Jefferson a
century earlier, there was a direct connection between democracy and
agricultural
communities. It was in "the lowly tillers of the soil", those who
worked
closely with the revitalizing influence of nature, that one
would
find those attributes of character needed to sustain a nation in
republican
health. It was the farming community, this society of small
landowners,
who were the true makers of the American republic.
Turnerís
theory as an explanation of the forces that had shaped America gained
wide
attention, in part because it supported a long-held belief
in the importance of agriculture and the family farm in American society
but also, and perhaps even more importantly, it had a strong
patriotic
appeal. The West represented values that were particularly
American;
the western frontier, where free men interacted with nature, spawned
those
qualities of individualism, practicality, inventiveness, and the
restless
energy born of freedom that set America apart from other nations.
The
problem
with the thesis, based as it was in agrarian theory, was soon
apparent.
Three years before Turner delivered his address, the Superintendent of
Census had declared the frontier closed. If Turnerís
equation
of democracy with the availability of free land was no longer valid, the
question
became one of identifying some other source in American
civilization
that would sustain (or, possibly, had already been sustaining) its
political
principles. This Turner was never able to do. The agrarian
philosophy
that was the basis of the thesis (as well as the popular myth of
the
goodness of rural life) also largely ignored the impact of
industrialization
which was transforming American society in the latter half of the
nineteenth
century. Henry Nash Smith (Virgin Land) says of the
shortcomings
of this theory: "The philosophy and the myth affirmed an admirable set
of values, but they ceased very early to be useful in interpreting
American
society as a whole because they offered no intellectual apparatus
for
taking account of the industrial revolutionÖAgrarian theory
encouraged
men to ignore [the revolution] altogether, or to regard it as an
unfortunate
and anomalous violation of the natural order of things." (...) As a
result,
attention has been diverted from problems created by industrialization
and, in the theoryís implicit distrust of cities and industry,
impeded
cooperation between agricultural and industrial interests.
source:
http://www.members.home.net/reaslink/jeffersn.htm
(Link may be
dead.)
More links
Turner
et l'Ouest sauvage
Cronon
about
Turner
Henry
Nash
Smith on Turner
More
about
Turner's hypothesis
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/TURNER/home.html
U
Utopianism
A form of
speculative thinking
in which ideal societies are depicted in order to highlight the defects
of those we inhabit. The original Utopia, published in 1516 by
Sir
Thomas More, depicted a society whose members lived communally and
abstemiously
[allowing themselves only a little food, drink, or pleasure], sharing
property,
and working under the direction of spiritual leaders. Many 19th-century
Utopias were socialist in inspiration, but the genre is not tied to any
particular political creed. In the 20th century, so-called 'dystopias'
extrapolate present trends to present a nightmarish vision of the
future
(Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and Orwell's 1984
(1949)
are examples) in the hope that such developments can be forestalled.
Oxford Paperback
Encyclopedia, ©
Oxford University Press 1998 http://www.xrefer.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=225691&secid=.-
Many Europeans tried to
start
their own utopias and a "new world"' in the New World in the so-called
American wilderness (e.g. the Puritans, the Quakers, the Amish,
the
Mormons, French Fourierists, and many others.)
V
W
WASPism
The belief in the
superiority
of the White Anglo-Saxon race and institutions, a belief that possibly
culminated in the late 19C.
Westward
expansion (19C)
Below are some
keyword
Land
Ordinance (1785)
Northwest
Ordinance (1787)
Louisiana
Purchase
Lewis
and Clark
Oregon
Trail (
1848- 1860s)
Waspism
Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty
(1848)
the frontier
technology
imperialism
capitalism
exploitation
Anglo-Saxonism
Manifest
Destiny
The Whig
Party
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAwhig.htm
The Whig Party was
established
in 1834 by politicians opposed to the executive tyranny of Andrew
Jackson.
The party was named after to the Whig Party in the House of Commons
that
at the time was advocating democratic reforms in Britain.
Wilderness
In sum, for the
first two
centuries that Europeans lived in North America, they saw the continent
as a giant wilderness or desert. They used the two words
interchangeably.
The motto of Dartmouth college, Vox clamantis in deserto,
translates
to "A voice crying in the wilderness." Source: Noel Perrin, "Forever
Virgin:
The American View of America," in Daniel Halpern, editor,ANTÆUS:
ON
NATURE (London: Collins Harvill,1989) 19.
X
Y
Z
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