April 15th — 22nd

On Friday we began -- Chapter 12: Antebellum Culture and Reform
The chapter objectives are:

• How American intellectuals developed a national culture committed to the liberation of the human spirit (doesn't that sound fun?);
• How this commitment to the liberation to the human spirit (more fun!) led to and reinforced the reform impulse of the period;
• How the crusade against slavery became the most powerful element in this reform movement.

Really all fun stuff!

Monday

We'll be finishing up Section one (since it's that much fun!), then hopefully begin Section 2; "Remaking Society!" How much fun does that sound?!?

Major themes include:

• Literature and the quest for liberation;
• Literature in the Antebellum South;
• The contributions of the Transcendentalists to American culture;
• And the various reform movements that flourished at this time in history.

The the primary source from the writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson and questions below will be a class assignment we'll cover together.

If any man spoke for the new democratic age, it was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Here, in an except from his essay, “Self-Reliance,” he exhorts his fellow citizens to have confidence in themselves and their potential — what is democratic about that? How does this selection reflect the force behind the reform movement in America? REad the section iin your text on Emerson (p. 322), and compare what you read in this document with the philosophy of transcendentalism. What similarities exist?

On the contrary, how might it be argued that Emerson is really saying nothing new, but is merely verbalizing what Americans already believed but had not put into words? Are the people Emerson is addressing once again being “forced to take with shame [their] own opinions from another?”

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost--and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre [sic] of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow [sic] a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays (New York: Hurst, 1885), pp. 63-64.

Homework: Read and re-read Section one and two, pp. 318-334;

Also:

At the women’s rights convention held at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, the delegates declared that “all men and women are created equal” and listed the “injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman.” Then the convention adopted a series of resolution  for constructive action, among which were the following:

Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.

Resolved, That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against women when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in feats of the circus.

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

Resolved, That the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.

Resolved, That the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous and untiring efforts of both men and women, for the overthrow of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to women an equal participation in the various trades, professions, and commerce.

What do these tell you about the goals of the early women’s rights movement?

What do they also tell you about the prejudices that women would have to overcome to gain the equality they sought?

Also: select a reading from Whitman's, Leaves of Grass, and prepare a two-paragraph reaction / interpretation to your selection. Please reference:

http://www.bartleby.com/142/index.html

The Whitman assignment is due Wednesday Thursday.

Tuesday

Students will be asked to share their responses from their homework.
By the end of the class, we should be finished with Sections one and two.

Yesterday's objectives were hefty, to say the least, so today we'll continue to wrap up this section, then begin the section, "Remaking Society."

Major themes to be covered include:

• The philosophy of reform;
• The temperance movement;
• Education & rehabilitation;
• And the first real feminist movement.

Homework: Read pp. 334-341 (end of chapter)

Thursday

A discussion of Whitman's Leaves of Grass assignment & Tuesday's homework assignment on the Declaration of Sentiments.

If any time remaining, we'll discuss "The Crusade Against Slavery"

• This section could be the "cause" war, but I wouldn't dare say so at the school I came from.

Homework:

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (London: Bentley, 1852), pp. 356-358.

These two coloured men were the two principal hands on the plantation. Legree had trained them in savageness and brutality as systematically as he had his bull-dogs; and, by long practice in hardness and cruelty, brought their whole nature to about the same range of capacities. It is a common remark, and one that is thought to militate strongly against the character of the race, that the negro overseer is always more tyrannical and cruel than the white one. This is simply saying that the negro mind has been more crushed and debased than the white. It is not more true of this race than of every oppressed race, the world over. The slave is always a tyrant, if he can get a chance to be one. . . .

     It was late in the evening when the weary occupants of the shanties came flocking home--men and women, in soiled and tattered garments, surly and uncomfortable, and in no mood to look pleasantly on newcomers. The small village was alive with no inviting sounds; hoarse, guttural voices contending at the hand-mills where their morsel of hard corn was yet to be ground into meal, to fit it for the cake that was to constitute their only supper. From the earliest dawn of the day, they had been in the fields, pressed to work under the driving lash of the overseers; for it was now in the very heat and hurry of the season, and no means were left untried to press everyone up to the top of their capabilities. "True," says the negligent lounger; "picking cotton isn't hard work." Isn't it? And it isn't much inconvenience, either, to have one drop of water fall on your head; yet the worst torture of the Inquisition is produced by drop after drop, drop after drop, falling moment after moment, with monotonous succession, on the same spot; and work in itself not hard becomes so by being pressed, hour after hour, with unvarying, unrelenting sameness, with not even the consciousness of free-will to take from its tediousness. Tom looked in vain among the gang, as they poured along, for companionable faces. He saw only sullen, scowling, embruted men, and feeble, discouraged women, or women that were not women--the strong pushing away the weak--the gross, unrestricted animal selfishness of human beings, of whom nothing good was expected and desired; and who, treated in every way like brutes, had sunk as nearly to their level as it was possible for human beings to do.

The influence of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the northern perception of the South’s “peculiar institution” was such that Abraham Lincoln was said to have addressed her in 1862 as, “the little woman who wrote the book who made this great war.” Presented here is a selection from that “book,” which describes the arrival of Uncle Tom on the plantation of Simon Legree.

• What was Stowe’s purpose in writing this book? 
• Notice that Legree is not a southerner, but is from New England. Why would she have created such a character? 
• What of the “two coloured men” who served Legree as his “principal hands”? 
• What was the author trying to say about the effect of slavery on slaves?
• Reread the section, “Where Historians Disagree” in Chapter Eleven.
• Which historian would Stowe have agree?

Due Friday.

Friday

Scheduled as a "catch-up-day" as well concluding the Chapter.

Homework: Read the DBQ (handout in class) five times.

Monday

Discuss HBS's homework assignment...

DBQ intro.

Homework (yes, the weekend and I'm asking you for homework).

Read student examples of the DBQ I handed you yesterday, and give each a grade of "good,"  "okay," or "blah." Give justifications on how and why you arrived at your grade. You'll each be given three examples.