The Civil War left America in a state of disarray, with over 600,000 casualties of the war and the South founds itself in social and economical ruin. The following twelve years, from 1865 to 1877, even though one may argue that Reconstruction for the South started as early as 1863 with the Emancipation proclamation, marked an era of reconstruction that contained many challenges: first, the reunification of this divided nation, second the conversion of the South, whose economy relied entirely on slavery and finally the integration of the emancipated slaves, culturally as well as politically. It was a time of transition from a belligerent conflict between the North and the South to a political one and a time of many changes. We may thus wonder to what extent the Reconstruction Era was a rupture in American history and paved the way to a unified nation? My argumentation will consequently fall in two parts: on the one hand I will demonstrate that the Reconstruction Era marks the end of a time and then I will show that the reconstruction is far from fulfilling its ambitions.
An uncharacteristic take on rural black politics, Steven Hahn’s A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration transports readers into a world of faith, power, and family across the rural South. Diving into a period that spans nearly one hundred years, Hahn, an author, specialist, and professor, addresses the political culture of newly freed slaves as they maneuvered through challenges of freedom, Jim Crow laws, and religion. Hahn pens, “ [A Nation under Our Feet] is a book about extraordinary people who did extraordinary things under the most difficult…” (1). The author successfully presents such book in this sequential timeline and geographical mapping from Texas to Virginia. Through his synthesis of vast primary literature on slavery, Civil War South, and the Great Migration, Hahn supports his arguments and presents readers with a new look into the past.
Chapter 5 “The Revolutionary Era: Crossroads of Freedom,” This chapter focuses on Revolutionary era and the war between Britain and the colonies. It shed light on the lives of the African Americans during the war and the decisions they made to fight with or against the colonies they were enslaved in. The first important topic is about Thomas Peters fight to get his freedom.
Ross’ story is told in a structurally unique way through Kennedy’s pen and with the theme of courage resonating throughout. Ross makes the decision to sacrifice his political career for the sake of saving the country of what ironically the Anti-Slavery radical Republicans were fighting so hard to vote against; freedom. Without his descriptive detail in his use of words, phrases and quotes, it’s message would be difficult to replicate. Without his subtle but significant use of rhetorical devices, he would never have able to persuade the audience to join Ross’ cause without even telling them his motives. Kennedy writes in a way which keeps the reader on the edge of confusion and enthrallment for Edmund G. Ross.
During the 18th and 19th century a lot was changing in the Colonies but, one constant during a crazy time in American history was the idea of liberty. Freedom meant that you were able to choose where you wanted to live, work, and speak your mind when you wanted to, without fear of a strict government coming down on you for it. The people of America wanted to be able to feel free but have a government there to protect them and Britain was not allowing the colonies to feel free or represented. In this paper I will talk about two excerpts In the Voices of Freedom by Eric Foner. One is a letter written back home from a German immigrant who is now living in Pennsylvania.
From the Revolution to our contemporary world, freedom has been America's mightiest force for cultural development and motivated numerous powerful events. Eric Foner views freedom not as a record of facts but as a possession which has been debated greatly for its elasticity throughout American history. Foner’s text “Give Me Liberty” depicts freedom to have been constructed not only in politics and authorized environments but also by depicting struggle to achieve the rights of African Americans, women, the working class and immigrants. Injustice and freedom can only be comprehended retroactively, when looking back at the past, and is difficult to understand it while you’re in that era. It all comes down to the fundamental history of America
“Long, hot summers” of rioting arose and many supporters of the African American movement were assassinated. However, these movements that mused stay ingrained in America’s history and pave way for an issue that continues to be the center of
After the British and French war, Peters’s family, hundred members of the Black Guides and Pioneers evacuated from New York to Nova Scotia. However, “in Nova Scotia the dream of life, liberty, and happiness became a nightmare. Some 3,000 ex-slaves found that they were segregated in impoverished villages, given small scraps of often untillable land, desprived of rights normally extended to British subjects, and reduced to peonage by a white population whose racism was as congealed as the frozen winter soil of Nova Scotia.” (Nash 7). At this new place, African Americans were treated really badly.
In his landmark collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, a professor of sociology at Atlanta University, disputed the main principle of Washington’s political program, the idea that voting and civil rights were less important to black progress than acquiring property and achieving economic self-sufficiency and then Du Bois’s striving to dramatize in his narrator a synthesis of racial and national consciousness dedicated to “the ideal of human brotherhood” made The Souls of Black Folk one of the most
Fredrick Douglas was a leading American Abolitionist and anti-slavery activist; born a slave, Douglas freed himself when he was twenty years old. Being an activist from the early 1840’s until about 1890 when the Jim Crow Laws were coming to affect (Jim Crow being laws that forced racial segregation). He made waves and changed the lives of millions. In this paper I will discuss what era he lived in, just a few of the thousands of speeches he gave, journal entries he’s written, how he impacted the slave free world we know today and following with some criticism he got when doing such a brave act of giving many people hope. To start, Fredrick was born in February of 1818, dying around February of 1895.
In William H. Chafe’s novel, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom, Chafe used evidence from Greensboro, North Carolina to prove his thesis about resistance in the United States from 1945 to 1975. In Chafe’s thesis, he argued that America was resisting civil rights for free blacks. Greensboro was considered one of the most “progressive” areas in the New South and whites seemed to be greatly accepting of the racial changes in the south. Despite the fact that Greensboro appeared so tolerant towards change, there still was a large amount of resistance.
Frederick Douglass, born a slave and later the most influential African American leader of the 1800s, addresses the hypocrisy of the US of maintaining slavery with its upheld ideals being freedom and independence on July 4th, 1852. Douglass builds his argument by using surprising contrasts, plain facts, and provocative antithesis. Introducing his subject, Douglass reminds his audience about the dark side of America for slaves, in sharp, surprising contrasts with the apparent progressivity within the nation. He first notices “the disparity,” that “the sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and deaths to me,” as an African-American former slave. It is surprising for the audience to hear that the Sun does not bring him any prosperity, that the Sun, the source of life on earth, brings him destruction.
According to the author of Give Me Liberty, Eric Foner believes that it is important to take into account the notion of freedom when analyzing the history of the United States, since it is one of the most basic fundamentals of our nation’s constitution. Seeing that our meaning of freedom has changed drastically over the centuries, Foner was able to identify the three basic components of freedom—the meaning, the social conditions, and the boundaries. Using Foner’s analysis, I will explain how the Progressive Era helped expand the definition of freedom to include women, which was very much considered taboo at the time. Moreover, because the US has had many instances in which the meaning of freedom was limited, I will also use Foner’s analysis
On September 2nd, 1862, Abraham Lincoln famously signed the Emancipation Proclamation. After that, there’s been much debate on whether Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation truly played a role in freeing the slaves with many arguments opposing or favoring this issue. In Vincent Harding’s essay, The Blood-red Ironies of God, Harding argues in his thesis that Lincoln did not help to emancipate the slaves but that rather the slaves “self-emancipated” themselves through the war. On the opposition, Allen C Guelzo ’s essay, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, argues in favor of the Emancipation Proclamation and Guelzo acknowledges Lincoln for the abolishment of slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation.
An Austrian philosopher Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner had gained recognition in the nineteenth century for publishing his philosophical works including “The Philosophy of Freedom”. His works address the question to which extent a man is said to be free. The first part of his work mentions Freedom in human thinking which is the most essential with respect to this topic. The second part of his works include conditions necessary for freedom of action, that is, external causality and its results. He also includes ethical individualism which is a part of moral philosophy.
