Booker T Washington’s autobiography, Up From Slavery, offers an interesting glimpse in what it was like to be born a slave, live through the tumultuous Civil War era, and as a young man to experience the consequences blacks faced with the end of Reconstruction when the Ku Klux Klan night-riders enslaved the former black slaves anew through terror by lynching them, burning their bodies and their farm and their churches, suppressing them and denying them justice, even denying them the ability to defend themselves in daylight through the courts.
Booker T Washington gives us a fascinating look into another world in another time, he goes from being an illiterate slave to running a major college, fund raising and socializing with the most powerful and wealth businessmen and philanthropists of his day.
Please also read our other blogs on civil rights and the Civil War and Reconstruction, which also include the videos from Yale lecture series mentioned in the video. These blogs have the links for the Yale lectures and also class notes and transcripts:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/category/civil-rights/
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/category/civil-war-and-reconstruction/
We also refer to writings of Epictetus, who was a former slave of a former slave, in this video:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/epictetus-discourses-blog-1/
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/epictetus-discourses-blog-2/
And the blogs for both Epictetus and Rufus:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/category/epictetus-and-rufus/
Please support our channel when purchasing these books from Amazon:
Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery and The Life of Frederick Douglass
https://amzn.to/3ja2ITo
The South may have lost the Civil War, but they won the culture war. The South was able to convince many of the Lost Cause myth, that somehow the Southern causes was a noble cause, that the Civil War was not fought over the issue of slavery, that the Civil War was fought over state’s rights, and that Southerners were benevolent masters whose slaves accepted their lot in life happily. Furthermore, the history of Reconstruction where blacks gained civil liberties and voting rights equal to whites was seen as a dark time in American history, that blacks showed themselves to be totally incapable of citizenship, utterly incapable to hold public office, manipulated by corrupt Yankee carpetbaggers and traitorous Southern scalawags.
One of the first historians to challenge this view was WEB Dubois. His history, Black Reconstruction, argued that blacks were able to make great strides during Reconstruction, and that Reconstruction was a bright, promising era for democracy. Although Reconstruction faced daunting problems, great strides were made in race relations, education, public health, and in establishing fair and just governments across the South, in spite of the rising racial violence caused by the KKK and similar groups, often aided by Southern sheriffs. These gains were reversed by the Redemptionists after the end of Reconstruction, robbing the blacks of their voting rights, allowing the South to build the Jim Crow system of racial violence and discrimination and subjugation that would last until the Civil Rights era.
Please view our blog on WEB Dubois:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/refuting-the-lost-cause-black-reconstruction-by-web-dubois/
Please support our channel, purchase from Amazon, we receive affiliate commission:
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, by WEB Dubois
https://amzn.to/3rZHpH0
Please support our efforts, be a patron, at:
https://www.patreon.com/seekingvirtueandwisdom
Patrons can participate in online Zoom discussions of draft presentations we prepare for future YouTube videos.
Story of the Civil War experience of my 2nd great grandfather John L. Haworth and his 3 brothers. All served the Union in the 3rd Tennessee Infantry, Co. "K".
Booker T Washington’s autobiography, Up From Slavery, offers an interesting glimpse in what it was like to be born a slave, live through the tumultuous Civil War era, and as a young man to experience the consequences blacks faced with the end of Reconstruction when the Ku Klux Klan night-riders enslaved the former black slaves anew through terror by lynching them, burning their bodies and their farm and their churches, suppressing them and denying them justice, even denying them the ability to defend themselves in daylight through the courts.
Booker T Washington gives us a fascinating look into another world in another time, he goes from being an illiterate slave to running a major college, fund raising and socializing with the most powerful and wealth businessmen and philanthropists of his day.
Please also read our other blogs on civil rights and the Civil War and Reconstruction, which also include the videos from Yale lecture series mentioned in the video. These blogs have the links for the Yale lectures and also class notes and transcripts:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/category/civil-rights/
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/category/civil-war-and-reconstruction/
We also refer to writings of Epictetus, who was a former slave of a former slave, in this video:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/epictetus-discourses-blog-1/
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/epictetus-discourses-blog-2/
And the blogs for both Epictetus and Rufus:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/category/epictetus-and-rufus/
Please support our channel when purchasing these books from Amazon:
Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery and The Life of Frederick Douglass
https://amzn.to/3ja2ITo
The South may have lost the Civil War, but they won the culture war. The South was able to convince many of the Lost Cause myth, that somehow the Southern causes was a noble cause, that the Civil War was not fought over the issue of slavery, that the Civil War was fought over state’s rights, and that Southerners were benevolent masters whose slaves accepted their lot in life happily. Furthermore, the history of Reconstruction where blacks gained civil liberties and voting rights equal to whites was seen as a dark time in American history, that blacks showed themselves to be totally incapable of citizenship, utterly incapable to hold public office, manipulated by corrupt Yankee carpetbaggers and traitorous Southern scalawags.
One of the first historians to challenge this view was WEB Dubois. His history, Black Reconstruction, argued that blacks were able to make great strides during Reconstruction, and that Reconstruction was a bright, promising era for democracy. Although Reconstruction faced daunting problems, great strides were made in race relations, education, public health, and in establishing fair and just governments across the South, in spite of the rising racial violence caused by the KKK and similar groups, often aided by Southern sheriffs. These gains were reversed by the Redemptionists after the end of Reconstruction, robbing the blacks of their voting rights, allowing the South to build the Jim Crow system of racial violence and discrimination and subjugation that would last until the Civil Rights era.
Please view our blog on WEB Dubois:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/refuting-the-lost-cause-black-reconstruction-by-web-dubois/
Please support our channel, purchase from Amazon, we receive affiliate commission:
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, by WEB Dubois
https://amzn.to/3rZHpH0
Please support our efforts, be a patron, at:
https://www.patreon.com/seekingvirtueandwisdom
Patrons can participate in online Zoom discussions of draft presentations we prepare for future YouTube videos.
Story of the Civil War experience of my 2nd great grandfather John L. Haworth and his 3 brothers. All served the Union in the 3rd Tennessee Infantry, Co. "K".
Presentation by Michael McGurty, interpretive program assistant, New Windsor Cantonment & Knox's Headquarters, July 2009. For related lesson plans, visit www.TeachingtheHudsonValley.org.
Presentation by Michael McGurty, interpretive program assistant, New Windsor Cantonment & Knox's Headquarters, July 2009. For related lesson plans, visit www.TeachingtheHudsonValley.org.
Lincoln, War, and the Slaughter of the American Working Class.docxsmile790243
Lincoln, War, and the Slaughter of the American Working Class
The American Civil War 1861-1865
The American Civil War is still, without doubt, the most traumatic experience in American History. Far more so than the American Revolution, the World Wars, and 9/11.
New estimates put the number of soldier deaths at 750,000 or above. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/civil-war-toll-up-by-20-percent-in-new-estimate.html
This does not include the many civilian deaths through disease, starvation, heartbreak, etc.
About 22 million lived in the North and 9 million in the South at the time of the war. There was about a 3.5 to 2.5 ratio of deaths North to South, but this means that the South lost a greater percentage of its population.
About 36,000 African American soldiers were killed.
In the following slides, we’ll recount the seminal events leading up to the war.
2
We can go back to the very foundations of the United States when the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3) and the 3/5th Clause (Article 1, Section 2. Par. 3) of the Constitution effectively legalized slavery without explicitly mentioning slavery.
Also, Amendment 10 “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” leaves the issue of slavery and other legal, commercial, and social matters up to the states.
Arguments and ill feelings regarding these issues began almost immediately, and tensions almost led to violence in 1820 when the Missouri Compromise staved off revolt and kept the balance between slave state and free state representation.
Texas independence from Mexico followed by its attempt to join the U.S. created tensions before and after the delayed admission in December of 1845, during the Polk Administration.
Polk’s (murderous?) manipulation of international politics led to massive gains in U.S. territory. He gave Mexico little chance to a avoid war that resulted in the loss of the that nations northern half, and he negotiated for the acquisition and consolidation of the Northwest, completing the U.S. march to the Pacific.
This created all kinds of problems for the slavery balance. The Wilmot Proviso, which might have solved the problem, though admittedly in the non-extentionist favor, was rejected. When California asked to join the Union as a free state, it engendered yet another crisis. Half of the state was below the Missouri Compromise line. There was a call in Congress to split California into one free and one slave state.
Then Clay (again) proposed a compromise that delayed secession, but may have ensured it at the same time.
Battle of San Jacinto
April 21, 1836
1845
O’Sullivan
Popularizes Term
Manifest Destiny
Clays Compromise 1850
California Enters Union as a Free State
Territories to Have No Restrictions on Slavery
Enforce Fugitive Slave Law
No Slaves in D.C.
Recall from the last presen ...
CHAPTER 9 THE AMERICAN WEST, Expansion and Contraction, 1860-19.docxrusselldayna
CHAPTER 9: THE AMERICAN WEST, Expansion and Contraction, 1860-1920
Contents
Introduction and Pre-Reading Questions: 1
Documents: 5
Document 1, Natives on Westward Expansion (Smithsonian, 1867; 1929) 5
Document 2, The Frontier Guardian on “More Indian Outrage,” 1851 (teachushistory.org, 1851) 5
Document 3, The Rocky Mountain News reports on the Sand Creek Massacre (PBS.org, 1864) 7
Document 4, Representative Grow (PA) explains how the Homestead Act provides, “Free homes for free men” (American Memory, 1860) 10
Document 5, Frances Garside, “The farmers’ wives are not merely ‘helpmeets’” in Kansas (Garside, 1995) 13
Document 6, Narrative of Cathay Williams, a female Buffalo Soldier (sangres.com, 1876) 14
Document 7, Illustration of blacks moving west from Louisiana to Kansas after the Civil War (Library of Congress, 1870) 15
Document 8, Interview of Bones Hooks, a black cowboy (American Memory, 1940) 15
Document 9, Benjamin Singleton testifies about the “Negro Exodus from the Southern States” (PBS.org, 1880) 19
Document 10, George B. Morris on “The Chinaman as he is…” (Library of Congress, c. 1868) 23
Document 11, Anti-Chinese boycott broadside (American Memory, c. 1889) 24
Document 12, Samuel Clemens on Mining Towns from Roughing It (Huntington Library, 1872) 25
Post-Reading Exercises 27
Works Cited 27
Introduction and Pre-Reading Questions: The west was a place that, through the end of the 1830s, was feared by most Americans. People assumed the soil was poor, the climate bad and the Indians terrifying. But by the mid-1840s, farmers, ranchers and miners, among others, took a gamble and tried their luck out west; by the end of the Civil War the romanticized notion of their experience on the “‘frontier’” drew increasingly more people out there in search of “wealth, adventure, opportunity, and untrammeled individualism.”[footnoteRef:1] In particular, it was the frontier thesis of a young man named Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that propelled greater numbers of Americans to unknown territory. His thesis said that the free lands that lie west, coupled with the drive of Americans to settle on that land, gave Americans the ruggedness, individuality and power they possessed. [1: Alan Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People (McGraw Hill: New York, 1996), 454.]
What these new settlers found in their quest for excitement, however, was often extreme hardship in the new western lands. The image of the frontier was one of uncharted territory, virgin land, an unconquered and untamed environment, an empty plot of land ripe for settlement. But what these western-bound settlers usually found was a territory with diverse groups of Indians, Mexicans, French, Asians and others, all with different cultures, languages and ideas about “ ‘America.’”
Prior to massive white expansion to the Far West, various societies flourished in the Far West—the region beyond the Mississippi River—places like New Mexico, California, ...
CHAPTER 9 THE AMERICAN WEST, Expansion and Contraction, 1860-19.docxspoonerneddy
CHAPTER 9: THE AMERICAN WEST, Expansion and Contraction, 1860-1920
Contents
Introduction and Pre-Reading Questions: 1
Documents: 5
Document 1, Natives on Westward Expansion (Smithsonian, 1867; 1929) 5
Document 2, The Frontier Guardian on “More Indian Outrage,” 1851 (teachushistory.org, 1851) 5
Document 3, The Rocky Mountain News reports on the Sand Creek Massacre (PBS.org, 1864) 7
Document 4, Representative Grow (PA) explains how the Homestead Act provides, “Free homes for free men” (American Memory, 1860) 10
Document 5, Frances Garside, “The farmers’ wives are not merely ‘helpmeets’” in Kansas (Garside, 1995) 13
Document 6, Narrative of Cathay Williams, a female Buffalo Soldier (sangres.com, 1876) 14
Document 7, Illustration of blacks moving west from Louisiana to Kansas after the Civil War (Library of Congress, 1870) 15
Document 8, Interview of Bones Hooks, a black cowboy (American Memory, 1940) 15
Document 9, Benjamin Singleton testifies about the “Negro Exodus from the Southern States” (PBS.org, 1880) 19
Document 10, George B. Morris on “The Chinaman as he is…” (Library of Congress, c. 1868) 23
Document 11, Anti-Chinese boycott broadside (American Memory, c. 1889) 24
Document 12, Samuel Clemens on Mining Towns from Roughing It (Huntington Library, 1872) 25
Post-Reading Exercises 27
Works Cited 27
Introduction and Pre-Reading Questions: The west was a place that, through the end of the 1830s, was feared by most Americans. People assumed the soil was poor, the climate bad and the Indians terrifying. But by the mid-1840s, farmers, ranchers and miners, among others, took a gamble and tried their luck out west; by the end of the Civil War the romanticized notion of their experience on the “‘frontier’” drew increasingly more people out there in search of “wealth, adventure, opportunity, and untrammeled individualism.”[footnoteRef:1] In particular, it was the frontier thesis of a young man named Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that propelled greater numbers of Americans to unknown territory. His thesis said that the free lands that lie west, coupled with the drive of Americans to settle on that land, gave Americans the ruggedness, individuality and power they possessed. [1: Alan Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People (McGraw Hill: New York, 1996), 454.]
What these new settlers found in their quest for excitement, however, was often extreme hardship in the new western lands. The image of the frontier was one of uncharted territory, virgin land, an unconquered and untamed environment, an empty plot of land ripe for settlement. But what these western-bound settlers usually found was a territory with diverse groups of Indians, Mexicans, French, Asians and others, all with different cultures, languages and ideas about “ ‘America.’”
Prior to massive white expansion to the Far West, various societies flourished in the Far West—the region beyond the Mississippi River—places like New Mexico, California,.
CHAPTER 9 THE AMERICAN WEST, Expansion and Contraction, 1860-19.docxchristinemaritza
CHAPTER 9: THE AMERICAN WEST, Expansion and Contraction, 1860-1920
Contents
Introduction and Pre-Reading Questions: 1
Documents: 5
Document 1, Natives on Westward Expansion (Smithsonian, 1867; 1929) 5
Document 2, The Frontier Guardian on “More Indian Outrage,” 1851 (teachushistory.org, 1851) 5
Document 3, The Rocky Mountain News reports on the Sand Creek Massacre (PBS.org, 1864) 7
Document 4, Representative Grow (PA) explains how the Homestead Act provides, “Free homes for free men” (American Memory, 1860) 10
Document 5, Frances Garside, “The farmers’ wives are not merely ‘helpmeets’” in Kansas (Garside, 1995) 13
Document 6, Narrative of Cathay Williams, a female Buffalo Soldier (sangres.com, 1876) 14
Document 7, Illustration of blacks moving west from Louisiana to Kansas after the Civil War (Library of Congress, 1870) 15
Document 8, Interview of Bones Hooks, a black cowboy (American Memory, 1940) 15
Document 9, Benjamin Singleton testifies about the “Negro Exodus from the Southern States” (PBS.org, 1880) 19
Document 10, George B. Morris on “The Chinaman as he is…” (Library of Congress, c. 1868) 23
Document 11, Anti-Chinese boycott broadside (American Memory, c. 1889) 24
Document 12, Samuel Clemens on Mining Towns from Roughing It (Huntington Library, 1872) 25
Post-Reading Exercises 27
Works Cited 27
Introduction and Pre-Reading Questions: The west was a place that, through the end of the 1830s, was feared by most Americans. People assumed the soil was poor, the climate bad and the Indians terrifying. But by the mid-1840s, farmers, ranchers and miners, among others, took a gamble and tried their luck out west; by the end of the Civil War the romanticized notion of their experience on the “‘frontier’” drew increasingly more people out there in search of “wealth, adventure, opportunity, and untrammeled individualism.”[footnoteRef:1] In particular, it was the frontier thesis of a young man named Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that propelled greater numbers of Americans to unknown territory. His thesis said that the free lands that lie west, coupled with the drive of Americans to settle on that land, gave Americans the ruggedness, individuality and power they possessed. [1: Alan Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People (McGraw Hill: New York, 1996), 454.]
What these new settlers found in their quest for excitement, however, was often extreme hardship in the new western lands. The image of the frontier was one of uncharted territory, virgin land, an unconquered and untamed environment, an empty plot of land ripe for settlement. But what these western-bound settlers usually found was a territory with diverse groups of Indians, Mexicans, French, Asians and others, all with different cultures, languages and ideas about “ ‘America.’”
Prior to massive white expansion to the Far West, various societies flourished in the Far West—the region beyond the Mississippi River—places like New Mexico, California, ...
17. 4. Tension grew and in 1856, a gang of proslavery raiders shot up and burned part of the free-soil town of Lawrence, Kansas --- prelude to a bloodier controversy 1856 Lawrence, Kansas newspaper describing sacking of Lawrence, Kansas
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21. C. Civil War broke out in Kansas in 1856 and continued until it merged with the large-scale Civil War of 1861-1865—Kansas earned the name “Bleeding Kansas” Jayhawkers and Missouri Bushwackers fight it out over Kansas becoming a free state or a pro-slavery state.
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31. Brooks believed his only alternative was to beat Senator Brooks as you would beat a dog FYI, this is Mrs. Read’s dog, Skippy, and she never beats him.
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44. B. Republicans lost because of doubts about Fremont’s honesty and sound judgment and also the fire eaters in the South threatened to secede if a “Black Republican” got elected---Northerners who had business connections in the South voted their pocketbooks (to keep trade open)
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52. D. This was another wedge between the northern Democrats (who were shocked --- people like Senator Douglas) and southern Democrats (who were delighted)
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58. D. Congress passed a homestead act charging a nominal $.25 an acre, but Buchanan vetoed it
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63. B. Lincoln was a member of the Whig Party but the Kansas Nebraska Act ignited something inside of him, and he became a Republican and a good orator
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66. B. As the debates proceeded, Lincoln really shone --- using logic rather than table-thumping