An American Renaissance: Religion, Romanticism, and Reform - Document Overview
Please read this document and answer the following questions.
An English visitor, Frances Trollope, scathingly scribbled that "if the citizens of the United States were indeed the devoted patriots they call themselves, they would surely not thus encrust themselves in the hard, dry, stubborn persuasion, that they are the first and best of the human race, that nothing is to be learnt, but what they are able to teach, and that nothing is worth having, which they do not possess." She then clucked on about how such an attitude served as an antidote tomeaning it countered or preventedimprovement.
While it was true that Americans tended to crow like cocks on a dunghill, Trollope failed to recognize the concerns behind the cock-a-doodle-doos. There was bravado as well as bravery in American actions, qualms as well as convictions in their attitudes, but they were not about to reveal their doubts and weaknesses to an Englishwoman who represented what to many of them was still the enemy. Yes, Americans did generally believe that their nation and its citizens were the best in the world, an attitude distasteful to others who reserved that title for themselves, but many also thought that their society could and should be improved, and it was up to themnot a foreign observerto determine what needed to be fixed and how it was to be done.
The 1830s and 1840s were thus years of great cultural as well as political ferment. The agitation and egalitarian spirit that marked Jacksonian democracy spilled over into a variety of reform crusades. A new generation of American moralists and thinkers saw themselves as inhabiting a nation of providential destiny and infinite potential, and they expressed an exuberant faith in the perfectibility of both individuals and society as a whole. As the poet-philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson proclaimed in 1841, "the doctrine of Reform had never such scope as the present hour." Indeed, at mid-century the United States was awash in organized efforts to redress every social evil and conquer every personal failing through both religious and secular means.
Religious life during the decades before the Civil War took on a more optimistic and fervent tone as many Protestants adopted more inclusive visions of God's grace and rejected the predestinarian tenets of orthodox Calvinism. Calvinists proclaimed the absolute sovereignty of God: God elected who was saved and who was damned. Ministers of the New Divinity theology, while accepting God's will, preached that people effected their own destiny by electing between good and evil. People of faith still believed in original sin, but more and more believers embraced the concept of a benevolent God who offered everyone the gift of salvation through the experience of spiritual conversion and a life of faith. Evangelical firebrands such as Charles G. Finney and the Methodist circuit rider Peter Cartwright were especially skilled at challenging orthodox theology and attracting throngs of believers to their banner of emotional rather than reasoned piety. Finney's enthusiasm did not stop with conversion: he exhorted the converted to express their faith not only in church but through good works, including social reform.
In the midst of this so-called Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century, new religious denominations appeared which embraced people without regard to social standing or educational achievement. Such egalitarianism assaulted the status quo in other areas as well as Americans set out to correct their society's faults. The most profound version of reform idealism during this period was the peculiar romanticism practiced by the Transcendentalists, an eclectic coterie of New England poets and philosophers. A fluid group of geniuses and cranks, they included among their ranks people of genuine intellectual stature: clergymen such as Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson; philosopher-writers such as Henry Thoreau and Bronson Alcott; and such learned women as Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller.
The Transcendentalists exercised an influence on American thought that far exceeded their numbers. Full of burning enthusiasm and perfectionist illusions about the boundless possibilities of human nature and the American social experiment, they broke away from what Emerson called the cultural domination of "reverent and conservative minds" and the dry logic of Enlightenment rationalism. Celebrating the individual spirit over the collective state, intuitive over rational knowledge, they rejected the intellectual methodology that had established the republic as the proper way to reflect upon and reform its society.
These visionariesand the authors and artists of the romantic movement they affectedgave free rein to their fertile imaginations so as to transcend the limits of reason and cultivate inner states of consciousness, for they believed that human existence encompassed more experiences than reason and logic could explain: such as impressions and feelings. Such philosophical idealism traced its roots to Plato and Kant and led the Transcendentalists to use the lamp of personal inspiration to illuminate changing states of consciousness and spiritual essences and to wield the rod of personal revelation to beat upon the status quo.
The Transcendentalists emphasized self-reliance but also supported many of the organized efforts to reform social ills. Of course, many of the reform organizations were created to promote self-reliance as well as social responsibility. Activists, many of whom were women, promoted the abolition of slavery, temperance legislation, prison improvements, aid to the physically handicapped and mentally ill, state-supported public schools, and women's rights.
Although this spirit of social reform was centered in New England and often fueled by an evangelical Protestant moralism, it penetrated all regions of the country and displayed quite secular motives as well. Burdened as well as bolstered by a naïve optimism about human nature and the sufficiency of individual moral regeneration, the antebellum reform movements exercised a powerful influence on the country's culture and helped reveal to the young nation how much remained to be done to ensure access to and realization of the American dream.
Please answer the following questions.
Click here for sample answers | Read the document again
fiogf49gjkf0d |
fiogf49gjkf0d Observation |
1. fiogf49gjkf0d What type of document is this? (Ex. Newspaper, telegram, map, letter, memorandum, congressional record) |
|
|
2. fiogf49gjkf0d For what audience was the document written? |
|
|
fiogf49gjkf0d Expression |
3. fiogf49gjkf0d What do you find interesting or important about this document? |
|
|
4. fiogf49gjkf0d Is there a particular phrase or section that you find particularly meaningful or surprising? |
|
|
fiogf49gjkf0d Connection |
5. fiogf49gjkf0d What does this document tell you about life in this culture at the time it was written? |
|
|
Submit to Gradebook:
Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835), Charles Grandison Finney
Please read this document and answer the following questions.
Charles Grandison Finney (1792Ð1875) was the most celebrated revivalist of the Second Great Awakening. Born in Connecticut, he was raised in various frontier towns in central New York, an area known as the "Burned-Over District" for the revivals that had swept through it. In 1821 Finney experienced a soul-wrenching conversion during which God told him "to plead his cause" to others, so he abandoned his legal career and became a celebrated converter of souls in upstate New York and New England. A man of imposing height, forceful appearance, and vibrant rhetoric, he mesmerized the thousands who flocked to hear him preach his appealing theology of conversion and redemption. Although initially ordained as a Presbyterian minister, Finney was not a Calvinist; indeed, he contributed to the breakdown of Calvinism in American religion. He insisted that sin was a voluntary act rather than a foreordained certainty, and therefore people could choose to be saved and elect to embrace a life of holiness. This focus on the individuala religious belief shared by most middle-class churchgoersshows how Finney was both a product and representative of the Jacksonian era. So too did his belief in progress. According to Finney, revivalism and reform went hand in hand, and he inspired many people to take up such causes as abolition and temperance.
* * *
A "Revival of Religion" presupposes a declension. Almost all the religion in the world has been produced by revivals. God has found it necessary to take advantage of the excitability there is in mankind, to produce powerful excitements among them, before he can lead them to obey. Men are so [spiritually] 1 sluggish, there are so many things to lead their minds off from religion, and to oppose the influence of the gospel, that it is necessary to raise an excitement among them, till the tide rises so high as to sweep away the opposing obstacles. They must be so excited that they will break over these counteracting influences, before they will obey God. [Not that excited feeling is religion, for it is not; but it is excited desire, appetite, and feeling that prevents religion. The will is, in a sense, enslaved by the carnal and worldly desires. Hence it is necessary to awaken men to a sense of guilt and danger, and thus produce an excitement of counter-feeling and desire which will break the power of carnal and worldly desire and leave the will free to obey God.]2
* * *
There is so little principle in the church, so little firmness and stability of purpose, that [unless the religious feelings are awakened and kept excited, counter worldly feelings and excitements will prevail, and men will not obey God].3 They have so little knowledge, and their principles are so weak, that unless they are excited, they will go back from the path of duty, and do nothing to promote the glory of God. The state of the world is still such, and probably will be till the millennium is fully come, that religion must be mainly promoted by these excitements. How long and how often has the experiment been tried, to bring the church to act steadily for God, without these periodical excitements! Many good men have supposed, and still suppose, that the best way to promote religion, is to go along uniformly, and gather in the ungodly gradually, and without excitement. But however such reasoning may appear in the abstract, facts demonstrate its futility. If the church were far enough advanced in knowledge, and had stability of principle enough to keep awake, such a course would do; but the church is so little enlightened, and there are so many counteracting causes, that the church will not go steadily to work without a special excitement. . . .
. . . The great political, and other worldly excitements that agitate Christendom, are all unfriendly to religion, and divert the mind from the interests of the soul. Now these excitements can only be counteracted by religious excitements. And until there is religious principle in the world to put down irreligious excitements, it is in vain to try to promote religion, except by counteracting excitements. This is true in philosophy, and it is a historical fact.
It is altogether improbable that religion will ever make progress among heathen nations except through the influence of revivals. The attempt is now making to do it by education, and other cautious and gradual improvements. But so long as the laws of mind remain what they are, it cannot be done in this way. There must be excitement sufficient to wake up the dormant moral powers, and roll back the tide of degradation and sin. And precisely so far as our own land approximates to heathenism, it is impossible for God or man to promote religion in such a state of things but by powerful excitements. . . .
* * *
III. I proceed to mention some things which ought to be done, to continue this great and glorious revival of religion, which has been in progress for the last ten years.
- 1. There should be great and deep repentings on the part of ministers. WE, my brethren, must humble ourselves before God. It will not do for us to suppose that it is enough to call on the people to repent. We must repent, we must take the lead in repentance, and then call on the churches to follow.
* * *
- 4. The church must take right ground in regard to politics. Do not suppose, now, that I am going to preach a political sermon, or that I wish to have you join and get up a Christian party in politics. No, I do not believe in that. But the time has come that Christians must vote for honest men, and take consistent ground in politics, or the Lord will curse them. They must be honest men themselves, and instead of voting for a man because he belongs to their party, Bank or Anti-Bank, Jackson, or Anti-Jackson, they must find out whether he is honest and upright, and fit to be trusted. They must let the world see that the church will uphold no man in office, who is known to be a knave, or an adulterer, or a Sabbath-breaker, or a gambler. Such is the spread of intelligence and the facility of communication in our country, that every man can know for whom he gives his vote. And if he will give his vote only for honest men, the country will be obliged to have upright rulers. . . . As on the subject of slavery and temperance, so on this subject, the church must act right or the country will be ruined. God cannot sustain this free and blessed country, which we love and pray for, unless the church will take right ground. Politics are a part of religion in such a country as this, and Christians must do their duty to the country as a part of their duty to God. It seems sometimes as if the foundations of the nation were becoming rotten, and Christians seem to act as if they thought God did not see what they do in politics. But I tell you, he does see it, and he will bless or curse this nation, according to the course they take.
- 5. The churches must take right ground on the subject of slavery. And here the question arises, what is right ground? And FIRST I will state some things that should be avoided.
- (1.) First of all, a bad spirit should be avoided. Nothing is more calculated to injure religion, and to injure the slaves themselves, than for Christians to get into an angry controversy on the subject. It is a subject upon which there needs to be no angry controversy among Christians. Slave-holding professors, like rum-selling professors, may endeavor to justify themselves, and may be angry with those who press their consciences, and call upon them to give up their sins. Those proud professors of religion who think a man to blame, or think it is a shame to have a black skin, may allow their prejudices so far to prevail, as to shut their ears, and be disposed to quarrel with those who urge the subject upon them. But I repeat it, the subject of slavery is a subject upon which Christians, praying men, need not and must not differ.
- (2.) Another thing to be avoided is an attempt to take neutral ground on this subject. Christians can no more take neutral ground on this subject, since it has come up for discussion, than they can take neutral ground on the subject of the sanctification ofthe Sabbath. It is a great national sin. It is a sin of the church. The churches by their silence, and by permitting slave-holders to belong to their communion, have been consenting to it. All denominations have been more or less guilty, although the Quakers have of late years washed their hands of it. It is in vain for the churches to pretend it is merely a political sin. I repeat it, it is the sin of the church,to which all denominations have consented. They have virtually declared that it is lawful. . . .
* * *
In the SECOND place, I will mention several things, that in my judgment the church are imperatively called upon to do, on this subject:
- (1.) Christians of all denominations, should lay aside prejudice and inform themselves on this subject, without any delay. Vast multitudes of professors of religion have indulged prejudice to such a degree as to be unwilling to read and hear, and come to a right understanding of the subject. But Christians cannot pray in this state of mind. I defy any one to possess the spirit of prayer, while he is too prejudiced to examine this, or any other question of duty. . . .
- (2.) Writings, containing temperate and judicious discussions on this subject, and such developments of facts as are before the public, should be quietly and extensively circulated, and should be carefully and prayerfully examined by the whole church. . . . [P]raying men should act judiciously, and that, as soon as sufficient information can be diffused through the community, the churches should meekly, but FIRMLY take decided ground on the subject, and express before the whole nation and the world, their abhorrence of this sin.
* * *
I believe the time has come, and although I am no prophet, I believe it will be found to have come, that the revival in the United States will continue and prevail, no farther and faster than the church take right ground upon this subject. The church are God's witnesses. The fact is that slavery is, pre-eminently, the sin of the church. It is the very fact that ministers and professors of religion of different denominations hold slaves, which sanctifies the whole abomination, in the eyes of ungodly men. Who does not know that on the subject of temperance, every drunkard in the land, will skulk behind some rum-selling deacon, or wine-drinking minister? It is the most common objection and refuge of the intemperate, and of moderate drinkers, that it is practised by professors of religion. It is this that creates the imperious necessity for excluding traffickers in ardent spirit, and rum-drinkers from the communion. Let the churches of all denominations speak out on the subject of temperance, let them close their doors against all who have any thing to do with the death-dealing abomination, and the cause of temperance is triumphant. A few years would annihilate the traffic. Just so with slavery.
It is the church that mainly supports this sin. Her united testimony upon this subject would settle the question. Let Christians of all denominations meekly but firmly come forth, and pronounce their verdict, let them clear their communions, and wash their hands of this thing, let them give forth and write on the head and front of this great abomination, SIN! and in three years, a public sentiment would be formed that would carry all before it, and there would not be a shackled slave, nor a bristling, cruel slave-driver in this land.
* * *
6. If the church wishes to promote revivals, she must sanctify the Sabbath. There is a vast deal of Sabbath-breaking in the land. Merchants break it, travellers break it, the government breaks it. . . .
7. The church must take right ground on the subject of Temperance, and Moral Reform, and all the subject of practical morality which come up for decision from time to time.
There are those in the churches who are standing aloof from the subject of Moral Reform, and who are as much afraid to have any thing said in the pulpit against lewdness, as if a thousand devils had got up into the pulpit. On this subject, the church need not expect to be permitted to take neutral ground. In the providence of God, it is up for discussion. The evils have been exhibited, the call has been made for reform. . . .
* * *
1. From the revised 1868 edition. (Return to text)
2. From the revised 1868 edition. (Return to text)
3. From the revised 1868 edition. (Return to text)
[From Charles Grandison Finney,
Lectures on Revivals of Religion, ed. William G. McLoughlin, (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 912, 293305. [Editorial insertions appear in square brackets unless otherwise noted
Ed.]]
Please answer the following questions.
Click here for sample answers | Read the document again
fiogf49gjkf0d |
fiogf49gjkf0d Observation |
1. fiogf49gjkf0d What type of document is this? (Ex. Newspaper, telegram, map, letter, memorandum, congressional record) |
|
|
2. fiogf49gjkf0d For what audience was the document written? |
|
|
fiogf49gjkf0d Expression |
3. What do you find interesting or important about this document? |
|
|
4. Is there a particular phrase or section that you find particularly meaningful or surprising? |
|
|
Connection |
5. What does this document tell you about life in this culture at the time it was written? |
|
|
Submit to Gradebook:
Self-Reliance (1840) by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Please read this document and answer the following questions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (18011882) was the animating genius behind American Transcendentalism. He derived his outlook on life from a variety of sourcesclassical philosophy, German idealism, English romanticism, Oriental mysticism, and New England Puritanismbut he also learned much from his personal experiences. His minister father died in 1811, leaving his family destitute and dependent on their own ingenuity and frugality. Emerson later credited the "iron band of poverty, of necessity, of austerity" for steering him away from a life of material indulgence and pointing him toward "the grand, the beautiful, and the good." Family tradition initially led Emerson into the Unitarian ministry, but by 1832 he decided that conventional religion was too confining. So he retired from his Boston ministry, and, after an excursion to Europe, settled in Concord with his wife and mother. There he developed a scholarly routine of introspection, writing, lecturing, community service, and occasional preaching. In perhaps his most famous essay, "Self-Reliance," he urged his readers to believe in themselves and to choose transcendental nonconformity instead of simply following the conventional dictates of society.
. . . 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. . . . A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognise 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, tomorrow 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.
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. . . .
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine Providence has found for you; the society of your contemporaries, the connexion of events. Great men have always done so and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay plastic under the Almighty effort, let us advance and advance on Chaos and the Dark.
* * *
. . . Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. . . . I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 'Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to itelse it is none. . . .
Virtues are in the popular estimate rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. . . . My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. . . . I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
* * *
For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause,disguise no god, but are put on and off as the wind blows, and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.
* * *
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with packthread, do. Else, if you would be a man, speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood. Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
* * *
The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or, in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day.
And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a task-master. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others.
If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction society , he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent; cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and so do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. The rugged battle of fate, where strength is born, we shun.
* * *
It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance,a new respect for the divinity in man,must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.
* * *
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton. Every great man is an unique. . . .
* * *
[From Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Essays: Second Series, intro. Morse Peckham, (Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co., 1969), pp. 3747, 6063, 68.]
Please answer the following questions.
Click here for sample answers | Read the document again
|
fiogf49gjkf0d Observation |
1. fiogf49gjkf0d What type of document is this? (Ex. Newspaper, telegram, map, letter, memorandum, congressional record) |
|
|
2. fiogf49gjkf0d For what audience was the document written? |
|
|
fiogf49gjkf0d Expression |
3. fiogf49gjkf0d What do you find interesting or important about this document? |
|
|
4. fiogf49gjkf0d Is there a particular phrase or section that you find particularly meaningful or surprising? |
|
|
fiogf49gjkf0d Connection |
5. fiogf49gjkf0d What does this document tell you about life in this culture at the time it was written? |
|
|
Submit to Gradebook:
Resistance to Civil Government (1849), Henry David Thoreau
Please read this document and answer the following questions.
The United States went to war against Mexico in May 1846. That July, while living at Walden Pond, Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax as a protest against the conflict, for he saw the war as an effort to extend the realm of slavery. As a result, the local constable arrested him, and he spent the night in the Concord jail. The next day a relativeprobably his auntpaid the tax, and he was released. As Thoreau continued his study of the woods and himself, he also contemplated the nature of government and the citizen's connection to it: out of this came his statement explaining his act of protest. Published in 1849, his essay has since become the classic justification for acts of civil disobedience. Mohandas K. Gandhi was inspired by its message and adopted Thoreau's principles in his lifelong campaign to gain Indian independence from Great Britain. Thoreau's ideas also influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. in his campaign for racial equality in the 1950s and 1960s.
I heartily accept the motto,"That government is best which governs least;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,"That government is best which governs not at all;" and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. . . .
This American government,what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity; but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. . . . It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. . . .
But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. . . . Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. . . .
* * *
How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also.
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. . . . But when . . . oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact, that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.
* * *
. . . Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless. We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. . . .
* * *
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?
* * *
As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not every thing to do, but something; and because he cannot do every thing, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the governor or the legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and, if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. . . .
I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one already.
* * *
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place to-day, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race, should find them; on that separate, but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her but against her,the only house in a slave-state in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. . . .
* * *
I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. . . . Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is very good; the law and the courts are very respectable; even this State and this American government are, in many respects, very admirable and rare things, to be thankful for, such as a great many have described them; but seen from a point of view a little higher, they are what I have described them; seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of at all? However, the government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under a government, even in this world. . . .
* * *
The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to,for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well,is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose, if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
[From Henry David Thoreau,
The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau: Reform Papers, ed. Wendell Glick (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 6376, 8690.]
Please answer the following questions.
Click here for sample answers | Read the document again
fiogf49gjkf0d |
fiogf49gjkf0d Observation |
1. fiogf49gjkf0d What type of document is this? (Ex. Newspaper, telegram, map, letter, memorandum, congressional record) |
|
|
2. For what audience was the document written? |
|
|
fiogf49gjkf0d Expression |
3. What do you find interesting or important about this document? |
|
|
4. Is there a particular phrase or section that you find particularly meaningful or surprising? |
|
|
Connection |
5. fiogf49gjkf0d What does this document tell you about life in this culture at the time it was written? |
|
|
Submit to Gradebook:
Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848), Seneca Falls Convention
Please read this document and answer the following questions.
Margaret Fuller's voice was but one among many, thus when she left America for Europe in 1846 the call for woman's rights was far from extinguished. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (18151902) became active in woman's rights issues, as did many other women, by way of her involvement in the antislavery movement. After living in Boston in the mid 1840s and there enjoying the stimulating company of other reformers, the Stantons moved to Seneca Falls, New York, where Henry practiced law and Elizabeth continued her activism. Stanton wanted full legal equality as well as educational, political, and economic opportunities for women. In July 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Jane Hunt, Mary McClintock, and Martha C. Wright organized a woman's rights convention that was held at the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Seneca Falls. On the agenda was a Declaration of Sentiments and various resolutions calling for change. Stanton, who drafted the Declaration of Sentiments using another, earlier, and revered American declaration as her model, also submitted a resolution calling for suffragethe votefor women. The fight for suffrage and equal rights would continue beyond her lifetime.
Declaration of Sentiments
* * *
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded menboth natives and foreigners.
Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her masterthe law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes, and in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of womenthe law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.
After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being closed against her.
He allows her in Church, as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.
He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in man.
He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and to her God.
He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradationin view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.
In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and National legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions embracing every part of the country.
The following resolutions . . . were adopted:
* * *
Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of nature and of no validity, for this is "superior in obligation to any other."
Resolved, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.
Resolved, That woman is man's equalwas intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.
Resolved, That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all the rights they want.
Resolved, That inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual superiority, does accord to woman moral superiority, it is pre-eminently his duty to encourage her to speak and teach, as she has an opportunity, in all religious assemblies.
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 woman 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 woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.
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, therefore, That, being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities, and the same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking, by any instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a self-evident truth growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be regarded as a self-evident falsehood, and at war with mankind.
* * *
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 woman an equal participation with men in the various trades, professions, and commerce.
[From Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds.,
History of Woman Suffrage, vol. I (1881; New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969), pp. 7072.]
Please answer the following questions.
Click here for sample answers | Read the document again
fiogf49gjkf0d |
Observation |
1. fiogf49gjkf0d What type of document is this? (Ex. Newspaper, telegram, map, letter, memorandum, congressional record) |
|
|
2. For what audience was the document written? |
|
|
Expression |
3. fiogf49gjkf0d What do you find interesting or important about this document? |
|
|
4. fiogf49gjkf0d Is there a particular phrase or section that you find particularly meaningful or surprising? |
|
|
fiogf49gjkf0d Connection |
5. What does this document tell you about life in this culture at the time it was written? |
|
|
Submit to Gradebook:
Address to the Women's Rights Convention (1851), Sojourner Truth
Please read this document and answer the following questions.
Enslaved people, of course, had no rights, but among the free people of color, black women faced double discrimination based on race and gender. One black woman named Isabella (17971883), who was born a slave to a master of Dutch descent in the state of New York, served a number of masters before gaining her freedom in 1827. She then moved to New York City, worked as a house servant, and became involved in evangelical activities. In 1843 she experienced a mystical conversation with God in which she was told to "travel up and down the land" preaching the sins of slavery and the need for conversion. After changing her name to Sojourner Truth, she began crisscrossing the nation, exhorting audiences to be born again and take up the cause of abolitionism. Although unable to read or write, she was a woman of rare intelligence and uncommon courage. During the late 1840s she began promoting the woman's rights movement and in 1851 attended the convention in Akron, Ohio. There she discovered that many participants objected to her presence for fear that her abolitionist sentiments would deflect attention from women's issues. Hisses greeted the tall, gaunt woman as she rose to speak: "Woman's rights and niggers!" "Go it, darkey!" "Don't let her speak!" By the time she finished, however, the audience gave her a standing ovation.
* * *
"Wall, chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be somethin' out o' kilter. I tink dat 'twixt de niggers of de Souf and de womin at de Norf, all talkin' 'bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all dis here talkin' 'bout?
"Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place!" . . . "And a'n't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! . . . I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And a'n't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a manwhen I could get itand bear de lash as well! And a'n't I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen 'em mos' all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And a'n't I a woman?
"Den dey talks 'bout dis ting in de head; what dis dey call it?" ("Intellect," whispered some one near.) "Dat's it, honey. What's dat got to do wid womin's rights or nigger's rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?" And she pointed her significant finger, and sent a keen glance at the minister who had made the argument. The cheering was long and loud.
"Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wan't a woman! Whar did your Christ come from?" Rolling thunder couldn't have stilled that crowd, as did those deep, wonderful tones, as she stood there with outstretched arms and eyes of fire. Raising her voice still louder, she repeated, "Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin' to do wid Him." Oh, what a rebuke that was to that little man.
Turning again to another objector, she took up the defense of Mother Eve. I can not follow her through it all. It was pointed, and witty, and solemn; eliciting at almost every sentence deafening applause; and she ended by asserting: "If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all alone, dese women togedder (and she glanced her eye over the platform) ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now dey is asking to do it, de men better let 'em." Long-continued cheering greeted this. "'Bleeged to ye for hearin' on me, and now ole Sojourner han't got nothin' more to say."
* * *
[From Frances D. Gage's reminiscences in
History of Woman Suffrage, vol. I, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds. (1881; New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969) p. 116.]
Please answer the following questions.
Click here for sample answers | Read the document again
|
Observation |
1. What type of document is this? (Ex. Newspaper, telegram, map, letter, memorandum, congressional record) |
|
|
2. For what audience was the document written? |
|
|
Expression |
3. What do you find interesting or important about this document? |
|
|
4. fiogf49gjkf0d Is there a particular phrase or section that you find particularly meaningful or surprising? |
|
|
fiogf49gjkf0d Connection |
5. fiogf49gjkf0d What does this document tell you about life in this culture at the time it was written? |
|
|
Submit to Gradebook:
Click here for sample answers
The Herald in the Country, 1853
Click on the thumbnail to view larger image.
Worksheet
The George Barrell Emerson School
Click on the thumbnail to view larger image.
Worksheet
The Way of Good & Evil
Click on the thumbnail to view larger image.
Worksheet
The Pennsylvania Hospital, 1767
Click on the thumbnail to view larger image.
Worksheet
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (left) and Susan B. Anthony
Click on the thumbnail to view larger image.
Worksheet
New York street auction, 1868
Click on the thumbnail to view larger image.
Worksheet
Marriage certificate, 1855
Click on the thumbnail to view larger image.
Worksheet
Women voting, 1879
Click on the thumbnail to view larger image.
Worksheet
Yankee Doodle album cover, 1847
Click on the thumbnail to view larger image.
Worksheet