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fuckmeyer · 11 months

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I saw a post about racist Jasper stans bitching bc they’re not able to enjoy shitty J*sper content bc of tags or whatever lol and someone said: “What is there even to enjoy?”. I had to laugh and I thought if you bc it’s so true. Most Jasper content isn’t even that enjoyable. It’s mostly the same boring white-supremacist garbage that I’ve seen before; even the jalice stuff is played out.

The only J*sper content I enjoy is content where he is worshipping Maria, thinking about Maria, talking about Maria, loving Maria, doing anything for Maria tbh. Is that bad? XD I owe it to you and your writing! idk something about a 19/20 year old dumbass confederate falling madly in love with a native brown woman and literally seeing her as a god-like figure as she’s basically handing him his karma for his racist crimes sends me. Ppl act like he was this awesome person before Maria and that it’s her fault he’s gutter trash now with the C*llens but he was gutter trash BEFORE he met Maria. She honestly made him so much better, stronger and MUCH more interesting. She literally created the man these stans thirst over so much. She is the blueprint.

the thing anti-María Jalice stans don't get is, without María, you do not have Jasper. for everything Jasper is, María is the catalyst ❤️

canonically, all we know about Jasper Hale pre-change is 1) he was born in Texas, 2) faked his age to join the Confederate Army* where he became the youngest major in Texas, & 3) was persuasive

beyond that, María made Jasper into the man the fandom adores. you like that he's an empath? guess whose venom made him one. you like that he's a warmonger? guess whose war he fought for. you like that he has a troubled past? guess who put the trouble in it. you like that he's "soft" "empath" "baby" (tbh i don't see it but ok)? guess who made him want to be that way. you like that he's submissive to Alice? guess who broke him in first.

you want Jasper with Alice but wish the María era didn't exist? lol just say you want the hot faceless Confederate to get with the psychic Mississippian & go

as for me, MARÍA ALL DAY BAYBEEEEE

here we have a woman who has suffered all her life at the hands of colonizers. born "1800s or earlier," we can suppose she has firsthand experience with colonization (at least Napoleon's invasion) & lived through Mexico's War of Independence. i.e., she has a deep familiarity with what it means to have your way of life ripped from you by invaders. PLUS she was a victim of Benito's army in the Southern Vampire Wars; her entire coven including her mate was killed.

& despite her losses, she rallied to take back her land & drive out her oppressors. baseline, she is a strong, cunning, powerful indigenous woman with a deep love for her community and her people. HOT

now let's look at Jasper, a bright leader in the Civil War who suffered defeat at the hands of the Union army. yes, María changed him. but did she force him to stay? to go to war? the newborn vamp with the strength & speed to overcome a "grown" vamp chose not to do so. the empath with the power to make anyone disregard him chose not to use it. some say María was "abusive" & "manipulative," but few acknowledge that Jasper had a choice.

why didn't Jasper leave? because he's submissive to anyone more powerful than him. because he was a loser. because the Southern Vampire Wars gave him a second chance at victory. because "empath" or no, he wanted to play war & win.

that's what's compelling about Jasper/María. as wrong as Jasper was for fighting for the Confederacy, he believed he was fighting for the same thing as she. he saw his way of life destroyed by "invaders" & fought back. it's a sick & twisted parallel between oppressor & oppressed that becomes subverted as their relationship goes on... & one that can heal them both.

María's experience with colonizers gives her a visceral picture of what it means to be oppressed... but her relationship with Jasper gives her the victory & emotional reflection she needs to move on. Jasper's military training gives him the hunger & knowledge for war... but his "curse" of empathy provides him with the tools he needs to recognize & address the horrors of his problematic past & move on.

tbh, i find Jasper & María are perfectly suited for a delicious character-driven narrative. Maria's story is that of a traumatized indigenous woman on a path from colonization to decolonization, & the sacrifices & destruction she endures realize that vision. Jasper's story is that of a troubled man on the path from self-hate to self-love, & what it means to undo the societal teachings/traumas & forge a life of empathy & forgiveness.

& that is something Alice alone can never give Jasper.

tl;dr all hail Queen María

#*non-americans: the Civil War (1861-1865) was a battle between Northern (Union) & Southern (Confederate) states...#...over whether to permit slavery in new U.S. territories.#maría my beloved #anon i'm glad you like my María writings (when i used to post them)!#anon thank you so much for giving me this ask and allowing me to just rave about María you are so wonderful <3333 thank you come again #twilight #twilight renaissance #the twilight saga #jasper hale #jasria #jasría #asks #(disclaimer: i don't hate jasper. i do not think of him. no hate to jalice stans either. lichrally i do not care. i simply love maría)#god i love her so much #most underrated character of the whole saga tbh #honestly if i didn't have this rewrite going on i would DEFINITELY LOVE to take a crack at writing The Jasría Story #i just see this gorgeous gothic horrific bloody strangely uplifting & bittersweet vampire novel #it's got death and sex and horror and blood and everything Twilight should've been but Worse (and Better)#ok fuck it fuck it FUCK IT I'M DOING IT. I'M OPENING A DOC. I'M TAKING NOTES. I'VE GOT TO WRITE THIS. SHE DESERVES IT #the-most-pathetic-edge wya bestie #let's change the renaissance. For Her #su-angelvicioso #i hope you see this & i hope you're doing well & if i write this series it's for you & i will get this story to you somehow

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yourreddancer · 2 years

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HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

June 26, 2022 (Sunday)

Defenders of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade insist that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health does not outlaw abortion but simply returns the decision about reproductive rights to the states.

“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote. He quoted the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote: “The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.” This, Alito wrote, “is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand.”

The idea that state voters are the centerpiece of American democracy has its roots in the 1820s, when southern leaders convinced poorer Americans that the nation was drifting toward an aristocracy that ignored the needs of ordinary people. The election of 1824, when established politicians overrode the popular vote to put John Quincy Adams into the presidency, seemed to illustrate that drift. Supporters of Adams’s chief rival, Andrew Jackson, complained that a wealthy elite was taking over the country and, once in charge, would use the power of the federal government to cement their control over the country’s capital, crushing ordinary Americans.

The rough, uneducated Andrew Jackson, who promised to break the hold of northeastern elites on the government and return democracy to the people, began to articulate a new vision of American government. He insisted that democratic government should actually look like a democracy: it should be formed by the votes of local people, not those from some far-off capital, and it should be made up of those same ordinary voters, not eastern elites like Adams, whose wealthy president father, John, had reared his son to follow in his footsteps.

Jackson’s new vision made ordinary Americans central to the democratic system. Democratic government put the power into the hands of individual voters. Local and state government was the most important stage of this system; the federal government always ran the risk of being taken over by an elite cabal that could override the will of the people. It must always be kept as small as possible.

But there was a power play in this argument. By the time Jackson was elected president in 1828, white southerners already knew they were badly outnumbered in the nation as a whole. In that year, quite dramatically, a congressional fight over tariffs ended up with a strong bill that hurt the South in favor of northern manufacturing. Outraged, southern leaders with Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina at their head claimed the right to “nullify” federal laws. (Jackson later said that one of the two regrets he had at the end of his term was that he “was unable to…hang John C. Calhoun.")

Congress lowered the tariff and the southerners backed down, but the idea that states were superior to the federal government only gained strength among southern enslavers as they felt the heat of a growing movement to abolish slavery. When it became clear that the U.S. might well acquire territory in Latin America, Democrats sympathetic to the South pushed back against the national majority that wanted to stop the spread of slavery into those lands by insisting on the doctrine of “popular sovereignty”: permitting the people who lived in a territory to decide for themselves whether or not to permit enslavement in it (although Mexico had outlawed enslavement in 1829). The U.S. acquired the vast territory of the American West in 1848, and two years later, Congress turned to popular sovereignty to try to avoid a fight about enslavement there.

The issue turned volatile in 1854 when Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas pushed through Congress a law overturning the 1820 Missouri Compromise and organizing two super-states out of the remaining land of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Rather than being free as the Missouri Compromise had promised, those huge states of Kansas and Nebraska would have enslavement or not based on the votes of those who lived there. This, Douglas insisted in his debates with Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln in 1858, was the true meaning of democracy:

“I deny the right of Congress to force a slaveholding State upon an unwilling people,” he said, “I deny their right to force a free State upon an unwilling people…. The great principle is the right of every community to judge and decide for itself, whether a thing is right or wrong, whether it would be good or evil for them to adopt it…. It is no answer to this argument to say that slavery is an evil, and hence should not be tolerated. You must allow the people to decide for themselves whether it is a good or an evil….” “Uniformity in local and domestic affairs,” he said, “would be destructive of State rights, of State sovereignty, of personal liberty and personal freedom.”

A strong majority in the U.S. opposed the extension of enslavement, but Douglas’s reasoning overrode that majority by carving the voting population into small groups the Democrats could dominate by whipping up voters with viciously racist speeches. Then, in the 1857 Dred Scott decision, a stacked Supreme Court blessed this plan by announcing that Congress had no power to legislate in the territories. In our system, this would mean that states taken over by pro-slavery zealots would eventually win enough power at the federal level to make enslavement national.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand," Lincoln warned Americans. “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.”

After the Civil War had proved the power of the federal government to defend the will of the majority from the tyranny of the minority, Congress found itself once again forced to override the will of state governments. When state legislatures put in place the Black Codes, which created a second-class status in the South for Black Americans, Congress passed and the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, overriding the Dred Scott decision to make Black Americans citizens, and establishing that “[n]o state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Almost 80 years later, it was this amendment—the Fourteenth—to which the Supreme Court turned to protect the rights of Black and Brown Americans, women, LGBTQ, and so on, from state laws that threatened their health and safety or treated them as second-class citizens. In using the power of the federal government to guarantee “the equal protection of the laws,” it made sure that a small pool of voters couldn’t strip rights from their neighbors. It is this effort today’s Supreme Court is gutting.

When today’s jurists talk of sending decisions about civil rights back to the states, they are echoing Stephen Douglas. “Citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting” is indeed precisely how democracy is supposed to work. But choosing your voters to make sure the results will be what you want is a different kettle of fish altogether.

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orikoaurora · 3 years

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Slavery.

By the beginning of the 19th century, slavery in the U.S. was firmly established with a series of statutes and penal codes enacted in various states to regulate the activity of slaves and all conduct involving slaves and free blacks. With the Louisiana Purchase, the question of slavery became both geographical and political, and ushered in a period of national debate between pro- and anti-slavery states to gain political and economic advantage. But by 1820, Congress was embroiled in the debate over how to divide the newly acquired territories into slave and free states.

The Missouri Compromise—also referred to as the Compromise of 1820—was an agreement between the pro- and anti-slavery factions regulating slavery in the western territories. It prohibited slavery in new states north of the border of the Arkansas territory, excluding Missouri. Constitutionally, the Compromise of 1820 established a precedent for the exclusion of slavery from public territory acquired after the Constitution, and also recognized that Congress had no right to impose upon states seeking admission to the Union conditions that did not apply to those states already in the Union. After Missouri's admission to the Union in 1821, no other states were admitted until 1836 when Arkansas became a slave state, followed by Michigan in 1837 as a free state. Indeed, the debate over slave and free states remained relatively calm for almost 30 years. However by the late 1840s, several events occurred that upset the balance: the U.S. added new territory as a result of the Mexican war, and the question of whether that territory would be slave or free arose again. California, beneficiary of an increased population because of the gold rush—petitioned Congress to enter the Union as a free state. At the same time, Texas laid claim to territory extending all the way to Santa Fe. Of course Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital, not only allowed slavery but was home to the largest slave market in North America.

In January 1850, Henry Clay presented a bill that would become known as the Compromise of 1850. The terms of the bill included a provision that Texas relinquish its disputed land in exchange for $10 million to be paid to Mexico. The territories of New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah were defined while leaving the question of slavery off the table, on the understanding that the issue would be decided when the territories applied for statehood. In addition, the slave trade would be abolished in the District of Columbia, although slavery would still be permitted in the nation’s capitol. It was agreed that California would be admitted as a free state, but the Fugitive Slave Act was passed to mollify pro-slavery states. This bill was the most controversial of all the bills that made up the Compromise of 1850. According to its tenets, citizens were required to aid in the recovery of fugitive slaves. Fugitives had no right to a jury trial. The cases were handled by special commissioners, who were paid $5 if a fugitive was released and $10 if the captive was returned to slavery. In addition, the act called for changes that made the process for filing a claim against a fugitive easier for slave owners. The new law was devastating. Many former slaves who had been attempting to build lives in the North left their homes and fled to Canada, which added approximately 20,000 blacks to its population over the following decade. Harriet Jacobs, a fugitive living in New York, described this period as “the beginning of a reign of terror to the colored population.” She was one of the runaways who remained in New York, despite learning that slave catchers had been hired to track her down. Many were captured and returned to slavery, however, including Anthony Burns, a fugitive living in Boston. Even free blacks, too, were captured and sent to the South, completely defenseless with no legal rights. The compromise lasted until the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, when Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas proposed legislation allowing the issue of slavery to be decided in the new territories.

In 1801, Congress extended Virginia and Maryland slavery laws to the District of Columbia, establishing a federally sanctioned slave code.

In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase added Creoles and French settlers to the U.S. population. Congress approved the Louisiana Purchase from France for $15 million, which virtually doubled the country’s land size. It also re-ignited controversy over the spread of slavery in the territory.

In 1807, Congress banned the importation of slaves into the U.S., although smuggling continued in some parts of the South. Once the transatlantic slave trade was prohibited, domestic slave trading throughout the South increased.

The 1820 census added free colored persons to its racial categories.

In 1820, the Missouri Compromise brought Missouri and Maine into the Union. By this time more than 20,000 Indians lived in virtual slavery on California missions. The same year, Congress made trade in foreign slaves an act of piracy.

In 1821, Missouri entered the Union as the 24th state and a slave-holding state, maintaining the balance of slave and free states.

The Office of Indian Affairs was created in 1824.

In 1825, a ship operated by the U.S. Revenue seized a slave ship, the Antelope, sailing under a Venezuelan flag with a cargo of 281 Africans. The case was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a unanimous opinion declaring the slave trade to be a violation of natural law. Only some of the Africans were set free, however, since the ruling also held that the U.S. could not prescribe law for other nations, and the slave trade was legal in Spain, Portugal and Venezuela. The 39 Africans designated by the court as property of Spain and the Antelope itself were restored to their owners.

The Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state; voters in New Mexico and Utah territories would decide whether they would be slave or free upon applying for statehood.

The new Fugitive Slave Act, also passed in 1850, made the federal government responsible for apprehending fugitive slaves in the North, and sending them back to the South. This extended slavery and its enforcement beyond the South. The South, however, felt that even this law was not strong enough, and the demand for more effective legislation resulted in enactment of a second Fugitive Slave Act that same year. However, the law was so severe that its implementation was open to abuses that defeated its purpose. Even during the Civil War, the Fugitive Slave Acts were used to prosecute blacks fleeing their masters in border states that were loyal to the Union. The acts were eventually repealed, but not until June of 1864.

In 1851 Shadrach Minkins, an African American working as a waiter in Boston, was abducted by slave catchers. Before he could be freed by legal means in a challenge to the Fugitive Slave law, Minkins was rescued by a group of African Americans.

In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed, dividing the region along the 40th parallel, with Kansas to the south and Nebraska to the north, and providing both territories the right to vote on whether to be slave or free. For all practical purposes the act effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, which had attempted to regulate the spread of slavery. As a result of the new law, both pro- and anti-slavery supporters tried to convince settlers to move to Kansas in order to sway the vote. The New England Emigrant Aid Company, an anti-slavery group, was very successful, and a group of anti-slavery activists was established around the town of Lawrence, Kansas. At the same time, pro-slavery settlers from Missouri began moving across the border to Kansas, some establishing themselves as residents of the territory, others simply coming across to vote. They were called “border ruffians” by their opponents. Lecompton, Kansas, the territorial capital, boiled with tension over the issue, and so-called “free-soilers” felt so threatened there that they set up their own unofficial legislature at Topeka. The enmity between the sides verged on civil war, and the period became known as "Bleeding Kansas."

The Dred Scott decision was handed down in 1857, which denied citizenship to free and enslaved blacks.

#slavery #enslaved

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 26, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed his state’s new voter suppression law last night in a carefully staged photo op. As journalist Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out, Kemp sat at a polished table, with six white men around him, under a painting of the Callaway Plantation on which more than 100 Black people had been enslaved. As the men bore witness to the signing, Representative Park Cannon, a Black female lawmaker, was arrested and dragged away from the governor’s office.

It was a scene that conjured up a lot of history.

Voting was on the table in March 1858, too. Then, the U.S. Senate fought over how the new territory of Kansas would be admitted to the Union. The majority of voters in the territory wanted it to be free, but a minority of proslavery Democrats had taken control of the territory’s government and written a constitution that would make human enslavement the fundamental law in the state. The fight over whether this minority, or the majority that wanted the territory free, would control Kansas burned back east, to Congress.

In the Senate, South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond, who rejected “as ridiculously absurd” the idea that “all men are born equal,” rose to speak on the subject. He defended the rule of the proslavery minority in Kansas, and told anti-slavery northerners how the world really worked. Hammond laid out a new vision for the United States of America.

He explained to his Senate colleagues just how wealthy the South’s system of human enslavement had made the region, then explained that the “harmonious… and prosperous” system worked precisely because a few wealthy men ruled over a larger class with “a low order of intellect and but little skill.” Hammond explained that in the South, those workers were Black slaves, but the North had such a class, too: they were “your whole hireling class of manual laborers.”

These distinctions had crucial political importance, he explained, “Our slaves do not vote. We give them no political power. Yours do vote, and, being the majority, they are the depositaries of all your political power. If they knew the tremendous secret, that the ballot-box is stronger than ‘an army with banners,’ and could combine, where would you be? Your society would be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided… by the quiet process of the ballot-box.”

Hammond believed the South's system must spread to Kansas and the West regardless of what settlers there wanted because it was the only acceptable way to organize society. Two years later, Hammond would be one of those working to establish the Confederate States of America, “founded,” in the words of their vice president, Alexander Stephens, upon the “great physical, philosophical, and moral truth… that the negro is not equal to the white man.”

Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln recognized that if Americans accepted the principle that some men were better than others, and permitted southern Democrats to spread that principle by dominating the government, they had lost democracy. "I should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares ... are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it, where will it stop?” he asked.

Led by Abraham Lincoln, Republicans rejected the slaveholders’ unequal view of the world as a radical reworking of the nation’s founding principles. They stood firm on the Declaration of Independence.

When southerners fought to destroy the government rather than accept the idea of human equality, Lincoln reminded Americans just how fragile our democracy is. At Gettysburg in November 1863, he rededicated the nation to the principles of the Declaration and called upon his audience “to be dedicated… to the great task remaining before us… that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The United States defeated the Confederacy, outlawed human enslavement except as punishment for crime, declared Black Americans citizens, and in 1867, with the Military Reconstruction Act, began to establish impartial suffrage. The Military Reconstruction Act, wrote Maine politician James G. Blaine in 1893, “changed the political history of the United States.”

Today, as I looked at the photograph of Governor Kemp signing that bill, I wondered just how much.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#quotes #political #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #confederacy #the South #Georgia #slavery #voter suppression #history

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statetalks · 3 years

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Did Any Republicans Own Slaves In 1860

Still Facing Democratic Oppression

youtube

Even though nearly 80% of the nation supports voluntarily spoken prayer in public schools only 13% of Democrats voted for a recent constitutional amendment to permit it. And even though almost 80 percent of the nation supports public displays of the Ten Commandments, only 21 percent of Democrats voted for a congressional bill to allow those displays.

Consider too, the congressional bill to remove IRS control from over what pastors can say. A bill that would reinstate freedom of speech to American pulpits, exactly the way it had been before Lyndon Baines Johnson amended the IRS code in 1954 to restrict speech in churches. Only 5 percent of Democrats voted to allow free speech for churches.

And when there was a vote on protecting under God in the Pledge of Allegiance, Â even though 87 percent of Americans support that phrase only 17 percent of Democrats voted to protect it. And on the issue of preserving marriage is ordained in the Scriptures, 72 percent of Americans support traditional marriage but only 15 percent of Democrats in Congress voted to protect it.

The Democrats simply do not have a good voting record on traditional religious issues. Consider also how Democrats deal with the issue of faith-based programs. Current statistics prove that faith-based programs offer the best solutions to many of societys most serious problems. For example, on the issue of drug abuse, the average cure rate for governmental type drug abuse programs is under 10 percent.

The Mcconnell Family Slaves

After NBC News reported earlier this week that McConnell’s great-great-grandfathers had owned 14 slaves, he responded by pointing out that President Barack Obamas ancestors also were slave owners.

“You know, once again I find myself in the same position as President Obama,” he said. “We both oppose reparations, and both are the descendants of slaveholders.”

A USA TODAY Network review of census documents and local property and accounting records show that slave ownership was passed down through generations and persisted in the McConnell family through the Civil War.

Richard Daley, McConnells maternal great-great-grandfather, reported owning five young female slaves in the 1850 U.S. Census Slave Schedule.

But he said that four “mulatto,” or mixed race, slaves ages 20, 18, 4 and 2 were escaped fugitives. One 22-year-old black woman remained at his farm, the document shows.

In the 1860 census, Daley reported owning another five slaves a 30-year-old “mulatto” female, an 11-year-old “mulatto” female and two “mulatto” boys ages 7 and 10 or 12.

They also escaped, according to the document, but one 39-year-old black female slave remained.

The names of slaves and receipts of sale transactions are difficult to trace. Slaves either moved with families from other states into Alabama or were purchased at auctions in Montgomery.

James McConnell, whose farm was next to Daleys, had four female “mulatto” slaves ages 25, 4, 3 and 1 who all escaped, according to the 1860 census.

The Republican Party Becomes The Party Of Rich Northerners

US History Scene

All this while, economic issues were growing more important to Republican politicians. Even before the Civil War, the North was more industrialized than the South, as you can see from this map of railway lines. After it, this industrialization only intensified.

And during the war, the federal government grew a lot bigger and spent a lot more money and that meant people got rich, and owed their wealth to Republican politicians. The partys economic policies, Cox Richardson writes, were creating a class of extremely wealthy men.

Gradually, those wealthy financiers and industrialists took more and more of a leading role in the Republican Party. They disagreed on many issues, but their interests rather than the interests of black Southerners increasingly started to become the partys raison detre.

National Republican Platform Adopted By The National Republican Convention Held In Chicago May 17 1860 Chicago Press And Tribune Office Chicago Illinois 1860 Library Of Congress Rare Book And Special Collections Division Alfred Whital Stern Collection Of Lincolniana Https://googl/lcbfpa

Resolved, that we, the delegated representatives of the Republican electors of the United States in Convention assembled, in discharge of the duty we owe to our constituents and our country, unite in the following declarations:

That the history of the nation during the last four years, has fully established the propriety and necessity of the organization and perpetuation of the Republican party, and that the causes which called it into existence are permanent in their nature, and now, more than ever before, demand its peaceful and constitutional triumph. That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitution, That all men 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 among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, is essential to the preservation of our Republican institutions; and that the Federal Constitution, the Rights of the States, and the Union of the States must and shall be preserved.

. . .

Republican Platform Of 1860. A reprint of the original broadside containing the Republican Platform of 1860, adopted by the National Republican Convention held in Chicago, 1860. Library of Congress, https://ift.tt/3gEpktE.

Study Questions

Q: Where Did Enslaved People Live In The White House

A: Enslaved individuals working in the White House often slept in the attic or in the Ground Floor rooms. Their living arrangements varied by administration. Accounts suggest these spaces were uncomfortable with extreme temperature disparity. In particular, the Ground Floor level was often damp and rodent infested.

The Fugitive Slave Law Repealed By Republicans

Frederick Douglass was in attendance at one such midnight rally, waiting for the proclamation to become official. When that moment arrived a celebration erupted and Douglas exclaimed, It was one of the most affecting and thrilling occasions I will witness and a worthy celebration of the first step on the part of the nation and his departure from the of the ages.

These gatherings were the origin of the modern day watch night services held every year at thousands of churches across the country. They are New Years Eve meetings where churchgoers gather to greet the entry of the new year and its glories and hopeful prospects with times of prayer and thanksgiving to God.

In 1864 following the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation several civil rights laws and lawsÂ preparing to facilitate civil rights were passed. One of them was this bill establishing the Freedmens Bureau. Another was this bill equalizing pay for soldiers in the military whether white or black. The Fugitive Slave Law was also repealed that year over the almost unanimous opposition of the Northern Democrats still in Congress.

Democratic Party And Its Factions

There have been voices that get lost over time, overlooked in popular memory, left unattended in historical study. In 1860, the United States loomed on the brink of war. Violence had erupted in growing western terror ties as Americans struggled to determine the future of slavery in the states. The variety of opinion over territorial policies proved too powerful for young Americas two party political systems. Certainly, two parties existed the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republican Party, united behind the illustrious Abraham Lincoln, has often over overshadowed its Northern opponents in historical memory. Yet even in the Union stronghold of Pennsylvania, the Democrats received a considerable amount of popular support. On the surface, it would be easy to paint the Democrats as one monolithic group, unable match the popular support of Lincolns Republican party. Yet a closer looks shows the Democrats were a popular party in Pennsylvania that had been dangerously divided in its beliefs about war, slavery, and civil liberties both before and after the fateful attacks on Fort Sumter.

James A. McPherson. Battle Cry of Freedom. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989.

Campbell, James to Franklin Pierce. October 22, 1860, Pierce Letter Collection. Library of Congress. Microfilm, Reel 5. Pennsylvania State University Libraries.

Shankman, Arnold M. The Pennsylvania Antiwar Movement, 1861-1865. Madison, Wisc.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1980. 24.

A Teachable Moment: Dinesh Dsouza Refuses To Take Back False Claim About Republicans Owning Slaves In 1860

See below the post for an update.

For Dinesh DSouza watchers, this headline is as shocking as proclaiming that water is wet. I post this incident because it is a clear and convincing demonstration that DSouza shows zero interest in academic integrity. Let me lay out the basics. First, DSouza claimed in a speech that no Republican owned slaves in 1860. Here is the speech:

Do you know how many Republicans owned slaves in 1860, the year before the Civil War started?

The answer may surprise you if you listen to progressive historians.

Dinesh DSouza June 10, 2019

He said one Republican who owned a slave in 1860 would require him to take back his claim.

Historians on Twitter, led by Princetons Kevin Kruse, quickly rose to the occasion and found ten. Follow the thread below for the receipts.

Weve provided clear evidence that at least ten Republicans owned slaves in 1860, and yet DSouza keeps retweeting this video insisting there werent any and promising hed take it back if anyone proved otherwise.

Kevin M. Kruse June 10, 2019

To go directly to the thread with the breakdown of the ten found thus far, .

In essence, the method of finding Republican slave owners involves an examination of those who attended the Republican convention as delegates and then comparing that list with registries of slave owners.

For his part, DSouza said the instances offered by the historians are and he repeated his claim this morning.

Juneteenth The Day Republicans Freed The Democrats Slaves

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Our history and our heritage are being shoved by rioters, looters, and anarchists down the memory hole. This is year zero on their calendar. Everything that came before and every struggle for freedom and human dignity by patriots of all colors is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is now. The only thing that matters is what they tell you. How we got here and what makes us who and what we are may not be pretty or politically correct but it is important. We cant know where were going if we dont remember where weve been.

The canceling of American history by anarchists, encouraged by cowering Democratic governors and mayors is necessary if they intend on propagating the lie that America is and always has been irredeemably racist. The Republicans are labeled white supremacists and its being pushed that only liberal progressive Democrats can create social justice, which means the absence of resistance to groups like Black Lives Matter, which among other goodies on its website endorses the elimination of the nuclear family. Nothing can be allowed to interfere with the progressive police state they are hoping to establish on Nov. 3, 2020.

The day after Sen. Elizabeth Warren was rebuked while making a speech critical of Sen. Jeff Sessions , Sen. Ted Cruz blasted Democrats, saying their party is the one rooted in racism.

He also happens to be a former card-carrying member of the KKK. In fact, he created his own chapter along with 150 of his friends and colleagues.

The Claim: Historians Do Not Teach That The First Black Members Of Congress Were Republicans

A viral meme, posted on Instagram, features a well-known lithograph of the first Black members of Congress, with a bold statement.

History not taught, it says. The first 23 Black congressmen were Republican.

You wont be taught this, wrote Ryan Fournier, the co-chair of Students for Trump, whose watermark appears on the meme, on his Instagram account. The Republicans were the anti-slavery party.

It is mostly accurate that the Republican Party formed to oppose the extension of slavery, although up until the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Abraham Lincoln and other Republicans pledged not to interfere with slavery in states where it existed. And the first 23 African Americans in Congress did belong to the Republican Party, due to the GOPs support of voting rights and the Democratic Partys embrace of white supremacy.

But the idea that Reconstruction-era historians hid those facts key to understanding the period is false.

This is just front and center in what we teach all the time, said Kate Masur, a professor of history at Northwestern University who has written extensively about Reconstruction. Its not a big secret.

A message seeking comment was sent to Fournier on Wednesday.

Mitch Mcconnells Ancestors Owned Slaves According To A New Report He Opposes Reparations

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is a direct descendant of two slave owners in his family line, according to an NBC report published Monday.

James McConnell and Richard Daley, two of the Kentucky Republicans great-great-grandfathers, owned at least 14 slaves in Limestone County, Ala., NBC reported, citing 19th-century census records. All but two of the slaves were female.

McConnell, who grew up in the area of Limestone County, has said he opposes reparations, the process of giving compensation to the descendants of slaves. The idea of reparations has recently animated the political debate surrounding racial injustice.

I dont think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, when none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea, he said in June before a House committee held hearings on the matter. Weve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. Weve elected an African American president.

McConnell did not return a request for comment from The Washington Post.

NBC reports:

NBC reported it did not find any record of McConnell acknowledging his familys history, including in his 2016 memoir, The Long Game. The book mentions slavery twice, including a chapter about Barack Obama that calls it the countrys original sin, saying it was a proud moment when Obama was elected.

Black writers, activists, scholars testify before House panel on the role of reparations

Abraham Lincoln And Slavery

This article is part of a series about

Abraham Lincoln‘s position on slavery in the United States is one of the most discussed aspects of his life. Lincoln often expressed moral opposition to slavery in public and private. “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” he stated in a now-famous quote. “I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.” However, the question of what to do about it and how to end it, given that it was so firmly embedded in the nation’s constitutional framework, in Congress, and in the economy of much of the country, was complex and politically challenging. In addition, there was the unanswered question, which Lincoln had to deal with, of what would become of the four million slaves if liberated: how they would earn a living in a society that had almost always rejected them, or looked down on their very presence.

As early as the 1850s, Lincoln was attacked as an . But in 1860 he was attacked as not abolitionist enough: Wm. Lloyd Garrison, editor-publisher of The Liberator, went to the expense of hiring a phonographer to record in full Wendell Phillips‘ May 30 speech attacking Lincoln. According to Phillips, if elected Lincoln would waste four years trying to decide whether to end slavery in the District of Columbia. Many abolitionists emphasized the sinfulness of slave owners, but Lincoln did not. Lincoln was married to Mary Todd Lincoln, the daughter of a slaveowner from Kentucky.

Horace Greeley Proceedings Of The First Three Republican National Conventions Of 1856 1860 And 1864 78

“Republican Party Platform of 1856, American Presidency Project, at , accessed April 25, 2014. Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Carlinville, Illinois, August 31, 1858, in Abraham Lincoln Association, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy Basler, at , accessed April 25, 2014. Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863, at United States National Archives, Americas Historical Documents, at , accessed April 25, 2014. University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab, Voting America: Presidential Election, 1864, at , accessed January 9, 2014.

Causing The Civil War

The central story told in textbooks is that the industrial revolution, beginning with the first textile mill in New England in the 1790s, created an economy that did not need slaves. Southerners, however, continued to use slave labor on their farms because agriculture was profitable. Closely related to this change, cities rose as population centers in the North created an urban society while the South remained primarily agrarian. Census data on farms and cities, however, reveals that while cities grew rapidly in the North between 1800 and 1860, they did not become leading population centers until 1920, 60 years after the Civil War began. In 1860, there were more farms in the North than in the South, although Southern states, especially in the Cotton Belt, had the majority of large farms .

The notion that there were no southern cities was also a myth. The U.S. had eight cities with more than 150,000 residents in 1860 and three of themSt. Louis, Baltimore and New Orleanswere in slave states. Several other southern cities, such as Louisville, Mobile, and Charleston, had more than 20,000 residents each and were listed among the largest urban places in the U.S. Similarly, data demonstrate the presence of manufacturing in the South. Richmond, VA, had mills and factories as early as 1800. The 1860 census shows the fairly even spread of manufacturing across the states, with only New York and Pennsylvania recording 17,000 or more manufacturing establishments .

Elder: Politifact Rates Elder False On Democrats And Slavery But Elder Was Right

Getting fact-checked cuts two ways. It means the fact-checkers pay attention to what I say. It also means I should expect liberal bias from the checkers.

In a recent appearance on Fox News, I made the following assertions:

Republicans did not own slaves. Democrats owned slaves;

Democrats founded the KKK;

Democrats opposed the 13th Amendment that freed the slaves, Democrats opposed the 14th Amendment that made the newly freed slaves citizens, and Democrats opposed the 15th Amendment that granted them the right to vote; and

As a percentage of their party, more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did Democrats.

Here are the claims Im interested in:

1. Republicans did not own slaves. Democrats owned slaves.

2. Democrats founded the KKK.

3. Democrats opposed the 13th Amendment, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment.

4. As a percentage of their party, more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than did Democrats.

Could you please send me any evidence you have in support of these claims?

I responded: As to no Republicans ever owning slaves, I was wrong, and Ive corrected it on social media. There were at least 10. As for the rest, you should have no difficulty finding sources. Good luck.

No. 4. Elder: As a percentage of the party, more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

PolitiFact: 61% of Democrats and 80% of Republicans voted for the bill to pass the House.

Game to Elder.

After The War Radical Republicans Fight For Rights For Black Americans

When states ratified the 14th Amendment. Republicans required some Southern states to ratify it to be readmitted to the Union.

For a very brief period after the end of the Civil War, Republicans truly fought for the rights of black Americans. Frustrated by reports of abuses of and violence against former slaves in the postwar South, and by the inaction of Lincolns successor, Andrew Johnson, a faction known as the Radicals gained increasing sway in Congress.

The Radicals drove Republicans to pass the countrys first civil rights bill in 1866, and to fight for voting rights for black men at a time when such an idea was still controversial even in the North.

Furthermore, Republicans twice managed to amend the Constitution, so that it now stated that everyone born in the United States is a citizen, that all citizens should have equal protection of the law, and that the right to vote couldnt be denied because of race. And they required Southern states to legally enact many of these ideas at least in principle to be readmitted to the Union.

These are basic bedrocks of our society today, but at the time they were truly radical. Just a few years earlier, the idea that a major party would fight for the rights of black citizens to vote in state elections would have been unthinkable.

Unfortunately, however, this newfound commitment wouldnt last for much longer.

How Republicans Made Common Cause With Southern Democrats On Economic Matters

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Map: Vox. Data: Barry Hirsch, David Macpherson, Wayne Vroman, Estimates of Union Density by State.

Roosevelts reforms also brought tensions in the Democratic coalition to the surface, as the solidly Democratic South wasnt too thrilled with the expansion of unions or federal power generally. As the years went on, Southern Democrats increasingly made common cause with the Republican Party to try to block any further significant expansions of government or worker power.

In 1947, confirming a new alliance that would recast American politics for the next two generations, Taft men began to work with wealthy southern Democrats who hated the New Deals civil rights legislation and taxes, Cox Richardson writes. This new alliance was cemented with the Taft-Hartley bill, which permitted states to pass right-to-work laws preventing mandatory union membership among employees and many did.

Taft-Hartley stopped labor dead in its tracks at a point where unions were large, growing, and confident in their economic and political power,Rich Yeselson has written. You can see the eventual effects above pro-Democratic unions were effectively blocked from gaining a foothold in the South and interior West, and the absence of their power made those regions more promising for Republicans electoral prospects.

Compensated Emancipation: Buy Out The Slave Owners

The thirteenth amendment to abolish slavery, which Lincoln ultimately sent to the states provided no compensation but earlier in his presidency, Lincoln made numerous proposals for compensated emancipation in the loyal border states whereby the federal government would purchase all of the slaves and free them. No state government acted on the proposal.

President Lincoln advocated that slave owners be compensated for emancipated slaves. On March 6, 1862 President Lincoln, in a message to the U.S. Congress, stated that emancipating slaves would create economic inconveniences and justified to the slave owners. The resolution was adopted by Congress; however, the Southern states refused to comply. On July 12, 1862 President Lincoln, in a conference with Congressmen from Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri, encouraged their respective states to adopt emancipation legislation that gave compensation to the slave owners. On July 14, 1862 President Lincoln sent a bill to Congress that allowed the Treasury to issue bonds at 6% interest to states for slave emancipation compensation to the slave owners. The bill was never voted on by Congress.

In his December 1, 1862 State of the Union Address, Lincoln proposed a constitutional amendment that would provide federal compensation to any state that voluntarily abolished slavery before the year 1900.

History Of Democrats Vs Republicans On Slavery

The history of a racist tinge being fought against or allowed into a political party is a long, hard struggle. I continue to be appalled at the stories black friends tell me they have heard from grandparents and great grandparents. It still is not over, even today. Looking back to 1789, after the U.S. Constitution was ratified, Congress made further extensive efforts to end slavery.

They did this by passing the laws of the Northwest Ordinance. This law outlawed any slavery in federal territories held at that time. It is for this reason that these seven eventually entered the nation as slave-free states:

Ohio

Michigan

Wisconsin

A couple decades later, Congress continued its fight against slavery by ending slave trade in 1808. A sermon celebrating this was given by the Rev. Absalom Jones. He was the first black bishop in the Episcopal Church in America. This sermon he gave in St. Thomas Church, Philadelphia became .

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/did-any-republicans-own-slaves-in-1860/

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glitterypeanutmugnickel · 3 years

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March 26, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Mar 27

Comment

It was a scene that conjured up a lot of history.

Today, as I looked at the photograph of Governor Kemp signing that bill, I wondered just how much.

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dailynewswebsite · 3 years

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Trump 2024? Presidential comebacks have mixed success

There are already reviews that Trump is mulling a run in 2024. Caitlin O'Hara/Getty Photos

American creator F. Scott Fitzgerald as soon as wrote that “there are not any second acts in American lives.”

But it’s already assumed Donald Trump will go on to a subsequent act in a single kind or one other.

Will he begin his personal media firm? Function a GOP kingmaker?

There are even rumblings that he’ll resolve to run once more for president in 2024. Having served just one time period, he’s constitutionally eligible to strive for an additional.

If he does resolve to run once more – and if he wins – he’ll be in uncommon firm.

Just one American president has misplaced reelection after which gained again his workplace: Grover Cleveland. Within the American elections course that I educate, college students be taught particulars in regards to the long-term political impacts of those comeback efforts, most of that are workouts in futility.

‘Gone to the White Home, ha ha ha’

The late 19th-century political setting resembled at the moment’s in some ways: tight polarized elections, sturdy regional patterns in nationwide voting, comparatively excessive voter turnout and adverse campaigning.

Cleveland, a Democrat, had been governor of New York for lower than two years when his social gathering nominated him for president in 1884. As governor, he had gained a repute for combating Tammany Corridor corruption in New York Metropolis.

Through the 1884 marketing campaign, during which Cleveland ran towards Republican James Blaine, a scandal erupted when a New York lady named Maria Halpin accused Cleveland of raping and impregnating her. She was finally institutionalized and compelled to surrender her baby for adoption. Cleveland disputed a number of the particulars of the story, and his supporters countered jeers of “Ma, ma, the place’s my pa?” with chants of “Gone to the White Home, ha ha ha.”

Grover Cleveland weathered assaults that he had fathered a baby out of wedlock. Common Photos Group by way of Getty Photos

Cleveland ended up profitable the nationwide in style vote by a slim margin – 48.85% to 48.28% – and gained 219 electoral votes to Blaine’s 182. Cleveland’s base of help was within the South and in his dwelling state of New York, whereas Blaine did properly in the remainder of the North. Voter turnout was excessive, estimated at 77.5% of the voting-age inhabitants.

Throughout Cleveland’s time period, tariffs grew to become a divisive partisan situation in American politics. Republicans favored increased tariffs to guard Northern manufacturing pursuits, whereas Democrats like Cleveland usually needed decrease tariffs to assist the South’s agricultural export-oriented pursuits and to decrease costs for customers.

Cleveland’s comeback

When Cleveland ran for reelection in 1888, he confronted off towards Republican Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland once more gained the nationwide in style vote by a good margin, however misplaced two states – Indiana and New York – that he had gained in 1884. It was sufficient to flip the Electoral School and permit Harrison to be elected president.

Grover Cleveland ran on tariff reform in 1888 – and misplaced. Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG by way of Getty Photos

After shedding the election, Cleveland returned to work as an lawyer in New York. Below President Harrison, Congress permitted the McKinley Tariff and the Sherman Silver Buy Act, every of which had been strongly opposed by Cleveland.

In 1891, after two years of avoiding the general public highlight, Cleveland once more grew to become politically energetic and began to vocally oppose the financial insurance policies of Harrison. Cleveland attracted some nationwide consideration that 12 months with a public letter indicating his persevering with help for the gold normal.

As Cleveland met with social gathering leaders and made some public speeches in 1892, nationwide Democratic help for his presidential nomination started to develop. By the point the Democratic Nationwide Conference met in June that 12 months, help for Cleveland had turn out to be overwhelming, and he secured the nomination.

With Populist Occasion candidate James B. Weaver on the poll pulling votes from each main social gathering presidential candidates, Cleveland gained the nationwide in style vote for the third straight election, this time besting Harrison by a 46% to 43% margin and profitable the Electoral School.

Strive, strive once more

Whereas Cleveland has, to this point, been the one U.S. president to lose reelection after which come again and win, different presidents have tried and failed.

In 1840, Democratic President Martin Van Buren misplaced reelection. He tried to be renominated by his social gathering in 1844, however Democrats as an alternative selected James Polk. By 1848, Van Buren joined with a gaggle of disaffected Democrats and anti-slavery activists to turn out to be the nominee of the Free Soil Occasion, which opposed the extension of authorized slavery to U.S. territories. Whereas Van Buren gained 10% of the nationwide in style vote and completed second in New York, Massachusetts and Vermont, he gained no Electoral School votes.

Van Buren is the one president aside from Cleveland to be renominated by his social gathering, lose reelection after which seem once more on ballots as a presidential candidate.

Three different presidents additionally made tried comebacks to regain the presidency after leaving workplace.

In 1852, President Millard Fillmore, who had ascended to the presidency after the loss of life of Zachary Taylor, made a halfhearted try to win the Whig Occasion nomination for a full time period. When he failed, he got here again 4 years later because the presidential candidate of the American Occasion, higher referred to as the “Know Nothings,” a political motion to limit Catholic immigration to the US. Fillmore gained over 21% of the nationwide in style vote, the second-best efficiency by a third-party presidential candidate in American historical past and gained Maryland’s electoral votes.

One of the best efficiency by a third-party presidential candidate in American historical past was additionally by a former president, Theodore Roosevelt. In 1912, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination towards his extra conservative protege, President William Howard Taft. When Roosevelt didn’t get his social gathering’s nomination that 12 months, he ran because the Progressive Occasion candidate.

After being shot at a marketing campaign rally throughout the month earlier than the election and surviving, Roosevelt bought 27% of the nationwide in style vote and 88 electoral votes, ending far forward of Taft in each vote tallies – however properly behind the winner, Woodrow Wilson.

The final American president to lose reelection and try to run for president once more was Herbert Hoover, who was unsuccessful in each 1936 and 1940 at persuading different Republicans to let him lead the social gathering once more after he misplaced in a landslide in 1932.

Richard Nixon made a distinct sort of political comeback.

He misplaced the presidential election of 1960 whereas serving as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vp after which went on to lose the 1962 California gubernatorial election. After the 2 losses, Nixon famously instructed the press, “You gained’t have Nixon to kick round anymore.” However the press did get one other whack at Nixon when he ran for president a second time – and gained – in 1968.

After shedding the 1962 California gubernatorial race, Nixon complained of his therapy by the press and hinted that he would retreat from public life. Bettmann by way of Getty Photos

The final try at a political comeback by a defeated president was a really transient effort by Gerald Ford, who had misplaced reelection in 1976, to barter the opportunity of being Ronald Reagan’s working mate throughout the 1980 Republican Nationwide Conference. The plan fell by, and Ford returned to non-public life.

As soon as out of workplace, most ex-presidents keep out of the highlight and keep away from criticizing their successor. Whether or not or not President Trump makes an attempt a political comeback in 2024, it’s doubtless that he gained’t keep mum over the following 4 years.

[Get our most insightful politics and election stories. Sign up for The Conversation’s Politics Weekly.]

Robert Speel doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that might profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their tutorial appointment.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/trump-2024-presidential-comebacks-have-mixed-success/ via https://growthnews.in

#Growth News

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altslashtab · 4 years

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Legislation and Policy Development During the Monroe Presidency

The Presidency of James Monroe contained major developments in the United States political domain. The period between 1816 to 1824 that brought the inclusion of several new states and the greater organization of the recently acquired Louisiana territory. Many of these processes expanded friction in the nation over slavery. International relations with Great Britain would provide a backdrop for the development of the northern portions of what would later become part of the United States. Borders with Russia, and Spain would be redrawn through international treaty, and the ideology known as the Monroe Doctrine would be a guiding element of American foreign policy for the foreseeable future. Lastly the limited scope of investment into infrastructure provided the means for canals to overrun highways in importance. The effects of the policies, and the challenges they faced, that developed during President Monroe’s administrations affected the United States future in profound ways that deserve study.

The sectional tension over the nature of slavery in the United States is the most dominant cultural and political aspect of American history before the twentieth century. It was affected in the field of religion, politics, economics, and philosophy. Great leaders and icons arose because of the fundamental disagreements over human bondage. Many northerners were uncomfortable with having to put aside their disapproval of slavery to maintain national unity. Ultimately the north and south were too diametrically opposed in their value systems to maintain peace. In pursuing compromises, such as the Missouri Compromise, the same people who sought to bring justice through peace prolonged the lifespan of slavery until it was resolved through national conflict.

At the end of one of America’s most successful purchases, the Louisiana purchase, was a conundrum over whether the acquired territories would be assimilated into the union as slave or free states. This started a series of dominoes in the American political sphere that would ultimately culminate in the Civil War. Conflicts such as the Missouri compromise, and Kansas-Nebraska Act would have never occurred without this purchase. The sectional rivalries and moral divides in the young nation were expressed by representatives who failed to meet at common ground and had to settle for a lesser equilibrium.

In 1817 the territory of Missouri began its petitioning of congress for statehood in the Union. The result would be infamous depending on the perspective. In 1819 Congress began its consideration of the territory’s entrance as a full state. A representative from New York named James Tallmadge saw the moral opportunity to combat the spread of slavery and introduced legislation into the bill for Missouri statehood preventing new slaves into the state and requiring those born into bondage in the state to be set free at 25 years old. The bill with this legislation was passed in February of the same year and sent to the senate for consideration (Johnson 48-49).

Missouri possessed a great deal of land further south that was sparsely populated. The southern Missourians did not believe they were adequately represented by the more northern portion of the state and had petitioned congress for the status of a separate territory. It was in this bill that representative John W Taylor attempted to insert an amendment of the same nature to that of Tallmadge’s legislation. Taylor proposed an amendment to the Arkansas bill that would prevent the spread of slavery, but unlike the Tallmadge amendment this did not successfully pass the House. Fifteen northern representatives sided with the southern House to prevent the constitution’s admittance of slaves (Johnson 49-56).

The Arkansas bill would be signed into law without a restriction on the introduction of slaves to the territory, and shortly after, on March 3, 1819, the bill bearing the Tallmadge amendment would be defeated in the senate. In the winter after the defeated amendments a second consideration of Missouri’s admittance would take place. During this consideration, the northern state of Maine was also being considered for statehood. Continued failures to legislate against the spread of slavery caused Taylor to suggest a line that would limit slave states to latitudes lower than 36 degrees and 30 minutes which was adopted in the First Missouri Compromise by Senator Jesse B Thomas. The First Missouri Compromise admitted Maine as a free state, and Missouri as a slave state, however no states north of 36 degrees and 30 minutes were to permit slavery (Johnson 48-65).

During Monroe’s presidency the United States acquired Florida from Spain expelling the European presence from the southeastern boundary of the United States. Initially ordered to pacify Seminole tribes that had been harassing Americans, General Andrew Jackson invaded the Florida peninsula. As Fred Greenstein writes, “Rather than positioning his forces in Georgia, Jackson led them well into Florida, where they razed Seminole villages, executed two British subjects for supplying the Indians, and deposed the Spanish governor.” Greenstein goes on to explain that rather than punish General Jackson the Monroe administration supported his actions and utilized the situation to force Spain to cede Florida in the Adams–Onís Treaty also known as the Transcontinental Treaty (279).

Early in the Monroe presidency legislation that had been worked on for quite some time began to see completion. In 1816 the United States and Great Britain stopped producing new warships on the Great Lakes due to the potential harm done by these vessels. In 1818 the United States Congress would approve the Rush-Bagot Treaty, limiting the amount and type of vessels allowed on the Great Lakes. These regulations would not always be followed perfectly but as Barry O’Neill writes in his article discussing the greater results of the Rush-Bagot treaty, “even while being violated the agreement served the function of setting a norm, prompting Britain justify and limit it’s noncompliance,” (20).

A more meaningful treaty in the modern consciousness that was signed with Great Britain during the Monroe administration was the, “Convention Respecting Fisheries, Boundary, and the Restoration of Slaves,” in 1818. Edmond S. Meany states his treaty existed as a, “mutual confession that the future would have to solve the question of actual sovereignty.” The treaty prevented the northwestern American continent past the Rocky Mountains, known as the Oregon territory, from being closed off to either country. The previous treaty with Spain had set the southern boundary of the United State’s territorial claim in the Oregon Territory to the 42nd parallel of latitude. Meany continues to elaborate on relations with Russia where in 1821 Russia had declared their area of control in the Oregon territory leading to further international deliberation. In 1824 the northern boundary of the Oregon territory was agreed to be set at 54 degrees and 40 minutes latitude between the United States and Russia (210-211).

The challenges presented in the years of Monroe’s presidency influenced what would define the remainder of American relations with European powers. On December 2, 1823 President Monroe delivered his seventh annual message to congress where he laid out the strategic interests of the United States against foreign intervention in the Americas. The key statement from the annual message being that the people of the nations of the western hemisphere is not viewed as targets for future colonization the European nations (Monroe).

Furthermore, in his annual message Monroe highlighted the development of transportation through canals saying, “the waters of the Chesapeake and Ohio may be connected together by one continued canal, and at an expense far short of the value and importance of the object to be obtained.” The great backdrop to the legislation of the United States’ growing infrastructure was the Erie Canal. By 1821 the first third of the Erie Canal was producing income for the state government. The completion of the Erie Canal occurred in 1825 and served as a point of American pride in their engineering and economic accomplishments (Burd 25).

The road system in this period also expanded considerably. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries state rivalries helped provoke investment in the improvement of highway systems (Klein and Majewski 475). Without strong interference from the national government the independent companies that produced the turnpikes of New York relied on what Daniel Klein and John Majewski referred to, “community boosterism,” and as the canals grew in importance the turnpike companies began to fail with the roads becoming public highways (504). Robert Hunter writes that Virginia took a somewhat different approach and in 1816, “created a Fund for Internal Improvement, and a Board of Public Works to administer the fund,” (279). The result was ultimately the same with an inefficient but earnest development of roads to connect communities throughout the state.

The policy making of the Monroe era was a complicated effort to navigate through inherited difficulties. Solutions needed to be found for the division between anti-slavery and pro-slavery forces. Powerful empires from around the world had to be contested with. The receding power of Spanish created and opportunity, and the British and Russian powers in the Oregon territory had to be surmounted over the course of decades. These great tests were taking place while the infrastructure of the country was slowly being built. The strategies of President Monroe’s cannot be understated in terms of importance to American history.

Works Cited

Dunn, John F. “Collecting the Presidents: #5: James Monroe.” U.S. Stamp News, vol. 17, no. 1, Jan. 2011, p. 28. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=57578197&site=ehost-live. Accessed 3 May 2020.

McGill, Sarah Ann. “James Monroe.” James Monroe, Aug. 2017, p. 1. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=17991903&site=ehost-live. Accessed 3 May 2020.

Johnson, William R. “Prelude to the Missouri Compromise: A New York Congressman's Effort to Exclude Slavery from Arkansas Territory.” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 1, 1965, pp. 47–66. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40023964. Accessed 3 May 2020.

Greenstein, Fred I. “The Political Professionalism of James Monroe.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 2, 2009, pp. 275–282. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41427360. Accessed 4 May 2020.

O'Neill, Barry. “Rush-Bagot and the Upkeep of Arms Treaties.” Arms Control Today, vol. 21, no. 7, 1991, pp. 20–23. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23624556. Accessed 5 May 2020.

Meany, Edmond S. “Three Diplomats Prominent in the Oregon Question.” The Washington Historical Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 3, 1914, pp. 207–214. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40474377. Accessed 5 May 2020.

Monroe, James. “Monroe Doctrine.” Monroe Doctrine, Aug. 2017, p. 1. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=21212458&site=ehost-live. Accessed 4 May 2020.

Burd, Camden. “A New, Historic Canal: The Making of an Erie Canal Heritage Landscape.” IA. The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology, vol. 42, no. 2, 2016, pp. 23–34. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26643089. Accessed 6 May 2020.

Klein, Daniel B., and John Majewski. “Economy, Community, and Law: The Turnpike Movement in New York, 1797-1845.” Law & Society Review, vol. 26, no. 3, 1992, pp. 469–512. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3053736. Accessed 6 May 2020.

Hunter, Robert F. “The Turnpike Movement in Virginia, 1816-1860.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 69, no. 3, 1961, pp. 278–289. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4246760. Accessed 6 May 2020.

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historyandculturesquad · 6 years

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3. Civil War

CAUSES

There are many causes that led to the American Civil War. While slavery is generally cited as the main cause for the war, other political and cultural differences between the North and the South certainly contributed. Below we will discuss some of these differences and how they created a divide between the North and the South that eventually caused the Civil War.

Industry vs. Farming :

In the mid-1800s, the economies of many northern states had moved away from farming to industry. A lot of people in the North worked and lived in large cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. The southern states, however, had maintained a large farming economy and this economy was based on slave labor. While the North no longer needed slaves, the South relied heavily upon slaves for their way of life.

States' Rights:

The idea of states' rights was not new to the Civil War. Since the Constitution was first written there had been arguments about how much power the states should have versus how much power the federal government should have. The southern states felt that the federal government was taking away their rights and powers.

Expansion:

As the United States continued to expand westward, each new state added to the country shifted the power between the North and the South. Southern states began to fear they would lose so much power that they would lose all their rights. Each new state became a battleground between the two sides for power.

Slavery:

At the heart of much of the South's issues was slavery. The South relied on slavery for labor to work the fields. Many people in the North believed that slavery was wrong and evil. These people were called abolitionists. They wanted slavery made illegal throughout the United States. Abolitionists such as John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe began to convince more and more people of the evil of slavery. This made the South fearful that their way of life would come to an end.

Bleeding Kansas:

The first fighting over the slavery issue took place in Kansas. In 1854, the government passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowing the residents of Kansas to vote on whether they would be a slave state or a free state. The region was flooded with supporters from both sides. They fought over the issue for years. Several people were killed in small skirmishes giving the confrontation the name Bleeding Kansas. Eventually Kansas entered the Union as a free state in 1861.

Abraham Lincoln:

The final straw for the South was election of Abraham Lincoln to President of the United States. Abraham Lincoln was a member of the new anti-slavery Republican Party. He managed to get elected without even being on the ballot in ten of the southern states. The southern states felt that Lincoln was against slavery and also against the South.

Secession:

When Lincoln was elected, many of the southern states decided they no longer wanted to be a part of the United States. They felt that they had every right to leave. Starting with South Carolina, eleven states would eventually leave the United States and form a new country called the Confederate States of America. Abraham Lincoln said they did not have the right to leave the United States and sent in troops to stop the South from leaving. The Civil War had begun

REPUBLICAN PARTY: ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The Republican Party was founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854 and famously led by Abraham Lincoln, who served as President from 1861 to 1865. At that time the United States was at a breaking point between a Democratic Party that was fond of the status quo and a Republican Party that wanted America to stand up for human rights.

Abraham Lincoln found himself at the head of a government that was divided amongst itself on how to proceed, given that the southern half of the country was teetering on the edge of secession. Fearing war and in-fighting between countrymen, Lincoln was forced to act first as a strong diplomat and subsequently as a strong military leader. His actions not only changed the course of history for Africans and all future Americans, but for the Republican Party as well.During the leadership of the Great Emancipator, Republicans were considered the liberals of their time. After all, it was they who demanded modernization in terms of labor, land ownership and the rights of human beings. Essentially, the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln promoted the individual freedoms of all men as well as the rights for all to receive a public education. Democrats, at the time, spoke of social progression, but did not act on it.

CONFEDERATE STATES

Confederate States of America, also called Confederacy, in the American Civil War, the government of 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860–61, carrying on all the affairs of a separate government and conducting a major war until defeated in the spring of 1865.

Convinced that their way of life, based on slavery, was irretrievably threatened by the election of Pres. Abraham Lincoln (November 1860), the seven states of the Deep South (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas) seceded from the Union during the following months. When the war began with the firing on Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861), they were joined by four states of the upper South (Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia).

The main concern of the Confederate States was raising and equipping an army. The Southern Congress first voted to permit direct volunteering up to 400,000, but conscription was begun in April 1862. The total number of Confederate soldiers is estimated at 750,000, as opposed to twice that many Federal troops. (Confederate population stood at about 5,500,000 whites and 3,500,000 black slaves, as against 22,000,000 Northerners.) In railroads, the South had only 9,000 miles, the industrial North 22,000

CIVIL WAR

The American Civil war started in 1861 and ended in1865. The two sides that fought during the Civil War were the Confederate States (a federal government established by slave states which seceded in response to the election of an anti-slavery president) and the rump United States (those states which didn’t secede). The Confederacy consisted of eleven states: South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, plus the Indian Territory (future Oklahoma) and the self-proclaimed Arizona Territory (the southern halves of modern Arizona and New Mexico), plus rump or self-proclaimed secessionist governments and militia from Missouri and Kentucky. Western Virginia broke away from the seceded state and formed first a Union-loyal Virginia government and later the new state of West Virginia.

The end of the war

The Battle of Palmito Ranch, was the final battle of the American Civil War. Their leaders were Theodore H. Barrett (from the Union) and John Ford (from the Confederate States). The Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, signed the surrender terms offered by Union negotiators. With Smith’s surrender, the last Confederate army ceased to exist, bringing a formal end to the bloodiest four years in U.S. history.

AFTERMATH OF THE WAR

Lincoln’s murder

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Shot in the head as he watched the play, Lincoln died the following day at 7:22 a.m., in the Petersen House opposite the theater. He was the first American president to be assassinated; his funeral and burial marked an extended period of national mourning.

Abolition of the slavery

Slavery Abolition Act, (1833), in British history, act of Parliament that abolished slavery in most British colonies, freeing more than 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa as well as a small number in Canada. It received Royal Assent on August 28, 1833, and took effect on August 1, 1834.

The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states on December 6, 1865. On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed its adoption. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including former slaves—and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the laws.” One of three amendments passed during the Reconstruction era to abolish slavery and establish civil and legal rights for black Americans, it would become the basis for many landmark Supreme Court decisions over the years.

Racist laws and organisations

Enacted by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures in the late 19th century after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued to be enforced until 1965. They mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in 1896 with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans in railroad cars. Public education had essentially been segregated since its establishment in most of the South after the Civil War. This principle was extended to public facilities and transportation, including segregated cars on interstate trains and, later, buses. Facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to those which were then available to white Americans; sometimes they did not exist at all. This body of law institutionalized a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages. Segregation by law existed mainly in the Southern states, while Northern segregation was generally a matter of fact—patterns of housing segregation enforced by private covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including discriminatory labor union practices.

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interwebsfamous · 6 years

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The Texas Revolution and the Mexican-American War Were About Slavery, Too

Or, why compromise couldn’t stop the Civil War After the Missouri compromise in 1820, several things became clear. Slavery would not be permitted in the vast majority of the landmass then controlled by the United States of America. The economy of the Deep South was deeply tied to slave labor. Also, the economy of the Upper South was deeply tied to exporting its slaves to the Deep South. To maintain its parity in the United States Senate, the Southern states looked beyond the current borders of their own country for future slave states. The United States successfully obtained Florida from Spain in 1821, after years of incursions into the territory to recover escaped slaves. However, later that year Mexico declared its independence from Spain. Newly independent Mexico began encouraging American immigration into Texas to help Europeanize a vast territory mostly inhabited by indigenous people. The influx of Anglo-American settlers into Texas caused the U.S. to offer to purchase it from Mexico in 1826 and 1827. Many of these Anglo-Americans were slave-owners. However, in 1829, Mexico’s first Black President, Vicente Guerrero, abolished slavery, giving the Americans a short adjustment period to free their slaves. Also, Guerrero, mostly unsuccessfully, attempted to discourage further American immigration into Mexico. These new policies caused the Anglo-American settlers to consider independence. However, the insertion of slavery into the issue caused the annexation of Texas to become a deeply partisan issue in the United States. Although he had formerly sought to purchase Texas from Mexico, John Quincy Adams opposed such a purchase after Guerrero put Texas on track for gradual abolition. However, the stage had been set for conflict between the Mexican central government and its far-flung provinces. General Santa Anna was initially a widely popular figure in Mexican politics, because he had ties to both the liberal and conservative wings of the Mexican independence movement. However, the governments he nominally controlled swung widely from left to right during his tenure, managing to alienate many different constituencies at once over time. This led to a mass uprising of Mexican borderlands in 1835 against the central government. Only Texas managed to maintain its independence, and in 1836 enshrined human bondage into its constitution. Texas hoped to be admitted to the United States as a slave state. However, this created a state of affairs that threatened to upset the Missouri Compromise, and the issue was tabled for a decade. In 1845, James K. Polk won the presidency on an expansionist platform and almost immediately formally annexed Texas to the United States. This resulted in a military showdown with Mexico. Most anti-slavery Whigs, including one freshman member of Congress, Abraham Lincoln, recognized this military conflict as an attempt to expand the institution of slavery beyond the limits established by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Abraham Lincoln boldly and passionately opposed the Mexican War on the principle that it sought to expand the institution of slavery. However, the young nation was primed for imperial adventure and conquest. A stunning and decisive American invasion of Mexico was completed in 1847. This resulted in the compelled cession of 529,000 square miles of formerly Mexican territory, opening up potentially vast new lands to the establishment of slave states. This was ultimately the issue that sparked the U.S. Civil War. Although the compromise of 1850 attempted to resolve these issues, it most decidedly did not. Merely four years later, slave states sought the admission of Kansas and Nebraska into the U.S. as slave states, even though, previous compromises had designated these territories to be free soil. Also, further filibustering adventures inspired by the conquest of Texas and California were inspired in the 1850s. The Knights of the Golden Circle sought to conquer the entire region surrounding the Gulf of Mexico and turn it into a slave-holding empire. This resulted in Anglo-American-led attempts to foment pro-U.S. revolutions in Baja California, Nicaragua, and Cuba. In response to Southern attempts to expand slavery, many Northern states attempted to use the doctrine of state’s rights to aggressively protect fugitive slaves who had fled into their jurisdiction, even though the Constitution at the time compelled states to return fugitive slaves to their masters. However, this issue was ultimately resolved to the liking of the slave states by the U.S. Supreme Court in both Dred Scott v. Sanford and Ableman v. Booth. The issue of whether slavery should be allowed in the newly conquered territories was the primary issue on which Abraham Lincoln campaigned. He was opposed to creating any new slave states in territories which currently did not permit slavery. Abraham Lincoln did not seek the gradual abolition of slavery and made pledges to protect slavery where it already existed. However, the election of Lincoln resulted in the secession of multiple Southern states. The leaders of the slave states failed to recognize that their Northern colleagues would be unwilling to negotiate under threat of armed insurrection. When the military forces of South Carolina took steps to resolve the dispute with force, the Civil War began in earnest. The leaders of the South, though, made it clear that they were fighting for the cause of white supremacy and the involuntary servitude of those of African ancestry. They did so in their resolutions on their causes for secession, and in the public statements of their leaders.

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Did Any Republicans Own Slaves In 1860

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Did Any Republicans Own Slaves In 1860