There are pinnacle years in American history that are raised above others because of the events that occurred in the midst of that year. Very familiar years such as 1492, 1607, 1776, and 1861 yield memories of significant occurrences that citizens have been taught their entire lives. However, after reading 1831: A Year of Eclipse, I have realized that the year 1831 was a monumental year for America as a country and was the tipping point for what the country would look like in the future. Louis Masur is trying to portray the importance of the year 1831 and have the audience understand that without the events that happened in that year, the United States would not look the same. In 1831, there was a notable shift in the thought process and the way Americans accomplished tasks and Masur is trying to allude to this change and deem it as important in the minds of his audience. The first phenomena that Masur alludes to is the slavery and abolitionist crisis. He starts off the chapter by explaining who Nat Turner is and the posture in which slavery is in. Masur paints the mindset of the slave owners by saying, “the slaves were content…slavery was a righteous institution…[we] were good masters. (pg 10).” Up until this point in history, no one had ever really challenged slavery. Slavery was real …show more content…
(pg 64). In the past, there had been puritan and separatist movements that were about being a light to the world, and Great Awakenings pertaining to moral reformation. However, this movement was based on the question, “what must I do to be saved? (pg 63).” With that being said, the real change in thinking comes in the answer to that question. Before this movement, a lot of what it meant to be saved was actions based, however, Finney’s movement was about inviting God into your life and listening to the Spirit of God to direct
In the novel A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, Gene and Finny have boarding school experiences during World War II. Finny helps Gene mature throughout the story. Finny is an archetypal Jesus because of he preaches his ideas to his peers, his death is similar to Jesus’s, and his charismatic personality.
Many Americans would not consider the year 1831 to be a turning point in United States History. Louis Masur, in his book 1831:Year of Eclipse, shines light on crucial events and culture shifts during 1831, that shaped the United States today. Masur’s metaphorical title suggests the importaince the eclipse of 1831 had on America. This twelve month period featured transitions in leadership, slavery issues, religious controversy, working class issues, and technological advances in the United States. Eventhough America spread and developed through techological advances, controversy over democratic values were a reoccuring theme that year, which exposed the US internal breakdown. After the eclipse on February 12th, Americans no longer feared the end of the world, but many were still anxious about the uncertanty of their counties fate. Prior to the eclipse on February 13, many Americans felt “a kind of vague fear, of impending danger-a prophetic presentiment of some approaching catastrophy” (5).
Writing around the same time period as Phillips, though from the obverse vantage, was Richard Wright. Wright’s essay, “The Inheritors of Slavery,” was not presented at the American Historical Society’s annual meeting. His piece is not festooned with foot-notes or carefully sourced. It was written only about a decade after Phillips’s, and meant to be published as a complement to a series of Farm Credit Administration photographs of black Americans. Wright was not an academic writing for an audience of his peers; he was a novelist acceding to a request from a publisher. His essay is naturally of a more literary bent than Phillips’s, and, because he was a black man writing ...
America in the mid to early nineteenth century saw the torture of many African Americans in slavery. Plantation owners did not care whether they were young or old, girl or boy, to them all slaves were there to work. One slave in particular, Frederick Douglass, documented his journey through slavery in his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Through the use of various rhetorical devices and strategies, Douglass conveys the dehumanizing and corrupting effect of slavery, in order to show the overall need for American abolition. His use of devices such as parallelism, asyndeton, simile, antithesis, juxtaposition and use of irony, not only establish ethos but also show the negative effects of slavery on slaves, masters and
The Second Great Awakening swept through the United States during the end of the 18th Century. Charles Grandson Finney was one of the major reasons the Second Great Awakening was such a success. Finney and his contemporaries rejected the Calvinistic belief that one was predetermined by go God to go to heaven or hell, and rather preached to people that they need to seek salvation from God themselves, which will eventually improve society has a whole. Finney would preach at Revivals, which were emotional religious meetings constructed to awaken the religious faith of people. These meetings were very emotional and lasted upwards of five days. Revivalism had swept through most of the United States by the beginning of the 19th Century. One of the most profound revivals took place in New York. After the great revival in New York Charles Finney was known ...
The book’s thesis is that the overseers and slave masters had a difficult time of managing slaves on the plantations. According to Franklin, slaves were very resistant to slavery and bondage, and some slaves would not stop trying to runaway despite the consequences. Franklin states, “The tensions, conflicts, and often violent confrontations between master and servant, or overseer and slave, have received less attention.”(2) White southerners refused to admit that slaves could n...
Shining a light on the cruel treatment of slave masters and their overseers. It would seem as though he wanted to ease the readers into the violent topic while at the same time painting a vivid picture.
To say that slavery only affects slaves is inaccurate; it dehumanizes the slaveholders too. Some of the slaveholders in the book were sympathetic, innocent human beings. They were not automatically corrupt just because they owned a slave. Rather, slavery changed their actions and characters from mercy into viciousness. In Douglass’ own book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, he emphasizes how many dignified human beings turn into barbaric slaveholders. Douglass, through his first hand experiences as a slave, reveals how the presence of slavery turns slaveholders into imposters.
There are difference classes of slave owners which are field, art, house slavery. The field work is generally for plantation, harvesting crops. Their schedule befitted for the season cycle. The second slavery class is art. This slavery required skills. The main character, Nat is also one of art slavery. The last slavery class is housework, working as a nurse or maid. The life of Nat as a slave like full of work cycle but never step forward. Nat’s days degenerated into endless, backbreaking drudgery. A sort of “all-purpose chattel,” as one writer has described him, Nat built the morning fire, hauled water, fed the cows, slopped the hogs, chopped wood, raised fences, repaired fences, cleared new fields, spread manure, and grew and gathered hay for the stock. The work never seemed to let up; it was worse than anything, everything he does and how hard he worked, his owner get all the benefit thus, in the end, he is still a slave. Every home have a television, The Television showed that white people looked having a nice life compared to themselves. This get the black people an idea why can they be like them, this is the beginning of “Revolution of Rising
In 1966 while serving as chairman of the Ohio Board of Evangelism, I went to Ashland, Ohio to meet with Carl Richardson who was one of the board members. We were working on a book called “Let's Have Revival”. While there Carl took me to Oberlin College, where the late Charles Finney served as President. I felt was a privilege just to stand in the chapel where he preached many of his great
An account of the August, 1831 slave revolt led by a slave named Nathaniel “Nat” Turner and happened in Southampton County, Virginia. The event is now known as Nat Turner’s Rebellion and the book is a telling of Nat Turner’s life, the system of slavery that existed in Southampton County and the state of Virginia. The pivotal element of the book is Nat Turner, his life as a slave and why he became the leader of the bloodiest slave revolt in the history of the United States. The author also tells of the tragically brutal events occurring during its suppression.
To begin, Douglass describes many events that portray slaves as being inferior to their masters. The slaves are never taught anything and kept completely clueless as to what is happening. By the way they are treated, the masters sort of
The literary work that I am going to be discussing is Frederick Douglass's Narrative. Narrative is about Douglass's transformation to an uneducated slave to abolitionist and writer. The issue that this work addresses is slavery. Throughout the story it shows Douglass as a naive young boy and then sometimes his experienced older self. Douglass is also sometimes the main character, but also he is sometimes just a supporting character. When he is just a witness, it help show just how dehumanizing slavery was.
The movements and awakenings have effected the current landscape of religious beliefs in that it has morphed and transformed into an entirely new religion, despite still going under the names of their original beliefs. Many of these religious values have become intertwined with civic and social values, thus straying from the original word of God. In the beginning it was believed that God knew who would be saved and who wouldn’t, and many Christians believed that they could not change God’s mind; however, with the Second Great Awakening it was believed that God’s mind could be changed. This is to say that people could determine whether or not they could be saved by “repenting” their sinful ways and choosing to walk the path of God. You would
These two historical themes that Frederick Douglass draws upon shows overall the terrible treatment the slaves had to go through. From trying to escape by learning to being deprived of every human right they deserve. Representing these historical themes in his narrative, Frederick Douglass shows the grueling impact of slavery.