Are freedom reserved for just a select few or are they for all peoples of different race, gender or religious belief? Are these freedoms worth fighting for? These were some of the questions the founding father of America where faced with during the birth of a free America. America was born in revolution for independence from English rule and taxation among other things. But was this freedom for a select few or was it for all races and genders. When Europeans first arrived in America the Native American Indians where already living in a free society. “In 1637 Thomas Morton’s presented an account of the Native American homes, trade, society, and religion and freely offered his own judgments about them. He condemned some of the Natives way …show more content…
of life and considered many of their religious beliefs to be the work of the devil or devil worship. Morton still admired them and noted that unlike Europeans Native Americans didn’t obsess over possessions and ownerships of lands” 1. Treatment of Indians during the early year of American settlements where harsh, many were exported to Cuba for salve labors.
Bartolome de las Casas took part in this exportation of Natives but in 1514 he freed his Indian slaves and protested the mistreatment of Indians under Spanish rule. “He also called for Indians to have the same rights as other subjects of Spain. Largely because of Las Casas’s efforts, in 1542 Spain promulgated the New Laws, ordering that Indians no longer be enslaved. But Spain’s European rivals used this treatment to twist their own agendas and made it seem they were rescuing them from Spanish …show more content…
rule”2. Some Indian tribe rebelled to regain their freedoms and ways of life back from Europeans that treated their very existence. “Pontic was the leader of the Pan-Indian resistance to English rule known as Pontiac’s rebellion”3. Pontic feared that his people where losing their customs and traditions of their ancestors. He encouraged his people to take up their weapons against the English to be once more happy and prosperous. Pontiac’s people would not be prosperous nor would other tribe of America. By 1830 the Indian removal act authorized the president to offer Indians lands west of the Mississippi some went peacefully some were removed by force. With the west ward expansion of America, the settlers move onto more and more Indian lands. Although Washington wanted a friendly relationship with the Indians the rapid expansion westward and continual conflicts between the Natives and settlers offered no real solution for this issue. As such the American Indians freedoms were slowly taken away and their way of life would never be the same. Just like the Indians the African Americans treatment was cruel and used for economic gain for colonist.
“It is estimated that 7.7 million slaves were transported to America between 1492 and 1820”4. They were used to farm, tend to live stock, and with the rise of profitable crops the slave trade grew on a large scale. Slavery in the north was not as big as in the south due to smaller farms. The laws that governed slaves in the north where not as harsh as in the south. They had rights to bring suits in courts testify against whites and own property and pass it on. The slaves in the south had none of these rights. Many blacks risked their lives to attain freedom from the colonist, especially in South Carolina and Georgia. The first uprising occurred in New York City in 1712, when a group of slaves set fire to houses and killed many whites who arrived on the scene. The slave were tortured burned alive and killed to show other slaves the price to pay for anymore uprising against the White slave owners. It would be years later before African Americans would achieve their freedom from slavery. “February 1 1865 President Abraham Lincoln approved the joint resolution of congress submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures. He then issued the Emancipation Proclamation on which followed the constitutional amendment to abolishment of
slavery”5. In the eighteenth century the British Empire still considered its self to be the worlds most advanced and freest nation. Great Britain not only had the greatest naval and sea power but its form of government was complex and incorporating common law, and common language. Colonist often felt that they didn’t share all the same standards and their stand of living was well below that of Britons. A form of this was taxation and representation. The colonist claimed the Britain had no right to tax them at all. No taxation without representation became the cry of the people. The stamp act was a tax that was created by parliament to raise money directly from the colonist and not from regulation though trade. It taxed books, documents, land deeds and printed materials produced in the colonies. It was used to fund British troops who were stationed in America. “This would be the first great drama of the revolutionary ere and the first major split between colonist and Great Britain over the meaning of freedom”.6 After America won its independence from Great Britain only a select few enjoyed the freedom in which the constitution was writing. Freedom for some races, genders and social statuses seemed to be nothing but a dream that was out of their reach. By defining liberty and defining freedom as a right for all rather than for a select few it raised the questions about the rights of women. Mary Wollstonecraft published her pamphlet a vindication of the rights of women. In which she said “the rights of humanity should not be confined to the male line”.7 She wanted women to have better education and better wages so that single women could support themselves. Judith Sargent Murray wrote essays, poems and books that insisted that women should have all the same rights as men such educational opportunities to acquire knowledge, and that the thought of women being inferior to men was result of women being denied the same opportunities as men.8 February 1869 congress approved the fifteenth amendment, which prevented any federal and state government from denying any citizen the right to vote because of race.9 but it didn’t apply to women. But it opened the doors for the possibility that some day it could be possible. But it wouldn’t be until 1920 that the 19th amendment would finally give women the right to vote. American was going to be the land of new beginnings and escape, and there where many reasons for American colonization. For the Quakers who fled religious persecutions from other religions and from their own governments for the beliefs that they held. For some European countries it was a chance to acquire great wealth, prosperity, economic power and to renew revenues lost waging expensive wars amongst themselves. Some were seeking alternate trade routes to other countries to cut out the middle market. Over population in European counties also fueled some of the migration to America in which settles where even offered lands to encourage them to settle in the new world. Whatever the reason that the first settles had to come to America and to start a new life all of them were looking for some kind of freedom. It wasn’t easy and some payed the ultimate cost with their lives. It was worth the risk for many who would rather die than live the rest of their lives as subjects of these governments whose political views where different from their own. Our forefathers took great risk and sacrifice fighting for the freedoms and liberties that we now enjoy. And nothing defines us as a nation as the declaration of independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 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; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world”.10 Freedom always has been a fundamental of Americans not only as a nation but ourselves. It has been with us in our history not only in the Declaration of Independence but the Constitution as well. We have fought for independence, fought civil wars, protested for equal rights, abolishment of slavery, and other freedoms and rights. It has been an ongoing battle thought out American history, as who has the right to have it and enjoy it. Even though America was founded on this concept it deprived many of its people of these rights and privileges. Today we still hold freedom as our utmost importance in our culture and politics. And one thing still remains certain and that is American freedom is still unfinished and still ongoing. Debates will still continue over the meaning of it and how it applies to a global scale and for all of humanity alike.11 Notes 1. Eric, Foner. Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History. 4th ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, (2014): 84. 2. Foner,Voices of Freedom, 7. 3. Eric, Foner. Give Me Liberty. Fourth ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W Norton & Company, (2014): 177. 4. Foner, voices of Freedom, 63. 5. "13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865)." Our Documents -. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2015.http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=40 6. Foner, Give Me Liberty, 188,189. 7. Foner, Give Me Liberty, 307. 8. Foner, Give Me Liberty, 311. 9. Foner, Give Me Liberty, 605. 10. "The Declaration of Independence." The Heritage Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2015. http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/the-declaration-of-independence 11. "Preserving American Freedom." The Contested History of American Freedom. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2015.http://digitalhistory.hsp.org/pafrm/essay/contested-history-american-freedom Bibliographies Foner, E. (2014). Voices of Freedom (Fourth ed., Vol. 1). New York London: W .W Norton. Foner, E. (2014). Give me liberty! An American history (Seagull 4th ed., Vol. 1). New York: W. W. Norton &. Company. "13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865)." Our Documents -. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2015. "The Declaration of Independence." The Heritage Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2015. "Preserving American Freedom." The Contested History of American Freedom. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2015.
To many of the English colonists, any land that was granted to them in a charter by the English Crown was theirs’, with no consideration for the natives that had already owned the land. This belittlement of Indians caused great problems for the English later on, for the natives did not care about what the Crown granted the colonists for it was not theirs’ to grant in the first place. The theory of European superiority over the Native Americans caused for any differences in the way the cultures interacted, as well as amazing social unrest between the two cultures.
Cronon raises the question of the belief or disbelief of the Indian’s rights to the land. The Europeans believed the way Indians used the land was unacceptable seeing as how the Indians wasted the natural resources the land had. However, Indians didn’t waste the natural resources and wealth of the land but instead used it differently, which the Europeans failed to see. The political and economical life of the Indians needed to be known to grasp the use of the land, “Personal good could be replaced, and their accumulation made little sense for ecological reasons of mobility,” (Cronon, 62).
Thomas Morton wrote about the Native Americans and their way of life while the colonist slowly populated the Americas. Native American’s living styles, religious views, and the relations the Indians had with the colonist are a few of the things that came across when you heard about the Indians during the time the colonist inhabited the Americas.
The first point of conflicting ideas of freedom was the Native tribes remaining slightly nomadic when hunting. This conflict was highlighted in the selection “On taking the new road” by Carl Sweeny on page 127. In the selection, Carl speaks of how his tribe’s traditions changed when forced to hunt within the reservation and also maintained lifestyles different to those of whites. The Whites often used these differences to reinforce the idea that the Native Americans were inferior. Carl mentions in the selection that Whites disapproved of the Natives withdrawing their students from school during the winter. It would have been common for the Whites to attribute this to the natives being “lazy” (Sweeny, p.127), instead of recognizing it as a cultural difference. White Americans did not want to accept that the Nativ...
The discovery and conquest of American Indians inspired efforts to develop an ideology that could justify why they needed to enslave the Indians. The Spanish monarch wanted an ideal empire. "A universal empire, of which all their subjects were but servants. Charles V remained for them the dominus mundi, the legitimate and God-ordained lord of the world." (Weckmann, The Transit of Civilization, 23) Gold and religious conversion was the two most important inspirations for conquistadors in conquering America. Father Bartolome De Las Casas was a Dominican priest who came to the New World to convert the Indians to become Christians. He spent forty years on Hispanolia and nearby islands, and saw how the Spaniards brutally treated the Indians and sympathized with them. The Devastation of the Indies was an actual eyewitness account of the genocide by Las Casas, and his group of Dominican friars in which he demonizes the Spanish colonists and praises the Indians. Father Las Casas returned to Seville, where he published his book that caused an on going debate on whether the suppression of the Indians corrupted the Spaniards' values. What Las Casas was trying to achieve was the notion of human rights, that human beings are free and cogent by nature without the interference of others.
When they found the “new world” is too weak to resist the invasion of European, they started to establish the colony in America. Bartolomé de Las Casas used to be a priest who explored America on Hispaniola and Cuba. But after he witnessed the colonists enslave and mistreat Indians, he changed his mind and start to protect the Indians. He free his Indian slaves in 1514, and start to against Spanish mistreat them (Foner, p.7). After that, he made the effort to liberate the Indian slaves, and he had backed to Spain several times want to make the King reduce the heavy labor of Indians. Finally, Spain published New Laws in 1542, which indicate that Indians no longer be enslaved (Foner, p.7).
American Indians shaped their critique of modern America through their exposure to and experience with “civilized,” non-Indian American people. Because these Euro-Americans considered traditional Indian lifestyle savage, they sought to assimilate the Indians into their civilized culture. With the increase in industrialization, transportation systems, and the desire for valuable resources (such as coal, gold, etc.) on Indian-occupied land, modern Americans had an excuse for “the advancement of the human race” (9). Euro-Americans moved Indians onto reservations, controlled their education and practice of religion, depleted their land, and erased many of their freedoms. The national result of this “conquest of Indian communities” was a steady decrease of Indian populations and drastic increase in non-Indian populations during the nineteenth century (9). It is natural that many American Indians felt fearful that their culture and people were slowly vanishing. Modern America to American Indians meant the destruction of their cultural pride and demise of their way of life.
In 1619, slaves from Africa started being shipped to America. In the years that followed, the slave population grew and the southern states became more dependent on the slaves for their plantations. Then in the 1800s slavery began to divide America, and this became a national conflict which lead to the Civil War. Throughout history, groups in the minority have risen up to fight for their freedom. In the United States, at the time of the Civil War African Americans had to fight for their freedom. African Americans used various methods to fight for their freedom during the Civil War such as passing information and supplies to the Union Army, escaping to Union territory, and serving in the Union’s army. These actions affected the African Americans and the United States by helping the African Americans earn citizenship and abolishing slavery in the United States.
The abolition movement continued to grow, choking the south until they couldn’t breathe. Radical abolitionists begin to lead slave revolts. Slave’s rebel and escape towards the north. The tension between the north and the south intensifies. The civil war erupts across the nation. The north wins, and President Lincoln issues The Emancipation Proclamation. The slaves are finally free.
Native Americans have had a long history of resistance to the social and cultural assimilation into white culture. By employing various creative strategies, Native Americans have attempted to cope with the changes stemming from the European colonial movement into the Americas. There are fundamental differences in world views and cultural and social orders between Indians and Europeans, which contributed to conservatism in Native American cultures. In this paper, two aspects of such cultural and institutional differences of Native American societies will be examined: holistic Native American beliefs versus dualistic world views and harmony versus domination. These two aspects are important in terms of explaining changes (or lack thereof) in Native American societies because they suggest that the Native American world view is more cyclical and its components are interlinked, while Western societies have a clear demarcation between cultural elements, such as religion, kinship, and morality. However, there are certain limitations to the theoretical frameworks that explain conservatism in Indian cultures because these theories are oriented around the Western world view and were developed based on the Western terms; therefore, indigenous population was not taken into account when these theories were developed.
Throughout our country’s history there have been several groups who have fared less that great. Every minority group was treated unfairly, Indians were uprooted and had no control, I can’t imagine for a second being a soldier in combat, women struggled for basic rights, and many people fell victim to the changing ways of our economy, losing their jobs and fighting to survive. It seems wrong to pick one group over another, as if to say some people who were treated horribly or who faced mounting obstacles didn’t actually have it as bad as another group. But throughout all the years we’ve studied, one group that stood out to me who were dealt a horrible fate were Native Americans living in the west during the 19th century. When Americans began to expand westward, Indians unwillingly had their lives flipped upside down and changed drastically. After years of displacement, they were being forced to live in certain areas and follow certain rules, or risk their lives.
Benjamin Franklin describes the culture of Native American in such a way so that it looks like ideal for everyone. Despite with the use of word “savages”, Franklin had an undeniable respect for the people of Native Americans. Franklin tried to explain that Indian men are the backbone of the culture of Native Americans. Franklin has huge admiration towards the Indian men because they were hard worker and disciplined. “The Indian men, when young, are hunters and warriors; when old, counselors; for all their government is by counsel of the sages, there is no force, there are no prisons, no officers to compel obedience, or inflict punishment.” (Franklin 468) Franklin had huge admiration towards the culture due to fact that there are no prisoners, no force and no police officers to impose obedience. Just imagine this country without law enforcement, prisoners and prisons? What would this country be similar, to those of the Native Americans? Would our behaviors be comparable, to those of the Native
America was expanding at such a rapid pace that those who were in America before us had no time to anticipate what was happening. This change in lifestyle affected not only Americans, but everyone who lived in the land. Changing traditions, the get rich quick idea and other things were the leading causes of westward expansion. But whatever happened to those who were caught in the middle, those who were here before us? One of those many who roamed the land before Americans decided that they owned it were the Native Americans.
Towards the development of the United States of America there has always been a question of the placement of the Native Americans in society. Throughout time, the Natives have been treated differently like an individual nation granted free by the U.S. as equal U.S. citizens, yet not treated as equal. In 1783 when the U.S. gained their independence from Great Britain not only did they gain land from the Appalachian Mountains but conflict over the Indian policy and what their choice was to do with them and their land was in effect. All the way from the first presidents of the U.S. to later in the late 19th century the treatment of the Natives has always been changing. The Native Americans have always been treated like different beings, or savages, and have always been tricked to signing false treaties accompanying the loss of their homes and even death happened amongst tribes. In the period of the late 19th century, The U.S. government was becoming more and more unbeatable making the Natives move by force and sign false treaties. This did not account for the seizing of land the government imposed at any given time (Boxer 2009).
In 1831 abolitionism and the underground railroad were created because of Nat Turner’s revolt. In 1857 the Dred Scott case occurred and the ruling was that all northerners were called to capture African Americans and return them to the South. In 1859 John Brown raided the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. In 1861 the Civil War began and Lincoln gave the Emancipation Proclamation. After the Civil War African Americans started earning their freedoms back. Before the Civil War live was tough for African Americans, they were used as slaves working long hours a day without rest, they were bid on and sold like cattle, Wives and Husbands were separated and if they had children they were most of the time separated from them. They had little rest throughout the day, they had horrible living conditions and had little to no food. They had to do what the plantation owner said if not, then they would be whipped or put to