Module 1

Question 1

Langston Hughes Poem

Answer 1

-“Words Like Freedom” (1967)

Question 2

Emma Lazarus Poem

Answer 2

-“The New Colossus” (1883)

Question 3

Freedom
-The Ideal

Answer 3

-The abstract promise of “America”
-The symbol of the Status of Liberty

Question 4

Liberty
-Historical Reality

Answer 4

-The lived experience of the “The United States”
-The exclusion of many groups frin the nations; political life

Question 5

America vs. US

Answer 5

-“America” is, on the one hand, much more than the US
-On the other hand, “America: is a promise, a dream, a hope, a set of ideals

Question 6

Claim-Christopher Columbus discovered America on Oct. 12, 1492

Answer 6

Answer: It depends on what you mean by “discovered”
-Archaeological evidence suggests that African explorers may have landed in the Americas in the early 14th century (the 1300s)
-Vikings reached Newfoundland, Canada, in the 11th century
-Even earlier, Chinese explorers may have reached the coast
-Nomadic people from Asia crossed the Bering Strait nearly 22,000 years before Columbus arrived in what is today the Bahamas, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba
~Today are known as Native Americans, American Indians, and indigenous peoples of North American
-Amerigo Vespucci claimed (falsely) that he had discovered the continent of South America in 1497 (one year before Columbus landed in Venezuela)

Question 7

Columbus believed he has landed in Asia (1492)

Answer 7

-Between 80 and 145 million indigenous people were living in the Americas
~They spoke as many as 2,200 different languages and formed 350-500 distinct cultural or “national” identities
-Agricultural, Commercial, Urbanized, Technologically Advanced Empires (Aztecs, Incas)
-Hunter-Gathers Societies (Paiutes, Shoshones)
-Hunting and Agricultural Societies (Algonquians, Iroquois)

Question 8

Cahokia
-Larger than London in AD 1250

Answer 8

-Cahokia, as it may have appeared around 1150CE
-Painting by Michael Hampshire for the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, courtesy of The American Yawp

Question 9

Hispaniola

Answer 9

-Taino culture occupied the current island of Haiti (Quisqueya or Bohio)
-Well-organized communal society divided among five caciquats or “kingdoms”
-Estimates of the population range from several hundred thousand to over a million
-Taino are thought to have entered the Caribbean from South America, starting as early as 2,500 year ago

Question 10

First Permanent Spanish Settlement

Answer 10

-December 5, 1492
~Columbus anchored off the northern shoreline of Haiti, near modern Cap-Haitien
-Christmas Eve 1492
~Sanra Maria sank
-Taino caciquw (chief), Guacanagari, allowed Columbus to leave 39 men behind
-On his return in 1493, Columbus moved his coastal base of operations 70 miles east to what is now the Dominican Republic
-Established La Isabela, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Americas

Question 11

Taino Deaths

Answer 11

-1504
~The last major Taino cacique was deposed
-Next ten years
~living conditions for the Taino declined steadily
-Spaniards exploited the island’s gold mines and Taino were slaves
-By 1514, only 32,000 Taino survived in Hispaniola
-1520
~Taino chieftain Enriquillo mobilized over 3,000 Taino in a successful rebellion
*Accorded land and a charter from the royal administration
-Within 25 years, most of the Taino had died from enslavement, massacre, of disease
-Genetics reveal Taino in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Puerto Rico

Question 12

Key Term
-Colombian Exchange

Answer 12

“In 1491, the world was in many of its aspects and characteristics a minimum of two worlds- the New World, of the Americas, and the Old World, consisting of Eurasia and Africa. Columbus brought them together, and almost immediately and continually ever since, we have an exchange of native plants, animals, and diseases moving back and forth across the oceans between the two worlds. A great deal of the economic, social, political history of the world is involved in the exchange of living organisms between the two world”
~Alfred W. Crosby, author of The Columbians Exchange (1962)

Question 13

“Native American”

Answer 13

-A European construction that only came into use in the twentieth century
-A term homogenizes a large and diverse range of people from distance “nations”

-A prehistoric Settlement in Warren County, Mississippi. Mural by Robert Dafford, depicting the Kings Crossing archaeological site as it may have appeared in 1000 CE

Question 14

Tecumseh (1768-1813)

Answer 14

Shawnee warrior and chief
-Chief of a large. multi-tribal confederacy
-In an 1810 letter to William Henry Harrison, then the Indiana Territory Governor, he explains the European understanding of land are alien to the Shawnee
~”No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers. Sell a country? Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?”

Question 15

The “City Upon a Hill”
-American Exceptionalism

Answer 15

-Concepts
~American Exceptionalism/ “City upon a Hill”
~What is an American?
-Contexts
~The Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Puritans
-Texts

Question 16

Anne Bradstreet, “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”

Answer 16

-Women have a 1/8 chance of dying in childbirth
-The main speaker is directing her poem toward her husband
-This poem is about the possibility of dying even while birthing a new human. But it really asks us to consider the possibility that death comes for all of us

Question 17

Anne Bradstreet

Answer 17

-Had eight children, wrote poetry about the religious and emotional conflicts as a writer and Puritan
-Puritans were to practice detaching from the world, but her poetry shows she often felt more connected to her husband, children, and community
-IN some poems, openly grieves over the deaths of her parents, her grandchildren, her sister-in-law
-Even though she writes, “He knows it is the best for thee and me,” she shows the difficulties in accepting God’s will

Question 18

American Exceptionalism

Answer 18

-The belief that the United States is destined to perform a special role in the world of nations, often stemming from the conviction that the United States is superior to all other nations. American exceptionalism typically cite the nation’s promises of hope and opportunity and its constitutional rights and democratic ideals.

Question 19

John Winthrop, “A Modle of Christian Charity” (1630)

Answer 19

-Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony (included parts of prest-day Massachusetts, Main, New Hampshire, and Connecticut)
-Financial, political, and familial circumstances drove him to establish a settlement in the so-called New World
-While most Puritans imagined the colony as a refuge, Winthrop sought to turn New England into an example
-Emphasized Puritan ideals of religious freedom community over individualism, charity, and love

Question 20

The Most Famous Sermon in American History

Answer 20

-What would you think of as your new role in this new world?
-What is he asking you to do?

Question 21

John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630)

Answer 21

-“We shall find that the God of Isreal is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when He shall makes us a praise and glory, [so] that men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘The Lord make it like that of New England, ‘for we must Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eye of all people are upon us.”

Question 22

John Winthrop on the Nation’s Uncertain Morality

Answer 22

-“[I]f we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world; we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of god… if our hearts shall turn away so that we will not obey, but shall be deducted and worship other Gods, our pleasures and profits, and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good Land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.”

Question 23

Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address (1989)

Answer 23

-I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it.
-But in my mind, it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity
-And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here

Question 24

John F. Kennedy, Speech at the University of Washington (1961)

Answer 24

-We are Americans, determined to defend the frontiers of freedom, by an honorable peace if peace is possible, but by arms if arms are used against us. … It is customary, both here and around the world, to regard life in the United States as easy. Our advantages are many. But more than any other people on earth, we bear burdens and accept risks unprecedented in their size and their duration, not for ourselves alone but for all who wish to be free.

Question 25

Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (1782)

Answer 25

-Traveled from Europe to tour much of the US; settled in New York as a farmer
-Returned to post-war America as French consul for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. During his absence, his wife had died, his farm was burned in a Native American raid, and his children relocated with strangers
-His book popularized the idea of America as a classless society, rich with opportunity
-Also noted the cruelty of slavery in the Southern states and lawless behavior in the western frontier
-“We are the most perfect society now exiting in the world. Here man is free…”

Question 26

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)

Answer 26

-Born in 1805 to an aristocratic family-both parents had been imprisoned
-Traveled with fellow layer Gustave de Beaumont all over the US. In Pennsylvania, interviewed every prisoner in the Eastern State Penitentiary
-Coined the word “individualism”
-A nation that seemed “without precedent”
-Impressed by America’s “general equality of condition among the people”

Question 27

Tocqueville’s Critiques

Answer 27

-A society of individuals can easily become uniform when “every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd.”
-Noted the irony of a freedom-loving place that upheld slavery and did not give women any rights (But believed women would never want to contest the authority of men in the family and in politics).
-Andrew Jackson’s forced relocation of indigenous people
-The practice of slavery in the Southern states

Question 28

Key Term
-The Tyranny of the Majority

Answer 28

-A society of individuals lacks the social structures to mediate relations with the states
-Public opinion would become an all-powerful force
~The majority could tyrannize and marginalized individuals
-The result could be a democratic “tyranny of the majority” in which individual rights are compromised
-Conformity of opinion, constant legislative instability, or oppression of minorities
-When Tocqueville asked a Pennsylvanian why free Black did not vote even though they had the right
~”But the majority harbors strong prejudices against the [Blacks], and our officials do not feel strong enough to guarantee the rights that the legislature had bestowed on them.”

Question 29

The American Revolution and the Politics of Enlightenment

Answer 29

-Concepts
~The Enlightenment
~Natural Rights/ Self-Evident Truths
~Douglass, Adams, and the Constitution
-Contexts
~Revolutionary War (1775-83)
-Texts
~Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (1776)
~Jefferson, Notes on the State of VA (1785/88)
~Douglass, “What to the Slave is the 4th?” (1852)
~Abagial Adams, “Letters to John Adams” (1776)

Question 30

Key Trem
-The Enlightenment (17th and 18th Centuries)

Answer 30

-Reason/ rationalism and skepticism over tradition, superstition, and religious dogma
-Scientific Empiricism
~Drawing conclusions from sensory data, tied to Scientific Revolution (Copernicus, Galileo, Newton)
-Individual liberty
~Autonomy, the free-thinking subject, universal equality
(“Liberalism”) (Jefferson, Rousseau, Locke)
-John Locke
~The mind as a tabula rasa
*Empty and waiting to be filled with the senses to be shaped

Question 31

John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)

Answer 31

-Often called the founder of “Liberalism” a philosophy emphasizing individual liberties, natural rights, and the social contract
-“Reason is the faculty of deducing unknown truths from principles or propositions that are already known”
-The mind is a tabula rasa
-Knowledge derives from sensations and the operations of our minds

Question 32

Frederick Douglass
-Quote

Answer 32

-“The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me … This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. […] Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them”

Question 33

Frederick Douglass

Answer 33

-Escaped slavery and became a prominent activist, author and public speaker
-Leader in the abolitionist movement
-Advocate for women’s rights, especially the right to vote
-Published the first and most famous of his autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Question 34

“Remember the Ladies”

Answer 34

-“And, by the way, in the New Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors… Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular attention is not paid to the Ladies, we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by an Laws in which we have no Voice, or Representation.”

Question 35

Equal Rights Amendment

Answer 35

-Proposed amendment to the Constitution
-Would guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex
-Would end the legal distinctions between men and women in terms of divorce, property, employment, and other matters

Question 36

Jefferson

Answer 36

-A consistent opponent of slavery who owned hundreds of Black Americans
-Opposed to the US taking on debt
-Died in severe debt, in part because of his love for fine wine and fine art
-Was opposed to “miscegenation.” or mixed-race reproduction
-Fathered six children with his slaves and late wife’s half-sister, Sally Hemings
-Agreed to free “her” children when they turned 21

Question 37

Section 1
-The making of American Freedom, 1492-1800

Answer 37

-The American Revolution &
the Politics of Enlightenment
-Concepts:
~The Enlightenment
~Natural Rights / Self-Evident Truths
~Jefferson’s contradictions
~Douglass & the Constitution
-Contexts:
~American Revolutionary War (1775–83)
-Texts:
~Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (1776)
~Jefferson, Notes on the State of VA (1785/88)
~Douglass, “What to the Slave is the 4th?” (1852)
~Abigail Adams (1776)

Question 38

The Beginning

Answer 38

“We are raised to think about 1776 as the beginning of our democracy, but when that ship arrives on the horizon at Point comfort in 1619, that decision made by the colonists to purchase that group of 20-30 human beings, that was the beginning too”
-Nikole Hannah-Jones (2019)

Question 39

Colonial Slavery and its Afterlives

Answer 39

-Concepts:
~What was/is slavery? When?
~The Middle Passage
~Strategies of anti-slavery
~The “Afterlife of Slavery”
-Contexts:
~The transatlantic slave trade & US chattel
slavery
~The last slave ship & survivor to arrive in the US
~“We the People”
-Texts:
~Petitions of Massachusetts Slaves (1773–80)
~Hurston, Barracoon (1931/2018)

Question 40

The Middle Passage

Answer 40

“The closeness of the place, and the
heat of the climate, added to the
number in the ship, which was so
crowded that each had scarcely room to
turn himself, almost suffocated us. This
produced copious perspirations, so that
the air soon became unfit for
respiration, from a variety of loathsome
smells, and brought on a sickness
among the slaves, of which many died,
thus falling victims to the improvident
avarice, as I may call it, of their
purchasers. . . . The shrieks of the
women, and the groans of the dying,
rendered the whole a scene of horror
almost inconceivable.”
– Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative (1790)

Question 41

Striking Facts Regarding the Atlantic Slave Trade and US Chattel Slavery

Answer 41

-In the history of the transatlantic slave trade (1525-1866), 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the Americas. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage (between 10 and 20 percent died), disembarking in North America, the Caribbean, and South America. Only about 388,000 were transported directly from Africa to North America.
-By 1860, the US black population had jumped from 400,000 to 4.4 million, of which 3.9 million were enslaved
-The US went from accounting for 6% of slaves imported to the “New World” too, by 1860, accounting for more than 60% of the western hemisphere’s slave population
-In 1860, 75% of white families in the US owned no slaves. One percent of families are owned by 40% more. One-tenth of 1% of white families owned 100 or more slaves
-Of the total African-American population in 1860, nearly 90% were enslaved
-In 1860, enslaved African Americans made up 57% of the population in South Carolina, 55% in Mississippi, 47% in Louisiana, 45% in Alabama, and 44% in both Florida and Georgia.

Question 42

The US as an Abolitionist

Answer 42

-1777 Slave Petition
“[Y]our petitioners apprehend that they have, in
common with all other men, a natural and
inalienable right to that freedom, which the great
Parent of the universe hath bestowed equally on
all mankind …
“They cannot but express their astonishment that
it has never been considered that every principle
from which America has acted, in the course of
her unhappy difficulties with Great Britain, bears
stronger than a thousand arguments of your
humble petitioners.”
-1780 Freemen petition
“… we are not allowed the privilege of freemen of
the State, having no vote or influence in the
election of those that tax us, yet many of our colour
(as is well known) have cheerfully entered the field
of battle in the defence of the common cause, and
that (as we conceive) against a similar exertion of
power (in regard to taxation), too well known to
need a recital in this place.”

Question 43

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall
-Searchable Database

Answer 43

-Discovered a record book in a rural courthouse in southern Louisiana that documented the thousands of enslaved Africans brought to Louisiana in the 18th century
-List includes names, places of origin, families, and ships they arrived on
-Spent the next seven years searching for similar books, eventually identifying some 107,000 people

Question 44

US Constitution no Slavery, as of 1845

Answer 44

-Three-Fifths Compromise
~Article 1, Section 2:
*Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons
-Protection of the Atlantic Slave Trade
~Article 1, Section 9:
*The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person. ^
^Resulted in the Act Prohibited Importation of Slaves of 1807
-Fugitive Slave Clause
~Srticle IV, Sectionn 2:
*No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due

Question 45

Frederick Douglass, Narrative (1845)

Answer 45

“By fat the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know theirs…”

Question 46

Key Term:
Natal Alienation

Answer 46

“This is achieved in a unique way in the relation of slavery: the definition of the slave, however recruited, as a socially dead person. Alienated from all ‘rights’ or claims of birth, he ceased to belong in his own right to any legitimate social order.
– Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (1982)

Question 47

Natal Alienation

Answer 47

Not only was the slave denied all claims on, and obligations to, his parents and living blood relations but, by extension, all such claims and obligations on his more remote ancestors and on his descendants. He was truly a genealogical isolate. Formally isolated in his social relations with those who lived, he also was culturally isolated from the social heritage of his ancestors. […]
“Slaves differed from other human beings in that they were not allowed freely to integrate the experience of their ancestors into their lives, to inform their understanding of social reality with the inherited meanings of their natural forebears, or to anchor the living present in any conscious community of memory.”
– Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (1982)

Question 48

Polygenism

Answer 48

-Samuel Morton
~Large volume meant a large brain and high intellectual capacity
-Charles Caldwell, in 1837, concluded that the skulls of African people indicated a “tameableness” that made them suited to be slaves and required them to “have a master.” It was used to justify segregation and enslavement
-Early statistical health data was weaponized against Black Americans in the late 1800s, as it was used to claim they were predisposed to disease and destined for extinction

Question 49

Harriet Jacobs, “Life of a Slave Girl”

Answer 49

“The secrets of slavery are concealed like those of the
Inquisition. … He [Jacobs’s slave master] was too
scrupulous to sell me; but he had no scruples whatever
about committing a much greater wrong against the
helpless young girl placed under his guardianship, as
his daughter’s property. … Sometimes my persecutor
would ask me whether I would like to be sold. I told him
I would rather be sold to any body than to lead such a
life as I did. … Though this bad institution deadens the
moral sense, even in white women, to a fearful extent,
it is not altogether extinct.”

Question 50

Women Under US Slavery

Answer 50

-In Douglass and Jacobs, we see that enslaved women in US chattel slavery were frequently subject to rape and sexual assault from their master
-Many enslaved women gave birth to mixed-race children, yet the child inherited the status of a slave from the mother, not freedom from the father
-White “mistresses,” or heads of households, were often devastated by their husbands’ sexual violence against slaves. Jacobs says that the mistress of her house refused to protect her out of jealousy

Question 51

Emancipation Proclamation

Answer 51

-The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) did not abolish the institution of slavery in the United States
~Rather, it “freed” any slave in the COnfederat states who could manage to flee her or his plantation and make their way behind liberating Union lines. As many as 500,000 black people managed to do this. So we might say that these people freed themselves
-In 1860 there were about 3.9 million enslaved African Americans, which means that by the end of the Civil war, 3.4 million black people remained in bondage, in spite of the Emancipation proclamation

Question 52

Key Term:
-The Afterlife of Slavery

Answer 52

“If slavery exists as an issue in the political life of black America, it is not because of an antiquarian obsession with bygone days or the burden of a too-long memory, but because black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago. This is the AFTERLIFE OF SLAVERY—skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment.”
– Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother (2008)

Question 53

Mass Incarceration

Answer 53

-In 2014, African American consituted 2.3 million, or 34%, of the total 6.8 million correctional population
-African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites
-Nationwide, African American children represent 32% of children who are arrested, 42% of children who are detained, and 52% of children who cases are judicially waived to criminal court
-Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32% of the US population, they comprise 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015
-If African Americans and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates as whites, prison and jail populations would decline by almost 40%
*Collected by the NAACP

Question 54

Second Great Awakening

Answer 54

-By the late 1700s, many people no longer regularly attended church services
-God would judge the person on how they lived their life on Earth. As a result of declining religious convictions, many religious faiths sponsored religious revivals
-Most of the religious revivals were camp meetings, where participants would spend several days hearing the word of God from various religious leaders
-Baptists and Methodists found the largest number of converts. Some groups created their own doctrines (Mormons)
-Church attendance increased during the first half of the nineteenth century
-The U.S. tempoerance and abolitionist movements were greatly influenced by the revival movements. Women’s involvement provided support for the women’s right movement

Question 55

Key Term
-Transcendentalism

Answer 55

-An idealist philosophical and literary movement started in New England in the 1830s that advocated for individualism over social conformity, a direct relation to “Nature” and God (not mediated by scientists or priests), and an elevation of individual reason and intuition over tradition and social customs/expectations. Society and institutions corrupt individuals
-Transcendentalism
~Non-confromity, self-reliance, free thinking, confidence, conviction that you possess the “all,” one with nature

Question 56

Sauntering
Spiritual Significance

Answer 56

-Thoreau’s: a woodland saunter, even
in one’s own backyard, could achieve
the same kind of spiritual significance
as a religious pilgrimage. Thrift and
austerity, even if it is temporary and
artificial, can grant us peace and
liberty.
- “How womankind, who are confined
to the house still more than men,
stand it I do not know; but I have
grounds to suspect that most of them
do not stand it at all.”

Question 57

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Answer 57

-Qualities of his poetry
~Free verse, long lines, catalogues or lists
-Central Ideas in Leaves of Grass
~Democracy, Love, Physicality, Divinity on Earth
“The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”

Question 58

Not Free Verse (Iambic Trimeter)
-They shut my up in Prose (445)
~Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Answer 58

They shut me up in Prose –
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet –
Because they liked me “still” –
Still! Could themself have peeped –
And seen my Brain – go round –
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason – in the Pound –
Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
Look down opon Captivity –
And laugh – No more have I –
NO

Question 59

From Song of Myself (1892)
-Whitman

Answer 59

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good
belongs to you. […]
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses
me, he complains of my gab and my
loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am
untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs
of the world.

Question 60

Walt Whitman (maybe) Wax Cylinder Recording, “America”

Answer 60

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

Question 61

Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

Answer 61

-At a time when a woman’s status was often
determined by her husband, Fuller was a single woman
devoted to her career as a schoolteacher, journalist,
and public intellectual.
-Wrote that it was an “accursed lot” to be burdened
with “a man’s ambition” and “a woman’s heart”
-At a time when no university admitted women, she
hosted all-women’s “conversations” to introduce
women to philosophy and rhetoric. Said women could
“literally feel their minds growing.”
-“But the men were far more sure of themselves
intellectually than the women and tended to
monopolize the discussion and to divert it from its
original course into areas in which they were
particularly interested and expert. In the face of this,
the women became increasingly intimidated, self-
conscious, and embarrassed, and retreated into what
one of them called ‘dullness’ (Slater, 46).

Question 62

Emerson: Teaching Self-Reliance

Answer 62

-Teachers are to help students
develop their own self-reliance.
-Teachers acknowledge inborn
goodness and intuition.
-Must awake students to the
realization of their God-like
qualities, their great potential
and therefore, their
responsibility to use that
potential wisely.
-The very task of learning is to be
conducted by the student.
-The student has a free choice of subjects
to be studied, teachers have less
professional control over students (no
grades).

Question 63

Mood

Answer 63

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

Question 64

The Wound Dresser

Answer 64

n, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)
The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,)
The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through I examine,
Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard,
(Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!
In mercy come quickly.)
From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and side falling head,
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump,
And has not yet look’d on it.

Question 65

Dickinson

Answer 65

It feels a shame to be Alive—
When Men so brave—are dead—
One envies the Distinguished Dust—
Permitted—such a Head—
The Stone—that tells defending Whom
This Spartan put away
What little of Him we—possessed
In Pawn for Liberty—

Question 66

Lincon’s Proposed Solution
-Abraham Lincoln Second Inaugural Address (1865)

Answer 66

Each looked for an easier triumph, and a
result less fundamental and astounding.
Both read the same Bible, and pray to
the same God; and each invokes His aid
against the other.

It may seem strange that any men
should dare to ask a just God’s
assistance in wringing their bread from
the sweat of other men’s faces*; but let
us judge not that we be not judged.**
*Genesis 3:19: By the sweat of your face you shall
eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of
it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you
shall return
**Matthew 7:1

He gives to both North and South this
terrible war as the woe due to those by
whom offense came* …
*Matthew 18:7: Woe unto the world because of
offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come,
but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!

Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all
the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of
blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid
by another drawn with the sword, as was
said three thousand years ago, so still it
must be said “the judgments of the Lord,
are true and righteous altogether.”*
*Psalm 19:19

Question 67

Douglass’ Solution

Answer 67

“…no candid man, looking at the political
situation of the hour, can fail to see that
we are still afflicted by the painful
sequences both of slavery and of the
late rebellion. In the spirit of the noble
man whose image now looks down upon
us we should have ‘charity toward all,
and malice toward none.’”

Question 68

Douglass Rejoinder

Answer 68

“In the language of our greatest soldier,
twice honored with the Presidency of the
nation. ’Let us have peace.’ Yes, let us
have peace, but let us have liberty, law,
and justice first. Let us have the
Constitution, with its 13th, 14th,
and 15th amendments, fairly
interpreted, faithfully executed, and
cheerfully obeyed in the fullness of their
spirit and the completeness of their
letter….”

Question 69

Captian O My Captian

Answer 69

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-
crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
About Lincon

Question 70

America’s Culture

Answer 70

America’s culture and way of life have changed since the 1950s”
63% of Democrats = better
70% of Republicans = worse
(Brookings, 2021)
“Things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.”
“Today, America is in danger of losing its culture and identity.”
“The American way of life needs to be protected for foreign influences.”

Question 71

“A National Divorce”

Answer 71

Over 50% Of Trump Voters Want To Secede
41% Of Dems Agree
It’s Time To ‘Split The Country’

Question 72

The Big Lie

Answer 72

64% of Americans believe U.S. democracy is “in crisis and at risk of failing.”
Republicans: Two-thirds of GOP respondents
agree with the verifiably false claim that “voter fraud helped Joe Biden win the 2020 election.”

Question 73

Protecting America

Answer 73

“If elected leaders will not protect America, the people
must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.”
Republicans = 39%
Independents = 31%
Democrats = 17%

Question 74

Manifest Destiny

Answer 74

-The belief that it was Ameircan’s duty and God-given right to settle the continent, to conquer, and to prosper
-Grounded in the belief that a democratic, agrarian republic would save the world

Question 75

John O’Sullivan

Answer 75

“…in favor of now elevating this question of the
reception of Texas into the Union…it surely is to
be found, found abundantly, in the manner in
which other nations have undertaken to intrude
themselves into it…for the avowed object of
thwarting our policy and hampering our power,
limiting our greatness and checking the
fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread
the continent allotted by Providence for the free
development of our yearly multiplying millions.”

Question 76

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Answer 76

“In every age of the world, there has been a
leading nation, one of a more generous
sentiment, whose eminent citizens were willing
to stand for the interests of general justice and
humanity, at the risk of being called, by the men
of the moment, chimerical and fantastic. Which
should be that nation but these States?”

Question 77

The Morriall Act

Answer 77

-In 1862: Lincon signs the Morrill Act
~Created by VT Rep. Justin Morrill
-The Morrill Act distributed publi-domin lands to raise funds for colleges across the nation
-High Cuntry News reconstructed approximately 10.7 million acres taken from nearly 250 tribes, bands and communities through over 160 violence-backed land sessions, a legal term for the giving up of trritory

Question 78

Annexation of Hawaii

Answer 78

-“I do hereby earnestly and respectfully protest against the assertion of ownership by the United States of America …
I especially protest against such assertion of ownership
as a taking of property without due process of law and
without just or other compensation. …
I call upon the President and the National Legislature and the People of the United States to do justice in this matter and to restore to me this property, the enjoyment of which is being withheld from me by your Government under what must be a misapprehension of my right and title.”
Queen Liliʻuokalani (1838-1917)

Question 79

Mexican Miners

Answer 79

-Fall 1848: The first wave of Mexican miners (between 2,000-3,000 and often in entire families) traveled to Claifornia for the Gold Rush
-By early 1849, an estimated 6,000 Mexicans were in the Gold Rush. Often experienced in mining they were considered foreigners by Anglo miners from the East
“The reason for most of the antipathy against the Spanish race was that the majority of them were Sonorans who were men used to gold mining and consequently more quickly attained better results” – Californio Antonio Franco Coronel

Question 80

Labor Force

Answer 80

-During the Civil War
~Southern landowners, anticipated the demise of slavery, began recruiting “coolie” workers-indentured and exploited workers generally from China and India
-Landowners believed them to be a racially distinct, cheap, and controllable labor force
-Many Chinese workers signed contracts to pay for fixed costs of passage that they paid off by working for set terms after arrival

Question 81

Creating an Economy

Answer 81

-Gold-Rush economy in California and political and economic instability in China in the late-19th century brought many Chinese to California
-In 1848: First two Chinese immigrants in California
-In 1852: 25,000 Chinese in Califonia
-1870s-early 1880s: /12th of the population were Chinese, and they comprised 1/4th of wage workers

Question 82

Loss of Power

Answer 82

-by the end of the 1850s, Chinese and Mexican immigrants made up 1/5th of the mining population in California
-In 1846: 11,500 of California’s 14,000 non-indigenous residents were of Spanish or Mexican descent
-Early 1850s: Hispnic rancheros thrived. Shanish-speaking Californians were 15% of the non-Indian population
-By 1870s: only 4%

Question 83

Foreign Miner Tax

Answer 83

-April 1850: California charges foreign nationals $20 per month to work the placers
-Tax is rigidly enforced against Mexicans and Chileans

Question 84

Discriminatory (rasist) Laws

Answer 84

-In 1862: California passes and the Lincon signs the “anti-coolie” bill that “banned transportation of ‘coolies’ in ships owned by citizens of the USA
-$2.50 tax per month ($73 today) on anyone “of the Mongolian race” who applied to work in a mine or to pursue any kind of business (other than certain agricultural jobs). $2.50 was more than half of what most Chinese workers earned in a month
-In 1882: Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited Chinese workers from entering the US
-In 1905 Theodore Roosevelt:
The conditions in China are such that the entire Chinese coolie class, that is, the class of Chinese laborers, skilled and unskilled, legitimately come under the head of undesirable immigrants to this country, because of their numbers, the low wages for which they work, and their low standard of living…We will admit all Chinese, except Chinese of the coolie class,
Chinese skilled or unskilled laborers.”

Question 85

Forgotten Workers

Answer 85

-1865-1869: 10,000 to 15,000 Chinese help construct American’s First Transontinental Railroad (80% of the workforce)
-Not a single document created by one of these workers-not even a letter- has ever been found
-Two Stanford professors (Chang and Fishkin) are working on a project to find those materials
“It is impossible to talk about the economic,
political and cultural rise of the Western U.S.
without a discussion of the Chinese” (Chang).

Question 86

Finding Materials

Answer 86

-Chang speculates that their records were discarded because their work on the railroad was “considered marginal to the story”
-What few immigration records may have existed were likely destroyed during the 1906 San Franciso earthquake and fires
-International team of academics will assemble a registry of descendants of Chiese railroad workers in the US and China

Question 87

Reno’s Chinatown

Answer 87

-In 1868: Chinese laborers constructed bare-wood structures at the crossroads of Virgina and First streets along the riverbanks
-Aug. 3 1878: Fire consumed the Chinese quarter
-Local workingmen’s Party member vocal in their condemnation of the companies employing Chinese labor for the Steamboat Trail. Held a meeting that same evening to discuss “the Chinese questions”
-Resolutions to replace Chinese workers with white workers were adopted and many local businesses obliged
-From 1880-1890: Washoe County’s Chinese population dropped by more than 50%
-Reports of bubonic plague in Honolulu and San Francisco’s Chinatown linked the disease with the communities
-1908: Washoe County Gradn jury orders the razing of Chinatown- a “plague spot” and “disease-breeding place.” Only a place of worship and some brothels that housed Chinese prostituted were spared
-Drew protest from Washington State to San Francisco
-The Reno Chinese community tried to sue for $7,000 but many of the buildings in the Chinese quarter had been on land owned by white proprietors

Question 88

Dawes Act

Question 89

Simon Pokagon

Answer 89

The old man who saw the vision claimed it meant that the Indian race would surely pass away before the pale-faced strangers. He died a martyr to his belief. Centuries have passed since that time, and we now
behold in the vision as in a mirror, the present net-work of railroads, and the monstrous engines with their fire, smoke, and hissing steam, with cars attached, as they go sweeping through the land. The cyclone of civilization rolled westward; the forests of untold
centuries were swept away; streams dried up; lakes fell back from their ancient bounds; and all our fathers once loved to gaze upon was destroyed, defaced, or marred, except the sun, moon, and starry skies
above, which the Great Spirit in his wisdom hung beyond their reach.
– Simon Pokagon, “The Red Man’s Greeting” (1893)

No rainbow of promise spans the dark cloud of
our afflictions; no cheering hopes are painted on
our midnight sky. We only stand with folded arms
and watch and wait to see the future deal with us
no better than the past. No cheer of sympathy is
given us; but in answer to our complaints we are
told the triumphal march of the Eastern race
westward is by the unalterable decree of nature,
termed by them “the survival of the fittest.” And
so we stand as upon the sea-shore, chained hand
and foot, while the incoming tide of the great
ocean of civilization rises slowly but surely to
overwhelm us. – Simon Pokagon, “The Red Man’s
Greeting” (1893)

Question 90

Sarah Winnemucca

Answer 90

-Life Among the Paiutes is the first English
narrative by a Native American woman
-Critiques Anglo-American culture while
recounting the legacy of federal lands, including
Nevada’s Pyramid Lake and Oregon’s Malheur
region.
-In 1878, she worked as a messenger, scout and
interpreter for General O. O. Howard during the
Bannock War, a skirmish between the U.S.
military and the Bannock Indians. “This was the
hardest work I ever did for the government in all
my life … Yes, I went for the government when
the officers could not get an Indian man or a
white man to go for love or money. I, only an
Indian woman, went and saved my father and his
people.”

“Since the war of 1860 there have been one hundred and three (103) of my people murdered, and our reservation taken from us; and yet we, who are called blood-seeking savages, are keeping our promises to the government. Oh, my dear good Christian people, how long are you going to stand by and see us suffer at your hands?”

Question 91

Piute Tribe

Answer 91

-In 1879, military leaders forced the Paiutes at Camp McDermit to
march more than 350 miles in winter to the Yakama reservation in
Washington territory.
-In Yakama she wrote letters to military and government leaders, and
in the winter of 1880, accompanied her father and other Paiute leaders
to Washington, D.C.
-Obtained a letter allowing the Paiutes to return to Malheur, but the Yakama agent refused to let them leave. Several of the Paiutes accused Winnemucca of betraying them for money.

“I have said everything I could in your behalf … I have suffered everything but death to come here with this paper. … I have told you many things which are not my own words, but the words of the agents
and the soldiers … I have never told you my own words; they were the words of the white people, not mine.”

Question 92

Chief Joseph

Answer 92

“Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country now overrun by white men. They do not protect my father’s grave. They do not pay for my horses and cattle. Good words do not give me back my children. Good words will not make good the promise of your war chief, General Miles. Good words will not give my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing.”

“If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian
he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all
men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an
even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.”

Question 93

Balancing Two Cultures

Answer 93

-An early activist who tried to force the US to pay back money owed from treaties and to provide for fair treatment of indigenous peoples.
-Pokagon met with Lincoln to petition for land taken in the 1833 Treaty of Chicago.
-In the 1890s, Pokagon began pressing land claims to the Chicago lakefront.
-He sold “interests” in that Chicago land claim to real estate speculators, angering some in the Pokagon community

Question 94

Climate Change and Land Dispossession

Answer 94

“When we think about how to address climate change, we sometimes forget that past U.S. policies and actions have led to conditions in which some groups are burdened more by climate change that others” -Justin Farrell, lead author of a multi-year study on climate change and land dispossession

-Settler’s economic interests motivated them to push tribes to areas they viewed as “less important” to the building of a nation
-The Mojave tribe (along the CO River) experiences an average 62 more days of extreme heat per year than on its historical land
-Nearly half of tribes experience heightened wildfire hazard exposure
-Drinking water is at risk as well as damage due to perafrost

Question 95

Boarding Schools

Answer 95

-1819-1969: the U.S. ran or supported 408 boarding schools.
-“Students endured rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse”
-The report recorded more than 500 deaths of Native children.
-Falls under the UN’s definition of genocide.

“When languages are lost, opportunities, traditions, memory, unique modes of thinking and expression—valuable resources for ensuring a better future—are also lost.” – Ignacio Montoya, Linguist, UNR’s Department of English