Amazing Grace

Cool connection to use for the Abolitionist movement etc.  Tracing English efforts to abolish slavery, the story of Amazing Grace and Obama remarks in Charleston June of 2015. Also nice opportunity to illustrate the many hats our chief executive wears…. In this case chief healer.

 John Newton (1725- 1807) was an Anglican clergyman in England and the founder of the evangelical Clapham Sect. He started as an English sailor, in the Royal Navy for a period, and later a captain of slave ships. He became ordained as an evangelical Anglican cleric, served Olney, Buckinghamshire for two decades, and also wrote hymns, known for "Amazing Grace" and "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken".

 William Wilberforce (1759 – 1833) was an English politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to eradicate the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming an independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Yorkshire (1784–1812). In 1785, he became an Evangelical Christian, which resulted in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform.

Amazing Grace Movie Trailer (William Wilberforce story)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Cv5P9H9qU

Obama Sings 'Amazing Grace' During Pinckney Eulogy | msnbc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S58k3ZXRJJc&feature=emb_logo

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

When historian David McCullough announced his intention to write a book about Americans in Paris, his interest was in Americans who went to Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, not, as he observed, "to make a social splash, but with the ambition to excel. The old world was the new world to them," says the author. McCullough discusses his latest work, "The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris." Speaker Biography: Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has called David McCullough the "citizen chronicler" for his meticulously researched and beautifully written historical books, such as the Pulitzer Prize winners "Truman" and "John Adams," the latter of which became an Emmy Award-winning miniseries on HBO. He is also a two-time winner of the National Book Award, for "The Path Between the Seas" and "Mornings on Horseback." His newest book is "The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris" (Simon & Schuster). McCullough has also received the National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award, the National Humanities Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The Drunkards Progress

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Drunkard%27s_Progress_-_Color.jpg

African American Anti-Slavery Resistance [1800 -1831]

Herbert Aptheker published his pioneering study, American Negro Slave Revolt (1936), defining a slave revolt as an action involving 10 or more slaves, with “freedom as the apparent aim [and] contemporary references labeling the event as an uprising, plot, insurrection, or the equivalent of these.”

In all, Aptheker says, he “has found records of approximately 250 revolts and conspiracies in the history of American Negro slavery.” This is the first fully documented study of Negro slave revolts in The United States. Dr. Aptheker provides proof, obtained by painstaking research, that this content and rebelliousness were not only exceedingly common, but we're characteristic of American Negro slaves. Special attention is paid to the famous slave rebellion of Nat Turner, into the revolts led by Denmark Vesey and Gabriel. This pioneering study remains a major contribution to the destruction of the myth of Afro - American docility.

American Slave Rebellions and Uprisings 1739 to 1831 
Evidence to dispel the generally accepted notion that  the American Negro responded to his bondage with passivity and docility

1739 Stono Rebellion (South Carolina); 1800  Gabriel's Rebellion  (Virginia);  1811 Charles Deslondes (Louisiana); 1822  Denmark Vesey Revolt  (South Carolina);  1831 Nat Turner's Rebellion, (Virginia)

For the slaves, there were harsh realities.  Common to all was the absence of freedom.  In addition, there were the slave codes:  According to law, .

slaves could not...testify in court against whites;  slaves could not...make contracts, or strike whites;  slaves could not...own property;  slaves could not...travel without permission or own firearms;  slaves could not... visit the homes of whites or free blacks;  slaves could not...entertain such persons in their quarters. 

 More severe restrictions came with every slave revolt – and whites lived in constant fear of such revolts. 

I am and ever will by our kind wife.

Dear Husband

 "I write you a letter to let you know my distress my master has sold albert to a trader on Monday court day and myself and [our] other child is for sale also….I want you to tell dr hamelton and your master if either will buy me….I don’t want a trader to get me they asked me if I has got any person to buy me and I told them no  they took me to the court houste too  they never put me up a man buy the name of brady bought albert and is gone I don’t know where….”

I am and ever will by our kind wife
Maria Perkins
Charlottesville [Virginia], Oct. 8th, 1852

All Night Forever

 "No day ever dawns for the slave," a freed black man wrote, "nor is it looked for. For the slave it is all night — all night forever." One white Mississippian was more blunt: "I'd rather be dead," he said, "than be a nigger on one of these big plantations." A slave entered the world in a one-room, dirt-floored shack. Drafty in winter, reeking in summer, slave cabins bred pneumonia, typhus, cholera, lockjaw, and tuberculosis. The child who survived to be sent to the fields at 12 was likely  to have worms, rotten teeth, dysentery and malaria. Fewer than four in a hundred lived to be 60"

Source: Ken Burns , The Civil War, "All Night Forever"                                                                                                                                      

Welcome to St Louis Son

The Five Points

“The most putrid urban carbuncle of all was the “Five Points” slum neighborhood of Manhattan, overcrowded with poor people from a variety of origins, native born and immigrant, notorious for its filth, disease, gangs, crime, riots, and vice. Charles Dickens, no stranger to urban wretchedness, expressed horror when he visited the Five Points. “From every corner as you glance about in these dark retreats” he wrote, “some figure crawls as if the judgement hour were near at hand, and every obscure grave were giving up its dead. Where dogs would howl to lie, women and men and boys would slink off to sleep. Forcing dislodged rats to move away in a quest for better lodgings.”

Source: Daniel Walker Howe What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, p. 530

The Erie Canal and the birth of American religion

“Far from the shackles of church authorities that dominated European life for centuries, land along the canal provided ample imaginative possibilities for working out one’s salvation and ushering in the reign of God’s kingdom on earth. Apocalyptic fever ensued, resulting in a series of self-styled prophets who believed themselves to be voices crying in the wilderness.”

"Within three decades of its opening this “psychic highway” cultivated experimental spiritual groups, including the Mormons, the Adventists, spiritualists, followers of a revived apocalypticism and utopian communal societies such as the Oneida Community, with the Amana Colony and the Shakers passing through. The emotion-laden revivals of the Second Great Awakening also ignited along the way, giving rise to the evangelicalism that we know today.”

The Erie Canal and the birth of American religion
S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

https://www.pbs.org/video/religion-along-erie-canal-x5cs64/

Quotable - Abraham Lincoln on Emancipation

You say you will not fight to free the negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time, then, for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes. And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it.

Quotable - Historian James McPherson on Antietam

"No single battle decided the outcome of the Civil War. Several turning points brought reversals of an apparently inexorable momentum toward victory by one side and then the other during the war. Two such pivotal moments occurred in the year that preceded Antietam. Union naval and military victories in the early months of 1862 blunted previous Southern triumphs and brought the Confederacy almost to its knees. But Southern counteroffensives in the summer turned the war around. When the Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac River into Maryland in September, 1862, the Confederacy appeared to be on the brink of victory. Antietam shattered that momentum. Never again did Southern armies come so close to conquering a peace for an independent Confederacy as they did in September 1862. Even though the war continued and the Confederacy again approached success on later occasions, Antietam was arguably, as Karl Marx and Walter Taylor believed, the event of the war."

 Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (2002)

Quotable - Abraham Lincoln on Slavery and Expansion

The Young Men’s Lyceum speech of 1838, the first public address that a young Abraham Lincoln ever gave, in the middle of it is this quite remarkable passage where it’s as though he’s almost predicting an impending crisis:

 “At what point shall we expect the approach of danger and by what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect” — we here is this American nation — “Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step over the ocean and crush us at a blow?” He answers, “Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge Mountains, in a trial of 1000 years. If destruction is to be our lot we must ourselves be its author and its finisher. As a nation of free men we must live through all time or die by suicide.”

Source Link: HIST 119 - Lecture 6 - Expansion and Slavery: Legacies of the Mexican War and the Compromise of 1850

Dear President Jackson

Letter to President Andrew Jackson, 
from New York Governor Martin Van Buren, dated January 31, 1829.

The canal system of this country is being threatened by the spread of a new form of transportation know as “railroads”.  The federal government must preserve the canals for the following reasons:

One, If canal boats are supplanted by railroads, serious unemployment will result.  Captains, cooks, drivers, hostlers, repairmen and lock tenders will be left without means of livelihood, not to mention the numerous farmers now employed in growing hay for the horses.

Two, Boat builders would suffer and towline, whip and harness makers would be left destitute.

Three, Canal boats are absolutely essential to the defense of the United States.  In the event of unexpected trouble with England, the Erie Canal would be the only means by which we could ever move the supplies so vital to waging modern war.

 As you may well know, Mr. President, “railroad” carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of fifteen miles per hour by “engines” which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and freighting women and children.

 The almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.

Nascent Nationalism and Post War Expansion [1815 to 1825]

GEOGRAPHIC GROWTH  and WESTERN EXPANSION

1800-1820 – US population grows from 5.3 million to 9.6 million 

 1812-1821 – Six new states added to the Union

WHY? lots of cheap land while land prices in the East are steadily rising; Embargo (1807-09) pushed people west looking for $

Transportation revolution (Cumberland Road –1811) and successful victories over Indians led to increased migration west. By 1820 25% of the population lived in the west

War declarations - THE SENATE VOTES

Declaration of War with Great Britain, 1812
On June 17, 1812, the Senate approved a resolution declaring war with Great Britain by a vote of 19-13. The House approved the measure that day, and President James Madison signed the legislation the next day, June 18, 1812, marking the first time the United States of America declared war on another nation.

Declaration of War with Mexico, 1846
On May 12, 1846, Congress approved a resolution declaring war with Mexico. The Senate approved the resolution by a vote of 40-2.

Declaration of War with Spain, 1898
On April 25, 1898, Congress approved a resolution declaring war with Spain by unanimous consent.

Declaration of War with Germany, 1917 On April 6, 1917, Congress approved a resolution declaring war with Germany. The Senate approved the resolution by a vote of 82-6 on April 4, 1917.

Declaration of War with Austria-Hungary, 1917
On December 7, 1917, Congress approved a resolution declaring war with Austria-Hungary. The Senate unanimously approved the resolution, 74-0.

Declaration of War with Japan, 1941
On December 8, 1941, Congress approved a resolution declaring war with Japan. The Senate unanimously approved the resolution, 82-0.

Declaration of War with Germany, 1941
On December 11, 1941, Congress approved a resolution declaring war with Germany. The Senate unanimously approved the resolution, 88-0.

Declaration of War with Italy, 1941
On December 11, 1941, Congress approved a resolution declaring war with Italy. The Senate unanimously approved the resolution, 90-0.

Declaration of War with Bulgaria, 1942
On June 4, 1942, Congress approved a resolution declaring war with Bulgaria. The Senate unanimously approved the resolution, 73-0.

Declaration of War with Hungary, 1942
On June 4, 1942, the Senate approved a resolution declaring war with Hungary. The Senate unanimously approved the resolution, 73-0.

Declaration of War with Rumania, 1942
On June 4, 1942, the Senate approved a resolution declaring war with Rumania. The Senate unanimously approved the resolution, 73-0.

SOURCE LINK

QuotAble - Historian Drew R. McCoY on jefferson

“Many years after his first election to the presidency, Thomas Jefferson commented that ‘the revolution of 1800’ was as ‘real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form.’…For him the election of 1800 was a turning point because it marked a turning back to the true republican spirit of 1776.…Within the Jeffersonian framework of assumptions and beliefs, three essential conditions were necessary to create and sustain such a republican political economy: a national government free from any taint of corruption, an unobstructed access to an ample supply of open land, and a relatively liberal international commercial order that would offer adequate foreign markets for America’s flourishing agricultural surplus.”

 Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America, 1980

Opposition to the Louisiana Purchase?

"… When news of the [Louisiana] purchase reached the United States, President [Thomas] Jefferson was surprised. He had authorized the expenditure of $10 million for a port city, and instead received treaties committing the government to spend $15 million on a land package which would double the size of the country. Jefferson’s political opponents in the Federalist Party argued that the Louisiana purchase was a worthless desert, and that the Constitution did not provide for the acquisition of new land or negotiating treaties without the consent of the Senate. What really worried the opposition was the new states which would inevitably be carved from the Louisiana territory, strengthening Western and Southern interests in Congress, and further reducing the influence of New England Federalists in national affairs. President Jefferson was an enthusiastic supporter of westward expansion, and held firm in his support for the treaty. Despite Federalist objections, the U.S. Senate ratified the Louisiana treaty in the autumn of 1803.…"

Source: National Park Service

Louisiana Purchase - By the Numbers

Q? Why would the Federalist party vote against such a game changing land deal?

Jefferson vs. Hamilton

HAMILTON said in his Defense of the Constitutionality of the Bank (Feb. 1791): the Congress has all the powers it is not specifically denied so if it doesn’t say you can’t you can! POV of the loose constructionists.

JEFFERSON, said: no way, if the Constitution doesn’t say you can, you can’t. Besides, the elastic clause only allows for necessary bills, and this is NOT necessary. POV of the strict constructionists.