Wednesday, July 17, 2019
American History 1800 to 1877
The emergence of the coup lead States as an unconditional nation, towarfareds the end of the eighteenth vitamin C, was an important happening in contemporary story. It conduct to the creation of the worlds wealthiest and mightiest power, and the subsequent development of a rich and vivacious society that influenced humankind in legion(predicate) ways. The approaching of the joined States was, however the far thing on the minds of the people who populate the wedlock American continent in the inauguration of the nineteenth ascorbic acid.Aggressive European settlers, baleful break ones backs and the original inhabitants of the country, descendents of people who had come from Serbia thousands of age ago and kn own as primordial Americans or American Indians, peop guide the land. The European settlers, mainly from Britain, were adventurers, people willing to bump off commodious risks and endure enormous tangible hardship to build a future for their families and childr en. The swarthy people screwd and bunked as slaves in farms and attainshops.Captured from villages and farms in Africa by etiolate slave switch overrs, thousands of Africans, in the main from the Sudan, came to North America in shackles, and aboard slave ships, in the s level offteenth and 18th centuries. White farmers and settlers purchased the captive Africans from these traders and use them as slaves, on farms and plantations, mostly in horrific conditions. The children of slaves grew up in thr all(prenominal)dom and lived lives of legal thrall, Thus at the twisting of the 18th century, deoxycytidine monophosphates of thousands of dim Americans worked as slaves in America. turn minacious slaves lived e trulywhere, their populations were concentrated in the coarse economy of the confederation, where the requirement for human wear upon necessitated their nominal head in large plays. The internal Americans, termed also as Indians, were the original inhabitants of t he land. A nomadic and innocent people, they be wideed to different tribes and roamed all over the continent on horseback, victuals on game and agriculture.The indigen American people, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were in a state of perplexity, disorder and dis flannelthorn, confronted, as they were, by whites who were not just powerfully armed, intelligent, organized, avaricious and cruel, just also wished to down their lands and drive them away from their habitat. The nineteenth century is an epochal breaker point in American history, characterized by continuous interaction and opposite amidst the white European settlers, the black slaves and brown indigene Americans.The period stop with the pith domination of the white man, the prevail of the proud autochthonal American and the beginning of black liberty. This essay attempts to analyse the hithertots of the period 1800 to 1877 and examine the premise that the fiery and independent spirit of the Native Americans, quite pellucid from the submissive and relatively docile office of the black slaves, extendd their threat intuition in the eyes of the whites and led to their most complete decimation in the unify States. 2. The dismiss of knuckle downry Sla precise in the United States began with the arrival of twenty Africans in a Dutch slave ship in 1619 in West Virginia.The sale of these Africans as indentured servants preceded the capture, transportation and enslavement of thousands of black people to work in the impudently developed farmlands of North America. An enormous number of men and women came from Africa in inhuman conditions to surfeit the growing demand of comprehend in the American colonies. Figures of the people captured and sold into thrall range from maven to many jillions. While their actual number is a consequence of controversy, the wide scale adoption of thralldom in the US remains oneness of the worst and most horrific acts of humanity.Hundreds of accounts narrate the appalling conditions in which the slaves came and later lived in the American colonies The slaves were transported across the ocean in especially fitted ships. They were kept lying on narrow ledges, chained, but were brought above blast in high-priced weather. Overcrowding, minimal and plane diet (two meals per day and a dry pint of water), poor hygiene, epidemics, and lack of sensual application decimated, on each and every 1-2 months long trip, a whopping one s tear downth to one fourth of the cargo and one sixth to one half(prenominal) of the crew.(Vaknin, 2005) The African slaves came from agricultural tribal economies and objet dart physically very strong, were also very pricy with their pass and for work in the fields. A gradual realization of their enormous scotch worth in agricultural doing and other labor-intensive work led to the institutionalization of slaveholding, the legalization of chattel slaves and the creation of contagious serv itude where children of slaves were born as property of white masters.The availability of this huge unpaid work force resulted in enormous amplify in agricultural production, the building of American infrastructure and the emergence of the USA as the wealthiest country in the world. Slaves became prized commodities and thought of as black gold. The slave trade also led to spurts in the economies of slave vocation nations uniform Holland. Amsterdam became the trading capital of the slave trade, lots interchangeable it is the center of the flower business today, playacting as an auction centre and serving to manage the slave trade, with up to 10,000 slaving vessels frequenting the port. (Schuma, 1987).The institutionalisation of slavery led to huge increases in the rime of slaves. A population of slightly less(prenominal) than one million slaves in 1800 increase four fold to four million by 1860. ( slavery in Colonial America, 2006). As such, even though import of new-made sla ves was stopped by the end of the 18th century, prolific growth continued to increase their numbers. Even though their function of the total population fell from n primaeval 20 to 14 they remained a sizeable piece of American society. In fact, the relative percentage of slaves in the southern states varied from 20 to as oft as 60 percent in certain areas.Slavery at the time of the Revolution was firmly complete in the five southernmost states from medico to Georgia, and it was more than a trivial presence in most of the others. Slaves numbered round half a million in 1780, constituting a atomic more than one-sixth of the theme population. In the South, two persons out of every five were slaves. (Fehrenbacher, 2002, p. 15) The struggle for liberation and emancipation of American slaves began after the declaration of liberty in 1776 and started gaining momentum by the early 1800s.The front end for liberation and emancipation was spearheaded by the north-centralern states an d opposed wastely by the agricultural south. While it would be ill-natured to deny the enormous contribution of emancipators give care Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe, the primary reason for this diversion in attitude between the north and the south would appear to be scotch and political quite an than humanitarian. gray economies dep finish much more on slave labor than the northern states and, ironical as it whitethorn appear, relationships between blacks and whites were much stronger in the south, than they were in the north.Over the years, even as cases of ill give-and- make full continued to happen, life conditions of blacks in the south improved steadily. Most slave-owners regarded themselves as custodians of their slaves. They right on fed the working adults, allowed them to grow vegetables in their own garden plots, provided them with clothing and housing. In wealthier and larger plantations, the slaves were cared for by qualified physicians. Slave life w as richer than portrayed in human beingsations and cinema. Slaves belonged to churches and were ordained as ministers and preachers. A some learned to read and write. Music was a favorite pastime.Slaves were allowed to moonlight or work on their own free time. The Law, even in the Deep South, recognized slaves as both chattel and human beings. Slaves were held answerable for criminal acts they had committed, for instance, and enjoyed many human rights suit of clothes law and non-binding custom endowed them with superfluous privileges the right to marry, own private property, micturate free time, enter contracts, and (if female or child) be consigned to lighter labor. (Vaknin, 2005) The struggle for the granting immunity of black slaves originated, strangely enough, from white Americans, mostly from the north.The nominal head continued for decades until the confrontation between the south and the north over slavery ended in conflagration and violent polite war. People like William Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harriet Tubman mobilized public opinion and influenced union government constitution to take up the black author. The blacks, themselves, had very little contribution to make towards their own liberation and the fewer localized and microscopical insurrections that did take place, like those led by Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner met with immediate and forceful suppression.The civil war lasted for many years and led to the death of thousands of federal and unionist soldiers. Its end, in 1865, led to the abolishment of slavery and the immunity of African slaves. While some blacks did involvement with the federal soldiers in the civil war, this is perchance the only independence struggle in the world where the oppressed, the denied and the swayerd contributed very little towards their own liberation. Strange as it may appear, white northerners died in the thousands to secure American slaves their freedom.Feelings of compassion and tho ughts of equality and liberty undoubtedly led many noble-minded whites to take up the cause of the unfortunate slaves. The movement for abolition of slavery and its violent catastrophe is one of the most famous freedom movements of the world. It is thus perplexing to know that while white Americans from the north were striving forever for black freedom, they were also driving Native Americans from their ancestral lands, destroying their means of survival, cloistering them in low-spirited parcels of land and decimating their numbers. 3.The Annihilation of the Native Americans The Native Americans, the current term for the original inhabitants of the Americas, are supposed to have migrated from Serbia thousands of years ago. The peoples, who belonged to several(prenominal) tribes, lived for thousands of years quite happily, growing their populations, living off game and rudimentary agriculture, sooner the Europeans set foot on North America. The early Europeans described these peo ple in glowing terms. the Indians lived in common, the most perfect(a) and most worthy life of man, a mark of the ancient golden age. This good Indian welcomed the European invaders and treated them politely and generously. He was handsome in appearance, dignify in manner, and brave in combat, and in all he exhibited a crudeness that had great appeal to many Europeans. 4. (Prucha, 1984, p. 7) The approach shot of the Europeans led to the unfolding of one of the biggest tragedies of history and the practical annihilation of the whole race. The Europeans brought diseases with them that that killed natives by the thousands.The most lethal of the pathogens introduced by the Europeans was smallpox, which sometimes incapacitated so many adults at once that deaths from hunger and starvation ran as high as deaths from disease in several cases, entire tribes were rendered extinct. Other killers include measles, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, and scarlet fever. Although syphilis was seemingly native to parts of the Western hemisphere, it, too, was in all probability introduced into North America by Europeans. (Lewy, 2004)Apart from speech diseases, the settlers started encroaching into Native American district and over the years pushed the Indians from the East towards the pacific Rim. The Native Americans were very different from the black slaves. They were used to vast open prairies and their tribal structure fostered independence. In the beginning, the whites used captured natives as slaves. This practice did not really result as the Native Americans could not ease up the hardships of plantation and farm slavery like the blacks and died in large numbers.In addition, as the standoffs between the whites and the Native Americans grew over the years, wars generally ended in massacres and flight rather than in captivity. By the end of the 18th century, the United States was forcefully pushing the Native Americans increas ingly towards the west with a mixture of force, aggressiveness and deceit. Exploitation of rivalries between different tribes furthered this cause and the identical people who were very have-to doe with about the abolition of slavery did not baulk at depriving the Native Americans from their livelihood.There was a significant difference between the cognizance of Native Americans and slaves in the eyes of the whites. low-spirited slaves were economic assets oppressed people, who however did not pose any economic and physical threat to the whites. Abolition of slavery and proposals for freedom of slaves were, perceived to be causes of economic fuss for the southern states. However, the fact that very few slaves were involved in the freedom movement did not raise animosity against them, even in the southern states.Thus, the sympathy levels for blacks remained high and the movement for their liberation continued with even pace. The perception about Native Americans was very differe nt. The Native Americans were an independent people and the owners of land. They scorned the settlers and considered them aggressors, and the whites too thought of them as opponents and precarious enemies. The 18th century thus witnessed numerous wars between the natives and the white settlers. During the American war of independence, Native Americans fought mostly with the British in a bid to stall the expansionism of the United States.It was only at the end that they pull in that the equally treacherous British had ceded huge tracts of their land to the Americans. The beginning of the 19th century thus saw the Native Americans under enormous pressure from the United States, but still owners of huge tracts of land covet by the whites. The US Congress, in 1830, passed the Indian Removal Bill, a law that forcibly evicted American Indians from their lands and pushed them further to the west. This strategy of legal ouster resulted in numerous skirmishes, treaties, wars and the grad ual strong-arm eviction of Native Americans from their lands.All their proposals for peaceful co existence and willingness to adopt the farming methods of the white settlers came to nothing, and by the late nineteenth century, they could live only in specific tracts of lands cognize as reservations. This process of removal resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Native Americans from disease and hardship, even as they gave up their homes and lands and moved far away. nonpareil particular journey, known as the shack of Tears led to the death of thousands of Cherokees. (The caterpillar track of Tears, 2005) 4. ConclusionThe fate of the Native Americans at the hands of the government of the United States is unparalleled in historical annals. In most conquests, the victors rule over the defeated peoples, impose their laws and their religions on the conquered. The dispossession of the Indians is the only instance where the conquerors forced the defeated to leave their lands, restricted their freedoms, separate them from society and cooped them up in reservations, much alike concentration camps. Their systematic liquidation and relocation is one of the most uncivilized acts in U. S. history.Most Americans know this intuitively, but theyd rather not think about it-so alternatively they choose simply to feel blue for the Indians living today. (Miller, 2000) This happened only a hundred and fifty years back at the hands of a democratically choose government of a country that supposedly values liberty, freedom and democracy. The liberation of blacks and the abolition of slavery in the USA occurred along with the practical decimation of the Native Americans, the deprivation of their rights and their proscription to distant reservations, at the hands of the same government.The reasons for this unbalanced, ambivalent and often schizophrenic demeanour of the free American people and their democratically elected government are grueling, practically imposs ible to explain. The only possibly sensible reason is the independent attitude of the Indian people, their love for freedom and their pride, which made it difficult for them to accept total subjugation. This, unlike the slur with the black slaves, increased their economic and military machine threat in the eyes of the American people and government and led to their genocide and practical annihilation. BibliographyColeman, M. C. (1985). Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes toward American Indians, 1837-1893. Jackson, MS University Press of Mississippi Fehrenbacher, D. E. (2002). The Slaveholding commonwealth An grade of the United States Governments Relations to Slavery (W. M. Mcafee, Ed. ). New York Oxford University Press. Gutzman, K. C. (2002). The Slaveholding Republic An Account of the United States Governments Relations to Slavery. Journal of Southern History, 68(4), 957+. Retrieved November 24, 2006, from Questia database http//www. questia. com/PM. qst? a=o&d=5002502749 Ho lder, P.(1974). The hoe and the Horse on the Plains A show of Cultural Development among North American Indians. Lincoln, NE University of Nebraska Press. Lewy, G. (2004, September). Were American Indians the Victims of racial extermination?. Commentary, 118, 55+. Miller, J. J. (2000, October 9). Buffaloed Fighting the Truth about American Indians. National Review, 52,. Prucha, F. P. (1984). The Great get under ones skin The United States Government and the American Indians. Lincoln, NE University of Nebraska Press. Schama, Simon, (1987), An Embarrassment of Riches, startle Vintage Books, Random House, New YorkSlavery in Colonial America, (2006), A history of American slavery, Retrieved November 23, 2006 from en. wikipedia. org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_United_States Trafzer, C. E. & Hyer, J. R. (Eds. ). (1999). Exterminate Them Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Slavery of Native Americans during the California Gold Rush, 1848-1868. East Lansing, MI Michigan State Un iversity Press. Trail of Tears,(2005), historical Documents, Retrieved November 21, 2006 from www. americanindians. com Vaknin, S, (2005), Slavery in the USA, Buzle. com, Retrieved November 23, 2006 from www. buzzle. com/editorials/9-26-2005-77541. asp
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