Economic Growth and Slavery

This article discusses what was more important to the colonists:  economic self-interest to keep slavery or moral convictions to abolish slavery?
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/con_economic.cfm

This goes back to our discussion in class on Friday -- that slavery was an easy solution to keeping the economy of colonial America growing.  Americans realized that if they did not have economic growth, the country would fall.  So when slavery started, they made the decision to take economic self-interest over the moral convictions of slavery.  However, once slavery became a big issue and people came to their senses... I believe slavery was abolished due to the morals of the American people (or some of them at least).

The Paradox of Slavery and Freedom

Towards the end of Morgan's "Slavery and Freedom" article, the author writes:
"Thus began the American paradox of slavery and freedom, intertwined and interdependent, the rights of Englishmen supported on the wrongs of Africans.  The American Revolution only made the contradictions more glaring, as the slaveholding colonists proclaimed to a candid world the rights not simply of Englishmen but of all men.  To explain the origin of the contradictions, if the explanation I have suggested is valid, does not eliminate them or make them less ugly.  But it may enable us to understand a little better the strength of the ties that bound freedom to slavery, even in so noble a mind as Jefferson's.  And it may perhaps make us wonder about the ties that bind more devious tyrannies to our own freedoms and give us still today our own American paradox."
     The way the author ends this -- that we still have an American paradox today really highlighted for me the fact that without a government, this paradox probably would not exist.  Furthermore, the only reason that we still have liberty is that the government is strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and the people are strong enough and well informed enough to maintain control over themselves even without the government.  It is sometime said that opposites attract -- that one thing cannot exist without the other.  When applying this to America,  freedom cannot exist without slavery.  If we had not have had slavery as a part of our history we would not have learned its impact on our culture.  We would not appreciate the freedom we have now as much as we do.  The freedom that Americans get to take part in now would not have happened without wars and protests for freedom.  On the other hand, each American is a slave in his or her own way....we obey the government for the most part...we are governed under these laws that make us "slaves" to our government.  But this is a paradox because we also gain freedom from our government.  Without our leaders and soldiers to protect us, our freedom would be lost.  So Morgan  is right -- part of being an American is living with paradoxes -- and one of these paradoxes is between freedom and slavery, all the way from our history until present day today.

The Root of the Importance of Houses in America

"The house owes its importance to its association with the family.  All the indigenous and immigrant cultures who have lived in what is now the United States have identified the family as the core institution of their societies, although they have defined it in very different ways.  However they are defined, families are complex institutions.  Shared values bind them, but internal divisions distinguish their members as individuals and according to their assigned roles, as spouses, parents, children, servants.  Equally important, families have histories - gene pools, genealogies, family stories and traditions: they are constellations of memories that surface in surprising ways from one generation to the next."
-- From Upton's "An American Icon"
           It is obvious that houses are important to Americans.  Without them, American ways of living would be quite different, especially the communal sense of families.  A house is one of the first things a new couple buys, and then it turns into the house where they raise their family.  The topic of family is very prominent in American history also.  Before there was all this technology, one's family members were sometimes the only people that one would be able to talk to.  I believe that a house is a dense fact that can describe a family.  No single house has the same stuff in it as another.   Family stories and traditions are kept within a house; the architecture and the furnishing help tell this story.  Houses are a place to keep memories safe in; memories of family and of American history.

Does Place Matter?

    Even though we have been studying how landscape and architecture impacts us, the reading for Monday made me think of the unimportance of landscape and architecture.   Throughout my college search, I was told many times that it is not a matter of where you go, it is a matter of what you do with the education that you receive. David Orr's article, "Architecture and Education" says, "First, it tells its users that locality, knowing where you are, is unimportant. To be sure, this is not said in so many words anywhere in this or any other building. Rather, it is said tacitly throughout the entire structure."   If knowing where you are is unimportant, then what is important?  The education you get both by your professors and by the people who surround you is important.  It is what people do with these aspects and how far they go with them that makes the real impact.  I think that knowing who you are and where you want to go with your life is much more important than knowing where you are (locality).  

Jefferson and Architecture

      Through reading Barnet's article, I got the impression that buildings should be analyzed according to their function/utility, structure, and beauty/design.  However, after reading the article about Thomas Jefferson's profession as an architect, I realize there is another way to read into the complexity of buildings.
     "As one of the pivotal idealists of the Revolution and as one of the creative figures in the formation of the new republic, Jefferson spoke for an aspiring America.  His architecture, therefore, takes on its full meaning only when viewed as both instrument and symbol of his social and political purpose. Jefferson became the first American leader to think in terms of cultural as well as political independence and to him this independence could nowhere be better expressed than in architecture.  He was the first American architect consciously to reject the English tradition and to seek instead an architecture appropriate to the new nation."  -- From William Pierson's "American Neoclassicism, The Idealistic Phase"
     Jefferson adds another way to analyze buildings:  What does the building say about the culture?  Personally I had never thought about the architecture in colonial America as a way to declare independence from Britain, but after reading I understand that this is the case.  Architecture was used as another means to culturally separate the states from Britain, and this helped highlight that Americans were different from their mother country not only politically, but also culturally and socially.

The Declaration

Takaki shares two different opinions of the Declaration of Independence in his book A Different Mirror.  He writes,
"Beyond their shared labor experiences and dreams, the diverse American people discovered a tie that binds - the Declaration of Independence, with equality as a principle for everyone, regardless of race or religion.  Moreover, they were prepared to fight and even die for this 'self-evident truth' in two of the nation's most horrendous conflicts - the Civil War and World War II" (Takaki 14-15).
This quote highlights the spirit of the American people - the want to be free and to take initiative for protecting that freedom.  It also points out how the Declaration united the colonists, which was perfect timing for the revolution.  The Declaration provided a means to unite the people of America together for fighting for their freedom in the revolution.

"In many schools, however, students were learning about freedom and equality as they recited the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence. 'Here the children learned about democracy or at least the theory of it,' said a University of Hawaii student.  They were taught that honest labor, fair play, and industriousness were virtues" (Takaki 250).
The last part of the quote underlines what America was founded upon: "honest labor, fair play, and industriousness were virtues."   It is these virtues which helped America succeed as an independent nation.  Without honest labor, the colonists could not have started businesses that supported the families in the colonies.  Without fair play, the colonists could not have trusted each other, which would then cause the colonists not to be united together for the revolution.  Finally, without industriousness, America could not have happened, because it is the industries that were started in the colonies that helped America be independent from Britain.  The goods that were made in America made it so that the citizens would not have to be dependent on Britain for the importation of goods.  These values were critical in the starting point for America as an independent nation.

In the article "The Stylistic Artistry of the Declaration of Independence", the author writes, 

"Labeling the Americans "one people" and the British "another" was also laden with implication and performed several important strategic functions within the Declaration. First, because two alien peoples cannot be made one, it reinforced the notion that breaking the "political bands" with England was a necessary step in the course of human events. America and England were already separated by the more basic fact that they had become two different peoples. The gulf between them was much more than political; it was intellectual, social, moral, cultural and, according to the principles of nature, could no more be repaired, as Thomas Paine said, than one could "restore to us the time that is past" or "give to prostitution its former innocence." To try to perpetuate a purely political connection would be "forced and unnatural," "repugnant to reason, to the universal order of things" (Stephen E. Lucas).

This passage points out the significance of the Declaration of Independence highlighting the fact that the Americans are one people.  This constitutes that the American people are not connected to England, and that if the Americans were to revolt, the war would not be a civil war if the two people were separate to begin with.  The passage also highlights how living in America transformed the colonists into having not only political views different from the Englanders, but also social, moral, cultural, etc. views that were different.  Living in America taught the colonists to become very independent and to view moral and social issues on a whole new level that was different than the views of the people in Britain.  

The Pursuit of Happiness

 In the readings for today, both Cullen and Davidson & Lytle explore the pursuit of happiness and what it means to the American people.

           In Cullen's The American Dream, the author writes, "The meaning of liberty, by contrast, sometimes seems all too clear: a celebration of the right to buy - if you've got the cash or credit.  And the pursuit of happiness - is it simply the acquisition of creature comforts?" (39).
Cullen asks his readers that is it really just getting the things that one wants that makes them happy? Can it really be that simple?  I think the truth is that these "creature comforts" are actually really hard to get - that the pursuit of happiness is hard unless people actually try, unless people actually have a vision that they set out to fulfill.  I think that the reason the "American Dream" seems so unattainable to so many people is that they do not know how to be happy, and that alone is the root of the problem itself.

           In The Art of Historical Detection, by Davidson & Lytle, the authors write,
"Francis Hutcheson had suggested that a person's actions be judged by how much happiness they brought to other people.  'Virtue,' he argued, 'is in a compound ratio of the quantity of good and number of enjoyers...that action is best which accomplishes the greatest happiness for the greatest number.'
...According to Enlightenment science, then pleasure was a quality embedded in human nature itself, the pursuit of which governed a person's actions as surely as the laws of gravity governed walking.  Further, since happiness could be quantified, a government's actions could be weighed in the balance scales to discover whether they measurably impeded a citizen's right to pursue happiness as he saw fit.  When rightly apprehended, the science of government, like the science of agriculture or celestial mechanics, would take its place in the advancing progress of humankind" (14).
The authors suggest that the government's actions should reflect the wishes of the people so as to have the most citizens happy as possible.  However, this is difficult when citizens have so many different opinions, because this means that someone will always be unhappy.  Different citizens have different wants of actions to take to pursue happiness as they see fit.  This is hard because at some point, the government has to draw a line, i.e. robbery, murder, rape...even though some individuals believe that these types of things would make them happy.  In all, the government's actions should be for bettering and further progressing the happiness of the American citizens.

American Cities and the Revolution

       In Benjamin Carp's article "Rebels Rising" he provides his readers with a good summary of the importance of cities in colonial America.  He writes,

"From the eastern side of the Atlantic, the cities may have seemed insignificant, but in America the cities had a disproportionately large influence on the surrounding countryside.  War, economic shifts, new legislation, and news from around the globe flowed into the urban seaports before they reached upriver to rural places.  As a result, American cities became the first places to feel the effects of imperial policies. As another historian of hate the colonial cities argued half a century ago, these five cities played a crucial "preparatory" role in the coming of the Revolution as population centers where leaders, crowds, and events conjoined. These cities were often the generators of revolutionary thought and action - they nurtured the Enlightenment in the New World, they helped unleash the dynamic forces of republicanism, they developed a burgeoning sense of American nationality, and they succeeded in spreading their views to the rural hinterlands.  Later historians added the idea that the cities also sparked internal upheaval, including religious revivals, economic disorder, and class conflict.  Whether we argue that the American Revolution was radical in its overthrow of British government or radical in its inflammation of internal struggle, the American cities were undeniably important as sites of radical change" (9).

     Americans recognized the need for cities early on. They were a way to keep the people contained, safe, and civilized.  These cities also provided more benefits thought - the cultivated the ideas of the revolution and provided places for rebellions and meetings to take place.  I think that part of the idea of an "American" is that Americans know how to take initiative for themselves and act upon what they want to.  This is obvious in these cities -- they knew that they could use these cities to develop the ideas of the rebellion and they could use the cities as a sort of "home base" for all the action.  The big cities also helped Americans develop a sense of place.  Since they were not their own country, they identified themselves by which city they lived in.  These cities allowed them to have pride of their American homeland and encouraged them to be involved in the revolution.

Women and the Revolution

In Woody Holton's article "Unruly Americans in the Revolution, the author talks and about the feminist perspective of the revolution and the benefits to the women of that time.  He writes,

 "The best-known item on the banned list was tea, a beverage much more popular among women than men. Male Patriots understood that the boycotts could not succeed without the help of their mothers, daughters, and wives, and the result was an unprecedented and highly successful effort to involve women in politics, initiated as much by the women themselves as by men.
The most valuable product that the colonists normally imported from the mother country was cloth, and when the Patriots extended their boycott to textiles, they created another opportunity for American women. It was up to them to spin the thread (and in some cases weave the yarn) that would replace the fabric once imported from Britain.
Historians of the American Revolution have never been able to reach an agreement about what it did for—or to—free women. Most recently, womens’ historians have argued that free women did benefit—at least temporarily. They had been politicized during the 1760s and 70s, as their domestic activities took on political meaning in the boycotts. Moreover, when men left home to become soldiers and statesmen, women took over their farms and businesses. As they mastered activities such as hiring farm workers and selling crops, their self confidence grew.. More than one wife who corresponded with her absent husband went from describing the family farm as “yours” early in the war to declaring it “ours” (and in some case “mine”) several years later. 
Free women benefited in another way as well. Americans feared that their new form of republican government would fail unless ordinary men practiced political virtue—a willingness to sacrifice for their country. After the revolution, reformers turned to women to instill this patriotism in their sons and daughters. Mothering thus became a “civic” act and Republican Motherhood a new ideology for women. With it came a realization that women could not properly instruct their children in virtue if they themselves did not receive a proper education in such fields as political theory, philosophy and history. “If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen and Philosophers,” Abigail Adams told her husband in August 1776, “we should have learned women.”"


Women gained recognition as having a civil duty in their home therefore they felt more like their home was truly theirs.  They were to cut down on the amount of tea they drank, spin thread, taking over farms and businesses when men went off to fight, and raising their children to be proud to sacrifice for their country.  This allowed the realization that women needed to be more educated if they were to have such a large role in the domestic life.  These aspects opened up many opportunities to women that might not have happened had the revolution not taken place.