American Culture I

1. American Culture I Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) “What the Black Man Wants” (1865)

2. “He [George III, king of England] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another”. “What then is the American, this new man? He is either a European, or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country”. John de Crèvecoeur’s “What is an American” (1782) Thomas Jefferson’s The Declaration of Independence (1776)

3. AmericanCivilWar

4. Civil War 1861-1865 . Soldiersengaged: Union (over 2.100.000) X Confederate (over 1.000.000) – use of black soldiers in the US Service. Casualties: Union (over 350.000) X Confederate (over 250.000). Reasons: there were several causes that led to the Civil War, many of which developing around the fact that the North was becoming more industrialized while the South remained largely agrarian, yet holding slaves.. Outcomes: Reconstruction Amendments - XIII Amendment (1865); XIV Amendment (1868); XV Amendment (1870) . Civil War Pictures: the first war that was widely photographed. Many American Civil War images, pictures, and photos have survived.

5. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.".

6. The Slave who Tells his own Story “People doubted if I had ever been a slave. They said I did not talk like a slave, nor act like a slave, and that they believed I had never been south of Mason’s and Dixon’s line”. ‘He don’t tell us where he came from – what his mater’s name was – how he got away – nor the story of his experience. Besides, he is educated, and is, in this, a contradiction of all the facts we have concerning the ignorance of the slave’. Thus, I was in a pretty fair way to be denounced as an impostor”. My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey (1818-1895)

7. Introduction “While he was not exactly inventing a new language, he was forging a new mission for his words, the mission of employing the written word in order to present himself […] as both a self-made man and a self-conscious hero. To be self-made is to claim American citizenship, no matter what the laws of the land designate a fugitive slave to be; to be self-conscious is to present unabashedly one’s intelligence and humanity, which is the intelligence and humanity a whole maligned race will cultivate once the beatings end and the chains are broken. (p. x-xi)”. Narrative of Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, written by himself (1845) Self-Made and Self-Conscious

8. A man made a slave A slave made a man “Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The very decided manner in which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to me a great good, to be diligently sought”(p. 45)”.

9. Introduction “Douglass’s experience is exceptional in that from boyhood to manhood he lives within a rather benign form of slavery that offers, early on, few chores, access to a grandmother’s affections, and, later, the relative “freedom” […], including just enough freedom to become literate and to earn money for an escape north”. (p. xi). A slave made a man… with benefits.

10. Aunt Hester Punished to Death Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, buthad been found in company with Lloyd’s Ned; which circumstance, Ifound, from what he said while whipping her, was the chief offence.Had he been a man of pure morals himself, he might have beenthought interested in protecting the innocence of my aunt; but thosewho knew him will not suspect him of any such virtue. Before hecommenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, andstripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, andback, entirely naked. He then told her to cross her hands, calling herat the same time a d—d b—h. After crossing her hands, he tied themwith a strong rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in thejoist, put in for the purpose. He made her get upon the stool, and tiedher hands to the hook. She now stood fair for his infernal purpose.Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood uponthe ends of her toes…

11. Aunt Hester Punished to Death … He then said to her, “Now, you d—d b—h, I’lllearn you how to disobey my orders!” and after rolling up his sleeves,he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, redblood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths fromhim) came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-strickenat the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out tilllong after the bloody transaction was over. I expected it would be myturn next. It was all new to me. I had never seen any thing like it before.I had always lived with my grandmother on the outskirts of theplantation, where she was put to raise the children of the youngerwomen. I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloodyscenes that often occurred on the plantation. (p. 20)

12. Introduction […] Douglass’s remarks early in the Narrative about Mr. Severe, and his “play” with Mr. Freeland’s name in Chapter 10. Records show that Douglass’s Mr. Severe spelled his name “Sevier”. While we must consider that Douglass did not know the exact spelling of “Sevier”, it is also quite tempting to think that he did know the spelling but chose “Severe” to vivify his portrait of slavery’s atrocities and to be true to his memory of the man. […] “Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man”. (p. xiii) Play with Names

13. 75 Masters at Once This was placing me at the beck and call of about seventy-five men. I was to regard all these as masters. Their word was to be my law. My situation was a most trying one. At times I needed a dozen pair of hands. I was called a dozen ways in the space of a single minute. Three or four voices would strike my ear at the same moment. It was—“Fred., come help me to cant this timber here.”—“Fred., come carry this timber yonder.”—“Fred., bring that roller here.”—“Fred., go get a fresh can of water.”—“Fred., come help saw off the end of this timber.”— “Fred., go quick, and get the crowbar.”—“Fred., hold on the end of this fall.” […] “I say, Fred., bear a hand, and get up a fire as quick as lightning under that steam-box.”—“Halloo, nigger! come, turn this grindstone.” […] —“I say, darky, blast your eyes, why don’t you heat up some pitch?”—“Halloo! halloo! halloo! (Three voices at the same time.) “Come here!—Go there!— Hold on where you are! Damn you, if you move, I’ll knock your brains out!” (p. 95)

14. “[…] if anywhere in the country there is to be found the highest sense of justice, or the truest demands for my race, I look for it in the East, I look for it here. The ablest discussions of the whole question of our rights occur here, and to be deprived of the privilege of listening to those discussions is a great deprivation”. (p. 1) WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS, 1865 The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society “How can we get up any difference at this point, or any point, where we are so united, so agreed?”. (p. 1)

15. “it is the right to choose one’s own employment. Certainly it means that, if it means anything; and when any individual or combination of individuals undertakes to decide for any man when we shall work, where he shall work, at what he shall work, and for what he shall work, he or they practically reduce him to slavery. He is slave”. (p. 1) WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS, 1865 What is freedom?

16. “I am for the ‘immediate, unconditional, and universal’ enfranchisement of the black man, in every State in the Union. Without this, his liberty is a mockery; without this, you might as well almost retain the old name of slavery for his condition; for in fact, if he is not the slave of the individual, he is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a privilege, not as a right.”. (p. 2) WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS, 1865 Enfranchisement

17. WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS, 1865 “’Women have not this right’. Shall we justify one wrong by another? This is a sufficient answer. Shall we at this moment justify the deprivation of the Negro of the right to vote, because some one else is deprived of that privilege? I hold that women, as well as men, have the right to vote, and my heart and my voice go with the movement to extend suffrage to woman; but that question rests upon another basis than that on which our right rests”. (p. 2) Why do you want it?

18. WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS, 1865 “We want it again, as a means for educating our race. […] By depriving us of suffrage, you affirm our incapacity to form an intelligent judgment respecting public men and public measures; you declare before the world that we are unfit to exercise the elective franchise, and by this means lead us to undervalue ourselves, to put a low estimate upon ourselves, and to feel that we have no possibilities like other men. […] I want the franchise for the black man”. (p. 2) Voting as a Means for Education… … a Means for Citizenship

19. WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS, 1865 “The South was fighting to take slavery out of the Union, and the North fighting to keep it in the Union; the South fighting to get it beyond the limits of the United States Constitution, and the North fighting to retain it within those limits; the South fighting for new guarantees, and the North fighting for the old guarantees; - both despising the Negro, both insulting the Negro.”. (p. 3-4) Both North and South Interested in Slavery

20. WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS, 1865 “I know that we are inferior to you in some things – virtually inferior. We walk about you like dwarfs among giants. Our heads are scarcely seen above the great sea of humanity. […] they can do what we cannot, that is, what we have not hitherto been allowed to do. But while I make this admission, I utterly deny, that we are originally, or naturally, or practically, or in any way, or in any important sense, inferior to anybody on this globe. […] You are up now. I am glad you are up, and I want you to be glad to help us up also”. (p. 4) Are the black people inferior?

21. WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS, 1865 “You have called upon us to turn our backs upon our masters, to abandon their cause and espouse yours; to turn against the South and in favor of the North; to shoot down the Confederacy and uphold the flag – the American flag”. (p. 5) Citizens and Aliens What have you asked the black men of the South, the black men of the whole country, to do?

22. WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS, 1865 “There is something too mean in looking upon the Negro, when you are in trouble, as a citizen, and when you are free from trouble, as an alien. […] In 1776 he was a citizen. He wanted us to fight. We were citizens then! And now, when you come to frame a conscription bill, the Negro is a citizen again. In time of trouble we are citizens. Shall we be citizens in war, and aliens in peace? Would that be just?”. (p. 5) Citizens and Aliens And what do you propose to do when you come to make peace? To reward your enemies and trample in the dust your friends?

23. WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS, 1865 “Let me not be misunderstood here. I am not asking for sympathy at the hands of abolitionists, sympathy at the hands of any. I think the American people are disposed often to be generous rather than just. I look over this country at the present time, and I see Educational Societies, Sanitary Commissions, Freedmen’s Associations, and the like – all very good: but in regard to the colored people there is always more that is benevolent […]. What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice”. (p. 6) 2 principles freedom of black people and their improvement

24. WHAT THE BLACK MAN WANTS, 1865 “Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeatenat the core […] let them fall! […] And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner-table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot-box, let him alone, don’t disturb him […] your interference is doing him a positive injury. […] He will work as readily for himself as a white man. (p. 6) What shall we do with the negro?