–

Jamestown: Several years after Smith created a fortress there, half of the settlers died due to
diseases and fire also destroyed the settlement. It was rebuilt and several industries flourished
there, especially pottery and glassware. Staple crops such as corn, tobacco, and vegetables were
grown. Tobacco immediately became a source of wealth for this colony. During starving time,
Native Americans retaliated due to the pressure placed by the Europeans. This antagonism
culminated with the capturing of Captain John Smith by Chief Powhatan and his daughter rescuing
him. For ninety years, Jamestown was the capital of Virginia.
Williamsburg: Renowned for its College of William and Mary and currently a college town. In the
1720s, Williamsburg developed considerably through the addition of more public buildings such as
the Governor’s House, etc. In the early twentieth century, the Rev. Goodwin manages to convince
Mr. Rockefeller to provide the necessary funds to restore the original colonial buildings there. In
the 18th century, Williamsburg became a cosmopolitan city and much of its wealth also came from
the revenue obtained through tobacco. In the 1760s, Thomas Jefferson enrolled at the local
college as a student and the video goes on to provide substantial information on this town’s role
during the period when the Declaration of Independence was drafted and during the American
Revolution after 1776.
Yorktown: This video focuses on the role played by this town during the war for Independence, the
assistance provided by the French during this war against the British troops, especially the Marquis
de LaFayette. It ends with the surrender of the British troops and the American soldiers shouting
for joy after having realized they had just become an emancipated people, a new nation which
would later rise to become a world power.
From thirteen original colonies along the Atlantic seaboard, America and England still have a very
special relationship and share much in common – a common English language, legal values, cultural
ties, etc. – but persist in viewing themselves as cousins rather than engaged in a closer, more
intimate relationship.
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Where America Began: Colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown and Jamestown. These mentioned towns
are the three most historic towns of the United States of America.
Historical community begins in England, and Virginia was named for Queen Elizabeth I, and here
we also met Sir Walter Raleigh, one of the most explorers of her reign, dreaming of establishing
English “settlements” in America. And here, Jamestown was the first permanent English
settlement in America.
We must note that here we have 2 important names to mention: John Smith and Pocahontas.
Important marks:
• King James III – establishing colonies in the New World.
• 1st landing in Virginia was by King Henry in April 26, 1607.
• On May 16, 1607, suitable rights was found, first closeness on the dream of an English-
America.
• In 1609, it was the starving time.
• Although it had many ups and downs, still thrived – Jamestown – Virginia.
• Tobacco, John Rolfe (Pocahontas husband)
The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg was an important institution for higher education
in Virginia, where the colonial assembly met.
In the 1920’s: Reverend W.A.R Godwin of the possibility of referming some decaying Williamsburg
colonial building, describing it to the town’s architecture John Rockefeller Jr, that took the
reverends vision, started all of in 1926.
American Democracy – nurtured in the old Williamsburg courthouse – a supposition.
Thomas Jefferson was the head of the College of William and Mary, and studied law under George
Wythe, which was the representor of Williamsburg.
The first continental conference was in Philadelphia, in the fall of 1774.

Here happened the surrender of the British Army, and French alliances. Initially it was a tobacco
port. In siege time, Thomas Nelson Junior, the town’s most prominent citizen and future governor
of Virginia and signer of the declaration of independence.

Native American creation stories (Iroquois, Pima stories, and the story of the Flood) contradict
Western cultural biases in the sense that they show Native peoples reflecting on profound
philosophical issues concerning creationism. In addition, a comparative and contrastive analysis with
similar stories in the Book of Genesis can assist us in coming up with a number of parallels between
both traditions. Imbued with imagery pertaining to native life (the constellations; animals such as
bears, buffaloes, and deer; native myths), these stories also stress the importance of women in
native cultures and how they were more respected than in the colonizer’s, that is, Western
cultures. In the case of white female captives, they usually refused to return to their white
husbands.
When attempting to study seventeenth-century American history in the 1950s, in Errand into the
Wilderness Perry Miller claims that it is “the massive narrative of the movement of European culture
into the vacant wilderness of America” (my emphasis). For Miller as well as for the English
colonizers, natives were non-existent and America was simply a vast wilderness into which they
could move into, settle down, and clear the land. This bias does not even allow for the possibility
of natives possessing a culture of their own! With the recording of these stories in the late
nineteenth-century (native culture was transmitted orally from one generation to the next and not
preserved in libraries as was the case with Europeans) and with the advent of multiculturalism and
postcolonial studies in late twentieth-century, these stories question the long-held assumptions
that Native-Americans were “savages, howling barbarians” without any cultural interests. These
stories show them wrestling with profound philosophical issues – Where do we come from? What
is our purpose in life? Who made us?
Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World, captaining three ships – the Nina, the Pinta, and
the Santa Maria. He managed to convince the Spanish crown (King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella)
that he could reach India sailing West, unlike the Portuguese, who believed it could only be
accessed by sailing along the coast of Africa and then cross the Indian Ocean. Columbus and his
sailors reached the Caribbean Islands on October 12, 1492. The letters he wrote back to the
Spanish monarchs reflect his fascination with the Edenic beauty, the fertility, and the abundance of
this new land (which Europeans viewed as literature of promotion, urging the hungry masses to
travel to this El Dorado). A Reborn Adam, Columbus names these islands using Spanish names. His
subsequent letters, written between 1493 and 1503, reflect his disappointment since practically
no gold is found there, the colonies begin to disintegrate and decay, and he becomes disillusioned
with life, the King, and loses practically everything that he had been granted. From an initial mood
of excitement, through the years, his letters reflect a man in a state of complete despair and
frustration.
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Genesis means “the beginning”.

The Europeans arrive at America Thinking their culture is superior. They wrote their culture, it had
to be always written, thinking that the Natives were barbaric, because they had no books, they
transmitted their culture orally.
The natives were a bit misunderstood. Woman always had an important role, maybe more
important than men (some of the woman captured by the natives wanted to stay with them).
Comparison of domestic violence to the superiority of cultures.
Europeans destroyed the state of peace and harmony of the Natives. The story of the creation
resembles the book of Genesis, and even here the devotion of the divine is already rigorously
applied.
These stories show that the Natives are the same as the Europeans, they are not savages or
barbaric they also have values, culture, questionable thought about life, and their place in it, and
the world. They might have had more in common than the Europeans had thought about, seen and
studied.
These stories were preserved through memory (most of it).

Puritans, 1620
• “the massive narratives of the movement of European culture into the vacant wilderness of
America.” – America was empty, it ignores people, being this an European assumption.

Important background information on the European settlement in the Americas – the English
colonies in North America:

• Columbus’s reports on the New world to the Spanish crown functioned as literature of
promotion where he highlighted the wonders of this place (abundance of food, balmy
weather conditions, fertile soil, an Edenic place, etc.), thus advertising America to
European settlers;
• European settlers were more violent than the natives – especially the Spaniards in Central
and South America (gradual destruction of the Mayas, Incas, and Aztec cultures);
• Microbes (small pox , measles, mumps, rubeola, etc) and diseases introduced by Europeans
decimated millions of natives;
• With the shortage of native labor due to these deadly diseases, African slaves were
transported to the Americas (the South of the USA, the Antilles, Brazil, etc.);
• Other nations began to compete for land in the New World and sent their own navigators
for this purpose: John Cabot; Amerigo Vespucci (Italy), Pedro Álvares Cabral and the Corte-
Real brothers (Portugal), etc.
• In a few decades, the seacoasts in the Americas began to resemble European towns
(houses, institutions, clothes, etc.);
 • This contact between both worlds and peoples contrasts the ways in which Western culture
is transmitted (through writing, books, and letters) whereas natives had an oral culture
which was preserved through memory (transmitted from one generation to the next orally,
namely storytelling);
• European parliaments and crowns controlled what happened in its colonies overseas
through directives (in America this culminated in the American Revolution where the
thirteen colonies refused an increase in taxes – the Stamp Act, the Boston Tea Party, etc.)
– and the fact that these colonies had no representatives in the British parliament in
London (“taxation without representation”).
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The relevant excerpts in John Smith’s The General History of Virginia which matter to our
understanding of how the first group of English colonizers settled in Jamestown, Virginia, in May of
1607, as well as the dynamics between the colonizer and the colonized point to three important
issues:
1. Captain John Smith comes across as an experienced leader, an expert in survival
skills and a man with a strong psychological character (building a fortress, chopping
down trees to build log cabins, hunting and fishing for food, etc.);
2. The images of America as a place of abundance (fruit, animals to hunt, rivers and
streams replete with fish), along with his accounts of endless space and that all one
needed to do was clear the forest and move in. Evidently, these were accounts that
fascinated Europeans, especially the poor and oppressed third estate in most
European societies;
3. The story of the Powhatan tribe, their fascination with European technology (the
ships, the weapons, the cannons, and the nautical instruments) stressed the
differences between both cultures. The rescue of Smith by Pocahontas, a child of
Nature, and the mythical union between both cultures (Smith: Europe/culture and
Pocahontas: America/Nature and wilderness) stresses the bond between both
continents.

Christopher Columbus – seen as a colonizer. Came from Genoa to find work. Came to Portugal, but
King James II didn’t believe his plan to sail west through the Atlantic yo get to India, he did not
provide Columbus (for the Portuguese, the only way to go was though the African Coast).
But…
He convinced Queen Isabella of Castille and King Ferdinand. In 1492 Columbus went on his journey,
and used three ships: Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria.
From letter to Luis de Santangel regarding the first voyage – they just made a stand there and
marked the land as it belonged now to the Spanish Crown.
Reborn Adam – Christopher Columbus gave new names to the lands he found enlightening the
Spanish Crown, giving names that to them don’t need religious or Christian.
Just like in the Book of Genesis, Columbus thought he would find something similar or equal to
European lands, although when describing Española, he sees it as a marvel, where we can make
the quick resemblance to the garden of Eden, as in the book of Genesis. Nature would feed you,
you wouldn’t have to work, also thinking and imagining this new world as El Dorado.
This was what Columbus witnessed, and what he sent to the Spanish Court. How these myths of
abundance start to loom the Europeans imagination, creating the desire to leave – this is what it
tells and show us at this point.
In the fourth voyage the colonies are in decay, from letters to Ferdinand and Isabella regarding the
fourth voyage.
What he had found was in the truth, America and not India. He was on his last days of life. And
after Columbus, people knew a new place was discovered, being tempted to go abroad. Columbus
had a major role in this desire.
And them through time America starts to resemble European places, in terms of clothes, costumes,
etc.
Theme of wonder in travelling Literature – an interesting point.
The Europeans are more aggressive and ruthless, they just wanted to grab some land and do their
life as they knew, destroying everything (almost) that were seen as different.
But not everything was a wonder, there were also diseases.
There is another side to colonising, the African slavery and how the Portuguese were so intrigued.
Guns in the hands of the natives – the natives also took advantage of the Europeans.
These letters are seen as a literature of promotion, they advertised the locations they found.
America recorded most of the first Europeans history marks, even though their “passing through”
culture is transmitted orally. So, the European would label the as inferior.
The metropolis – the colonizer and the colonized (type of relation).
John Smith in 1607 leaves to the new world, arriving in Jamestown, what is now Virginia, leading
us to The General History of Virginia.
When he arrived in 1607, May in Jamestown, the first vision is like Eden. How does he act with is
crew? They start building a fortress to protect themselves from the natives. How John and Radcliffe
learn skills to survive and how to adopt to this new place. How to help the men together and alive,
having leadership skills.
Again, comes the superiority culture, as the natives get closer to them, but a gun shot comes out
they all flee. The natives are seen as pagans.
Here we start to see the dynamics of the colonizers and the colonized.
According to the British people, as they show the natives their things, to them, the natives are
making hellish notes. Ti the Englishmen the natives are like children.
The story of Pocahontas, like the first American love story. This is seen as a mythical union, and she
represents nature and innocence, and Smith represents the technology and the culture.
Class 4
In this provocative essay, Murrin questions several cultural biases transmitted in our History classes
in the past – especially in those attended by older generations, where they were taught to consider
European colonization and settlement in the Americas as possessing heroic, epic grandeur. Murrin
shows otherwise in the sense that the colonized peoples were brutalized and their land was raped.
His view is that the opening of the Americas was one of the greatest moral monstrosities of all times
– at least 20 million people were devastated or killed by it (the Amerindians). Europeans carried
cruelty, greed, slaves, and enslavement, disease and death to the Americas and brought back to
Europe syphilis, gold and silver to fuel inflation, a cycle of wars in Europe, tobacco (cancer) and
sugar (diabetes) to undermine the health of people who never got even close to the New World.
This essay adds additional information on the British convicts who were sent to Maryland and
Virginia, the crops brought to Europe (tomato, corn, potatoes, etc.), and the economic patterns of
settlement in North America: the South with an economy based mostly on land and agriculture,
operated mostly by indentured slaves and the Northeast colonies, which imitated the technological,
entrepreneurial potential of Europe, and the training of lawyers, doctors, teachers and physicians
at Harvard. Through time, these economic realities and the widening split between both ways of
life would culminate in a Civil War (1861-65).
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America and Europe’s Union – used with the Pocahontas and John’s Smith “story” as a metaphor.
These two figures have different aims towards the world. Whether it is a love story or not, it doesn’t
really matter.
This is also a matter if genocide.
John Smith sees these people as their inferior, a typical Columbian gage.
The beneficiaries of the Catastrophe were the English colonies in America.
Here it is showed a comparison to Luís de Camões, Lusíadas and the discovery of India by Vasco da
Gama, because moments of heroic hide more obscure and negative moments. “Europeans carried
cruelty, greed, slaves and enslavement, disease, and death to the Americas.
The trying to conquering lands by the Englishmen (European), it meant money, but for the natives
it meant their heart.
Apparently, European women, after a year of captivity, would prefer staying with the Indians. Pretty
much by being more respected than by their actual husbands.
Class 5
The goal for this class is to understand the religious beliefs and livelihood of the Founding Fathers
of America – the Puritans – within the context of the Reformation in Europe, their role as Dissenters
from the Anglican Church, etc. The late Middle Ages in Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries were characterized by a Christian Church infested with corruption, political disputes (two
Popes: one in Rome, Italy, and another one in Avignon, France) and several voices calling for the
need to reform this institution. In Portugal, for example, Gil Vicente criticized the clergy in several
plays and in England, Chaucer also satirized the clergy in The Canterbury Tales, the selling of
indulgences, etc. Martin Luther, a German monk ignited the Reformation when posting his 95
theses on the door of the church in his town (October 31, 1517). He called for a return to the
original Christian values of charity, meekness, faith, integrity, and honesty. Although Southern
European countries remained faithful to the Pope (the Catholic Church), other countries endorsed
Luther’s protestant reformation and each country reacted in its own way. In England, Henry VIII
sought a divorce from his Spanish queen so that he could later marry Anne Boleyn, but the Pope
denied such a request. He proclaimed himself as the head of the Church of England (the Anglican
Church), confiscated the property of the church and expelled many priests. After years of religious
disputes between his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, and later on James I, the Church of England
was slowly established. With the religious wars during Cromwell’s appointment, the Puritans, who
were followers of John Calvin (a Swiss theologian), left England for the Lowlands (Amsterdam) to
flee persecution, religious intolerance, and the impossibility of being appointed to public jobs.
They believed in predestination, where God, the active and Supreme being, had ordained since
the beginning of time (Adam and Eve’s Fall in the garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis) who
would be rewarded with election or saved and who would de damned and cast into everlasting fire.
Believing in an exact, austere God, they searched for signs of election within themselves and lived
simple and Spartan lives. As poor doubting Christians constantly being tempted by Satan, they
viewed their lives as a series of temptations, which they must avoid. Ironically, they lived for death
since this was the moment when they would finally either ride on a chariot to heaven or be thrown
into hell. Even if they tried to be the epitome of perfection by keeping the Sabbath, raising their
families with the best values, pray, fast, and be ideal citizens, they could not question an arbitrary
God who could still send them to hell. With death being such a pivotal moment, the elegiac mode
in writing flourished in New England. There was simply no flourishing of the arts, music, or any other
form of entertainment since these were like baubles placed by Satan to ensnare these poor
Christians.
After being granted a Charter to settle in America, they sailed on the Mayflower for Jamestown in
September of 1620 and it took them 66 days to reach American shores, further North, on what is
now Cape Cod, Massachusetts and settle down in Plymouth plantation.
In the chapter “The Marrow of Puritan Divinity,” for Perry Miller, the Puritans interpreted the Bible
in a Calvinist manner even if they were not followers of Calvin. For them, God is an absolute, perfect
being that cannot be subjected to the laws of human reason or natural plausibility. God’s words
cannot be questioned; God’s ways are not to be understood, but accepted. God is a mysterious,
unpredictable being, someone we cannot fully understand. With the philosophical changes
sweeping through Europe in the seventeenth-century – Logic and Reason – Miller attempts to
explain the ways in which some of these Calvinistic tenets can be understood or accepted in the
light of these new challenges. In his view, Calvin’s beliefs are clearly subject to being disputed if
any second generation, devout Puritan were to ask himself the following question: What’s the point
in doing good deeds, of being a devout Christian if I may still end up in Hell? After these scientific
breakthroughs (Copernicus, Galileo; the heliocentric theory, for example), man needed some sign
from God. In addition, the world could not remain the same after René Descartes’s publication of
Le Discours de la Méthode, where readers are told that anyone engaged in the act of thinking that
he or she must exist.
In reaction to these issues, Arminians, for example, tried to supply a reasonable explanation of the
relation of God to man – they put too much emphasis on human freedom. The Puritans, in turn,
viewed the covenant as a means to understand God’s ways. By applying Adam and Eve’s covenant
with God in the Book of Genesis to their own predicament, they could better understand what this
contract or commitment entailed. Clearly, God’s ways could now be better understood, and God
became a less unpredictable being and could even be counted on. God no longer acted like a
lightning bolt that struck without warning them. Moreover, God was no longer seen as cruel, harsh,
insensitive, but full of compassion. Now, if one believed and followed the rules of the covenant,
God was compelled to play the game of salvation. Since Adam and Eve had broken the covenant,
it was, thus, only fair that they were punished. And even if the Puritans attempted to establish a
covenant, God was still a mysterious, unpredictable being who always had the last word. In the end,
God did not like to be boxed or fenced within the boundaries of a contract or covenant. This
awareness further reinforced Calvinism or Puritanism as a religion of anxiety.
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The founding fathers
• The puritans, how they shaped the course of America, and they sailed to America in 1620
 • Who are they? English settlers, they dealt with protestants.
Jamestown, founded in 1607 by Captain John Smith – to fund gold but also to found a piece of
ground for the British crown.
The puritan experiment: Plymouth plantation.
Puritans, thought of themselves as soldiers in war against Satan. They were Martin Luther and
Calvinism followers. Why weren’t puritans happy with the church of England. Predestination –
keyword. Holy communion and baptism, highly important to Puritans. They were inspired by the
Jews, for them the church of England wasn’t god enough for them.
Later, the church lost its credibility, and horrible truths, comes to the surface.
How do these differ?
Protestants:
• No saints
• Different clothes
• Different bible interpretations
Catholic
• Saints
• Faithful to the fate
• Exuberant clothes
Henry VIII – The creator of Protestantism
• He wanted to annule his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. She couldn’t give him and heir,
he got tired, and just went on to be the womanizer hidden on him. He even confiscates the
land of the clergy. His daughter, Elizabeth II, continued it but goes to war with her cousins,
Mary Queen Scots, who is catholic.
Cromwell – wasn’t happy with the peoples beliefs in the comparison of the curch of England and
the Catholicism.
The Puritans – hard life in England. In order to have a close/direct relationship with God, you had to
know how to read the bible.
Protestantism, the big step to it. The puritans believed in predestination, believing in election or
damnation, for them it was an arbitrary God.
Even though the Puritans sailed to America, before that, they spent some time in the Netherlands
and Amsterdam. But why did they leave? The work was too hard, prostitution, and the Puritans
were horrified by it.
The Puritans goal was to “Find the City Upon the Hill”, and for them it’s about growing in life, your
efforts. Compared themselves to old testimony figures, to be exact, the Jews. They also believe in
typology.
1620 – The Era of reason and logic. In a time when René Descartes, “Le discours de la Méthode”
– I think, therefore I am.
Puritans – Covenant – if they respected what god had for them, they would go to heaven, and if
they were obedient, demanding if themselves and be good, of course, if they played the game.
But even if they committed to this covenant, God does not want to me boxed. Even if they were
ideal, they still lived in fear and anxiety about the way they would end of, saver our damned. This
will be a journey of how to become the best citizen.

The excerpts from Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 by William Bradford give us a detailed
yearly account of what occurred to the original Founding Fathers of America who settled in
Plymouth plantation. For our purposes, Bradford begins by stating the reasons why the Puritans
seceded from the Church of England. Their belief was that the Anglican Church was too similar to
the Catholic Church since it relied too much on hierarchy and was subject to pomp and
circumstance. Since the Puritans experienced religious persecution in England, they left for the Low
Countries and remained in Amsterdam for a few years. Adjusting to life there, however, was not
easy. Among the several reasons Bradford enumerates for their decision to apply for a charter in
America were the following:

• labour was extremely hard, and their livelihood was very difficult;
• it was particularly difficult for old people to live and work in Holland;
• hard child labour.
• there were too many temptations for the youth there (prostitution);
• and most of all, they were desirous to start a new life of worship.

Some of them objected to going to America since they viewed this place as peopled with brutes
and wild animals. They were also afraid of the Indians and the voyage would be too costly. The war
with the Spanish in Holland, however, propelled them to leave to America. After equipping the
Mayflower and sailing from Southampton, they finally arrived in Cape Cod, Massachusetts on the
11th of November of 1620. Their first impressions upon arrival were not idealistic at all, that is, they
were the opposite of the literature of promotion they had learned about in Smith’s or even
Columbus’s accounts of the New World. In Bradford’s words, America was a vast wilderness with no
social amenities or civilization as they had known in the Old World (towns, inns, roads, etc.). The
forest was dark and peopled with strange people. Faced to fend for themselves in the midst of
harsh winter weather, no houses to retire to, no food to harvest and with inadequate clothes to
cope with the freezing temperatures, several of them died during the first year while they tried to
erect a fortress, chop down tress and start building log cabins. Before landing, however, they
drafted a series of laws and regulations, which would govern them in this strange, new world and
which came down to us as the Mayflower Compact. Those who managed to survive these
adversities and after having learned how to grow corn, harvest pumpkins and fruits and even hunt,
a year later (1621) gathered to celebrate their first thanksgiving. Bradford’s account of this episode
later inspired the celebration of Thanksgiving, which, of all holidays, is perhaps the most American
of all.
John Winthrop sailed to America in 1630 on the Arbella after having, unsuccessfully, tried to
reform the Church of England from within. He was a very educated man who would become the
governor of Massachusetts. In his work, A Model of Christian Charity he tells his countrymen on
board that if they wish to succeed in America they must be knit together through the bond of
brotherly affection. Love and mutual help are the guiding forces which will assist them in their
enterprise. Love is what can help them to cope in the wilderness and, for this reason, they must
stay together. As the Bible tells each one of them, he or she must learn to love those who hate
them. If they succeed, they may be accepted back again in England. The eyes of the world, he tells
them, are upon them and that is why they must be like “a city upon a hill.” Through time, this notion
evolved into Americans being very demanding with themselves or even viewing themselves as
special people whose leaders must be transparent, a role model or simply a model of virtues. This
puritan trait can help us to understand several historical occurrences in the United States which, to
us, Europeans, may sound strange, conservative, or simply backward [cf. the Bill Clinton and Monica
Lewinski affair, teenagers’ need to identify with a role model, etc.].
In Winthrop’s journal, however, this brotherly love could become sour if anyone challenged Puritan
dogmas or ways. His journal is crucial to our understanding of Puritan intolerance since it presents
us with an account of the proceedings against Anne Hutchinson. She questioned predestination and
the freedom of the will, arguing that human beings had a will of their own, that they were not
passive recipients of God’s mercy. She and other women were burned at the stake during the
famous Salem witch trials. This episode shows us that the Puritans did not accept different points
of view, that they were intolerant towards otherness, and that their lives were full of contradictions.
Incapable of dealing with intolerance in England, they, too, became intolerant in New England. To
Winthrop and his followers, it was only right that Hutchinson deserved God’s wrath during one of
her miscarriages.
By conflating these different accounts of and by the Puritans, we can sense that these God-fearing,
hard-working, and educated people [in the early 1630s they founded Harvard College] were also
very intransigent, hence leaving the seeds of intolerance which would occasionally crop up during
American history.
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William Bradford, of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 – Tells us why the Puritans leave from
England to the Netherlands and then leave the Netherlands to England again, and then to the
“New World” – 1620, Puritans want to go to Jamestown, but they end up in Boston, Massachusetts,
Café Cod
Covenant – established by Puritans by their beliefs on Predestination, inspired by the book of
Genesis, also following Calvinism.
In England they were being persecuted and the English church wasn’t for them, on good enough
for them. So, they leave to the Netherlands, being a place more respectful to religion and more
peaceful. But hard labour began to be also too much and elderly people had even more difficulty
to live though the hard labour, making children do it, which was also no good. There is also the
reason of temptations, and those once very kin to God, started to drift away. Lastly, the desire of
a new life appears. Puritans had the right of expression.
Comparison between Puritans and Jews, about Inquisition and powerful literacy.
The puritans looked happy when arriving to the so called “New World”, but they expected
something else to be there. To them was like the Portuguese “desterro”, a land with absolutely
nothing, being seen as a less idealistic view of America.
They arrived Cape Cod by the 11th of November, forward they spot Indians for the first time, and
they appear scared Puritans. The Puritans weren’t in any way prepared to the weather; the cold
weather created the lack of food.
The Puritans already presented some Democratic principles, searching for a way of a better life and
get along with everyone.
In 1776 they are ready to fight for their independence, and here we are talking about people who
are kin on working. The beginning of the USA.
The fragments from Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan add additional information on writings
by European travellers and how they regard this new Continent – hence functioning as literature
of promotion – where America is depicted as a place with abundance (fish, fowl, fruit, and rich soil
to farm), the opposite of what occurred in Europe, where most peasants could hardly make ends
meet. Lured by these appealing descriptions, it is evident that most of them would want to cross
the Atlantic and start a new life in the American wilderness. In addition, Morton’s account of his
dealings with the Puritans further stresses their intolerance and callousness.
Morton tells us about his notorious incident with the Founding Fathers at Plymouth Plantation when
he erected a Maypole, gave guns and beer to a group of natives, and started dancing around this
maypole. Reminiscent of pagan traditions in England (the celebration of the Roman festivals
marking the end of winter and the renewal of life during Spring; or pagan fertility rites), this
maypole was also set up on the feast day of Saints Philip and James. To these Separatists, this
reminded them of Popery and Catholic rituals which they clearly abhorred. The song these men
sing stresses the rigidness and inflexibility of these founders of America. For Morton, their lifestyle
is too insipid and what they really need is some fun. Morton criticizes the Puritans’ intolerance in
that they compel everyone else to conform to their ways and beliefs. Being themselves the target
of intolerance and religious persecution in Europe, once in America they, too, became intolerant.
Morton claims they are harsh, insensitive people and even compares them to vultures and
cannibals. Fearing for their lives due to his giving guns to the natives, the Puritans expelled him
from their community and Morton returned to England. Moreover, he had supported the Church of
England. For our own purposes today, what this episode stresses is the legacy of intolerance that
still permeates much of contemporary American life (the ongoing battle on abortion issues, gay
and lesbian rights, the Moral Majority, etc.).
As a strict observer of the old New England way, Edward Taylor (c. 1642-1729) believed that
monthly communion was an important sacrament. His poems in God’s Determinations Touching his
Elect and Preparatory Meditations, most of which found at the Yale University Library in the 1930s
by his grandson, Ezra Stiles (a former president of Yale), were written for his own pleasure as he
also prepared for the sermon to be delivered at monthly communion. These poems are now
difficult to read since the language is clearly from the seventeenth century and the imagery is
intricate. These poems, however, invite us to plunge into the inmost part of his being – his heart
and soul – and contemplate this poor-doubting Christian pondering whether he is prepared to
administer such an important sacrament. The pattern in most poems begins with a tormented soul,
completely paralyzed during the first half of the poem, waiting for a sign from God that may assist
him in overcoming this spiritual numbness.
In the Prologue to Preparatory Meditations, the poetic voice begs for a pen so that he may write
about God’s greatness. Drawing from seventeenth-century imagery and reality (a pen made from
a feather dipped in a jar of ink), he begs God to inspire him so that he may put his imagination at
His service. Through God’s reassurance, the poem ends with an urge to turn God’s words into
precious gems and petals.
In Mediation 8 (First Series), Taylor builds on the biblical passage from John 6. 51. I am the living
Bread to reflect on his condition as someone needing reassurance from God telling him that he has
grace, that he should receive and administer holy communion. In the end, this poetic voice is in a
state of ecstasy as God, through the angels, administers communion to this anxious soul.
The Preface to God’s Determinations revisits the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament to find a
culprit for the destruction of the beautiful world God had created. The heavenly bodies, the stars,
rivers, and nature – claims the poetic voice – were destroyed by Adam and Eve who had disobeyed
Him by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, thus bringing evil into our world. As humans, we cannot
deter God from doing what He wants to do. Adam and Eve’s fall has, thus, determined a whole new
way man has interact with God. In this sense, Puritans viewed themselves as predestined to either
be saved or damned since God, in their view, is an arbitrary being conditioned by Adam and Eve’s
behaviour.
The poem, “Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold” plays on the image of the wasp, a metaphor for a first-
generation Puritan, who is completely petrified because of doubting as to whether he/she has
grace or not. Plunged in a state of self-doubt, Taylor begs God to eradicate such doubts from his
spirit. Incapable of seeing clearly, too, only the Lord can clear his sight and once this has been
accomplished, he will sing songs and praise the Almighty. In this poem, as in the remaining ones,
God is the active, enterprising being while man is a mere passive recipient waiting for God’s
intervention.
“Huswifery” draws on seventeenth-century housekeeping imagery related to weaving cloth (the
“spinning wheel,” the “flyers,” the “spool” and the “reel”), to reflect on whether the poetic voice’s
is ready to see the face of God. Through the process of metaphor, the poetic voice’s body is put at
the service of God, that is, he wishes it to be a vessel containing the Lord. With death possibly being
the most important moment in a Puritan’s life – the ultimate revelation of election or damnation –
this voice wishes to put on the right clothes (shroud) to meet God upon his death.
“Upon a Spider Catching a Fly” focuses on a natural occurrence – a spider weaving a net to catch
distracted flies or wasps – so as to focus on the changes sweeping through puritanical New England.
Through symbolism, the fly is meant to represent the third generation (the grandchildren of the
original Puritans), which falls and is eaten by the spider, that is, the devil. The wasp, instead, puts
up a fight with the spider and flies away scot-free. As a representative of the first or second
generation of Puritans, the wasp is immune to the devil’s tricks. In this analogy, Edward Taylor, a
devout believer in the old New England way, attempts to scare Half-way covenanters, warning
them of the dangers inherent in their laidback attitude towards Calvinist beliefs. Content with just
keeping the Sabbath while overlooking monthly communion and not providing an account of
election to their congregation, this was seen as too relaxed an attitude and a means for the devil
to take control of them.
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Puritans move for religious reasons, purposes – big believers of predestination – mindset.
So, what did the Puritans left to today’s America?
John Winthrop – true Anglican, who wanted to improve the church of England, but the clergy
doesn’t want to. He does not succeed, se he sails to the “New World” – 1630 in “Arbella”.
Along this sail there was a woman, into poetry, her name is Anne Bradstreet. Her poems are of her
time poems, mostly about missing her husband, comparing him to the sun, or about woman’s status
and struggles.
It’s also discussed how Protestants dealt with literacy talking about poetry and education.
Returning to John Winthrop – he became governor of Massachusetts, role of a leader, by people’s
selection; he was seen as an good example of a ruler – “Model of Christian Charity”.
“Although its ok to have different ranks and facial positions we are all knit together in the bond of
brotherly affection”. “Love these who hate you”.
They must live as a congregation, to the fullest. “We shall be as a city upon the Hill”. They want to
be seen as a model others will look up to – this being the notion of transparency.
“What does it mean to be transparent?”
• To be in the city upon the hill, means leadership, to be honest and fair.
John Winthrop has also a not so good side. In his journal, he is also a “human being” and had his
fragilities.

Who is Anne Hutchinson? She did not believe in predestination, she believed in Freedom of the
will. She was playing with fire; she was going against a world ruled by men. This is no transparency,
this is intolerance, silence.
Here we see a conservative and controversial America. As it still is in current days.

Through a series of initial difficulties as those narrated by Bradford, the Puritans and subsequent
waves of immigrants gradually adapted to this strange new World. Economic difficulties and
adaptation were overcome in New England. Up to the middle of the eighteenth-century, the
population of Boston and Philadelphia increased and Philadelphia eventually became the unofficial
capital of the colonies. At the time, the old New England Way became obsolete as the
Enlightenment/Age of reason (cf. Galileo’s heliocentric theory; the role of the French philosophers
Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu; Descartes’ Le discourse de la méthode and its initial
statement – “penso, logo existo”) made its way through the 18th century. Scientific inquiry
advocated the study of man and not God.
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), however, fought against these social, scientific, and cultural
changes and attempted to revive the old New England way of the seventeenth-century. Edwards’
life is, thus, a moving story in American literature – a man whose rise to eminence was later
accompanied by a fall from power. His grandfather, Solomon Stoddard (a Founding Father and
influential reverend in New England), influenced his beliefs enormously. Imbued with the values of
the Protestant work ethics, Edwards was also determined in perfecting himself. As we will later see
with Benjamin Franklin, Edwards believed in self-help, that is, the belief that God helps those who
help or improve themselves. He believed in leading an honest life based on hard work, rising at
4:00 a.m., studying and working 13 hours per day, etc. (the prerequisites for the American
Dream). In trying to revive the old New England way, Edwards is usually associated with the
movement of the Great Awakening, which began in 1734 and went on for about fifteen years
(1749). He tried to restore the practice of administering communion only to those who had publicly
declared themselves to be saved/elect. As a firm believer in the doctrine of the covenant, he
chastised the Half-way covenanters. In his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” he went
as far as to name backsliders from the pulpit, even children and the parents of the best families.
Tired of fanaticism and religious controversies, the residents of the Connecticut Valley turned
against him. Afterwards, they voted to dismiss him from the Church and was silenced. Compelled
to leave, he served as a missionary to the Indians in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and wrote his most
famous monumental treatises on the Freedom of the Will. Later, he moved to New Jersey to
become the President of the College of New Jersey (Princeton), but died of smallpox three months
after arriving there. Briefly, in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (a sermon delivered on July
8, 1741), Edwards claims that God is the supreme will, that is, if God’s will is to let us fall into hell,
He will act accordingly. By addressing his congregation directly, his goal is to scare them and make
them repent. He also tells them that: “You have offended Him infinitely more than ever a stubborn
rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but His hand that holds you from falling into the fire every
moment.” Unfortunately, Edwards was no longer capable of moving his flock – they were simply
tired of so much sulphur and brimstone.
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• One that stopped believing in the reformation of the English Church.

• Went to the Americas.
• Big follower of Calvinism.
• Truly connected to religion/wrote poems to reflect on the sermons he read in the church,
true inspiration in the bible/he administrated communion once a month to those members
of his congregation who had made a declaration of their faith.
• Truly given to God and begging of him to imagine him to write. He asked God to hand him a
pen “so he can write about his greatness”.
• Fancy means imagination.
• Wants a sign of God to know if he is worthy and good to rule the congregation.
• 1st tormented poetic voice, 2nd has a more confident voice in his reflexions, on his poems.
• Very connected to the book of genesis, Adam and Eve, the forbidden fruit, sin.
• Meaningful words: Birds of paradise/cage/my corpse/the fruit forbade/soul bread.
God’s determination
• God has created this wonderful world.
• God as omnipotent.
• We cannot defer God from what he wants to do.
• Adam and Eve’s fall – explanation why God can be upset and punish us.
• Show how the puritans were shaped by Adam and Eve’s episode – explains why the puritans
were so precedent to being saved or being left to sin, who would go to heaven and who
would go to hell.
• Edward Taylor lives up to the puritans’ values.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was born in Boston in a family of fifteen children. At the age of
twelve, he was apprenticed to his brother, a printer. He was a very independent and ambitious
young man. Sometime later, he ran away to Philadelphia. Upon arriving there, munching a loaf of
bread, he walks into a Quaker assembly house and falls asleep. Through time and much hard work,
he begins to edit Poor Richard’s Almanac, a publication mostly for colonial farmers containing advice
on when to grow specific crops, harvest them, along with a few maxims such as “Early to bed, early
to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” or “Time is money.” As general postmaster of the
colonies, the revenue he received from this publication increased substantially.
Inspired by Bonifacious’ essays on Doing Good, he developed a philosophy of life based on the
principles of philanthropy. What did he actually do for the well-being of mankind both in
Philadelphia and around the world? He is credited for having founded a public library, inventing the
Franklin stove, establishing a fire company, subscribing to an academy that was to become the
University of Pennsylvania, served as secretary to the American Philosophical Society, paving and
lighting the streets of Philadelphia, a night watch, etc. He was highly interested in science and had
a passion for the natural sciences, especially the phenomena of sound, vapors, earthquakes, and
electricity. He experimented with lightning while flying a kite with his son on a stormy night. From
these scientific inquiries, he left for posterity the lightning-rod. He is also credited for having
invented bifocals while coining several words associated with electricity which we still use today
(battery, negative, positive, etc.). These experiments opened the doors for his appointment to the
London Royal Academy of Science. He also served on the committee to draft the Declaration of
Independence and in October of 1776 he was appointed minister to France to negotiate America’s
independence. While there, he became a famous and beloved American in France and around the
world.
In his scheme for moral perfection in his Autobiography, we learn in his thirteen precepts or rules
how hard he strove to perfect himself so as to become a better individual and citizen. He does
acknowledge in his “Errata” his mistakes and imperfections (lack of humility and uncontrolled
libido). A hard-working, organized man who did not waste his time, he is the living embodiment of
the self-made-man, the rags-to-rich success story in America, which we often refer to as the
American Dream. This potent myth is not just about mere material acquisition, that is, how one can
make it to the top, but how to get there through the values of sincerity, fairness, justice and
humility. By sharing with us his daily schedule we, too, can emulate him and thus make our own
personal dreams come true.
His famous essay, “The Way to Wealth” contains a series of maxims which was composed for the
25th anniversary issue of his Almanac. Here, he provides us with a few maxims on how to become
wealthy: “Time is money” and “God helps them that help themselves,” etc. The latter contains the
Protestant belief in self-help, that is, the notion that God blesses those who help themselves, those
who work hard and prosper. Unlike the Catholics, who seem to have a problem with wealth (cf. the
rhetoric of “blessed are the poor in spirit” or “it is easier for a camel to squeeze through the hole
in a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” etc.), Protestants’ hard work and
enterprising spirit are blessed by God. Historians have referred to this as the Protestant work ethics
in such works as, for example, Max Weber’s The Protestant Work Ethics and the Rise of Capitalism.
One may argue that both views on wealth left an imprint around the world. It is no mere
coincidence that most Northern European countries and North America (the U.S.A. and Canada)
are predominantly Protestant, economically prosperous, industrialized, etc, whereas Southern
ones are predominantly Catholic and have been mostly rural societies (Southern Europe, Central
and South America). This essay includes other maxims such as: do not waste time, avoid being idle,
do not oversleep, be industrious, do not leave for tomorrow what you can do today, accumulate a
lot of money so that you may enjoy your leisure time later on, be frugal, save your money and do
away with unnecessary expenses, avoid living on credit, vanity leads into poverty, etc. When
following all of these maxims, Franklin notes, the chances of one leading a successful and rewarding
life are enormous.
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Housewifery (poem)
• Spiritual cloth so that the spirits can glorify or meet with God.
• A poem that focuses on the moment of death.
This poem talks about the clothes he’ll wear when he dies – a metaphor for when women had the
expertise for weaving cloth but in fact, is about the clothes they’ll wear when they die (the most
important day of their lives).
1734-1749 – The Great Awakening
The world is changing, the 3rd generation thinks differently from the Puritans of the 1st/2nd Gen,
they go to church on Sundays but don’t receive communion. They don’t have the spiritual
power/correct mindset.
An Expanding Universe – 1620/1820
It started to look like a city (like a town in Europe)
Boston & Philadelphia – Important towns at the time
Puritanism is different from Logic.
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was already in the British colonies.
• He believed they had to return to the old ways (the spirit of 1620) – predestination - of his
grandfather. But that boat had already sailed.
• He believed in the protestant work ethics.
Very demanding of himself, honest and hard-working, believed in self-help (if you work hard you
want to change the mindset of poverty/individualism), role model. There’s pressure on people of
his age- because they’re halfway covenants.
He became hysterical and fanatic, to the point that he accused children of being sinners – die-hard
for the puritan values.
Freedom of the will – outdated view of the old way (puritans 1st gen) and preaches to the Indians.
Moves to ??? and becomes the president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton)
Very famous sermon in which he calls out the people and says they aren’t true believers; he is a
man who died for the puritan values that he believed in.
Traits and the Puritans origins of the American self:
Hard-working people/simple lives – simplicity/plain style – plain writing/keen on
education/transparency but also intolerant
Attempt to perfect one-self; be outstanding.

Benjamin Franklin was America’s most famous Founding Father and its most international figure.
He was a man of science, letters, a politician and a diplomat. He rose to prominence and became
the first truly American citizen of the eighteenth-century. He was appointed to three academies,
elected as postmaster in Philadelphia and later on in the entire thirteen colonies, started the first
fire department, a lending library, a fire insurance company, and laid the foundations for the
University of Pennsylvania. Moreover, he was a member of the committee appointed to draft the
Declaration of Independence. Whereas D. H. Lawrence in Studies in Classic American Literature
calls him a hypocrite and a man whose true nature was that of indulging in pleasure, a womanizer,
Max Weber in The Protestant Work Ethics and the Rise of Capitalism claims that he embodied the
spirit of capitalism. He was an avid reader, but had no money for a college education. At the age
of twelve, he wrote two ballads. He also developed a taste for journalism and was inspired by the
essays of The Spectator, which he copied down. For some time, he wrote under secret authorships.
When he relocated to Philadelphia, he fell asleep at the local Quaker Meeting House. Deborah
Reed, his future wife, saw him and laughed at his tired, bedraggled look.
As far as his character is concerned, he seems to have enjoyed hanging out with low life women
(his famous “Errata”). At some time, a Quaker told him that humility was missing in his scheme for
moral perfection. Possibly one of his most rewarding business ventures was Poor Richard’s Almanac,
a bestseller containing weather forecasts, the best time for harvesting, sowing, proverbs with
pieces of personal wisdom. He is also credited for having established, in Philadelphia, a police
force/night watch, the first hospital, and the groundwork for the future University of Pennsylvania.
He was a shrewd man, but also generous, a philanthropist. Through such inventions as the
Franklinian stove, this attitude of doing good to mankind was seen as divine. He also invented the
lightning-rod and postulated a few electrical theories. He established the laws by which electricity
operated and coined words that we still use, such as negative, positive, battery, etc. He came down
to posterity as the man who flew his kite and key. In 1752, under a threatening sky he flies a kite
so as to confirm his theory about electricity. His fame soared. These scientific breakthroughs gave
him an international reputation in England and France. Moreover, he was a Deist and became
known as the man who tamed the thunderbolts.
Many critics have noted that in the later phase of his life he spent more time abroad than in
America. He stayed in England for seven years to resolve a dispute with William Penn concerning
the non-payment of taxes. Later on, he left again for England and stayed there for fifteen years.
In the meantime, most colonials began to feel upset with the increase of taxes on such products as
publications, playing cards, etc. With the Stamp Act, the political climate changed in the colonies.
There were riots in Boston and the motto “no taxation without representation” became a call of
the times. On February 13, 1776 Franklin was summoned to the House of Representatives where
he questioned the Stamp Act. Americans were ready to oppose the Stamp Act with arms. He
considered himself a British empire man and his experience in England entrenched those ideas in
his mind. Now, facing a divided Parliament, he began to waver. The Stamp Act was repealed, but
new taxes were ordered. Tensions augmented. This instability culminated in the Boston Tea Party,
where tea and other products were dumped into the Boston harbor. The ambiance for revolution
was pretty strong. When he returned to Philadelphia in 1775 he found the population ready to
bear arms. After the several years of fighting, he went to France to resolve the American
revolution. France had assisted the American cause because, at the time, France hated England.
Franklin was representing a new nation which had not been recognized internationally. Frenchmen
loved him and women flocked to him since he paid attention to them. He flirted with a few married
aristocratic women who enjoyed good conversation, good food, and company. He came to France
as a lobbyist and left as the representative of a sovereign state.
At the age of eighty, he was finally back in America, fully aware that his political career was over.
By then, the Constitution was already established. Death and taxes, he claims, are the only things
certain in one’s life. He died at the age of 84.
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Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
• Born in Boston, in a family of 15 children.
• 12 years old, apprentice of his brother who was a printer.
• In is teens, he ran away to Philadelphia.
• Very independent and hard-working man.
• Negotiated peace when the Versailles treaty came in.
• He has a big part (General postmaster) in Poor Richard’s Almanac, very successful business.
• He was kin on providing good.
• Lightning rod, amazing invention of his. He was very passionate when it came to science,
and others that involved with experiences and other things within the “area”.
• He had a good relationship with the French.
“The Way of health”
• An essay to show how people can become healthy as he did, give some advice to the avid
readers of “Poor Richard’s Almanac”.
• What can we take from this essay and connect to what we’ve been talking in the last
classes and how it has an impact in the development of the American Culture – self-help,
protestant work ethics.
• Franklin goes against the emphasis given to being poor, how Catholicism shapes ir as a
fantasy.
• “God helps them that help themselves” – self-help.

What about the American Dream? – Benjamin Franklin’s influence.

Benjamin says:
• Don’t procrastinate – resolute.
• Don’t waste energies, resources – be frugal.
• Time is money, philosophy of self-help.
• Be moderate, prudent, just.
• Don’t be sexually promiscuous.
• Be humble.
Benjamin had a calendar of his own, a Temperance with all 13 Precepts and with the quote: “Eat
not to Dullness. Drink not to Elevation”.
• The morning question – What good shall I do this day?
• Evening question – What good have I done today?
This is the American Dream, to make it to the top, this is Benjamin Franklin’s insight – a positive
influence, and this will also influence the economy and the culture.

In the colonies, the Boston Tea Party and the Stamp Act were seen as abusive behaviour enacted
by the British Parliament, in London, which was interested only in taxing the English colonies in
North America. Without any representatives in the Parliament, the colonials reacted violently by
either dressing up as Indians and dumping the cargoes of tea and other products into the Boston
harbor or through rebellion against taxes imposed on printed materials, etc. Thomas Paine’s
pamphlet, Common Sense, is the first pamphlet to urge immediate independence from Britain. It
sold almost half a million copies and galvanized those who wavered on the issue of independence.
Most English colonials, who viewed themselves as Englishmen, were not ready to rebel against their
fatherland. Profoundly imbued with the spirit of an era intent on fostering a discourse focusing on
the rights of man, the age of reason and logic, Paine argues that human beings cannot tolerate for
too long a political system that oppresses people. In this persuasive piece of argumentative writing,
Paine aims at convincing those who still believe that reconciliation between America and England
is still possible. “Now is the time,” he tells them, to act. If they do not fight for their independence,
they will have to put up with a despot forever: “”Ye that oppose independence now, ye know not
what ye do: ye are opening a door to eternal tyranny by keeping vacant the seat of government.”
This pamphlet clarified the situation while urging colonials to fight for their independence from
Great Britain.
Another influential voice during this period was Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, who later became the
third president of the United States, wished to be remembered for three things: a) drafting the
Declaration of Independence; b) religious freedom in America; c) and founding the University of
Virginia. He studied at the William and Mary College in Williamsburg and became a lawyer. In the
original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Congress did not tolerate his attacks on England
and slavery. He wished to put on record the despotic behavior of George III and a statement against
slavery in America even if he, himself, owned slaves working in his plantation in Virginia and
eventually fathered a few children with one of his black female slaves. A man imbued with the spirit
of the Age of Reason, he was a very good friend of the Portuguese Abbey Correia da Serra, an
intellectual who was also interested in science and regularly stayed with him on his plantation in
Virginia. In the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson tried to capture the spirit
of the times and show the ways in which America would be different from Europe, where people
were oppressed, exploited by the aristocracy, and unhappy most of the time. Democracy in America
would grant people their dignity and self-respect. “We hold these truths to be self evident,” states
this document, “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In
England, anyone caught stealing a loaf of bread would be put in prison even if the government
would not create the necessary conditions for its citizens to lead a decent life. In France, dissenters
would be locked up in the Bastille prison without a trial. The people from the third estate were
exploited, unhappy, and oppressed. In America, these same people could democratically elect their
representatives or take them out of office four years later during elections. Contrasted with
Europe, America looked like a more appealing place to live in even if his views on equality do not
necessarily mean the same thing today (“equality” in his time meant white, middle-class male
landowners since women and blacks were not included in this category).
In Letters from an American Farmer, Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur also draws a very idealistic
portrait of America, a fertile land with plenty of resources (literature of promotion), but what really
interests us is his coinage of the melting-pot theory. Through the various generations, Americans
would mix with people from other ethnic backgrounds and hence produce the American, this brand
new man. Today, Americans feel that other metaphors best describe America’s ethnic diversity
such as the mosaic theory (Chinatown co-existing with Little Italy or Little Portugal, etc, all over
America) or to see America as a salad or a soup, where each distinctive element stands out. In the
long run, however, Crèvecoeur’s theory remains valid today in the sense that biological hybridity is
a given in the United States of America.
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The voices from the Enlightenment will launch an enormous change through the whole world.
One of the voices is Thomas Paine, who were a commoner, wrote an essay – “Common sense”,
very popular piece of writing when the so-called Revolution broke out, politically and in Rights of
Mom (an attempt to fight the abuses from the english).
In the 13 colonies there was a big lack of mobility between social classes.
“Common sense” was the flood for freedom from the English – voices questioning absolutism.
Who is Thomas Pain trying to persuade? Who is his audience? – Those who still believe that
reconciliation between America and England is possible.
To Paine and his listeners or reader, England wasn’t needed anymore, England wasn’t letting them
prosper. The only reason there was ties between the two countries, was an economic reason.
Thomas says that England has not acted like a mother towards America but, instead, like a cannibal.
So why claim that Britain is the mother country?
Thomas then says, “Reconciliation is now a fallacious dream”.
“A government of our own is our natural right” – beginning of Democracy. This pamphlet by Thomas
is the best to clarify their fight for freedom, from taxation for example. To show how the Americans
had enough. (Taxation without representation)
Boston tea party – a rebellion – just another example of the state of tired mess of the disrespect.
Stamp Act – the rise of the price of stamps, also rising books, magazines, etc.

• The one who drafted the Declaration of Independence, supporting religious freedom and
founding the University of Virginia.
• He was against slavery and wanted to show how King George III was tyrannical.
• Jefferson was the big architecture of Washington D.C.
Now, in the “Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General
Congress Assemble” – the seeds of democracy.

This video begins with a presentation of the major figures associated with Independence: Benjamin
Franklin, John Adams and Abigail Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas
Paine.
On 29 August 1774, the colonies were in turmoil; major leading colonial representatives attended
the conference of 1774 with delegates meeting so as to protest against the King of England
(George III). They harbored feelings of independence in their bosoms. They questioned issues
related to their own identity such as not being a Virginian or a New Englander, but, instead, an
American. In May of 1775, the second Continental Congress was held and there was an overall
feeling that everyone was getting ready for a war to secure the new nation’s independence.
George Washington was nominated their leader and a government of laws would be established,
not a government of men. In the letters exchanged between Abigail Adams and her husband, John
Adams, she reminded him that women should not be forgotten during the process of creation of
this new nation.
The colonies decided that they should be independent states that they should dissolve all ties with
Great Britain, and prepare a declaration. Thomas Jefferson was commissioned the drafting of the
Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1776, this document was read, ratified, sent to the
assemblies and conventions and proclaimed in each of the United States. By August it should be
engraved in parchment, signed and sent to the King in England. The war ensued for a few years
and officially ended in October of 1781. In 1787, Benjamin Franklin returned from France and by
then the Constitution was written. It was agreed that both the big and small States should have
equal power and access to the same resources. In 1789, the Constitution was ratified and since
then, the representatives of the nation have been elected every four years. The world’s oldest
democracy from the modern era was, thus, officially established.
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J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813) – Letters from an American Farmer – From the letter
III • What is an American – America as an El Dorado.
 • The best qualities in people who had came from Europe are put to work to create this
wonderful country.
• America as class/es society – literature of promotion.
• Laws are equal for everyone – not like Europe, where the laws were disrespected by the
aristocracy.
• America as a land of freedom – a vast country.
In this text we will see the value that is given to the hard work and how people get the reward from
it. Also being a demonstration of going against Feudalism.
People from Europe ran to America to become free and “somebody”. Not just being slaves ot
committed to a crown and stitching for a bad life. They chase a change.
The melting pot theory – “Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of man, whose
labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world”. – people are all mixed, all
embraced by each other, matrimony between different nationalities.

The period after the American Revolution is characterized by an attempt to create the economic
conditions for the country’s gradual emancipation from Europe. Culturally, however, it still relied
heavily on the Old World, especially Great Britain. At the time, there were very few writers and
these knew each other quite well. As much as possible, they tried to write about America and
avoided European topics. James Fenimore Cooper, for example, created the figure of Natty Bumpo
for his novels, a strong and resilient frontiersman equipped with survival skills to cope in the
American wilderness. Washington Irving, instead, relied on the Dutch colonization of the Catskill
mountains in upstate New York and Tarrytown in some of his short stories (“Rip Van Winkle” and
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”). There were few literary and publishing centers and those that
existed were all located along the Atlantic seaboard. After 1820, New York and Philadelphia
became the leading publishing centers in the United States. It was very difficult to make a living by
writing. This was due, in part, to the lack of copyright laws to protect writers and intellectual
property. It was also difficult for American writers to get their work published and books published
in England were usually much cheaper. A few decades after the signing of the Declaration of
Independence, American writers began to ponder what they could or should write about. For some
time, they believed they could not write without any kind of allusion to Europe or English literature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, however, urged American intellectuals to heed his call for a national
literature and culture.
Briefly, Wilentz’s essay focuses on the period between 1815-1848, also known as the Jacksonian
period. It attempts to address such broad issues as the role of women, slaves, and Native-
Americans so as to question this period’s former name as the era of the common man. Historians
of this period regard the market revolution as the single most important event which shaped the
first half of the nineteenth-century in America. In the Northeast, this was manifested through the
industrial revolution. Gradually, a number of textile mills began to operate in Rhode Island and
Massachusetts and this technological revolution was further manifested in the area of
transportation, namely through the building of road systems, canals, and railroads to connect the
major industrial cities. These cities – New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Cincinnati –
became key sites of economic development. This rapid industrialization relied on the exploitation
of underpaid workers, mostly women, children, and poor immigrants, who had to toil for 12-16
hours each day in these sweatshops with poor safety and health conditions. Although everyone
benefitted from these economic changes, not everyone enjoyed the distribution of wealth.
While middle-class men were providers, their wives were household managers responsible for
rearing healthy children – the ideal citizens for the country – and, hence, also starting the cult of
domesticity. While immigrants and their children (especially the Irish and Germans) worked in the
factories in the Northeast, the old North easterners, dissatisfied with the changes brought by this
market revolution, moved West. Once there, these yeomen, whose goal was to replicate their
former life in the East as small farmers, had to yield to the laws of a capitalist market where banks
and land speculators were stronger. They eventually collapsed while attempting to establish in the
West the yeoman way of life in the East. During this process, Native Americans had to be removed
to make way for these new settlers. Epitomized by the cowboy movies of a few decades ago, where
the settlers’ will always prevailed, natives were either killed or put in reservations. Imbued with the
spirit of manifest destiny, these settlers strongly believed that they were bringing “western
civilization” to the territory. Everyone was, therefore, affected by this market revolution.
The Southern states, in contrast, remained essentially rural. Usually referred to as the Cotton
Kingdom, with huge farms owned by a few slaveholders, miles and miles of cotton and/or tobacco
plantations were worked by indentured slaves brought from Africa. Whereas an ambiance of
medieval feudalism prevailed there, the industrialized economy of the Northeast fostered the spirit
of individualism and entrepreneurship. Gradually, the gulf between the North and the South began
to widen.
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Books were cheaper in England, pamphlets, other technology, and such even though they were
trying to be free from it. Was difficult to be a writer and was very difficult to publish a book in
America.
The Spirit of the Renaissance – 1830/40 in America: “Look at Us”
• James Fenimore Cooper – “The Last of the Mohicans”
• Washington John Irving – “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Herman Melville - “Moby Dick”

Jacksonian Period
Period of questioning about their society
1830 – Industrial Revolution (major event with positives and negatives)
• Discuss the role of women.
• Also slaves.
1815-1850 – Technology Revolution (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, England, and parts of
Germany)
Countries like Portugal remained rural (took them more 100 years)
Textiles, roads and canals, and the railroad – can be seen as the road (?) revolution.
The exploitation of the immigrants and children/workers.
Victorian Literature - Cult of Domesticity - “Angel in the House” women stay at home working and
have children.
Yeomans – who had their own class of land and keep the agriculture in the family; for themselves
and they go west.
Battles between Native Americans and Americans, which leads them to get put in reservations.
The Yeomans take ownership of these lands but had to pay for the land.
The South – Cotton kingdom and slavery (slave work and its exploitation) were worse there.
1862-1865 Civil War.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was a respectable man to whom every significant writer and
intellectual of his time had to come to terms with. He influenced, for example, Melville, who
satirized him in The Confidence Man as a great American philosophical con man; without Emerson’s
inspirations, the writings of Thoreau are all but unthinkable; and Whitman’s great poetry might
never have been written. His persisting influence on 20th century American writers can be seen in
the poetry of Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens or in the fiction of Theodore Dreiser and Ralph
Waldo Ellison. After graduating from Harvard, be first became a schoolmaster (1817-1821) and in
1829 a junior pastor at Boston’s Second Church. As a Unitarian, he accepted the Bible as the
revelation of God’s intentions for humankind, but no longer held that human beings were innately
depraved or that Jesus was more than the highest type of immortal individual. He was influenced
by the German “higher criticism” and was gradually developing a faith greater in individual moral
sentiment than in revealed religion. After experiencing a religious epiphany around 1830 or 1831,
the following year (1832) he notified the Church stating that he had become so sceptical of the
validity of the Lord’s Supper that he could no longer administer it. A few months later he resigned.
During his career, he delivered several lectures which were later shaped into essays or books. Some
of these are profoundly philosophical as is the case with Nature.
One can notice the influence of Wordsworth and Coleridge in the tendency to “look on nature with
the spiritual eye.” Others attacked it for its spiritual pantheism or idealistic pantheism. When in
contact with nature, he tells us, he could reach God: “Standing on the bare ground, -- my head
bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a
transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal being circulate through
me; I am part or particle of God.” His views led to the formation of the Transcendental Club.
“The American Scholar,” originally his formal Harvard address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1837
on the American scholar and to the Divinity School graduates in 1838 on the state of Christianity
were both printed as pamphlets, according to the custom of the time. Since America’s
independence, it has been too busy with establishing its economic survival and has neglected the
arts, culture, and literature. But this now draws to a close. It is time America stops depending on
England and Europe for cultural inspiration. “We have listened too long to the courtly muses of
Europe,” he says. America is a vast, new country yearning to be celebrated. This graduating class
has a mission to fulfil. The American scholar must chart a new path for American culture, because
it is time for America to sing its own richness and diversity. In this sense, this essay has been
considered America’s intellectual declaration of independence.
“Self-Reliance,” in turn, foregrounds the role of individualism and the belief in the potential of the
self both on a personal and social levels. Your private, inner thoughts may be universal truths. Even
if, at first, one may consider them as absurd or stupid, one should not be afraid of expressing what
one’s heart tells us. Believe in yourself, “trust thyself,” never imitate. A man should count on his
own thoughts and not see through the eyes of others. To be misunderstood is to be great. All of
those who were misunderstood in their own time were, in actuality, the ones who really changed
the world, knowledge, and culture: “Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was
misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton,
and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.” This
Emersonian insight means that our beliefs, our vision may change our own life and the lives around
us. In this sense, Emerson was foregrounding the values of individualism and entrepreneurship and
the ways in which these can ultimately improve our living conditions and contribute to a better
society and world. On a more personal level, trusting in our ability to overcome difficult moments
in our life – everyone’s dark night of the soul – is quite uplifting and certainly has a therapeutic
effect.
Finally, in the essay “The Poet” he briefly tells American intellectuals and writers how they can
celebrate the diversity of American life and record the changes that are occurring in America:
We have yet had no genius in America, with tyrannous eye, which knew the
value of our incomparable materials, and saw, in the barbarism and materialism
of the times, another carnival of the same gods whose picture he so much
admires in Homer; then in the middle age; then in Calvinism. Banks and tariffs,
the newspaper and caucus, methodism and unitarianism, are flat and dull to dull
people, but rest on the same foundations of wonder as Troy, and the temple of
Delphos, and are as swiftly passing away. Our logrolling, our stumps and their
politics, our fisheries, our Negroes, and Indians, our boasts, and our
repudiations, the wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the
northern trade, the southern planting, the western clearing, Oregon, and Texas,
are yet unsung. Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles
the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.
Instead of looking abroad, America has a beauty of its own and a lot already happening there even
if it was still a young country without much tradition and antiquity as Europe. In addition to his
intellectual career, Emerson was also an advocate for Abolitionism in the 1850s.
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Theology and starts to preach, he was a schoolmaster and to later become a reverend.
“The Over-Soul” – epiphany/religious experience; spilled into his own writing.
Wife dies of tuberculosis (16 months after)
1832 – Starts having doubts about his beliefs about becoming a reverend.
Travels to Europe and becomes inspired by Coleridge Wordsworth (romantic poet).
1834 – retreat at Concord, Massachusetts
1836 – “Nature” (book) – pág. 1020
Looks at nature with a “spiritual eye” – “my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite
space – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the
currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God”.
Spirit communicating with spirits; I too am God; Heal psychological wounds.
1837 – “The American Scholar” – SAI NO TESTE
Intellectual Declaration of Independence.
“We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe”. Break free from the Europeans, a
nation is only independent when writes about itself.
Leaves the idea of becoming a reverend to become a Spokesman.
He’s for abolitionism (abolition of slavery that started in 1850)
Self-reliance, is it good or not? Questions about these types of questions.

More dependent on the “I”; And focus on oneself – speak your mind, believe in yourself.
They were misunderstood (and it’s good to be misunderstood)
Melville – Confidence-Man
Moby-Dick – Ahab
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
H. David Thoreau, Walden
Themes about Nature, transcendentalism, and the search for own culture - wanted to surpass
England.
Classicism
A. Pope “The Rape of the Lock”
Poem about a woman that is getting ready and by mistake clips her hair and about her despair –
about banal stuff.
Lyrical Ballads – a collection of poems
About an idiot boy – stories about the simple-farmers, common people, and people with disabilities.
Rural setting/area.

In “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro: Speech at Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852,”
Frederick Douglass stresses the contradictions in nineteenth-century American life. While pointing
out the accomplishments of the leading figures during America’s emancipation from England
(George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, etc.) and British oppressors, he asks why
this freedom that all whites in America cherish is denied to blacks. Drawing from strong, compelling
arguments and examples, Douglass ends his essay with a keynote of hope. Keeping in tune with
the structure of the Jeremiad (the biblical figure of Jeremiah), Douglass laments the current state
of slavery for blacks in the United States, points to the problem that is undermining America’s
credibility as a country that cherishes freedom, and ends with a sense of hope that, in due time,
America will be pressured by the international community so as to abolish such a degrading
institution.
Douglass’s essay also invites a brief analysis of the history of antebellum Southern society, its
culture, economy, and the role of black slaves. Also known as Cotton Kingdom, with thousands of
miles of cotton and tobacco fields, its society has a very pronounced feudalistic outlook: very few
white landowners with hundreds of black slaves who worked for them for free. The Market
Revolution, however, imposed a new dynamic and this also changed the ways in which black slaves
were treated from now on. They were seen as “hands” who merely worked and produced, they
were kept in a state of total ignorance, flogged, and treated like animals. In contrast, the
eighteenth-century Phyllis Wheatley (the first African American poetess), is a bona fide example
of the opposite; that is, how black slaves were treated before this Market Revolution. She may have
worked from dawn to sunset helping to raise her master’s children, milking cows, and working as a
housekeeper, but her master (and practically all other slave owners at the time) were proud of
feeding their slaves properly, teaching them their Bible, and how to read and write. The economic
changes in the 19th-century, however, changed this state of affairs.
This leads on to a brief discussion of Frederick Douglass’s autobiography and how the
autobiographies written by black male slaves stress the physical violence and brutality inflicted on
slaves, whereas Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) stresses the way in which
black women were raped by their white masters. Stigmatized, this brutality also left them
psychologically scarred for life. Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved, however, questions this
pattern in the sense that she demonstrates how black male slaves were also raped by prison guards,
something they refused to discuss openly because it was seen as a taboo. Adding to this modus
vivendi, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), highlights the hypocrisy and
inhumanity in the white slaveholders and how they broke up black families by selling their own
hybrid/mulatto children for a profit to other plantations.
These voices were part of a larger Abolitionist movement that was taking shape in the decade that
preceded the Civil War (1861-65). Briefly, it is worth keeping in mind the role of such Abolitionists
as John Brown (his attack of the Federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia), Lydia Maria Child, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, etc. To assist runaway
slaves, the Underground Railroad (a mechanism aimed at helping runaway slaves on their journey
North, during which time they would walk during the night and stay in hiding during the day). They
were told to follow the North Star (the name which was given to the popular Abolitionist publication
edited by Douglass). The enactment of the Fugitive Law, however, made this practice of fleeing
North even more difficult (cf. the passage in Mark Twain’s, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
where Huck is accosted by two men capturing runaway slaves and how he tricks them, letting his
sound heart prevail).
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America had a problem – the horrors of slavery – racial tendencies.

The movement of Independence for the Negros

• Abolition of slavery, given speech on the 5th of July. (76 years later)
• Criticizing the 4th of July. (he wants to be separated)
• What he witnesses himself as a slave.
• Rhetorical writing.
 • Story of breaking free the south.
Means to tap into their conscious – they should identify what it means not to be free.
To make his argument reliable he argues they also deserve to be free. Revolution is a landmark of
freedom. Has nothing to reassure or be proud of the colonists – with not much, dependent, young
were still able to defeat England.
Everyone feels proud for independence, but not African Americans as they are not considered as
being real Americans.
The revolution was not fully achieved. “You should be ashamed of those who are slave owners.”
Manipulation of the Bible, to serve their “master”.
Middle damage – period when many slaves died of deceases and labour was needed.

People were enslaved in factories for long hours. The souter remained rural, but the hours
increased, with the market revolution the goal was to make more money by producing more, so it
was needed more work.

Frederick Douglass questioned America about its Constitution and its independence. In his view,
blacks were valued as property and unworthy of a record or a marker in a cemetery. Not knowing
when one is born is like not having a conscience. Instead, knowing one’s birth date is being aware
of who you are. Cedar Hill, across the hills from Washington, D.C., was where he spent the last
years in his life. Even there, he was still in search of his birth date. After several meticulous searches,
it is believed that his accurate birth date is February 18, 1818.
He lived with his grandmother when he was a young boy, before learning he was a slave. There
were at least 500 slaves at Mr. Auld’s plantation, which depended on black slaves, namely
carpenters, farmers, and butlers. His mother died when he was nine years old. She never revealed
the identity of his father. She belongs to this group of blacks who had no grave with a marker.
Slavery had made his mother a myth and his father a mystery. One of the dehumanizing
characteristics of slavery is cruelty: he recalled his aunt being beaten cruelly and an overseer
shooting a runaway slave in the head. He went to Baltimore to work as a carpenter. He saw himself
as being chosen by divine Providence. There, he slept in a bed for the first time, took his meals and
was asked to speak his mind. He also enjoyed the freedom to read for one year. Miss Sophia taught
him for one year but was suddenly forbidden from doing so by Master Auld. Afterwards, he carried
Webster’s book into the streets and tricked kids into teaching him how to read and write. The
Columbia Orator was a crucial publication which he used to teach himself how to read and write.
He often memorized its texts. With the Nat Turner rebellion, stricter laws were passed against black
slaves. From now on, every black man or woman was seen as suspicious or a rebel. It was around
this time that his religious conversion took place. Later on, Frederick Bailey sent him back to a
plantation, to Mr. Covey, who was renowned for breaking slaves. He almost broke Douglass by
working him night and day. He almost made him into a humble slave. He was beaten for six months
but then he decided he would be beaten no more. He resolved to fight. This was his turning-point
in his life – he learned he has a manhood. In the meantime, Covey silenced this episode since it
would question his reputation as a slave breaker. He was hired to work in a shipyard, but he never
gave up on his hope for freedom.
Anna Murray was a free housekeeper whom he met in Baltimore. He disguised himself as a sailor
and ran away to the North. In 1838, he was finally a free man. He travelled to New Bedford,
Massachusetts and married Anna Murray there. He chose a different last name: Douglass was
inspired by Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake. He began to read The Liberator and admired its
contents. Garrison was its editor, and he was an Abolitionist. Nantucket’s Athenaeum was the place
where he told his story of bondage to freedom. Garrison invites him to be a full time member of
the Abolitionist society, the place where he found his voice, his critique of slavery and where he
became a radical abolitionist. He was a master, an orator who could reveal slavery as they had
never heard before. He had to face Jim Crow in the North and slavery in the South. He was denied
a table at a restaurant in London, seats on a train, etc. In 1845, he published Narrative of the Life
of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, where he revealed real names and places to
authenticate his story. The anti-slavery society was concerned with his safety.
In August of 1845, he went to London to lecture on slavery in America. He is not treated as a
coloured man but as a man. Lords and aristocrats flocked to his lectures – they were tremendously
impressed by his insight and his story. He denounced slavery in America. It was in England where he
found his independence. His British friends paid his freedom to Mr. Auld. At the age of 29 he returns
to the United States a free man and an international celebrity. Once back home, he moved to
Rochester, New York, to start a newspaper. It would be named the North Star, a weekly publication.
Garrison, however, saw this newspaper as competition and discouraged him from publishing it.
More than ever, he was involved in the movement to free slaves. In 1848, he came out strong for
women’s right to vote. Rochester had a strong abolitionist center there, mostly composed by
women. He was now a voice of his own people; he no longer spoke to Garrison and his men. In
1849, the Constitution is questioned. In the 1850s, the North limited expansion of slavery. Every
black person was now in danger. Families began to be torn apart. He became active on the
Underground Railroad. Because of the Fugitive Slave Law, black families must now cross the border
into Canada. On July 5th, 1852, he delivered a speech where he insisted that blacks had no rights,
that they were not citizens of the USA. The Dred Scott case was a reminder to blacks that they were
not citizens nor that they would ever be. They would stay in bondage, remain as someone else’s
property. In 1859, he attended a secret meeting with John Brown where they discussed attacking
the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. Douglas, however, believed this would not have a successful
outcome. This was proven true and afterwards, John Brown was, indeed, hanged. Douglass
escaped to Canada and then to England. It is reported he knew about John Brown’s plans and was
given an arrest warrant.
In November of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected US President on a campaign where he
defended no more slavery. The national argument on slavery was civil war – the lesson of the war.
Douglass welcomes the civil war because he believed a war of necessity had to be made on the
slaveholders. For some time, Lincoln was of the opinion that the best thing was to remove blacks
from America. Douglass believed that this war would end slavery. Lincoln is inundated with this
plea. On January 1st, 1863, he issued an Emancipation Proclamation. This war was destined to
destroy slavery. Douglass’s son was a Union soldier, and he organized a regiment of blacks to fight
in the Union troops. With the 13th Amendment, slavery is banished from the Constitution. At the
time, Douglass was 47 years old. Blacks were free but had nothing but a dusty road on their feet,
naked, hungry. Emancipated slaves were now subject to black codes – they could be detained as
vagrants. With the belief that blacks should be able to vote, the KKK began to enforce white
supremacy; they were not going to give blacks the right to vote. Women suffragists did not support
his cause for black suffrage. The 15th Amendment, however, declared that the right to vote cannot
be denied on issues of race. Douglass’s dream had finally come true. But there was political
resistance for blacks to vote. Presumably, in retaliation, his house was burned down in Rochester.
With the KKK running freely and unchecked in the South, a spirit of hatred and murder became
rampant. He and his family moved to Washington, D.C. Douglass did not witness any racial
integration in the 1870s or 1880s. His son was unable to find a job and yet he was a great
professional – thus starts discrimination on the basis of race. Lincoln was said to be the President of
whites.
In 1878, he moved into a rural house in the District of Columbia. Presidents begin to appoint him
to certain tasks, which was an honour to him. Unfortunately, America was not ready to deal with
ex-slaves. Trapped in economic bondage, the goal was now to restore white supremacy. People
were tired of blacks’ problems, they wanted to make money, get down to business. At least
50,000 blacks head to Kansas and to the North – thus starting the mass exodus. Douglass was
booed because he believed blacks belonged in the South. At this point, he was a little removed
from what happened to blacks in the South. He had been out of the South for too many years.
When he was in his sixties, he wrote Life and Times of an American Slave, his third autobiography.
Anna was now suffering with illness. She died and he was crushed by her death since she had been
his companion. Sometime later, he meets Helen Pitts, from Mount Holy Seminary, who was 20
years his junior and a white woman. With the revival of white supremacy, ironically, he marries a
white woman. This caused internal problems in his family, and he was criticized by both blacks and
whites in American society.
They travel to Europe and North Africa. He was appointed to represent the USA in Haiti. She
encourages him to rebel against the lynching of blacks in America. With lynching and the Jim Crow
laws, the 1890s were one of the worst decades for blacks in the USA. He died in Cedar Hill but had
been to a woman’s suffrage meeting that morning. He died with the belief that African Americans
would someday receive equality in America.

This essay discusses the economic, social and cultural differences between the Northern and
Southern states. Whereas the economy in the Northeast was predominantly industrial, capitalistic,
and relied on self-reliant, individualistic values, that of the South, in contrast, relied on the work of
indentured slaves who worked in Cotton Kingdom (vast fields of mostly cotton and tobacco). This
“House Divided,” as Abraham Lincoln argues in his speech, could not remain like this for much long.
As America was getting ready for the Civil War, the slave-holding Southern States wanted to form
a Confederacy whereas the Northern Union soldiers fought for maintaining the country as one. In
1863, Abraham Lincoln issues an Emancipation Proclamation which technically emancipated all
blacks. Unfortunately, not all former slaves were ready to cope with the new challenges awaiting
them. Ill-educated, with no job skills, incapable of starting anew, during the Reconstruction era of
the late 1860s and 1870s many ex-slaves received some assistance from the carpetbaggers (ex-
Union soldiers or federal employees, etc.). They were taught how to read and write, some survival
skills, how to manage a budget, etc. Discontent with the few economic prospects in the South,
some African Americans migrated to the Northern industrial cities, huddling together in ghettoes
and becoming the prey of economic exploitation, taking on low-paying jobs considering their weak
job skills. Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery provides a dazzling picture of these years of
difficulties for these emancipated blacks who had to learn how to start a new life (eating properly,
voting, receiving some basic instruction, etc.). Southern ex-Confederate soldiers, however, were
not going to settle easily for this new reality. Through the years, a new reign of terror gradually
begins to emerge – initially in the South – with the Ku Klux Klan killing and lynching emancipated
blacks, setting their schools, houses and churches on fire. Believing in the superiority of the
Caucasian (the WASP mainstream population of America), the KKK started to terrorize Catholics,
Jews and other ethnic minorities.

The name attributed to the Gilded Age era comes from the title of a novel co-authored by Mark
Twain and Charles Dudley Warner titled The Gilded Age (1873), which focuses on the lobbying,
briberies and rampant corruption prevalent in the United States in the 1870s and 1880s. This essay
discusses the enormous transformations prompted by the rapid industrialization of the USA after
the Civil War and how these economic, social, and political changes touched the lives of everyone
there. A period characterized by the formation of Trusts, which tried to eliminate competition
among businesses (especially oil companies, steel, electricity, the railroad, etc.), families such as
those of Andrew Carnegie, Rockefeller, Huntington, etc. are names we often associate with this
period. Renowned for their exploitation of workers (also known as the robber barons), they later
on left part of their fortunes for philanthropic purposes (ex.: the Huntington Library and botanical
gardens in San Marino, California; Carnegie Hall in Manhattan for the Performing Arts, etc.). Among
several literary possibilities, a novel imbued with the spirit of Social Darwinism, of the survival of the
fittest ideology of the time, dealing with the squeezing of the most vulnerable ranchers by the
railroad is, for example, The Octopus (1901) by Frank Norris.
While most middle-class American women were typical Victorian ladies who relied on their
husbands as family providers, working class women (just like the adolescents and the new
immigrants hailing from Eastern European countries) were the new slaves who would toil for 14 or
16 hours in the sweatshops of America. Liberated African Americans, who were being ostracized in
the South by the Ku Klux Klan, subject to the racial segregation laws of Jim Crow, slowly migrated
to Northern industrial cities, hoping to find jobs even if they had incipient job skills or education.
Most ended up in ghettos in these industrial cities (Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, etc.), just like other
immigrants, the Irish, in particular, who lived, for example, in the slums of the Bowery (NY City) and
fictionalized in Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893). The horrifying living conditions
in most American cities as well as the hazardous working conditions and overall lack of public
hygiene, exploitation, etc. were often denounced in the press by the so-called muckraking
journalists. Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle (1906) is clearly a case in point. It denounces the
brutality, exploitation, inhumane treatment of workers in the slaughterhouses of Chicago and the
lack of hygiene (workers’ fingers were often cut, eventually entering the meat-processing system,
only to be turned into ham, corned beef, etc.). A novel imbued with Marxist, proletarian ideology,
it was a pivotal work which brought about legislation such as the Pure Food Act enacted by President
Theodore Roosevelt in the early twentieth-century.
A period marked by intense labor agitation, strikes, and riots, possibly the most renowned case was
that of the Haymarket Square Riots in Chicago in the late nineteenth-century. The police’s brutality
and mistakes after a May 1st, 1886 demonstration for the eight hour daily work schedule, led to
the killing of innocent workers. Today, we still commemorate this date around the world as Labor
Day (May 1st; ironically, and even if it was inspired by this event, Labor Day in the USA is celebrated
on the first Monday of the month of September).
Immigrants – mostly Eastern Europeans and later on the Southern Europeans – were being
subjected to the conservative political, economic, and social changes sweeping through the USA in
the early twentieth-century, gradually being denied admission through a series of Immigration Acts
(enacted between 1917 and 1924). Viewed as undesirables by the prevailing Eugenics Movement
theories that were very popular at the time (they were seen as illiterate, had huge families with
swarthy/dark complexions and were said to possess tainted germplasm), these new arrivals were
often sent back to their original countries after having been administered the famous Literacy Test
(a test where prospective immigrants were asked to spell a few words in their native language
when most of them were illiterate). For most Italians, Portuguese, Turks, Spaniards, and Greeks,
their dream of coming to America, of being welcomed by the Statue of Liberty, usually ended right
there at the immigration inspections on Ellis Island. Those who managed to pass through the tight
scrutiny of immigration authorities became the new slaves to toil in America’s industrial
“nightmare” of the time.

An outline of the following topics might help us to better understand Brinkley’s essay:

• ‘The Roaring Twenties’: After World War I, Americans were eager to start a new life and
forget the atrocities of this devastating war. Jazz music, clubs and bars attracted crowds who
yearned to celebrate the material comfort and consumerist subculture that was taking shape
in America. They wished to watch the cancan/foxtrot girls dance and indulge in alcohol,
smoking, and dating. Francis Scott Fitzgerald immortalized this era in his novel, The Great
Gatsby (1925), where he describes Jay Gatsby’s lavish parties, which attracted hundreds of
strangers, eager to listen to the jazz music, drink booze, and enjoy free appetizers under
the blaze of lights. Seen from afar, his house looked like an amusement park.
• After World War I, women were eager to discard any resemblances with nineteenth-century
Victorian women (who wore long skirts, had large families and practically gave birth to a
baby each year, and were told by their patriarchal culture to act as an “angel in the house”
and to “suffer and be still”). The New Woman emerged in this post-war world and started
to wear shorter skirts, smoke, put on a more masculine look (short haircuts, masculine-
looking outfits, etc.). This was the age of the “coquette,” the flapper, the cancan girl who
wished to have fun and lead a more hedonistic lifestyle. Lady Brett in Hemingway’s novel,
The Sun Also Rises is perhaps a good example of this New Woman, emancipated, with
several men lusting after her while she has them wrapped around her little finger. For most
American women, the prior Woman’s Suffrage Movement culminated in their hard-gained
right to vote for the first time (August of 1920).
• Prohibition, 1920-1933 – this period of Progressive, conservative politics witnessed the
passing of Prohibition legislation (it was illegal to buy, sell or consume alcoholic beverages
on American soil). Nonetheless, booze was consumed illegally everywhere, in the
speakeasies, underground bars and clubs, and smuggled into the country. Others produced
or consumed poisonous liquor to such a point that many people died during this period. This
was the time when the Mafia emerged and thrived, with the gangster also emerging in the
films produced by Hollywood. The recent arrivals of Italians (especially Sicilians) in the
previous decades had now encountered the ideal terrain or conditions for this phenomenon
to thrive. It is also worth keeping in mind how America’s puritanical heritage cropped up
during this period (intolerance/refusal to allow other lifestyles, and forcing everyone to
conform to the values of the majority WASP culture – cf. Thomas Morton and the
Merrymount episode, the Salem witch trials, etc. ).
• Immigration Acts of 1917-1924 – a series of immigration acts were passed to refuse
admission to mostly Southern Europeans (Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks and even
Turks) due to their alleged darker complexions, their high levels of illiteracy, poor job skills,
and the pressure enacted by the Eugenics movement which viewed these people as possibly
contaminating the germplasm of white America. Donald Taft’s study on Two Portuguese
Communities in New England (1923) evinces how science was manipulated to the point of
suggesting the Portuguese as having African blood in their veins (due to its role and contacts
 with African people in its overseas empire). In a country such as the USA, where the one drop
rule of African blood immediately classified anyone as being black, this rhetoric was
manipulated to the point of closing the doors on these undesirables. Like most other ethnic
groups, the Portuguese (mostly Azorean) immigration to the USA dropped enormously after
1924, only to pick up once again after 1958, with the eruption of the Capelinhos volcano in
Faial.
• The Great Depression/1929 Wall Street Crash: with the collapse of the American economy,
overproduction of products, stock market/banking malpractices, and huge withdrawals of
whatever money was still available in banks, most Americans lost practically everything they
owned. Others could not afford to pay their mortgages, were unemployed, while others
simply committed suicide. The figure of the hobo, the tramp, a whole generation set adrift,
desperately looking for a job appear in the fiction of the time (Jack London; John
Steinbeck’s fiction, especially The Grapes of Wrath and in most proletarian literature of the
1930s). This country – like no other Western country of the time – simply had no safety net
to protect its citizens.
• FDR’s “New Deal” – After President Hoover, President Frank Delano Roosevelt implemented
a series of programs – hence establishing a “new deal” with Americans – that would change
American/Western life forever. Programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,
unemployment benefits, etc. see the light of day during the 1930s and, thus, give rise to
America’s Welfare State.
• African Americans from the South steadily continued to migrate to Northern industrially-
based cities looking for better job opportunities. They settled in segregated slums in these
cities (Detroit, Cincinnati, Chicago, Boston, etc.) and were subject to the prevailing
segregationist mentality of the time – known as the Jim Crow laws (segregation in public
toilets, means of transportation, restaurants, hotels/motels, schools, etc.) – without the
possibility of these facilities being shared concurrently by whites and blacks. Each one had
his/her own place in American society and the customary sign “Whites Only” was a popular
trademark of these times.

The Marshall Plan; The Cold War

• The United States resisted being pulled into World War II (1939-1945) for a few years but
when Japan bombarded Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, it had no other option
but retaliate. To make a long story short, and with the end of World War II, war-torn
Western Europe needed serious rebuilding. Combining American economic and political
interests in securing its Western European allies, the USA prepared a huge financial package
aimed at such a rebuilding – the Marshall Plan. Gradually, with the mounting pressure
coming from the Soviet bloc, fierce scientific competition, the arms race between the West
(Capitalism) and the East (Communism), a wall of suspicion was being erected between both
blocks. It eventually culminated in the erection of the Berlin Wall in the early 1960s.
Fearing who would first press the button and launch another nuclear war further augmented
this rising tension. It would only end with the downfall of the Berlin wall in November of
1989, after much earlier pressure enacted by President Ronald Reagan, British Prime-
Minister Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Soviet President Gorbachev, and Polish Trade
Unionist Lech Walesa, etc.
McCarthyism
• This period in American history (the 1950s) is characterized by a fierce attempt at cracking
down on any Marxist belief, policy, call for social or labor program with a socialist, collectivist
appeal. It was named after Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was keen on eradicating from
American soil anyone who professed or was a sympathiser of such an ideology.

The American Way of Life/Consumerism

• After World War II, American society experienced a huge demographical explosion in the
sense that millions of babies were born after the war and this generation is widely known as
the baby boom generation. Americans also became more and more materialistic and started
to create a consumerist society based on the American way of life. Most middle-class homes
would now have a refrigerator, a washing machine, a TV set, a dishwasher, a vacuum
cleaner, and other electrical appliances to assist women in their household chores because
they refused to give up their jobs once the troops returned home. Hollywood movies became
more and more popular and further anchored this culture of glamor, material comfort, and
happiness. Most soldiers were eligible for the GI Bill to pursue a degree in higher education
or money to buy a house in the suburbs. As blacks were moving into the cities, whites were
slowly moving out because they refused to share the same spaces as blacks and started to
create the new American way of life in white suburbia marked by the possession of a one
family house with a big lawn, a car parked in the driveway and a white picket-fence. The
children of these middle-class income families were enrolled in the best schools so as to later
on apply to the best universities.
The Civil Rights Movement
• Tired of living in a country where whites and blacks were technically equal but should remain
separated, enduring the racist, segregationist Jim Crow laws, being terrorized by the Ku Klux
Klan, blacks realized they needed to fight back and dismantle this status quo. The moment
of rupture is said to have occurred when Rosa Parks, in the late 1950s, refused to give her
seat to a white individual when she was riding on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. The police
was called, blacks started to gather and soon all blacks would boycott the city buses. This
lasted for about a year and slowly galvanized other blacks all over America. The Civil Rights
Movement of the 1960s witnessed the contributions of such activists as Malcolm X and
Martin Luther King, Jr. From the Million Man March to Washington D.C., King’s “I Have a
Dream” speech, the earlier Brown vs. Board of Education legislation aimed at desegregating
American public schools, America in 1968 was clearly a country witnessing most of its
previous pillars shaking, crumbling, burning down. Violence in several American cities was
rampant and fear of how the country would pull itself out of this chaos was paramount.
The Feminist Movement
• As had been the case after the Civil War, American women also take advantage of the social
momentum started by blacks in their cause for desegregation to argue that they, too, were
disenfranchised, barred from pursuing careers where they could aspire to positions of power
in higher education, corporate management, politics, law, etc. Inspired by Betty Friedan’s
book, The Feminine Mystique, women united to change this reality. Slowly, American
universities created Women’s Studies programs, more and more women were eligible to
attend prestigious institutions of higher learning, feminist criticism became a new trend in
academic scholarship, and American women gained greater respect from men.
Undoubtedly, this is not an isolated, local phenomenon since we cannot overlook the
contributions of, for example, French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir, etc.
The Counter Culture Movement of the Sixties
• The movement of the Beat Generation of the late 1950s, with Allen Ginsberg and Jack
Kerouac being its spokesmen, these two writers are generally believed to have ignited the
counterculture movement of the 1960s. With the 1957 publication of Ginsberg’s poem,
“Howl” (1956) and Kerouac’s novel, On the Road (1957) – literary works considered to be
the bibles of this movement – both men are regarded as having launched a movement of
non-conformity to the values of materialistic America, the so-called American way of life
endorsed by their parents, anchored on materialism, sustained by a predictable bourgeois
life based on amassing money and conforming to what they saw as an insipid, non-idealistic
lifestyle. Throughout the sixties, American youth were excited about living in an era of
change – the Civil Rights movement – and protested against capitalism, a bourgeois
educational system at, for example, the University of California – Berkeley, against the
Vietnam war, and rebelled against their parents’ views and way of life, by joining the hippie
movement, experimenting with drugs, alcohol, and advocating free sex (“make love not
war”). The Flower Power Movement was a trademark of this time, and most hippies were
answering this request, that is, making sure they’d “wear some flowers in their hair” and
going to San Francisco – the haven for this Woodstock generation. Feminists also rebelled
by tearing apart their bras (which they saw as oppressive), adopting a radical, nonconformist
attitude. Their middle –class, wealthy, Christian parents stood back in horror.
Return to Moral Values – The Presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush (senior)
• In due time, America began to come to terms with the liberal policies enacted during the
1960s and 1970s, in particular those enacted by the Roe vs. Wade court case, which
completely legalized abortion in the United States. Jimmy Carter was a Sunday church-goer
even if he was accused of being too soft on those who partook in these liberal changes. After
the Vietnam War, America was further humiliated by the Iran hostage crisis (American
ambassador and Embassy workers in Tehran) in late 1979 during the Ayatollah Khomeini
Islamic Revolution. Most Americans felt that the United States’ dignity had been trampled
on and that the time had arrived for it to regain its lost splendor and power. America should
start to flex its muscles once again. Ronald Reagan was the right man for this purpose – the
ex-Hollywood “cowboy” and California Governor, voters believed, would clean up America.
He was elected in the early 1980s by a conservative platform somewhat disgusted with the
liberal course America had taken in the previous decade or two. From the resurrection of
the values endorsed by the Moral Majority to the violent battles between the pro-life and
pro-choice movements regarding abortion rights, many abortion clinics around the country
were bombed or set on fire and some of the doctors who had performed abortions were
eventually killed. America was heading for more than a decade of conservative politics.

These are the main points addressed by Shenton’s essay:

• Reasons for emigration to the USA (mostly for economic reasons but sometimes for religious
purposes – the Puritans, for example – or for political reasons such as the Cubans, etc.)
• Assimilation vs. the “unmeltables” – Most of the time America encouraged immigrants to
assimilate its values, culture, language and ways but certain ethnic minorities have resisted
much longer being drawn into the American melting-pot.
• Anglo Conformity – the view that since the Anglos were the first European immigrants to
settle in North American, all other immigrants later joining them would have to conform to
the Anglo values, namely its culture, legal/educational systems, the English language, etc.
 • The British colonies in North American were often used as a dumping ground for British
convicts, especially Maryland (cf. the character of Moll Flanders in the eponymous novel by
Daniel Defoe).
• The class consciousness aroused by Irish immigration to the USA during the 1840s (The
Hungry Forties), their being ostracized by the Anglos for several reasons, Catholicism being
the major one.
• Patterns of emigration to the USA during the 19th century: Germans, Russians, Austrians,
Hungarians, Eastern European countries, Italians Jews, etc. /as opposed to the older
immigrants of Northern European stock and the Dutch. The former flocked to America to
pursue their American dream only to end up as the new “slaves” who would toil in the
factories of industrialized America.
• The Immigration Acts of 1917-1924 aimed at closing the doors to Southern Europeans; the
Literacy Tests.
• Chinese immigrants in the 19th century were admitted into America (mostly on the West
coast/California) even if their culture and language were radically different from Western
cultures and ways – to work in the mines, the construction of railroads, etc. (the coolies);
Japanese immigrants were forced to relocate to concentration camps after World War II due
to Japan’s bombardment of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 1941.
• The Hart Cellar Act of 1964 opens up immigration to peoples hailing from Africa, Asia, and
Latin America
• Instead of the white vs. black demographic dichotomy in the USA, it is expected that the
Latino communities will outnumber these by the year 2050, with America gradually
becoming brown

Portuguese immigration to the USA:

• Portugal was one of the first countries to acknowledge America’s independence from Britain
• Older areas of settlement of the Portuguese in the USA: New England (New Bedford and
Nantucket, Massachusetts, due to the whaling centers there); California, Hawaii
• The role of the Sephardic Jews (Portuguese/Iberian Jews expelled by King Manuel I), the
whaling industry and their role in hiring Azorean and Cape Verdean harpooners, The Touro
Synagogue as the oldest synagogue in the USA founded by Portuguese Jews in Newport ,
Rhode island; the Jewish cemetery there, etc.
• How the Immigration Acts of 1917-1924 affected Portuguese immigration to the USA
• Twentieth-century immigration from continental Portugal to new areas of
settlement/industrialized cities in New Jersey (Newark), Connecticut, New York,
Pennsylvania, etc.