Soldiers were forbidden to interfere with slavery or assist runaways, but many soldiers found such a policy unchristian

Yet the end of legal slavery did not mean the end of racial injustice.

Finally, white Confederates did not see African Americans as their equals, much less as soldiers. There was never any doubt that black laborers and camp servants were property.

Gooding argued that, because he and his brethren were born in the United States and selflessly left their private lives and to enter the army, they should be treated “as American SOLDIERS, not as menial hirelings.

The language describing black enlistment indicated Lincoln’s implicit desire to segregate African American troops from the main campaigning armies of white soldiers.

Land-Grant College Act (a.k.a. Morrill Act)

Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in areas under Confederate control.

Lincoln, who initially waged a conservative, limited war, believed that the presence of African American troops would threaten the loyalty of slaveholding border states, and white volunteers who might refuse to serve alongside black men

Union troops evacuated. In response to the attack, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to serve three months to suppress the rebellion

foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery… is his natural and normal condition.

 Confederate nationalism was based on several ideals, foremost among these being slavery. 

On December 20, 1860, the South Carolina convention voted unanimously 169-0 to dissolve their Union with the United States.

all future Confederate states, with the exception of Virginia, excluded Lincoln’s name from their ballots.2

but the war ultimately transformed into a struggle to eradicate slavery.

The American Civil War, the bloodiest in the nation’s history, resulted in approximately 750,000 deaths

Slavery had long divided the politics of the United States.

The acquisition of so much land made it imperative to antislavery leaders that these lands not be opened to slavery.

South had become known as “Doughfaces

The Democratic Party tried to avoid the issue of slavery and instead sought to unite Americans around shared racial anxieties and desires to expand the nation.

The Dred Scott decision signaled that the federal government was now fully committed to extending slavery as far and as wide as it might want.

The Dred Scott decision, Scott v. Sandford, ruled that black Americans could not be citizens of the United States

The conclusion of the Mexican War gave rise to the 1848 Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo. The treaty infuriated antislavery leaders in the United States.

Slavery briefly receded from the nation’s attention in the early 1820s,

Revolutionaries in the United States declared, “All men are created equal,”

Revolutionaries in the United States declared, “All men are created equal,”

Revolutionaries in the United States declared, “All men are created equal,”

Masters-turned-employers now not only had fewer obligations to their workers, they had a lesser attachment.

Factories slowly replaced shops.

he modern American factory was born. Soon ten thousand workers labored in Lowell alone. Sarah Rice, who worked at the nearby Millbury factory, found it “a noisy place” that was “more confined than I like to be.”21 Working conditions were harsh for the many desperate “mill girls” who operated the factories relentlessly from sun-up to sun-down.

As early as the 1790s, however, merchants in New England began experimenting with machines to replace the “putting-out” system.

But a new system, “piece work,” divided much of production into discrete steps performed by different workers. In this new system, merchants or investors sent or “put-out” materials to individuals and families to complete at home.

Robert Fulton established the first commercial steam boat service up and down the Hudson River in New York in 1807

The so-called “Transportation Revolution” opened for Americans the vast lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. In 1810, for instance, before the rapid explosion of American infrastructure, Margaret Dwight left New Haven, Connecticut, in a wagon headed for Ohio Territory.

With so many fake bills circulating, Americans were constantly on the lookout for the “confidence man” and other deceptive characters in the urban landscape.

In 1816, for instance, $9 could move one ton of goods across the Atlantic Ocean, but only 30 miles across land

larger exchange network connected by improved transportations,

e WILL not longer submit to that arbitrary power which has for the last ten years been so abundantly exercised over us.

she must still continue to toil on, long after Nature’s lamp has ceased to lend its aid—nor will even this suffice to satisfy the grasping avarice of her employer;

In Congress, Whigs and Democrats joined forces in 1836 to pass an unprecedented restriction on freedom of political expression known as the “gag rule,” prohibiting all discussion of abolitionist petitions in the House of Representatives.

Anti-removal activism was also notable for the entry of ordinary American women into political discourse. The first major petition campaign by American women focused on opposition to removal and was led (anonymously) by Catharine Beecher.

Consumption among adults skyrocketed in the early nineteenth century, and alcoholism had become an endemic problem across the United States by the 1820s.

Commercial distilleries produced readily available, cheap whiskey that was frequently more affordable than milk

nder the leadership of preachers and ministers, reform societies attacked many social problems.

their leadership signaled a dramatic departure from previous generations when such prominent roles for ordinary women would have been unthinkable.

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, because Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him….

I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And arn’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And aren’t I a woman?

Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And arn’t I a woman?

she dedicated her life to abolition and equal rights for women and men.

He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

These four ladies, sitting round the tea-table of Richard Hunt, a prominent Friend near Waterloo, decided to put their long-talked-of resolution into action, and before the twilight deepened into night, the call was written, and sent to the Seneca County Courter

began to direct my attention to this great object, to fulfil the purpose for which, by this time, I felt assured I was intended.

when the white people would not let us be baptized by the church, we went down into the water together, in the sight of many who reviled us, and were baptized by the Spirit

But the reason of my return was, that the Spirit appeared to me and said I had my wishes directed to the things of this world

The most tragic, indeed horrifying, aspect of slavery was its inhumanity. All slaves had memories, emotions, experiences, and thoughts. They saw their experiences in full color, felt the pain of the lash, the heat of the sun, and the heartbreak of loss, whether through death, betrayal, or sale.

A single bad crop could cost even most wealthy, landed planter his or her entire life,

Cotton had become the foundation of the Southern economy

Prices for slaves varied drastically, depending on skin color, sex, age, and location, both of purchase and birth.

Over the course of the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, slavery became so endemic to the “Cotton Belt” that travelers, writers, and statisticians began referring to the area as the “Black Belt,”

But then cotton came, and grew, and changed everything

Tobacco, then, was expensive to produce

By 1835, the five main cotton-growing states—South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana—produced more than 500 million pounds of “Petit Gulf”

the Indian Removal Act of 1830, allowed the federal government to survey, divide, and auction off millions of acres of land for however much bidders were willing to pay

On their own time, enslaved people used available materials to construct musical instruments, such as drums, rattles, bells, banjars (an ancestor to the banjo), fiddles, and other instruments.

In the Americas, new languages emerged and evolved. They were, again, pidgin or creole languages which emerged from the blending of African, European, and Americanized-European languages.

For the enslaved, understanding the language of European and American slave traders and plantation owners was necessary

stories in their homes and neighborhoods in the New World,

Africans brought to the Americas the greatly varied cultures of their homelands, including folklore, language, music, and foodways

So, whether he has two little or too much, his approach to the gin- house is always with fear and trembling.

This done, the labor of the day is not yet ended, by any means. Each one must then attend to his respective chores. One feeds the mules, another the swine- - another cuts the wood, and so forth;

The hands are required to be in the cotton field as soon as it is light in the morning,

removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation

now occupied by a few savage hunters.

national political community; it helped to focus the American people's attention on the political component of their national identity.

all except Rhode Island, which of course had refused to send any delegates to the Federal Convention at all.

That weakness meant that the burden of paying back debt from the Revolutionary War fell on the states.

only Rhode Island declined to send a representative

Thomas Jefferson, thought “a little rebellion now and then” helped keep the country free, others feared the nation was sliding toward anarchy and complained that the states could not maintain control.

resorted to tactics like the patriots had used before the Revolution, forming blockades around courthouses to keep judges from issuing foreclosure orders.

s than two years before the national celebrations of 1788 and 1789, the United States had faced the threat of collapse.

With no one to distribute the stamps, the Act became unenforceable.

Dunmore’s Proclamation of 1775 in Virginia, which promised freedom to any slaves who would escape their masters and join the British cause.

Women on both sides of the conflict were frequently left alone to care for their households. In addition to their existing duties, women took on roles usually assigned to men on farms and in shops and taverns.

Washington needed something to lift morale and encourage reenlistment. Therefore, he launched a successful surprise attack on the Hessian camp

Slaves could now choose to run and risk their lives for possible freedom with the British army, or hope that the United States would live up to its ideals of liberty.

Women, too, became involved to an unprecedented degree in resistance to the Townshend Acts.

some colonists began to fear a pattern of increased taxation and restricted liberties.

In both Britain and the colonies, land was the key to political participation,

Britain had largely failed to define the colonies’ relationship to the empire and institute a coherent program of imperial reform.

The British North American colonists had just helped to win a world war and most, like Rush, had never been more proud to be British. And yet, in a little over a decade, those same colonists would declare their independence and break away from the British Empire

Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the (servants)

I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.

As to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh

herever the English went they caused disturbances for they lived under no Government and paid no respect either to Wisdom or Station. I hoped for better things, that those Old Talks had no truth in them.

where he reported that those Medal Chiefs who did not behave well Should be broke & their Medals given to others.

it is true the Land belonged chiefly to those who have given it away

I expect they will be equally Bountyfull which must be done if they wish equally to gain the affection of my people.

"The delays we meet with in carrying on the Service, from every parts of this country, are immense.

provincial soldiers under his command were challenging his authority.

Whereas the French had maintained a peaceful and relatively equal relationship with their Indian allies through trade, the British hoped to profit from and impose “order.”

In June, a coalition of Ottawas and Ojibwes captured Fort Michilimackinac by staging a game of stickball (lacrosse) outside the fort. They chased the ball into the fort, gathered arms that had been smuggled in by a group of Native American women, and killed almost half of the fort’s British soldiers.

“This land where ye dwell I have made for you and not for others. Whence comes it that ye permit the Whites upon your lands…Drive them out, make war upon them.

The British received much of Canada and North America from the French, while the Prussians retained the important province of Silesia. This gave the British a larger empire than they could control, which contributed to tensions leading to revolution.

Catholicism threatened to literally capture Protestant lands and souls.

Raiding parties would destroy houses and burn crops, but they would also take captives

all the while fearing we should be too late to hear the Sermon

I saw how stubborn and willful man was

Thirdly, in the state of Nature there often wants power to back and support the sentence when right, and to give it due execution

he seeks out and is willing to join in society with others who are already united

men when they enter into society give up the equality, liberty, and executive power they had in the state of Nature into the hands of the society,

equal to the greatest and subject to nobody,

thought that would be a happy change for they had no Souls a

I was possesst with a notion that if I had it I would die and goe right to hell,

more people to marry earlier in life

wives asserted more control over their own bodies.

Whether or not African Americans, Native Americans, and women would also be included in this notion of equality

only a tiny portion of males could vote

Malaria and other tropical diseases spread, and caused many owners to live away from their plantations.

South Carolina also banned the freeing of slaves unless the freed slave left the colony.

Defiant slaves could legally be beaten, branded, mutilated, even castrated.

Slave owners could not be convicted of murder for killing a slave;

Earlier laws had already guaranteed that the children of enslaved women would be born slaves,

. By 1750, slavery was legal in every North American English colony,

two of the White men offered me eatables; and on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely.

also reports that African women faced other hardships, especially sexual abuse and rape:

and cut one of his legs so round the bone, that he could not move, the nerves being cut through; others cut our cooks throat to the pipe, and others wounded three of the sailors, and threw one of them overboard in that condition, from the forecastle into the sea.

all the oldest died of thirst, for there was no wate

  As can be seen from Equiano's account, it was not uncommon for captives to jump overboard and drown themselves rather than endure transportation and a life of slavery

the voyage across the Atlantic that could take as long as two months.

facilitating the natural reproduction of slave

This economic strategy on the part of planters created a legal system in which all children born to slave women would be slaves for life, whether the father was white or black, enslaved or free.

desperation that drove some slaves to suicide.

ative American slaves died quickly, mostly from disease, but others were murdered or died from starvation.

Skin color became more than superficial difference; it became the marker of a transcendent, all-encompassing division between two distinct peoples, two races, white and black.

colonists experienced religious and political conflict t

Yet during the war the colonies remained neutral, fearing that support for either side could involve them in war

. Thousands of other Indians fled the region or were sold into slavery.

Religion was a motivating factor in the creation of several other colonies as well,

The ambitious Penn wanted his own, larger

Despite the turmoil in Britain, colonial settlement grew considerably throughout the seventeenth century, and several new settlements joined the two original colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts.

Religious conflict plagued

may become a profitable member here among us

being a woman not fit for our society,

here have been six witnesses to prove this and yet you deny it.

fitting for your sex

f white and black acting together to challenge authority

That in whatsoever place, house, or ship, any of the said persons shall reside, be hid, or protected, we declare the owners, masters, or inhabitants of the said places to be confederates and traitors

God Almighty in His most holy and wise providence hath so disposed of the Condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection

which the wealthy were to show charity and avoid exploiting their neighbors while the poor were to work diligently.

When God gives us a special commission He wants it strictly observed in every article....

not sparing either age or sex, man, women or child; so sudden in their cruel execution that few or none discerned the weapon or blow that brought them to destruction....

owhatan's successor, Opechcanough, tried to wipe out the English in a surprise attack.

. After ten years, however, the colonists discovered that Virginia was an ideal place to cultivate tobacco

tobacco production rapidly exhausted the soil of nutrients

The happy minority God had already chosen to save were known among English Puritans as the Elect.

They dug up graves to eat the corpses of their former neighbors

“Would rather starve than work.”

The skyrocketing cost of land coincided with plummeting farming income. Rents and prices rose but wages stagnated.

a jealous England eyed the enormous wealth that Spain gleaned from the new World.

The wealth flowing from the exploitation of the Aztec and Incan Empires greatly eclipsed the profits of other European nations. But this dominance would not last long

Land east of the Tordesillas Meridian, an imaginary line dividing South America, would be given to Portugal, whereas land west of the line was reserved for Spanish conquest.

Jesuit missionaries succeeded in bringing Christianity to Brazil, but strong elements of African and native spirituality mixed with orthodox Catholicism to create a unique religious culture.

They are also poor people, for they not only possess little but have no desire to possess worldly goods. For this reason they are not arrogant, embittered, or greedy.

The milk in the breasts of the women with infants dried up and thus in a short while the infants perished

For in the beginning the Indians regarded the Spaniards as angels from Heaven. Only after the Spaniards had used violence against them, killing, robbing, torturing, did the Indians ever rise up against them....

But I should not say "than beasts"

(since the Spaniards usually spare only the women and children, who are subjected to the hardest and bitterest servitude ever suffered by man or beast

In the encomienda, the Spanish crown granted a person not only land but a specified number of natives as well. Encomenderos brutalized their laborers with punishing labor.

we came here to serve God and the king, and also to get rich.

The “discovery” of America unleashed horrors. Europeans embarked upon a debauching path of death and destructive exploitation that unleashed murder and greed and slaver

They were not quite Indios, or Indians, but their lack of limpieza de sangre, or “pure blood,” removed them from the privileges of full-blooded Spaniard

Wave after wave of disease crashed relentlessly. Disease flung whole communities into chaos. Others it destroyed completely.

In 1531, a poor Indian named Juan Diego reported

“purity of blood.”

Smallpox ravaged the city.

In central America the Maya built massive temples

Columbus described them as innocents.

There, three crops in particular–corn, beans, and squash, the so-called “three sisters”–provided nutritional needs necessary to sustain cities and civilizations.

Meanwhile, kinship bound most native North American people together.

Native Americans lacked the immunities that Europeans and Africans had developed over centuries of deadly epidemics

Nomadic hunter-gatherers, they traveled in small bands following megafauna–enormous mammals that included mastodons and giant horses and bison–into the frozen Beringian tundra at the edge of North America

Finally, the little muskrat stepped forward and he said, “I can do this. I know I can do this.

How was she ever going to survive? So the great big birds with the big wingspan flew high and they flew underneath her and sure enough they caught her

But one by one they took turns diving deep, deep down into the dark water of the sea world. One by one, they floated up to the top because it was a far, far away down. Each one of the animals tried. Pretty soon there weren’t too many left.

the sky world.

she had seen long the way, she began to crave and wanted to know what was underneath that tree – she wanted the roots of that tree.

All the gods contributed what gold they had, and Orunmila supplied the articles for the bag.

She had not been consulted by Obatala, and grew angry that he had usurped so much of her kingdom.  

All the other gods were happy with what Obatala had done, and visited the land often, except for Olokun, the ruler of all below the sky.  

The new people built huts as Obatala had done, and soon Ife prospered and became a city.

  The next day he realized what he had done, and swore never to drink again, and to take care of those who were deformed, thus becoming Protector of the Deformed.

And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

¶ And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

And God blessed them, Gen. 5.1, 2 and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.