Tag Archives: Slavery

DACA: from the beginning…

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in DACA, Immigration, Racism, The United States

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President Obama Meets Beneficiaries Of The Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals Policy

WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 04: U.S. President Barack Obama meets with a group of ‘DREAMers’ who have received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in the Oval Office of the White House February 4, 2015 in Washington, DC. ‘DREAMers’ are children who were brought into the U.S. illegally and were then granted temporary relief under Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The above photograph features DREAMers or beneficiaries of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/04/politics/daca-dreamers-immigration-program/index.html

President Trump plans to deport immigrants who arrived in the United States as minors. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is a policy of the Obama administration  adopted in June 2012 and rescinded by the Trump administration in September 2017 (See Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Wikipedia.) DACA beneficiaries received a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and were eligible for a work permit.

DACA is rooted in the DREAM Act (acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act#2017

“The bill was first introduced in the Senate on August 1, 2001, S. 1291 by United States Senators Dick Durbin (D– Illinois) and Orrin Hatch (R– Utah), and has since been reintroduced several times (see Legislative history) but has failed to pass.” (See DREAM Act, Wikipedia.)

Lafayette and Washington at Valley Forge
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, 1
Dred Scott. Oil on canvas by Louis Schultze, 1888. Acc. # 1897.9.1. Missouri Historical Society Museum Collections. Photograph by David Schultz, 1999. NS 23864. Photograph and scan (c) 1999-2006, Missouri Historical Society.

John Ward Dunsmore‘s depiction of Lafayette (right) and Washington at Valley Forge, a battle fought in 1777-1778 (Wikipedia)
George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, 1797 (Wikipedia)
Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, 1798 (Wikipedia)
Dred Scott  (Photo credit: PBS)
Gilbert Motier, marquis de Lafayette by Joseph-Désiré Court, 1791 (Wikipedia)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

If one reads the Declaration of Independence, quoted above, without taking its historical context into consideration, one cannot reconcile the phrase “all men are created equal,” with enslavement. Matters are all the more puzzling since, as Minister to France (1784 -1789), Thomas Jefferson helped the Marquis de Lafayette draft the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), a monument to social justice drawing from the American Declaration of Independence. La Fayette had fought in the American Revolutionary War. Could it be that the Founding Fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson, were hypocrites? I have pondered this question and it would be my opinion that, in their eyes, black slaves were not fully developed men. The Founding Fathers: George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison wished to create a union of white men. George Washington, the 1st President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, was a Mason and a slave owner, but did he know that blacks were human beings to the same extent as whites?

Thomas Jefferson is unlikely ever to have whipped his slaves, but I doubt that his attitude towards the blacks was substantially different from the view expressed, a century later, by Confederate General-in-Chief, Robert E. Lee’s (19 January 1807 – 12 October 1870)

“most noted comment, quoted by most Lee’s biographers, occurred in a [sic] 1856 letter to his wife, describing slavery as an evil institution, but one that had more adverse effects on whites than blacks. However, he viewed slavery as a “painful discipline” which elevated blacks from barbarism to civilization while introducing them to Christianity. He felt that the institution would come to an end in God’s good time, but that might not be soon.” (See Robert E. Lee, Wikipedia.)

The White Man’s Burden

In the White Man’s Burden, a poem published as the 19th century drew to an end, in 1899), Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) expressed views that portrayed the inhabitants of colonies as “primitive:”

“The implication, of course, was that the Empire existed not for the benefit — economic or strategic or otherwise — of Britain, itself, but in order that primitive peoples, incapable of self-government, could, with British guidance, eventually become civilized (and Christianized).” (See The White Man’s Burden, Wikipedia.)

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The British John Bull and the American Uncle Sam bear The White Man’s Burden (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling), taking the coloured peoples of the world to civilisation. (Victor Gillam, Judge magazine, 1 April 1899) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rudyard Kipling is the author of the Jungle Book (1894) and the Just-so stories (1902), classics of children’s literature. As for Lafayette, although he was an abolitionist and a Mason, he fought in the American Revolutionary War and probably realized that George Washington and other Founding Fathers of the United States could not be brought to view their black slaves as altogether human or “men,” but that they were good human beings.  The United States Declaration of Independence was worded in the language of John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) and also reflected Freemasonry. Equality would be the subject matter of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778)  Discourse on Inequality (1754) and a main theme in Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762). These documents are “cornerstones in modern political and social thought.”

 

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John Locke by Godfrey Kneller, 1697 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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J.-J. Rousseau by  Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 1753 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798

  • Three Acts
  • Dred Scott

The case of Dred Scott is most revealing. In 1857, Dred Scott, a slave taken to free states by his owners, sued for his freedom and lost. Dred Scott vs Sandford  60 U.S  393 is considered one of the worst mistakes of the Supreme Court of the United States. Its decision was made shortly before the American Civil War (1861-1865) and it proved to be an indirect catalyst for the American Civil War.” (See Dred Scott vs Sandford 60 U.S.393.)

African-Americans had been taken to the Americas forcibly, yet they were not recognized as citizens of the United States until the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1868, three years after the South surrendered to the Union. As for American Indians, they were not  citizens until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

“This law limited naturalization to immigrants who were free white persons of good character. It thus excluded American Indians, indentured servants, slaves, free blacks and later Asians although free blacks were allowed citizenship at the state level in certain states.” (See Naturalization Act of 1790, Wikipedia.)

John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts

The Naturalization Act of 1798, is one of four acts, the Alien and Sedition Acts, signed into law by John Adams, the 2nd American President of the United States and its 1st Vice President. The four laws under John Adam’s Alien and Sedition Acts are the following:

(See Alien and Sedition Acts, Wikipedia)

The Naturalization Act of 1798 was repealed by Thomas Jefferson and replaced by the Naturalization Law of 1802, which reduced the residence requirement of immigrants from 14 years to 5 years, as it had been under the terms of the Naturalization Act of 1795.  However, the Alien Enemies Act, was used after Pearl Harbor was attacked, on 7 December 1941. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 would allow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt “to imprison Japanese, German, and Italian aliens during World War II.” Canadians followed Franklin Delano Roosevelt and also interned Japanese Canadians. (See Internment of Japanese Canadians.) The Alien Enemies Act was also used by President Harry S. Truman “to continue to imprison, then deport, aliens of the formerly hostile nations.” It has been revised but remains in effect. The Alien Friends’ Act and the Sedition Act went into dormancy. A modified Alien Enemy Act is still in force.

“The Sedition Act resulted in the prosecution and conviction of many Jeffersonian newspaper owners who disagreed with the government.” (See Alien and Sedition Acts, Wikipedia.)

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 6 May 1882 is particularly sad, and the United States was not the only country in which the Chinese were viewed as a peril, the Yellow Peril. It was the first American federal law prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers. Chinese had first emigrated to the United States during the California gold rush (1848-1855). Later, in the 1860s, they were employed to build the First Transcontinental Railroad from Nebraska to the Pacific Ocean. The Burlingame Treaty, signed in Washington (1868) and ratified in Beijing (1868), granted the Chinese equality with Americans. Yet, on 24 October 1871, 500 rioters entered Los Angeles’ Chinatown “to attack, rob and murder Chinese residents of the city.” Rioters “tortured and then hanged” 17 to 20 Chinese. The Massacre was “racially motivated,” and “it took place on Calle de los Negros (Street of the Negros), also referred to as ‘Nigger Alley.’ “It was the largest mass lynching in American history.” (See Chinese Massacre of 1871, Wikipedia.)

 

YellowTerror (1)

The Yellow Terror in all His Glory (1899) is a rebellious Qing Dynasty Chinese man, armed to the teeth, who stands astride a fallen white woman representing Western European colonialism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau, the author of the Essai sur l’inégalité des races (The Essay on the Inequality of  Human Races, c. 1848), feared the Yellow Peril above all. As we have seen, he developed the theory of the Aryan master race, but he was not an anti-Semite.

Darwinism

As biology, botany, ethnology, and related disciplines developed, the matter of racial superiority or inferiority among races started to lose its grip. The findings of English naturalist, geologist and biologist Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) were a revolution. According to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, two years after the Dred Scott vs Sandford, humans had evolved “through a process of natural selection.” (See Charles Darwin, Wikipedia.) Darwin’s views were controversial. Wasn’t man created by God? There is such a thing as Scientific Racism (see Wikipedia), but Darwin was not a racist.

Lafayette and Washington

Gilbert Motier de Lafayette was a very good friend of George Washington. He named one his sons after the 1st President of the United States. (See Georges Washington de La Fayette, Wikipedia.) Georges Washington de La Fayette, Lafayette’s son went to the United States during the French Revolution. He studied at Harvard and lived at the home of George Washington, and Americans did all they could to save the life of the Lafayette’s during the French Revolution. As for Thomas Jefferson, during his stay in France, just prior to the French Revolution, he was a distinguished guest at Lafayette’s home. Lafayette was an abolitionist and a Mason. He was a member of la Société des amis des Noirs  (The Society of Friends of the Blacks). In a letter to George Washington, written in 1783, “he urged the emancipation of slaves and their establishment as tenant farmers.” (See Gilbert Motier de Lafayette, Wikipedia.) He bought land in the French colony of Cayenne to “experiment.” However, there was little he could to do to change the embedded mindset of his American friends. Slavery had long been looked upon as morally acceptable, the slaves were blacks, an inferior race, and one did not have to pay slaves.

320px-Gilbert_du_Motier_Marquis_de_Lafayette

Gilbert Motier, marquis de Lafayette by Joseph-Désiré Court, 1791 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Conclusion

By rescinding DACA, President Trump would show that he has little respect for immigrants, especially, but not necessarily, coloured immigrants. DACA beneficiaries arrived in the United States as minors and, at times, alone. The only home they know is the United States. If President Trump deports immigrants who arrived to the United States as minors, and, at times, unaccompanied, America will not be “great again;” it will be cruel and it will be walking back to an age when immigration to the United States was restricted to “free white persons of good character.” Immigration to the United States is currently taking a turn for the worse. DACA beneficiaries featured in the photograph inserted at the top of this post are dark-skinned.

I prefer to think that ethnicity is not a factor in the Trump administration’s decision to deport DACA beneficiaries. But what about immigrants from the Near to Middle East. They may have pale skin, but ethnicity might deprive them of a home.

In a letter to his wife Adrienne, Lafayette wrote:

“The welfare of America is bound closely to the welfare of all humanity. She [America] is to become the honored and safe asylum of liberty! Adieu! Darkness does not suffer me to continue longer. But if my fingers were to follow my heart, I should need no daylight to tell you how I suffer far away from you, and how I love you.” (See Adrienne de La Fayette, Wikipedia.)

When Lafayette was in United States, it was a country in the making, a project. And it is still a project. It took a long time to accept African-Americans as citizens of America. As for DACA, Mr Trump might change his mind and not deport them. President Trump wants to reverse every decision made by the Obama administration. The Affordable Care Act is his main target.

In all likelihood the Founding Fathers believed that “all men were created equal,” but they lived in an age when humans looked upon the blacks and American Indians as inferior to white men. Matters have changed. The United States is now or should be “the honored and safe asylum of liberty!”

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Love to everyone ♥

800px-Official_Presidential_portrait_of_John_Adams_(by_John_Trumbull,_circa_1792)

John Adams by John Trumbull, 1793 (Wikipedia)

© Micheline Walker
30 October 2017
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Walter Crane: from Slavery to Wage-Slavery

21 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by in Art, Socialism, United States

≈ 14 Comments

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Walter_crane_small

Walter Crane by Frederick Hollyer, 1886 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am  closing this mini-series on art in 19th-century Britain, except for future posts on individual artists: Aubrey Beardsley, Kate Greenaway, Randolph Caldecott, as well as artists who illustrated their own texts, a foremost example being Beatrix Potter.

Walter_Crane_as_a_Child_by_Thomas_Crane

Walter Crane by his father Thomas Crane (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

From Abolitionism to Socialism

  • Immigrants to the United States
  • The Declaration of Independence
  • Wage Slavery

However, before closing, I can’t resist taking a closer look at Walter Crane who dared say the “Chicago four” (see Haymarket affair, Wikipedia) had been wrongfully convicted. His contracts were cancelled and he was shipped back to Britain.

As I read about Walter Crane, it occurred to me that slavery laid the foundation for wage slavery and that, consequently, there might be a link between abolitionism and socialism (labour unions).

Most immigrants to the United States were people escaping persecution, poverty, a change of régime, not to mention revolutions or other evils. There was no room in Europe for the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritans, but there was land in what was or would become the United States.

However, among immigrants to the United States, there were persons seeking far more than the acquisition of a little white house surrounded by a picket fence. They were seeking the privileges that birth conferred upon European aristocrats, and which money might confer upon certain immigrants. Slavery had afforded nearly free wealth to plantation owners. Once a plantation owner had bought his slaves, wealth was within easy reach. Could the same not be done for industrialists?

In fact, the British had laughed when they read the text of the Declaration of Independence (4 July 1876). Britain was about to lose its better-located American colony, but as principal writer of the United States Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson was seeking for the white what the black slaves could not attain and it so happened that Thomas Jefferson owned a large number of slaves.

If there were slaves, all men were not created equal. If there were slaves, the Creator had not endowed man with certain unalienable rights. Finally, if there were slaves, they did not possess a life of their own. They therefore had no rights and could in no way pursue happiness?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I am inclined to think that Jefferson meant what he wrote, but that he was dependent on his slaves to the point of blindness and that he perhaps could not see the blacks as altogether human. He was unable to travel to France, where he spent several years, unaccompanied. He took slaves with him.

Therefore, it is possible that slavery had left in the American mind the thwarted notion that wealthy did not have to earn their wealth, which could serve to explain why an employer hired children and overworked employees he also underpaid. There was a ‘precedent:’ slavery. Workers were not owned, but why should they be paid adequately when the goal of the industrialist was to make as large a profit as possible. This could explain why Walter Crane, a socialist, made himself persona non grata at a gathering of polite society in Boston. Employers had rights: a profit.

It has been labelled wage slavery.

$_1

Design by Walter Crane (Photo credit: Google Images)

The Gilded Age

  • a mindset
  • wage slavery
  • entitlement, or a “right” to

Slavery could be and was abolished, at a price: Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. But what could not be removed was a mindset. There was a precedent. Slaves had made the plantation owner rich, so factory owners would pay workers a less than adequate salary. Machines had increased productivity and so would employees.

“Increased mechanization of industry is a major mark of the Gilded Age‘s search for cheaper ways to create more product.” (See Gilded Age, Wikipedia.)

In other words, one type of slavery, the enslavement of the blacks, would be followed by another type: wage slavery.

“According to historian Steve Fraser, workers generally earned less than $800 a year, which kept them mired in poverty. Workers had to put in roughly 60 hours a week to earn this much.”

The Haymarket Affair

  • Walter Crane driven out of the United States
  • Socialism = Labour Unions

Consequently, abolitionism was followed by socialism or a degree of Marxism. After the Haymarket affair (1886), labour unions would develop. Employees paid union dues to be protected and it occurred to certain new Americans that they too could levy dues from businesses to ‘protect them.’

The Boston socialites who drove Walter Crane out of the United States may have been the wives of wealthy factory employers. In fact, they may have been the wealthy employers themselves. Yet, the social Walter Crane attended in 1891 was a Boston anarchist meeting. How could anarchists drive an artist out of a country? It seems that the expulsion of Walter Crane was a sign of things to come, a ‘precedent.’ A few decades later, McCarthyism arose.

8_-Hammersmith-Socialist-League

(Photo credit: Google Images)

The Arts and Crafts Movement and Socialism

It should be noted however that although the Arts and Crafts Movement and William Morris are associated with socialism, William Morris owned a company and Kelmscott Press. Machines were used. They were not deemed useless; they were in fact very useful. Members of the Arts and Crafts Movement used machines. These increased the availability, at a reasonable price, of the various elements required to make a home beautiful: fabrics, wallpaper, decorative tiles, glassware, furniture, etc. Two stories merge: the Golden Age of Illustration, illustrations that could be reproduced, and the domestication of art, products that could be manufactured. However, Walter Crane was a member of the Art Workers Guild.

Almost immediately below, a photograph shows Morris & Co.‘s employees weaving at his Merton factory.

(See Arts and Crafts Movement, Wikipedia.)

The weaving shed in Morris & Co's factory at Merton, which opened in the 1880s

The weaving shed in Morris & Co.‘s factory at Merton, which opened in the 1880s

Walter Crane: Women’s Clothing

  • a woman’s health
  • liberty

I forgot to mention that Walter Crane was a ‘clothes activist.’ He was “a Vice President of the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union, a movement begun in 1890.” (See Walter Crane, Wikipedia.) Women were forcing themselves into corsets and very tight clothes. Crane therefore militated against tight-fitting garments. Bless him! About two or three decades later, Coco Chanel started designing flexible clothes. Jersey was a fabric Coco Chanel loved.

Conclusion

The impact of the Industrial Revolution cannot be understated. Machines did the work, but our industrialists did not differ substantially from slave-owners. The goal was a profit even if the welfare of workers was put in jeopardy. A profit was a noble goal. People tend to have a good opinion of themselves and they may close their eyes if money is to be gained and even ill-gained.

Thus were born our labour unions.

With kind greetings to everyone. ♥

Walter Crane & Johann Strauss
“Roses from the South”

thm_solidarity-of-labour

(Photo credit: Google Images)

© Micheline Walker
21 December 2015
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Isis: a Nightmare

03 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by in Religion, Russia, Slavery, Terrorism

≈ 2 Comments

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an-arab-and-his-dog

An Arab and his Dogs by Jean-Léon Gérôme (Photo credit: WikiArt.org)

My lost post resurfaced. I added missing links to the published post, but did not change its contents. However, one of my links led to more information. It seems Isis is offending Russia. It appears a Russian has been beheaded.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/02/middleeast/isis-russian-beheading-claim/?iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial&iref=obinsite

It also appears Isis is targeting a religious group.

Assad was interviewed and claims not to have failed his people, but further radicalization of Islam is taking place.

The following images are very perturbing

purchase-of-a-slave.jpg!Blog

Purchase of a Slave by Jean-Léon Gérôme  (Photo credit: WikiArt.org)

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Slave Market by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1866

http://www.haaretz.com/misc/iphone-article/.premium-1.609449

 

Une_nouvelle_arrivée_by_Giulio_Rosati_3

The Newly-arrived Slave at the Harem by Giulio Rosati (Photo credit: FR Wikipedia)

Wikipedia has an entry entitled Traite des Blanches (trading white women).

The trading of white women is something French and French Canadian women have known about. But I have never heard anyone speak about the capture and enslavement of white women outside Quebec or France.

9/11

It is quite true that the wars of the 2000s triggered many of the acts of terrorism we are witnessing. But the attacks of 9/11 were acts of terrorism perpetrated against the United States. It was retaliation. So there is more to that story.

King regards to everyone. ♥

Jean-Léon_Gérôme_-_On_the_Desert_-_Walters_3734

On the Desert by Jean-Léon Gérôme (Photo credit: The Walters Art Museum)

© Micheline Walker
3 November 2015
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Voltaire’s Candide, Part 1

12 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by in Age of Enlightenment, France, Great Books

≈ 8 Comments

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Tafelrunde

Tafelrunde in Sanssouci (Voltaire to the left, purple, next to Casanova, red lapels), Adolph von Menzel, 1850 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Voltaire the celebrity, but…

A favourite guest of celebrities
Wit, his chief quality

Voltaire lived in a castle, le château de Ferney and befriended Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, and other royals and dignitaries. For instance, in the above image, he is at Sanssouci  [literally “without worry”], a castle owned by Friedrich der Große who was an admirer of François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire. The artist is Adolph von Menzel (8 December 1815 – 9 February 1905). However, do not expect an example of this decorum in Voltaire’s Candide.

His indomitable wit and his pen were Voltaire’s chief weapons. He rarely went unnoticed. The French call this présence. However, he was forever running to escape the Bastille. 

Casanova
From lair to lair: “traduit de l’Allemand”

Next to Voltaire, at the round table (Taflerunde) is Casanova, the Chevalier de Seingalt (pronounced Saint-Galle) (2 April 1725 – 4 June 1798), the famous Venitian womanizer, but a person who lived among princes and wrote the history of his life, L’Histoire de ma vie (See Casanova, Wikipedia.)

Voltaire published his Candide under a pseudonym, that of Mr. le Docteur Ralph, and claimed the novella had been translated from German, “traduit de l’Allemand.” The frontispiece (cover) of the first edition of Candide, published in 1759, is the work of Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune. Voltaire was protecting himself.

Voltaire_and_Diderot_at_the_Café_Procope

At Café Procope: at rear, from left to right: Condorcet, La Harpe, Voltaire (with his arm raised) and Diderot. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Background: Lazarillo de Tormes

a picaresque novel
a pícaro
Lazarillo de Tormes (1554)
a Bildungsroman

Voltaire’s Candide is a novella consisting of thirty (30) chapters and published in 1759. It has been described as a picaresque novel. The word picaresque is derived from a Spanish novella entitled La Vida de un pícaro (The Life of a Rogue; short title) or La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades (The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of his Fortunes and Adversities), by Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). In picaresque novels, characters move from place to place.

The novel is also considered a Bildungsroman or a coming of age novel. In this regard, Voltaire’s Candide resembles Henry Fielding‘s Tom Jones (The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling), 1749. Henri Fielding’s Tom Jones is characterized by obliqueness because Tom, a “foundling,”[1] has no lineage, which gives him a degree of anonymity and impunity. As a Bildungsroman, Voltaire’s Candide has also been associated with Laurence Sterne‘s Tristram Shandy (a Bildungsroman), 1759 – 1767 (9 volumes).

As an oblique novel, Candide has affinities with Montesquieu’s  Persian Letters (Lettres persanes) (1721). Montesquieu’s Usbek and Rica, his two Persians, are foreigners and may therefore say anything with impunity. Tom Jones is an “illegitimate” son and a foreigner of sorts. Moreover, Candide invites comparison with Blaise Pascal‘s Lettres provinciales (1656-1567). (See Lettres provinciales, Wikipedia.) Both works feature naïve characters.

Candide1759

Candide, ou l’Optimisme, 1759

key sentences

Candide is Voltaire’s answer to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz‘ optimism. It has a second title: Candide, ou l’Optimisme. Key sentences and concepts are:

Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes. (All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.)
Il faut cultiver son jardin. (One must cultivate one’s garden.)
There is a cause for each effect.

The Cast

Cunégonde (the woman Candide loves)
The Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh (Cunégonde’s father)
Candide (the illegitimate son of the Baron’s sister)
Dr Pangloss (Candide’s mentor: who believes this is “the best of all possible worlds”)
Cacambo (Candide’s loyal servant, a zanni of the commedia dell’arte) 
The Old Lady
Martin (the Old Philosopher)
Paquette (suivante to the Baroness)
Giroflée (a friar)
etc.

The Story

We are in Westphalia. Candide, the illegitimate son of the Baron Thunder-ten-tronchk’s sister, is kicked out of Paradise when he kisses Cunégonde, the Baron’s daughter. (1)

Candide leaves and is made prisoner by Bulgarian soldiers who flog him and are about to execute him when the Bulgar King arrives and saves Candide whom, he says, is not worth hanging. (2)

In Holland, Candide meets an Anabaptist who looks after him, provides him with a shelter and becomes his teacher. (3) Dr Pangloss, Candide’s mentor at the Baron’s, appears unexpectedly. He caught smallpox and is pockmarked. He tells Candide that everyone has been killed, including Cunégonde. (4)

They leave for Lisbon but are shipwrecked during an earthquake and a tsunami (the 1755 Lisbon earthquake). A sailor lets the Anabaptist drown. Candide is wounded but he and Dr Pangloss survive. (5)

In Lisbon, Dr Pangloss is hanged by the Inquisition and Candide, spanked. (6) Cunégonde watches the auto-da-fé (act-of-faith) and recognizes Candide. An old woman is sent to fetch Candide. (7) Cunégonde is owned by a Jew and an Inquisitor, (8) but staves off their advances, she says. Candide kills both men. (9)

They flee to Buenos Aires. (10) The old woman, the daughter of a pope and a princess, tells how she lost one of her buttocks. (11-12). In Buenos Aires, the Governor falls in love with Cunégonde. (13) Candide and Cacambo continue to flee the Inquisition and arrive in Paraguay where they find Cunégonde’s brother, a Colonel, who has not died. (14) The Colonel will not let Cunégonde marry Candide who belongs to an inferior class. Candide kills him. (15)

Candide and Cacambo carry on but are captured by Oreillons and nearly eaten. They are spared because they are enemies of the Jesuits. A river propels them into El Dorado or Paradise. In El Dorado, there is no religion, just Deism, but they leave. Sheep, laden with treasures, guide them above mountains. They think they will be able to take Cunégonde back. (17 – 18) On their way to Suriname, they lose their sheep and much of their riches (jewels, etc.). However, Cacambo is sent to buy Cunégonde back while Candide and Martin, a poor philosopher, sail for Venice (19).

During the trip across the sea, Martin tells his philosophy. It is diametrically opposed to that of Dr Pangloss. (20 -21) They stop in Paris where Candide falls prey to various crooks, cheat on Cunégonde and gets in trouble. He has to flee. (22)  As they, Candide and Martin, pass England, they see an admiral who is being executed because he lost a battle. (23)

In Venice, they find no sign of Cunégonde and the old woman, but meet Paquette, the baroness’ suivante, and Giroflée, a friar. (24) They also visit with a man who claims to be happy, the Pococurante.(25) It’s Carnival time in Venice. While they are having dinner with six dethroned and impoverished monarchs, Cacambo surfaces. (26)

Cunégonde is a slave in Constantinople and has grown ugly. Among the galley slaves in the boat taking them to Constantinople, Candide, Martin and Cacambo recognize Pangloss and the son of the Baron. They have not died. They are bought back. (27) Pangloss tells how the Inquisitors failed to kill him. Similarly, the young Baron was unskillfully killed by Candide and is still alive. (28) Candide buys Cunégonde back and is repulsed.

He will marry her nevertheless, despite the young Baron’s objections. (29) They buy a piece of land and start cultivating their garden. Paquette and friar Giroflée also  reappear.  All will cultivate the garden. (30)

Sources and Resources

Candide (Wikipedia)
Candide (summary) EN
Candide (incomplete text) Internet Archives EN
Candide (incomplete text) Gutenberg [EBook #19942] EN
Candide (complete text) literature.org EN
Candide (complete text) Internet Archives FR
Candide (complete text) Ebooks gratuits FR
Candide Google Books
Candide (résumé) FR
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1 July 1646 – 14 November 1716), Wikipedia

____________________
[1] French cinematographer François Truffaut produced L’Enfant sauvage, about a feral child (The Wild Child).

Leonard Berstein conducts his Candide Overture (1956)

??????

© Micheline Walker
12 March 2015
WordPress 

Comments on Racism

02 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by in Racism, the World, United States

≈ 4 Comments

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1024px-Mines_1

Slaves working in a mine. Ancient Greece. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Slavery

We have looked at the abolition of slavery, but we have not discussed racism. The image placed at the top of this post shows that slavery is an ancient institution. In classical Athens two to four-fifths of the population were slaves. (See Slavery, Wikipedia.)

Not all slaves were born to slaves. Many slaves were persons held in captivity during a war, ancestors to our prisoners of war. Poet Horace‘s[1] (8 December 65 BCE – 27 November 8 BCE) father was a slave for several years. He had been “taken captive by the Romans during the Social War.” (See Horace, Wikipedia.)

During the Ottoman wars, Christians were enslaved, but once again enslavement was the result of an armed conflict except that the conflict opposed people of different faiths. These religious conflicts have been numerous, the worst being the Crusades. Mercedarians often rescued captive Christians.

800px-Fathers_of_the_Redemption

The work of the Mercedarians was in ransoming Christian slaves held in Muslim hands (1637). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Serfdom[2] also constituted a form of slavery. In fact, slavery endures: debt bondage, the sex industry, child labour, etc. but many slaves and most serfs were and are of the same ethnicity as their owner, lord or seigneur, which precludes racial discrimination.

  MEDIA FOR: serfdom “Luttrell Psalter” “Luttrell Psalter” Two serfs and four oxen operating one medieval agricultural plow, 14th-century illuminated manuscript, the Luttrell Psalter.

“Luttrell Psalter”
Two serfs and four oxen operating one medieval agricultural plow, 14th-century illuminated manuscript, the Luttrell Psalter. (Photo credit: The Encyclopaedia Britannica)

I must skip examples or never publish this post. Moreover, we have reached a topic defined by the United Nations as “racial discrimination.” (See Racism, Wikipedia).

Slavery differs from Racial Discrimination

racial discrimination
ethnic discrimination

Slavery differs from racial discrimination or racism. In an earlier post, I noted that the United Nations does not define “racism.” Defining racism is difficult because there has been and there is discrimination between ethnic and religious groups. However, the United Nations does define “racial discrimination.”

According to the United Nations‘ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,

“the term ‘racial discrimination’ [a term adopted in 1966] shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.” (See Racism, Wikipedia.)

The above definition of racial discrimination is consistent with Gobineau’s racial theories, in that it combines race and ethnicity.

Arthur de Gobineau

Arthur de Gobineau (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau

gobinisme
Caucasians
Aryanism

Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau[3] (14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) is the author of L’Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines (An Essay on the Inequality of Human Races) (1853 – 1855). According to Gobineau, there was inequality between the races: the white, the black and the yellow, the white race being the superior race. However, although the “white” race was deemed superior to the “black” and “yellow” races, Gobineau looked upon some Caucasians, the white, as inferior to other Caucasians. The term Caucasian is still used, but less frequently, to describe members of the white race. As for the word Aryan, it existed before Gobineau. (See Aryan, Wikipedia)

“He [Gobineau] advanced the theory that the fate of civilizations is determined by racial composition, that white and in particular Aryan societies flourish as long as they remain free of black and yellow strains, and that the more a civilization’s racial character is diluted through miscegenation, the more likely it is to lose its vitality and creativity and sink into corruption and immorality.”[4]

Gobineau’s theories may have influenced Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, but Gobineau was not anti-Semitic and cannot be linked, at least directly, to the slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews by Hitler’s Nazis. Gobineau’s Aryans were “the peoples of European and Western Asian heritage,” including the peoples of the Middle East and India, as in Indo-European languages. (See Caucasian race, Wikipedia.) As for Hitler’s Aryan race, it excluded the Jews.

The “allies” fought Germany not only because Hitler was invading other countries, beginning with the Sudetenland and Poland, but because of Aryanism. In other words, ethnicity played a major role in World War II and, once Hitler seized power, no dissent was tolerated in Germany.

Racism: The Black & the Coloured

Atlantic slave trade
Slavery and racism linked

In the case of the lucrative Atlantic slave trade, or Translatlantic slave trade, which took place between the 16th and the 19th centuries, racism, as most of us understand it, i.e. Gobineau’s black, white and yellow races, was a major factor. In this instance, slavery  and racism were linked. The slaves were black and the black had been considered a less-than-human race before the Transatlantic slave trade. Ironically, black people often captured black people to sell them to slave traders who would send them to both South and North America. You may remember that Ignatius Sancho’s father committed suicide to avoid being subjected to slavery. (See RELATED ARTICLES.) Black Africans themselves were slave traders and slave owners.

During the 14th century CE, Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun (27 May 1332 CE – 19 March 1406 CE) wrote that:

“beyond [known peoples of black West Africa] to the south there is no civilization in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings. They live in thickets and caves, and eat herbs and unprepared grain. They frequently eat each other. They cannot be considered human beings.” “Therefore, the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Negroes) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.” (See Racism, Wikipedia.)

“[D]umb animals!” In the United States, the slaves were also black. Consequently racial discrimination often followed the ignominy of enslavement, especially in the former slave states. But racial discrimination soon extended to people of colour who were neither black nor slaves. They were Amerindians or persons of mixed ancestry (métis). Amerindians were an inferior “race” compared to the white “race,” yet they were not black slaves. They were people of colour.

In a former post, entitled From “Manifest Destiny” to Exceptionalism, I quoted Senator John Caldwell Calhoun (18 March 1782 – 31 Mars 1850) who believed only Caucasians, but which Caucasians, should enter into “our Union:”

“We have never dreamt [sic] of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind, of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race…. We are anxious to force free government on all; and I see that it has been urged… that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religious liberty over all the world, and especially over this continent. It is a great mistake.”  (See Manifest Destiny, Wikipedia.)

I suppose it would be difficult to enslave a person one had not first divested of his or her humanity. It remains that being born black is what I have called, in an earlier post but different context, an accident of birth. If one is white and born to an aristocratic family, it is also an accident of birth.

Being rich is also, to a very large extent, an accident of birth. In Russia, serfdom  was not abolished until 1861 and it impoverished landowners. In North-America, the loss of slaves—free labour—led to a civil war and contributed to racism. The abolition of slavery had impoverished the slave-owners. Shouldn’t former slave-owners and their descendants be compensated for the loss of their slaves? Why should they pay taxes and promote a decent minimum wage? Why should the children of their inferiors be given access to higher education?

There are people who do not want to attend university or cannot pass the entrance examination. It is best for some people to enter a community college and learn a trade. My plumber once told that he would rather be a plumber than a university teacher. There are many ways of earning a living and a decent living. As President Obama noted, in his State of the Union Address (2015), one cannot survive on $15,000.00 a year.

The United States & …

From Slavery to Racism
Impoverishment

As we know, long after the abolition of slavery, racism persists and many citizens feel they should carry a gun to defend themselves. The abolition of slavery did not transform the black into white citizens and it impoverished slave owners and their descendants. Hence the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists, violence by the police and against the police, and, as far as I can see, disrespect towards the President of the United States, who is a man of colour.

Hardline Republicans are the laughing-stock of the world. Yet the world is not exactly innocent. It’s a mea culpa. We’ve all “sinned.”

Romans_(Niketas_Oryphas)_punish_Cretan_Saracens

A 12th-century Byzantine manuscript illumination depicting Byzantine Greeks punishing Cretan Saracens in the 9th century. From the Madrid kylitzes. (Caption and photo credit: Wikipedia)

The truth is that President Obama, the 44th President of the United States, is one a handful of truly superior Presidents of the United States. Not all American Presidents have been qualified to govern a nation. Need I remind anyone of the events of the 2000s? Remember the recession of 2008.[5] The United States nearly went bankrupt and the economy being a global economy, other countries suffered. Was that President Obama’s fault?

I have often wondered whether or not the mental representation of coloured people, expressed by Senator John C. Calhoun a long time ago, has survived. In other words, I have wondered whether or not what we call racism is a built-in mental content. If it is a built-in mental concept, there’s very little room left for reason to lead to a change.

Washington

On what valid grounds can anyone sue the President? On what valid grounds can he be impeached? Opposition is acceptable, but systematic obstructionism and scapegoating are not. Doesn’t John Boehner realize that his behaviour is not acceptable. (Scroll down the following link to “This fiasco reveals…” .)

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/01/30/israeli-ambassador-throws-speaker-boehner-netanyahu-speech-bus.html

Obviously there is a flaw in the system. Congress should not be in a position to paralyze a duly-elected administration and make it necessary for a president to resort to executive orders and his presidential right to veto “bills” so he can carry out his duties.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/01/31/veto-filibuster-threats-ahead-vote-next-week-to-fund-homeland-security-roll/

So I must agree with the author of The Cold Hard Truth who published the image featured below.

Obama.3

Conclusion

Fortunately, we can end racism. President Barack Obama was elected to the presidency of the United States. President Obama did not buy his position. It is clear, therefore, that racism is waning, but racism remains a major issue.

We, humans, must now fight poverty, violence, terrorism. We have to put an end to flogging and beheading.

However, we could first put an end to racism. It can be a society’s decision. There are white supremacists in Canada!

King regards to all of you.

RELATED ARTICLES 

Sources and Resources

_________________________

[1] “Horace”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 05 janv.. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/271624/Horace>.

[2] “serfdom”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 01 févr.. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/535485/serfdom>.

[3] “Joseph-Arthur, comte de Gobineau”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 04 janv.. 2015 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/236572/Joseph-Arthur-comte-de-Gobineau>.

[4] op. cit.

[5]  “The Great Recession of 2008-09: Year In Review 2009”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 31 janv.. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1661642/The-Great-Recession-of-2008-09-Year-In-Review-2009/286636/The-US-Response>.

Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-George(s)


images© Micheline Walker
1 February 2015
WordPress 

The Old Plantation

18 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by in Art

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The Old Plantation, attributed to Rose
The Old Plantation, attributed to John Rose (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Old Plantation, attributed to John Rose, possibly 1785-1795, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA

Slaves and serfs made up around three-quarters of the world’s population at the beginning of the 19th century. (See Slavery, Wikipedia) 

Slavery: Resistance

I used this watercolor in a post dated 10 November 2013. From an artistic point of view, it is a lovely painting. Moreover, according to Wikipedia, “it is the only known painting of its era that depicts African-Americans by themselves, concerned only with each other.” (See The Old Plantation, Wikipedia.)

John Rose, the apparent and probable artist, was a Virginia slave owner who depicted not only “African Americans concerned only with each other,” but also enslaved human beings “resisting” their unfortunate condition. In other words, he portrayed resilience.

“Jumping the Broom”

It is difficult to tell with certainty what John Rose depicted in his “Old Plantation,” but it may be a traditional African marriage practice called jumping the broom. His painting shows slaves trying to have a life of their own. They were slaves, but they built a community, danced, played music, and kept their customs alive.

In other words, slavery was despicable, but many slaves rose above it.

Slavery 

It is not possible to exaggerate the wrongs of slavery in general and North-American slavery, in particular. For instance, if the plantation owner’s wife had a “headache,” she could be replaced. Slave owners often believed they owned the bodies of their slaves. In fact, some slave owners considered the Black they purchased as members of an inferior race. The Black were not altogether “human.”

466px-Remember_Your_Weekly_Pledge_Massachusetts_Anti-Slavey_Society_collection_box
Remember your Weekly Pledge
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 

History

The history of slavery is a very complex topic. There have been many forms of slaves and slaves of many colors and, although serfdom, an international plight,  and slavery in North-America have been obliterated, [h]uman trafficking hasn’t. According to Wikipedia “[h]uman trafficking is primarily used for forcing women and children into sex industries.” In fact, debt-bondage  also remains a form of slavery and it has nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.  

The Wikipedia entry on slavery is extremely informative. There was chattel slavery and  indentured servants, persons who had borrowed money to move to the Americas, but were made to pay for a lifetime. There were children used as soldiers and forced to work. Surrogacy is yet another form of slavery as is the theft of organs and tissues, perhaps the latest form of human trafficking.

To simplify, however, we can reduce enslavement to three areas: forced labor, the sex industry and debt-bondage (poverty).  Also, we are looking at North-American enslavement mainly.

504px-Slaveshipposter-contrast
Slave Ship (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 

Slavery in North-America

North-American slaves were Black and they were used mainly as free and forced labor. They were captured in Africa, mostly West Africa, shipped like sardines to the Americas. They were sold mostly to plantation owners who made them work endless hours and often to death.

The condition of slaves differed from plantation to plantation, but all were human beings bought by human beings who had complete control over their lives and bodies. They were beasts of burden.

According to Wikipedia, “[a]n estimated 12 million Africans arrived in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Of these, an estimated 645,000 were brought to what is now the United States. The usual estimate is that about 15% of slaves died during the voyage, with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous people to the ships. Approximately 6 million black Africans were killed by others in tribal wars.” (See Slavery, Wikipedia.)

Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (Photo credit: Virginia Historical Society)

The Declaration of Independence

The case of slavery in North-America is particularly sad.  Owning slaves, which had been deemed acceptable since settlers started to come to America, was suddenly in violation of the American Declaration of Independence (4 July 1776).

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The American Declaration of Independence  remains an ideal—there is no equality, but if “all men are created equal,”  enslavement could not be justified. In other words, federation could not be achieved unless slavery was abolished, which entailed the economic collapse of the Slave States.[i]

As a result, the Slave States, the South, confederated and started a war to preserve their economy, but although the Union, the North, won the war, ending slavery, a Union victory did impoverish former Slave States and, since  they had owned slaves, former slave owners felt their privileged lifestyle could not be taken away. I should think that many knew slavery was unacceptable, but it had been accepted and had made the plantation owner a wealthy man in a land that promised wealth. King Cotton!

Therefore, although Thomas Jefferson[ii] was able to pass the Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves of 1807 (2nd March 1807) the year England passed the Slave Trade Act, in 1807, the abolition of slavery itself occurred later and incurred a war.

In England, 26 years separate the Slave Trade  Act of 1807 and the abolition of slavery, in 1833, but in North-America, the gap is longer: 58 years. Given new moral imperatives, rooted in the Age Enlightenment (the primacy of reason), the French Revolution (liberté, égalité, fraternité), and Romanticism (the primacy of sentiment or feelings), slavery had to be abolished.

800px-King_Cotton

— King Cotton (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Civil War

Consequently, the Slave States confederated, won the battle of Fort Sumter (12 -14 April 1861), but lost the war (9 April 1865). Confederacy General Robert E. Lee (19 January 1807 – 12 October 1870) surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant (27 April 1822 – 23 July 1885) at Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865, six days before President-elect Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, on 15 April 1865. Slavery had been abolished, but the state of the Union was fragile. Robert E. Lee is as much a hero to Americans as Ulysses S. Grant. But slavery was an evil. One’s life and body belong to oneself.    

From Slavery to Racism, but…

The Emancipation Proclamation (1863), signed by President Lincoln on 1st January 1863, gave their freedom to the slaves inhabiting the Slave States (11) and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) would eradicate slavery, but the Union’s victory fueled racism and led to segregation.  The Ku Klux Klan has not closed shop, there have been too many cases of lynching, and there are voter purges.  No “Act” can do away with racism.

Slavery and segregation have ended in the eyes of the law: but a de jure victory is not necessarily a de facto victory. Yet, President Obama, an African-American, is the duly elected President of the United States and that is a fact. Moreover, although the Affordable Care Act is imperfect, Affordable Care has begun. It may have to be taken out of the hands of Insurance Companies, except for the little extras, but it exists.   

Conclusion

Humankind’s resilience and its wish to be happy are such that victims themselves seek and find little pleasures. Even in the days of slavery, there were fine friendships, and even love, between the Black and the White, not to mention the slave owner and the slave. Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) may contain stereotypes, but it shows immense sympathy toward the Black. Joel Chandler Harris, the author of Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1880) and other Uncle Remus stories, was influenced by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. These books are testimonials. 

The painting at the top of this post is not a lie. There had to be an “Old Plantation” and there is.

The new slave is the son or daughter who cannot afford the house in which he or she was raised.        

_________________________
[i] The Confederacy included South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. After the Confederacy’s victory at Fort Sumter, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina seceded from the United States or the “Union.”  
[ii] Although Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves, he was an abolitionist.
 
 
images
 
© Micheline Walker
November 17, 2013
WordPress
 
 
 

From Manifest Destiny to Exceptionalism

10 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by in United States

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 800px-Emanuel_Leutze_-_Westward_the_Course_of_Empire_Takes_Its_Way_-_CapitolAmerican westward expansion is idealized in Emanuel Leutze‘s famous painting Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (1861). The title of the painting, from a 1726 poem by Bishop Berkeley, was a phrase often quoted in the era of Manifest Destiny, expressing a widely held belief that civilization had steadily moved westward throughout history.” (Caption and photo credit: Manifest Destiny, Wikipedia).  See also the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Sara Carr Upton.

Manifest Destiny

First Description

We have already covered the subject of “Manifest Destiny.” I used one of two descriptions provided by Wikipedia in its entry on “Manifest Destiny.” According to William E. Weeks, Manifest Destiny has the following themes:[i]

  1. the virtue of the American people and their institutions;
  2. the mission to spread these institutions, thereby redeeming and remaking the world in the image of the United States;
  3. the destiny under God to do this work.

This description is the current description of Manifest Destiny, as it has been interpreted, and it is almost synonymous with the currently contested Doctrine of American Exceptionalism.  (See Manifest Destiny and Doctrine of American Exceptionalism, Wikipedia.)

Second Description

The second description, Robert J. Miller‘s, seems an invitation to settle Louisiana, the territory bought from France in 1803 for 15 million dollars. Its three themes are:  

  1. The special virtues of the American people and their institutions;
  2. America’s mission to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian America;
  3. An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty.[ii]

Justifying Colonialism

The Doctrine of Discovery (1823)
The Monroe Doctrine (1823)
The Manifest Destiny (1845)
 

Robert J. Miller has linked Manifest Destiny with the Doctrine of Discovery. The Doctrine of Discovery seems an afterthought. It was formulated in 1823 and legitimized colonialism, but that same year, on 2 December 1823, the Monroe Doctrine put an end to any further attempt to colonize America.

Therefore, neither doctrine is particularly edifying. The past, i.e. two to three hundred years of “discovery,” was rationalized by the Doctrine of Discovery, but “discovery” could not be repeated, except by Americans whose “irresistible destiny” was to stretch their boundaries all the way to the Pacific Ocean and, possibly, to the British territories located north of the 49th parallel, the future Canada.

So Manifest Destiny, a term coined by columnist John O’Sullivan in 1845, is perhaps best defined using William E. Weeks , except that Weeks’ three themes make “Manifest Destiny” more or less consistent with the notion of American Exceptionalism.

American Exceptionalism

Alexis de Tocqueville was the first to use the word “exception” with respect to America. For Tocqueville, American democracy was different from other democracies, but he did not suggest that it was superior to other democracies. On the contrary, other democracies were not to emulate democracy in America.

In his Democracy in America  (1835 and 1840), Alexis de Tocqueville (29 July 1805 – 16 April 1859; aged 53 [tuberculosis]) wrote that “a thousand special causes… have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects[:]”

“The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits, even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism, a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important, have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward; his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease, then, to view all democratic nations under the example of the American people.” (See American Exceptionalism, Wikipedia.)

The Ugly American

Doctrine of Discovery
Monroe Doctrine
Manifest Destiny
Doctrine of American Exceptionalism
 

The Doctrine of Discovery, the Monroe Doctrine and the Manifest Destiny all converged to create the concept of American Exceptionalism. According to the Doctrine of American Exceptionalism, America is qualitatively superior to other nations and its mission is as defined in the Manifest Destiny: to remake the world “in the image of the United States.” The concept of Manifest Destiny, which made it the destiny of Americans to conquer and settle the West, developed into American Exceptionalism, a notion that cannot be linked with Alexis de Tocqueville’s use of the word “exceptional” because it borders on imperialism and has promoted the pejorative but fading image of the “ugly American.”

American Exceptionalism 

If one adheres to the notion of American Exceptionalism, the President of the United States can, theoretically, invade sovereign countries and effect strikes against other countries. Exceptionalism is a deeply-rooted notion that empowers America. However, it also constitutes a threat to US citizens. The United States remains a superpower, but is it America’s duty to protect the entire world, making itself an intruder, but also placing a terrible burden on the war-weary shoulders of its citizens? Not long ago, President Obama was considering a military strike against Syria, which may have been catastrophic.

588px-Oregoncountry2  Wpdms_oregon_territory_1848

The Annexation of Texas and the Oregon Country 

At any rate, if we step back, the concept “Manifest Destiny” was used not only to colonize Louisiana, but also to annex Texas (1845). Louisiana had been claimed by France and sold to the United States.  It was not annexed.  Yet, it was inhabited by Amerindians whose displacement is a great tragedy and who were killed quite wantonly as Americans pushed their boundary all the way to the Pacific Ocean, led by God. 

Manifest Destiny also legitimized the annexation of the Oregon Country, the Pacific Northwest, a disputed territory until the Oregon Treaty, signed on 15 June 1846 in Washington DC. Under the terms of the Oregon Treaty, territory located north of the 49th parallel became British as did Vancouver Island in its entirety. So this is how the West was won, a rather sad chapter in the history of the United States. Sad, because of the displacement of Amerindians. However, as we will see, in the days of “Manifest Destiny,” slavery, formerly a right, morally and legally, was becoming a wrong.

 

In short, the Doctrine of Discovery (1823), the Monroe Doctrine (1823), the Manifest Destiny (1845) and related doctrines I will not discuss, boil down to American Exceptionalism, which Russian President Vladimir Putin is currently challenging.  (See The American Thinker.)

Slavery & Racism

Although Exceptionalism served to legitimize the Annexation of the Republic of Texas (1845), it led to the Mexican-American War of 1846. It also served to justify the annexation of the Oregon Country. However, problems arose with respect to the possible annexation of Mexico. On the one hand, nineteenth-century ideology could not allow slavery. But, on the other hand, did the US want to welcome Mexicans, many of whom were métissés, half-breeds. One can dictate away slavery, but not racism.

Manifest Destiny threatened to expand slavery and was therefore rejected by prominent Americans (such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant and most Whigs and Republicans [today’s Democrats]). (See Manifest Destiny, Wikipedia.) Moreover “[b]y 1843 John Quincy Adams, originally a major supporter, had changed his mind and repudiated Manifest Destiny because it meant the expansion of slavery in Texas.” But what of Métis?

On 4 January 1848, in a speech to Congress, Senator John C. Calhoun (18 March 1782 – 31 March 1850) of South Carolina expressed considerable racism.[iv]  Slavery was useful as slaves provided cheap labour. The loss of slaves would literally impoverish slave owners, usually owners of plantations. Mexicans would not be slaves, but they would not be altogether human.  Let us quote Senator John C. Calhoun:

“We have never dreamt [sic] of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind, of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race…. We are anxious to force free government on all; and I see that it has been urged … that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religious liberty over all the world, and especially over this continent. It is a great mistake.” (See Manifest Destiny, Wikipedia.)

Conclusion

It could be said, therefore, that the Declaration of Independence, signed on 4 July 1776, was mere rhetoric and an ideal until the abolition of slavery in the United States, which would not necessarily eradicate racism. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson (13 April 1743 – 4 July 1826) owned hundreds of slaves, yet he was the principal writer of the Declaration of Independence according to which “all men are created equal:”  

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Given the degree—the debt-ceiling crisis—to which extremist Republicans opposed and still oppose the Affordable Care Act: sabotage! Given also that, according to the Washington Times, not only has the NSA been listening on the conversations of friends of the United States, but it appears it has also used German Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s mobile telephone to spy on President Obama, it could be that the lofty ideals expressed in the US Declaration of Independence have not been attained. One also wonders whether or not the Civil War is over.

“It seems straight out of a grade-B movie, but it has been happening for the past 11 years: The National Security Agency (NSA) has been using Mrs. Merkel as an instrument to spy on the president of the United States. We now know that the NSA has been listening to and recording her cellphone calls since 2002.” Read more:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/30/napolitano-going-the-stasi-one-better-and-in-ameri/#ixzz2jJU4Y6LU
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter (The Washington Times)

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[i] Weeks, William Earl, Building the continental empire: American expansion from the Revolution to the Civil War. (Ivan R. Dee, 1996), p. 61.
[ii] Robert J. Miller, Foreword by Elizabeth Furse, Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark and Manifest Destiny (Praeger: Lincoln Connecticut and London, 2006).
[iii] Weeks, William Earl, loc. cit.
[iv] Arthur de Gobineau (14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) wrote an Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races.  He developed a theory of the Aryan Master Race. He was a friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, which seems very strange.
[v] Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum  
 
    Declaration_independence 
John Trumbull‘s famous painting is often identified as a depiction of the signing of the Declaration, but it actually shows the drafting committee presenting its work to the Congress (Caption and photo credit: Wikipedia)
 

I apologize for the use of certain words. My mother would be very upset.

The Old Plantation, attributed to Rose

The Old Plantation, attributed to John Rose, possibly 1785-1795[v]