Cranial Exercises 1You will need to analyze 2 of the 3 sources below with each question having 2 parts (A and B). You must
answer both parts for 2 of the sources and your answers should be answered as 1A. , 1B. , etc. You will have
until 11:59 to turn your work into Dropbox. I will be available on Zoom (939 2693 1996)
From 2-3:3o p.m. if you have questions, but please make sure to read the directions precisely before you
begin.
Choose 2 (and only 2) sources below to read and analyze Each answer from each part (A, B) for each
source should be approximately 250 words. In total this makes approximately 1000 words for the entirety
of the exercisesd.
Part A: 10 pts, Part B: 15 pts; 25 points total per question
A. Extraction: Look at the primary source and identify the critical features of the source (when the document
was made, the person or type of person who created the document, and the purpose of the document
and for whom). List and briefly discuss the meaning and relevance of each element that you have
extracted.
B. Analysis: Contextualize the primary source and interpret the document and its meaning. Make sure that
you reference material from lecture, facilitating sessions, historical thinking, and American Yawp. While I
don’t expect you to have included material from all those sources, you should demonstrate some breadth
of knowledge. DO NOT USE OUTSIDE SOURCES (e.g. Wikipedia, or Encyclopedias, etc.)
1. Letter from Jourdon Anderson to former slaveowner Col P.H. Anderson, August 7, 1865.
To my old Master, Colonel P. H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee.
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to
come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt
uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they
found at your house…As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that
score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville.
Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly
and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time
we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in
the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a
month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six
hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and
deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and
the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to…If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past,
we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to
the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for
generations without recompense.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant, Jourdon Anderson
2. William T. Hornady, On the Extermination of the American Bison, 1889
Of all the quadrupeds that have lived upon the earth, probably no other species has ever marshaled such
innumerable hosts as those of the American bison. It would have been as easy to count or to estimate the
number of leaves in a forest as to calculate the number of buffaloes living at any given time during the
history of the species previous to 1870…The primary cause of the buffalo’s extermination, and the one
which embraced all others, was the descent of civilization, with all its elements of destructiveness, upon
the whole of the country inhabited by that animal. From the Great Slave Lake to the Rio Grande the home
of the buffalo was everywhere overrun by the man with a gun; and, as has ever been the case, the wild
creatures were gradually swept away…
The buffalo supplied the Indian with food, clothing, shelter, bedding, saddles, ropes, shields, and
innumerable smaller articles of use and ornament. In the United States a paternal government takes the
place of the buffalo in supplying all these wants of the red man, and it costs several millions of dollars
annually to accomplish the task…The Indians of what was once the buffalo country are not starving and
freezing, for the reason that the United States Government supplies them regularly with beef and blankets
in lieu of buffalo. Does any one imagine that the Government could not have regulated the killing of
buffaloes, and thus maintained the supply, for far less money than it now costs to feed and clothe those
54,758 Indians?
3. Sinclair Lewis. Babbit (novel). 1922
There was nothing of the giant in the aspect of the man who was beginning to awaken on the sleepingporch of a Dutch Colonial house in that residential district of Zenith known as Floral Heights.
His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing
in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for
more than people could afford to pay…
He escaped from reality till the alarm-clock rang, at seven-twenty…It was the best of nationally
advertised and quantitatively produced alarm-clocks, with all modern attachments, including cathedral
chime, intermittent alarm, and a phosphorescent dial. Babbitt was proud of being awakened by such a rich
device. Socially it was almost as creditable as buying expensive cord tires…
The evening before, he had played poker at Vergil Gunch’s till midnight, and after such holidays he
was irritable before breakfast. It may have been the tremendous home-brewed beer of the prohibition-era
and the cigars to which that beer enticed him; it may have been resentment of return from this fine, bold
man-world to a restricted region of wives and stenographers, and of suggestions not to smoke so much.
Study Guide 1
Due Date: March 10 by 11:59 to Dropbox
Format: Single-space, Arial or Candara font, 11 font size, regular margins
Evidence: To receive a decent grade, you must explain yourself clearly, answer the question as
asked, provide specific evidence, and demonstrate competence with the subject matter.
Information: You should consult lecture material, historical thinking documents, and American
Yawp when studying. Using a combination of some of these to answer the various questions is
necessary in order to demonstrate understanding.
The items / terms listed below will be the basis of 2 or 3 questions for the exam. While these /
items / terms form the basis of your study, you should develop a solid understanding of the
larger ideas and historical context around them. That is, if you are looking at the Black Codes,
then having a good sense about early Reconstruction is essential.
Black Codes
13th, 14th, 15th, Amendments
Redeemed States / Lost Cause
Dawes Allotment Act
Mythic West
Homesteading
American Expansion
New Immigrants
Harlem Renaissance
Bungalows / Leisure / Hygiene
Early 20th Century Technology &
Consumerism
The exam will consist of several primary sources with associated questions. These questions will
ask you to contextualize (relevant ideas and issues that help you understand) the document(s),
identify the critical features of the sources, and interpret the document.
Historical Thinking 1 Documents — Reconstruction / Memory
Document 1: Readings from Historians explaining Monuments and Memory
Americans are accustomed to having their history presented to them in a clean, orderly package.
How often do we assume that what we see commemorated is the uncontested and unadulterated
story?
–John Barnes. “The Struggle to Control the Past,” The Public Historian, Vol. 30, No.1 (February 2008),
pp. 81-104.
Monuments express three different relationships with those who build them. First, monuments
reflect the relationship between the builders and their understanding of the role past individuals or
groups played in shaping historical events. Second, monuments illustrate the relationship between
past individuals or groups and the people who are erecting the monument. In fact, monuments often
tell us more about the people who build them than the people they intend to commemorate. Third,
monuments express a relationship between those who construct monuments and the times in which
they live. Every monument is designed and built in a specific time and context, and therefore a part
of, and commentary on, its contemporary social, political, cultural, intellectual, and economic
environment.
–John Neff, Jarod Roll and Anne Twitty. A Brief Historical Contextualization of the Confederate
Monument at the University of Mississippi.
Document 2: South Carolina “Red Shirts” Battle Plan (1876)
Every Democrat must feel honor bound to control the vote of at least one Negro, by intimidation,
purchase, keeping him away.
We must attend every Radical meeting. Democrats must go in as large numbers as they can, and well
armed, behave at first with great courtesy and as soon as their speakers begin tell them that they are
liars and are only trying to mislead the ignorant Negroes.
In speeches to Negroes you must remember that they can only be influenced by their fears,
superstitions and cupidity. Treat them so as to show them you are the superior race and that their
natural position is that of subordination to the white man.
Never threaten a man individually. If he deserves to be threatened, the necessities of the times
require that he should die. A dead Radical is very harmless—a threatened Radical is often
troublesome, sometimes dangerous, and always vindictive.
Every club must be uniformed in a red shirt and they must be sure and wear it upon all public
meetings and particularly on the day of election.
–In Dorothy Sterling, ed., The Trouble They Seen: The Story of Reconstruction in the Words of African
Americans (Da Capo Press, 1994), 465.
Document 3: Colfax Signage – 1951 & 1920
Lincoln on Popular Sovereignty
“I particularly object to the NEW position which the avowed principle
of this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it
because it assumes that there can be MORAL RIGHT in the enslaving of
one man by another.”
[The Founders] “began by declaring that all men are created equal;
but now from that beginning we have run down to the other
declaration, that for SOME men to enslave OTHERS is a ‘sacred right
of self-government.'”
[Popular sovereignty] “has been nothing but a living, creeping lie from
the time of its introduction till to-day.”
Constitution of the Confederate States; March 11, 1861
Preamble
We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its
sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent
federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the
favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the Confederate States of America
Constitution of the United States
Preamble
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings
of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.
Constitution of the Confederate States
ARTICLE 1, sec 9
(4) No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of
property in negro slaves shall be passed.
ARTICLE IV
Sec. 2. (I) The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and
sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and
the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.
(2) A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime against the
laws of such State, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall,
on demand of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered
up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.
(3) No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the
Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into
another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from
such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such
slave belongs,. or to whom such service or labor may be due.
Antietam, 1862. Confederate Soldiers
U.S. CIVIL WAR: 1861 – 1865
• Fought between the United States and the Confederate States of America
• Caused primarily by slavery in the southern states
• The United States defeated the Confederate States of America
Reconstruction: 1865 – 1877
•
How to bring former Confederate States back into the
United States?
•
How to integrate approximately 4 million former slaves into the economic,
political, and civil spheres of American life?
JIM CROW ERA: 1880s – 1960s
• Era after Reconstruction when former Confederate States came under
White Democratic control
• New governments created new laws and State Constitutions
• Segregation
• Disenfranchisement
Juneteenth – Texas
Brevet Major General Gordon Granger
June 19, 1865 – Galveston, TX
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from
the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute
equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and
slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that
between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly
at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not
be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in
idleness either there or elsewhere.
13th Amendment (1865)
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to
their jurisdiction
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate
legislation.
Chronology of 13th Amendment
•
April 8, 1864 – The Senate passed the 13th Amendment (S.J. Res. 16) by a vote of 38 to 6.
•
June 15, 1864 – The House of Representatives initially defeated the 13th Amendment (S.J. Res. 16) by a
vote of 93 in favor, 65 opposed, and 23 not voting, which is less than the two-thirds majority needed to
pass a Constitutional Amendment.
•
January 31, 1865 – The House of Representatives passed the 13th Amendment (S.J. Res. 16) by a vote of 119 to 56.
•
December 18, 1865 – Secretary of State William Seward issued a statement verifying the ratification of the
13th Amendment.
Illinois — February 1, 1865
Rhode Island — February 2, 1865
Michigan — February 3, 1865
Maryland — February 3, 1865
New York — February 3, 1865
Pennsylvania — February 3, 1865
West Virginia — February 3, 1865
Missouri — February 6, 1865
Maine — February 7, 1865
Kansas — February 7, 1865
Massachusetts — February 7, 1865
Virginia — February 9, 1865
Ohio — February 10, 1865
Indiana — February 13, 1865
Nevada — February 16, 1865
Louisiana — February 17, 1865
Minnesota — February 23, 1865
Wisconsin — February 24, 1865
Vermont — March 8, 1865
Tennessee — April 7, 1865
Arkansas — April 14, 1865
Connecticut — May 4, 1865
New Hampshire — July 1, 1865
South Carolina — November 13, 1865
Alabama — December 2, 1865
North Carolina — December 4, 1865
Georgia — December 6, 1865
Black Codes
• Black codes were put into place by Southern states at the end of the Civil War
to control the labor, migration, and other activities of the freedpeople.
• Continued legal discrimination and reflected unwillingness of whites to accept
blacks as equals.
• Their general purpose was to secure a supply of cheap labor.
Black Codes — Mississippi
Section 1. All freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes may sue and be sued,
implead and be impleaded, in all the courts of law and equity of this State, and
may acquire personal property, and chooses in action, by descent or purchase,
and may dispose of the same in the same manner and to the same extent that
white persons may: Provided, That the provisions of this section shall not be so
construed as to allow any freedman, free negro or mulatto to rent or lease any
lands or tenements except in incorporated cities or towns, in which places the
corporate authorities shall control the same.
Section 3. All freedmen, free negroes or mullatoes who do now and have
heretefore lived and cohabited together as husband and wife shall be taken
and held in law as legally married, and the issue shall be taken and held as
legitimate for all purposes; and it shall not be lawful for any freedman, free
negro or mulatto to intermarry with any white person; nor for any person to
intermarry with any freedman, free negro or mulatto; and any person who shall
so intermarry shall be deemed guilty of felony, and on conviction thereof shall
be confined in the State penitentiary for life; and those shall be deemed
freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes who are of pure negro blood, and those
descended from a negro to the third generation, inclusive, though one ancestor
in each generation may have been a white person.
Black Codes — Louisiana
Sec. 1. Be it ordained by the police jury of the parish of St. Landry, That no
negro shall be allowed to pass within the limits of said parish without special
permit in writing from his employer. Whoever shall violate this provision shall
pay a fine of two dollars and fifty cents, or in default thereof shall be forced to
work four days on the public road, or suffer corporeal punishment as provided
hereinafter. . . .
Sec. 3. . . . No negro shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within said
parish. Any negro violating this provision shall be immediately ejected and
compelled to find an employer; and any person who shall rent, or give the use
of any house to any negro, in violation of this section, shall pay a fine of five
dollars for each offence.
Sec. 4. . . . Every negro is required to be in the regular service of some white
person, or former owner, who shall be held responsible for the conduct of said
negro. But said employer or former owner may permit said negro to hire his
own time by special permission in writing, which permission shall not extend
over seven days at any one time. . . .
Freedman’s Bureau
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, also known as the
Freedmen’s Bureau, was established in the War Department by an act of Congress.
• Establish March 3, 1865 (13 Stat. 507) – extended twice (1866, 1868)
• Provided services to freedpeople and refugees, while establishing a free labor system.
• Helped negotiate contracts
• Took complaints / resolved disagreements
• Financed schools and teachers (over 1,000 schools established)
SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That the commissioner, under the direction of the
President, shall have authority to set apart, for the use of loyal refugees and freedmen,
such tracts of land within the insurrectionary states as shall have been abandoned, or to
which the United States shall have acquired title by confiscation or sale, or otherwise,
and to every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman, as aforesaid, there shall be
assigned not more than forty acres of such land, and the person to whom it was so
assigned shall be protected in the use and enjoyment of the land for the term of three
years
Freedmen’s Bureau Registered Reports of Murders and Outrages – Travis County, Texas
No. 2202 Reported from: Austin. County offense committed: Travis. Name of criminal: J. P.
Brown, Jim Brown and others. Race: white. Name of party injured: Tom Benson. Nature of
offense: homicide. Race: black. By whom reported & when: Clarence Mauck, November 30th,
1868. Action of Bureau: tried to arrest the parties but failed. Action of Civil Authorities:
(blank). Statement of circumstances: the freedman Tom Benson was employed by the four
mentioned desperadoes to cook for them and some difficulty occurring they shot and
murdered him, throwing his body into the Colorado river where it was found, 2 bullet holes
in it.
No. 1827 Reported from: Austin. County offense committed: Travis. Name of criminal:
Unknown. Race: (blank). Name of party injured: Freed people. Nature of offense: burning a
school house. Race: black. By whom reported & when: W. H. Horton, June 30th, 1868. Action
of Bureau: (blank). Action of Civil Authorities: (blank). Statement of circumstances: the
Freedmen’s school house at Circleville was burnt; it is believed it was done maliciously by
some party or parties unknown. This house has never had any fire in it since its being used as a
school-house.
No. 1594 Reported from: Austin. County offense committed: Travis. Name of criminal:
William Thompson. Race: white. Name of party injured: William Burke. Nature of offense:
homicide. Race: white. By whom reported & when: James Oaks, March 31st, 1868. Action
of Bureau: (blank). Action of Civil Authorities: (blank). Statement of circumstances: Burke
was a U. S. Soldier and was shot without any provocation so for as known. Thompson
escaped of course.
1866 Civil Rights Act
•
•
•
•
Granted citizenship to former slaves
Right to create contracts, sue, give evidence in court protected
Equal treatment of person and property
Penalties for obstructing enforcement of the Act
That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power . . . are
hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens, of every race and color,
. . . shall have the same right, in every State and Territory in the United States, to make and
enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold,
and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and
proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and
shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute,
ordinance, regulation, or custom, to the contrary notwithstanding.
Sec 6. And be it further enacted, That any person who shall knowingly and wilfully obstruct,
hinder, or prevent any officer, or other person charged with the exectution of any warrant or
process insued under the provisions of this act…[shall] be subject to a fine not exceeding one
thousand dollars, and imprisonent not exceeding six months.
Civil Rights Act Opponents:
• Andrew Johnson vetoed the Act – veto overridden by Congress.
• Johnson and Democrats feared that the Civil Rights Act could serve as precedent
if a more radical Congress decided to eliminate other state-tolerated distinctions.
Sen. Reverdy Johnson (D-MD)
“[I]f we can, by legislation, authorize the negro to sue, we are authorized to go one
step at least toward making him a citizen.” “If we authorize him to testify we take
another step; and so to go on by assuming that we authorize him to do every other
act that a white man can do, short of the right of voting, what is there in the
Constitution which denies us the power to stop when we come to the exercise of
that right?”
Representative Michael C. Kerr (D-IN)
“[t]his bill rests upon the theory that Congress has the right to declare who shall
be citizens of the United States, and then to provide that such citizens shall enjoy
in the States all the privileges and immunities allowed therein to the most
favored class of citizens of such State.”
Thomas Nast
Illustration, 1866
Several Riots in the South
• Memphis
• New Orleans
• Mostly blacks killed after calling for more equitable state
Constitutions
Andrew Johnson, “Third Annual Message,” 1868
The Blacks in the South are entitled to be well and humanely governed, and to
have the protection of just laws for all their rights of person and property. If it
were practicable at this time to give them a Government exclusively their
own, under which they might manage their own affairs in their own way, it
would become a grave question whether we ought to do so, or whether
common humanity would not require us to save them from themselves…
It is the glory of white men to know that they have had these qualities in
sufficient measure to build upon this continent a great political fabric and to
preserve its stability for more than ninety years, while in every other part of
the world all similar experiments have failed. But if anything can be proved
by known facts, if all reasoning upon evidence is not abandoned, it must be
acknowledged that in the progress of nations negroes have shown less
capacity for government than any other race of people.
Dred Scott
•
•
•
•
Slave in Missouri
Lived with own in Illinois (free state)
Lived in Wisconsin Territory (free territory)
Scott sued for freedom, claiming his
residence in free territory made him a free
man.
• Court Ruling:
• Scott, as well as all other blacks, slave or
free were not citizens.
• Decision argued that since slaves were
never intended to be anything other than
slaves, that they had no claim to citizenship.
14th Amendment (1868)
•
•
•
•
•
Citizenship to those born in the United States
Privileges and Immunities protected
Due Process – life, liberty, or property
Equal Protection of the Laws
Voting Protection
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall
make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their
respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians
not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President
and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and
judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the
male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United
States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis
of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male
citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such
state.
Opposition to the 14th Amendment
Representative Charles E. Phelps (UU / D-MD)
if “[t]he ‘privileges or immunities’ of citizens are such as Congress may by law
ascertain and define,” then an “act of Congress to define the privileges and
immunities of citizens could and doubtless would be made to include the privileges
of voting, serving upon juries, and of holding office. Those privileges must, then, be
incorporated into the constitution and laws of each of the States . . . .”
Reconstruction Act of 1867
• Each former Confederate State must ratify the 14th Amendment
• Elect new officials that were loyal to the Union
• Each former Confederate State must write a new Constitution providing
manhood suffrage.
• Divided the former Confederacy (except Tennessee) into 5 military districts.
• To supervise elections and protect officeholders and freedpeople.
15th Amendment (1870)
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude.
“Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot”
–Frederick Douglass, May 1865
Hiram Revels (seated at far left) of Mississippi, the first African American U.S. senator, along with black members of
the House of Representatives (seated, left to right) Benjamin S. Turner of Alabama, Josiah T. Walls of Florida, and
Joseph H. Rainey and Robert Brown Elliott of South Carolina and (standing) Robert C. Delarge of South Carolina and
Jefferson H. Long of Georgia. – 41st and 42 Congress
Mississippi State Legislature
South Carolina
State Legislature,
1868 –
Flyer created and
distributed to
create fear
Ku Klux Klan
• founded in Tennessee,
1866
• Sought to stop blacks
from voting through
intimidation and terror
Image: Mississippi Klan
members
January 27, 1872, Harper’s
Weekley
The caption reads, “OF COURSE HE WANTS TO VOTE THE DEMOCRATIC TICKET!” The
second line says, “Democratic ‘Reformer.’ ‘You’re as free as air, ain’t you? Say you are,
or I’ll blow yer black head off!”
Harper’s Weekly
Thomas Nast
24 Oct 1874
Caption reads:
“Worse Than Slavery”
• White League – left
• KKK – right
Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)
It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship
of a state, which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different
characteristics or circumstances in the individual.
We think this distinction and its explicit recognition in this Amendment of great
weight in this argument, because the next paragraph of this same section, which is
the one mainly relied on by the plaintiffs in error, speaks only of privileges and
immunities of citizens of the United States, and does not speak of those of citizens of
the several states. The argument, however, in favor of the plaintiffs, rests wholly on
the assumption that the citizenship is the same and the privileges and immunities
guaranteed by the clause are the same.”
—Slaughterhouse Cases: 83 U.S. 36, 73-74 (1873)
The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities
clause affected only rights of United States citizenship and not state
citizenship. Therefore the butchers’ Fourteenth Amendment rights had not
been violated.
Redeemers
• White Southerners who wanted to reclaim the South from federal oversight
• Saw those who supported Reconstruction and Republican Party as in the way
• Sought to relegate blacks to second class citizens
Colfax – Louisiana
• Contested 1872 election for governor of Louisiana and local offices
• Democrats, armed with rifles and a small cannon, overpowered Republican
freedmen and state militia (also black) trying to protect the Grant Parish
courthouse in Colfax
• Most of the freedmen were killed after they surrendered
• Estimates of the number of dead have varied, ranging from 62 to 153
• 3 whites died but the number of black victims was difficult to determine because
bodies had been thrown into the river or removed for burial
Dates: When re-entered Union / When “Redeemed” under Democratic Control
Civil Rights Cases (1883)
Civil Rights Act of 1875: “all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States
shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of
• the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns,
• public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public
amusement;
• and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any
previous condition of servitude”
Deemed unconstitutional.
• Congress lacked the constitutional authority under the enforcement
provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to outlaw racial discrimination by
private individuals and organizations, rather than state and local
governments
Mississippi Plan
• New State Constitution used general language and avoided specific use of race or
ethnicity.
• Statutes and laws were enforced often at the local level and in a discriminatory
fashion.
• Voting Registration (frequent re-registration, long residency, street names)
• Literacy Tests (understanding clause, grandfather clause, 8 ballot box)
• Firearm Restrictions
Article 12 Section 244, from its enactment in November 1890 to its repeal in
December 1975:
On and after the first day of January, A. D., 1892, every elector shall, in addition to
the foregoing qualifications, be able to read any section of the constitution of this
State; or he shall be able to understand the same when read to him, or give a
reasonable interpretation thereof. A new registration shall be made before the next
ensuing election after January the first, A.D., 1892.
Jim Crow
From the 1880s through the 1960s Jim Crow laws were enacted throughout the South
• All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company
shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the
white and colored races. Alabama
• All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and
a person of negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever
prohibited. Florida
• All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant, shall serve either white people
exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within
the same room or serve the two races anywhere under the same license. Georgia
• Separate schools shall be maintained for the children of the white and colored
• races. Mississippi
• Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but
shall continue to be used by the race first using them. North Carolina
Jim Crow: Separate Car Act, 1890 – Louisiana
• In 1890, the State of Louisiana proposed the “Separate Car” Act, which
would require railroads to maintain “equal and separate” facilities for
whites and non-whites. Despite the presence of 16 black legislators in the
state assembly, the law was passed.
• Though segregation was widely practiced at this time, this was the first
state Jim Crow law passed that officially required racial segregation in
any business or public service.
• The Separate Car Act required either separate passenger coaches or
partitioned coaches to provide segregated accommodations for each race.
Passengers were required to sit in the appropriate areas or face a $25
fine or a 20-day jail sentence.
Continued Segregation and Disenfranchisement
• Kentucky, Arkansas, and Georgia passed railroad segregation laws throughout 1891.
• That year, the Fifty-second Congress contained only one black Congressman, down
from the 19th century high of eight who served in the 1875-77 Congress.
• Congress abandoned a bill that authorized federal supervision of elections (Lodge Bill).
•
Nationwide, one hundred thirteen blacks died from lynching in 1891.
Plessy v. Ferguson
• June 7, 1892, Plessy boarded a New Orleans train and sat in the “whites only” car.
• Plessy then informed the conductor that he was black and the railroad officials,
following through on the arrangement, arrested Plessy and charged him with
violating the Separate Car Act. Tourgée’s plan was officially in motion.
• In the Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans, Tourgée argued that the
law requiring “separate but equal accommodations” was unconstitutional as it
violated the 13th & 14th Amendments. Further, as illustrated by Plessy’s arrest,
there was no way for railroad companies to enforce the law. (Had Plessy not
announced himself, no one would have ever known he was black.)
• ————————————-• Three and a half years later, on April 13, 1896, the US Supreme
• The Supreme Court reasoned that while the Thirteenth Amendment abolished
slavery, it could not protect African Americans from state aws that treated them
unequally.
• The language of the Court further determined that the Louisiana law was
constitutional under the 14th Amendment in its establishment of“separate but
equal” cars for African Americans.
Speeches of Hon. George H. White, of North Carolina, in the House of
Representatives, Monday, February 5, and Friday, February 23, 1900.
As a humble representative of this House, I would like to feel free to discuss
and aid in the disposition of these questions in the same way that my 355
colleagues on this floor do.
Since January 1, 1898, to April 25, 1899, there were lynched in the United States
166 persons, and of this number 155 occurred in the South. Of the whole
number lynched, there were 10 white and 156 colored. The thin disguise usually
employed as an excuse for these inhuman outrages is the protection of the
virtue among white women.
———————————————————————————————————“The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward
Slavery.”
–W.E.B. DuBois (1935)
A Trifle Embarrassed
Imperialism
•
•
•
Projection of state power (preeminently administrative, military and
economic) from one sovereign center into regions beyond
established frontiers or borders.
Expansionist in nature / connotation
Economic / Political / Social (Moral) rationale / Balance of Power
Reasons for U.S. Expansion in late 19th century
• Prefigured by westward expansion?
• Mobilized by Cleveland and Harrison?
• Economic downtowns of 1870s / 1890s?
A cartoon in Puck, December 1, 1897, imagines the
annexation of Hawaii by the United States as a shotgun wedding.
American Progress, John Gast (c. 1872)
Turner’s Frontier Thesis (1893)
In a recent bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890 appear these significant words: “Up to
and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been
so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the
discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in
the census reports. This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to
our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great
West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American
settlement westward, explain American development…
Our early history is the study of European germs developing in an American environment. . . . The
frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist. It
finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the
railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in
the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an
Indian palisade around him. Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp
stick; he shouts the war cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion. In short, at the frontier the
environment is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or
perish, and so he fits himself into the Indian clearings and follows the Indian trails. . . . At first, the
frontier was the Atlantic coast. It was the frontier of Europe in a very real sense. Moving westward, the
frontier became more and more American. As successive terminal moraines result from successive
glaciations, so each frontier leaves its traces behind it, and when it becomes a settled area the region
still partakes of the frontier characteristics. Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a steady
movement away from the influence of Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines. And
to study this advance, the men who grew up under these conditions, and the political, economic, and
social results of it, is to study the really American part of our history. . .
Hunters shooting buffalo as the Kansas-Pacific Railroad
cuts across the West, 1870s
Buffalo Hides
Buffalo Skulls
Annual Meeting of the Indian Rights Association, 1885
Dr. Roads stated that the meeting marked the completion of the third year of the existence
of the Association. He referred to what had been accomplished for the destitute Indians in
Montana during the past year, and to other work in which the association assisted. This
included the defence of the Crow Creek reservation, the grant to Indians of individual
rights to lands, and the appropriation by Congress of $1,000,000 for educational purposes
among the tribes, with the proviso that Indians benefited by it were to come under the
jurisdiction of the Federal Laws.
During the year, he said, 14 new branches of the Indian Rights Association had been
organized, making in all 27 branches in 11 States of the Union.
Professor C.C. Painter, the Washington Agent of the Association, was the next speaker.
He said the difficulties of the Indian problem were not due to the Indians, but to the
method of the Government in dealing with them. The policy of the general Government,
he said, was to regard the Indians as an uncivilized stranger or outcast, not worthy of the
consideration of men. He spoke of the wrongs which the Indians had suffered through, the
insatiable greed of white men, and of their utter helplessness to protect themselves by
means of law.
The closing address was made by Herbert Welsh, Secretary of the Indian Rights
Association, who spoke of a trip recently made to Dakota. At Crow Creek, Pine Ridge and
other places, he found Indians who were eager to obtain the protection of the law and the
encouragement of the Government in their efforts to cultivate land and grow into the ways
of the white people. Many of them, he said, were Christians, whose confidence in the
Government and in the whites had been forfeited by missionaries and careful agents.
Civilize Him by Treating Him as a Human, Los Angeles Times, 1887
The way to civilize the Indian, or anybody else, is to treat him in a civilized way. The Dawes Indian Bill
proceeds simply and confidently on that principle, but between the Indian Rights Association and the
Indian Defense Association this bill came near slipping into the Congressional waste basket. Both of the
philanthropic associations named are composed of men who are sincere in their friendship for the Indian.
But there appears to have been a serious misunderstanding of the provisions of the bill on the part of the
last-name organization. Dr. Byron Sunderland, the President’s pastor, declared that he wished there
might be “a wall of adamant as high as the stars and as permanent as heaven erected around the Sioux
Reservation.” However desirable that kind of everlasting isolation might be, it is no more possible than it
would be for the timid Doctor to fence in a part of the sky above his own little garden wall. His motive was
no doubt good enough. He is anxious that no wrong should be done the Indian, and that he should’nt be
deprived by force or fraud of any of his natural or treaty rights.
But the fact is the Daws’ land-in-severalty bill is no hasty or ill-considered piece of legislation. [The Bill]
gave the President the right to allot land in severalty to individual Indians…independently of the consent
of the tribe – a wise provision, tending to encourage Indians to move out from tribal relations, and, as
individuals, to become industrious and civilized men – but the bill did not give the President the right to
break up that portion of the reservation not taken up by individual allotments, but vested the same in a
tribal patent, to be held by the United States for a period of 25 years, and at the expiration of that time to
be conveyed to the tribe…
On the whole, therefore, we believe the new policy is one essentially just and kind for the Indian, as well
as for the public good.
The Indians Severalty Law, New York Times, 1887
A few weeks hence the Interior Department will begin to enforce a law whose enactment marked the
adoption of a new policy concerning the Indians and the reservations which they occupy. Probably the
importance of the Severalty act is not fully comprehended by a majority of the people. The principle
which it embodies has been set forth with more or less clearness in the bills which two or three
Congresses failed to pass, and when at last the Forty-ninth Congress accepted it the measure
received less attention from the public than it deserved. There are now upon the reservations about
260,000 Indians, and they occupy 135,000,000 acres of land, a very small part of which they use. The
purpose of the law is to place these Indians…upon farms of reasonable size; to secure these farms to
them in fee simple in such a way that they shall be unable to sell or give away the until the expiration
of a period of 25 years; to open the surplus lands to white settlers under the homestead laws and for
the pecuniary benefit of the Indians, and to make every Indian who takes a farm so allotted in
severalty a citizen of the United States…
Fortunately, the surplus land to be released can be taken by settlers only under the homestead laws. If
the same restriction could be enforced with reference to the lands released to settlement by the
opening of the railroad indemnity belts there would be insured a more equitable distribution of those
lands than can be made under the other laws which have been so extensively used by land grabbers.
Boys from the Lakota tribe on their arrival (left) and during their stay (right) at
Carlisle
Harper’s Weekly, January 16, 1869
Grover Cleveland — State of the Union 1893 – 4 December 1893
To the Congress of the United States:
The condition of the Indians and their ultimate fate are subjects which are related to a
sacred duty of the Government and which strongly appeal to the sense of justice and
the sympathy of our people.
Our Indians number about 248,000. Most of them are located on 161 reservations,
containing 86,116,531 acres of land. About 110,000 of these Indians have to a large
degree adopted civilized customs. Lands in severalty have been allotted to many of
them. Such allotments have been made to 10,000 individuals during the last fiscal year,
embracing about 1,000,000 acres. The number of Indian Government schools opened
during the year was 195, an increase of 12 over the preceding year. Of this total 170
were on reservations, of which 73 were boarding schools and 97 were day schools.
Twenty boarding schools and 5 day schools supported by the Government were not
located on reservations. The total number of Indian children enrolled during the year as
attendants of all schools was 21,138, an increase of 1,231 over the enrollment for the
previous year.
I am sure that secular education and moral and religious teaching must be important
factors in any effort to save the Indian and lead him to civilization. I believe, too, that the
relinquishment of tribal relations and the holding of land in severalty may in favorable
conditions aid this consummation. It seems to me, however, that allotments of land in
severalty ought to be made with great care and circumspection. If hastily done, before
the Indian knows its meaning, while yet he has little or no idea of tilling a farm and no
conception of thrift, there is great danger that a reservation life in tribal relations may be
exchanged for the pauperism of civilization instead of its independence and elevation.
Indian Reservations, ca. 1890
PLESSY v. FERGUSON. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 163 U.S. 537, May 18, 1896
MR. JUSTICE BROWN, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.
This case turns upon the constitutionality of an act of the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana,
passed in 1890, providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races. The first section
of the statute enacts “that all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this State, shall
provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races, by providing two or more
passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to
secure separate accommodations: Provided, That this section shall not be construed to apply to street
railroads. No person or persons, shall be admitted to occupy seats in coaches, other than, the ones,
assigned, to them on account of the race they belong to.”…
The petition for the writ of prohibition averred that petitioner was seven eighths Caucasian and one eighth
African blood; that the mixture of colored blood was not discernible in him, and that he was entitled to
every right, privilege and immunity secured to citizens of the United States of the white race;…
The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before
the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon
color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon
terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation in places where they
are liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and
have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in
the exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment
of separate schools for white and colored children, which has been held to be a valid exercise of the
legislative power even by courts of States where the political rights of the colored race have been longest
and most earnestly enforced…
A “Jim Crow” Case, Los Angeles Times, May 19, 1896
WASHINGTON, May 18. – The Supreme Court decided today in what is known as the “Jim Crow”
car case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, that the statues of Louisiana requiring railroad companies to
supply separate coaches for white and colored persons is constitutional , affirming the decision of
the court below. Justice Brown delivered the opinion. Justice Harlan dissented.
The “Jim Crow” Cars.
Separation of White and Colored Railroad Passengers, New York Times, Dec 16, 1890
There are a number of important railroad bills before the South Carolina Legislature, but the one in
which the people State take the greatest interest is a measure compelling the railroad companies to
provide separate cars for white and colored persons. The bill is in the hands of the Railroad
Committee of the House…
Capt. McBee began by saying that it was clearly to the interest of the railroad companies to have the
question of the association of white and colored persons when traveling settled as soon as possible,
but he did not consider it fair that the solution of a race problem that had puzzled the wisest men in
the South for a quarter of century should be forced upon the railroad managers. To separate the
railroads vexatious delays and troubles and expenses which would lead to bankruptcy…
Under such a law the railroads would be forced to bear an enormous increase in expenses without a
single additional dollar in receipts. If forced to double their space, they would, in self-defense, have
to furnish poor accommodations…
Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882
An Act to Execute Certain Treaty Stipulations Relating to Chinese
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America
in Congress assembled, That from and after the expiration of ninety days next after the
passage of this act, and until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act,
the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended;
and during such suspension it shall not be lawful for any Chinese laborer to come, or having
so come after the expiration of said ninety days, to remain within the United States.
SEC. 6. That in order to the faithful execution of articles one and two of the treaty in this act
before mentioned, every Chinese person other than a laborer who may be entitled by said
treaty and this act to come within the United States
SEC. 14. That hereafter no State court or court of the United States shall admit Chinese to
citizenship; and all laws in conflict with this act are hereby repealed.
SEC. 15. That he words “Chinese laborers,” wherever used in this act, shall be construed to
mean both skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining.
Add material
Immigrants
Immigration Numbers
An illustration in the 1912
publication The New Immigration
A Sociologist Portrays the Racial Dimensions of Immigrants from Europe, 1914
the conditions of settlement of this country caused those of uncommon energy and venturesomeness to
outmultiply the rest of the population. Thus came into existence the pioneering breed; and this breed
increased until it is safe to estimate that fully half of white Americans with native grandparents have one or
more pioneers among their ancestors…
Now we confront the melancholy spectacle of this pioneer breed being swamped and submerged by an
overwhelming tide of latecomers from the old-world hive…Certainly never since the colonial era have the
foreign-born and their children formed so large a proportion of the American people as at the present moment.
In this sense it is fair to say that the blood now being injected into the veins of our people is “sub-common.” To
one accustomed to the aspect of the normal American population, the Caliban type shows up with a frequency
that is startling. .. You are struck by the fact that from ten to twenty per cent. Are hirsute, low-browed, bigfaced persons of obviously low mentality. Not that they suggest evil. They simply look out of place in black
clothes and stiff collar, since clearly they belong in skins, in wattled huts at the close of the Great Ice Age.
These oxlike men are descendants of those who always stayed behind…
That the Mediterranean peoples are morally below the races of northern Europe is as certain as any social
face…
The Spanish-American War: The Caribbean
Charge of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill
The Spanish-American War: The Pacific
The destruction of the battleship Maine in
Havana Harbor provided the occasion for
patriotic pageants.
American Empire, 1898
Cartoon commenting on the American effort to
suppress the movement for Philippine independence
Emilio Aguinaldo
Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company
William Howard Taft
Some of the 1,200 Filipinos exhibited at the 1904
Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
White Man’s Burden – Rudyard
Kipling
Take up the White Man’s burden-Send forth the best ye breed-Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man’s burden-In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.
Take up the White Man’s burden-The savage wars of peace-Fill full the mouth of Famine
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man’s burden-No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper-The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man’s burden-And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard-The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Take up the White Man’s burden-Ye dare not stoop to less-Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
White man’s Burden –cont’d.
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man’s burden-Have done with childish days-The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought
wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
Pear’s Soap Ad
Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company
The Two Great Missioners of Civilization, 1898
Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company
Spanish-American War as National Reconciliation
Give Me Liberty!: An American History, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2013 W.W. Norton & Company
A Republican campaign poster from the election of 1900
Theodore Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress, 6 December 1904
•
•
•
•
•
•
The Nation continues to enjoy noteworthy prosperity. Such prosperity is of course primarily due to the high individual
average of our citizenship, taken together with our great natural resources; but an important factor therein is the working of
our long-continued governmental policies. The people have emphatically expressed their approval of the principles
underlying these policies, and their desire that these principles be kept substantially unchanged, although of course applied
in a progressive spirit to meet changing conditions.
Foreign Policy
…It is not merely unwise, it is contemptible, for a nation, as for an individual, to use high-sounding language to proclaim its
purposes, or to take positions which are ridiculous if unsupported by potential force, and then to refuse to provide this
force. If there is no intention of providing and keeping the force necessary to back up a strong attitude, then it is far better
not to assume such an attitude.
The steady aim of this Nation, as of all enlightened nations, should be to strive to bring ever nearer the day when there shall
prevail throughout the world the peace of justice. There are kinds of peace which are highly undesirable, which are in the
long run as destructive as any war. Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a wilderness and called it peace. Many
times peoples who were slothful or timid or shortsighted, who had been enervated by ease or by luxury, or misled by false
teachings, have shrunk in unmanly fashion from doing duty that was stern and that needed self-sacrifice, and have sought to
hide from their own minds their shortcomings, their ignoble motives, by calling them love of peace. The peace of tyrannous
terror, the peace of craven weakness, the peace of injustice, all these should be shunned as we shun unrighteous war. The
goal to set before us as a nation, the goal which should be set before all mankind, is the attainment of the peace of justice,
of the peace which comes when each nation is not merely safe-guarded in its own rights, but scrupulously recognizes and
performs its duty toward others. …The eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty must be exercised, sometimes to guard
against outside foes; although of course far more often to guard against our own selfish or thoughtless shortcomings.
Cont’d
•
•
•
•
Policy Toward Other Nations of the Western Hemisphere
It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards the other nations of the
Western Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries
stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If
a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps
order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence
which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require
intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe
Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the
exercise of an international police power. If every country washed by the Caribbean Sea would show the progress in stable
and just civilization which with the aid of the Platt Amendment Cuba has shown since our troops left the island, and which
so many of the republics in both Americas are constantly and brilliantly showing, all question of interference by this Nation
with their affairs would be at an end…
In asserting the Monroe Doctrine, in taking such steps as we have taken in regard to Cuba, Venezuela, and Panama, and in
endeavoring to circumscribe the theater of war in the Far East, and to secure the open door in China, we have acted in our
own interest as well as in the interest of humanity at large. There are, however, cases in which, while our own interests are
not greatly involved, strong appeal is made to our sympathies. Ordinarily it is very much wiser and more useful for us to
concern ourselves with striving for our own moral and material betterment here at home than to concern ourselves with
trying to better the condition of things in other nations. We have plenty of sins of our own to war against, and under
ordinary circumstances we can do more for the general uplifting of humanity by striving with heart and soul to put a stop to
civic corruption, to brutal lawlessness and violent race prejudices here at home than by passing resolutions and wrongdoing
elsewhere. Nevertheless there are occasional crimes committed on so vast a scale and of such peculiar horror as to make us
doubt whether it is not our manifest duty to endeavor at least to show our disapproval of the deed and our sympathy with
those who have suffered by it. The cases must be extreme in which such a course is justifiable…