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Bleron Suma

After analyzing Professor Edna Greene Medford’s lecture “Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation”, I was able to obtain a better understanding of President Lincoln’s percussion on the freedom of African Americans. Lincoln desired to free African Americans from slavery because he didn’t understand those who would claim the promise of the declaration of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for themselves but not for others. He understood that if people weren’t going to fight for the lives of African Americas then he would have to do all he could alongside blacks to gain their freedoms and preserve the union. I knew that President Lincoln was a strong advocate for the black’s freedom, but I was unaware that he represented an African American woman’s court case. He argued that selling African Americans in Illinois was illegal due to Illinois being a free state.

In the one of the sections of her writing, she illustrates  into Lincoln’s actions to invite these former slaves and inform them that he was able to get congress to acquire funds to ship black people once freed to a whole other country. This doesn’t add up. Why would President Lincoln insist they fight in a war for their freedom in America just to be shipped to another country for their efforts? Knowing this, it made me question Professor Medford’s statement when she says that Lincoln did not want to originally include black men in the military because they wouldn’t be strong enough to stand up against their former owners on the battlefield. She then states, “He found out very quickly that black men were anything but cowards and that they were spoiling for a fight”. I believe he was very disappointed in what America has become and he knew that even with time African Americans will still be wrongly treated within America, but he wanted to ensure that equality was written truthfully within the lines of the constitution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_9DXEnEd-Q

This may be useful.  Knowledge is power.

Please reflect upon this information.  Does it change your thought process on the current health crisis?  What other sources of information can you pursue?

Research as inquiry means finding what you need to know to stay healthy and prosper.

http://learningabe.info/fd_ReadandWrite

After having a close look  at “Professor Medford’s lecture on video”, it quite  didn’t effect my views on  Wilentz but it did make me think more deeper about Hannah Jones’ writing in the “The 1619 Project”. In Hannah Jones, she mentions Thomas Jefferson and James Madison accountable for their actions in the wrong treatment of African Americans. Also makes a statement that the proclamation he allowed ex slaves to join the union army and fight against their former owners. Hannah Jones, she mentions, “He believed that free black people were a ‘‘troublesome presence’’ incompatible with a democracy intended only for white people”. In this part of her writing piece, she also involves  Lincoln’s actions to bring in the former slaves and inform them that he was able to get congress to acquire funds to ship black people once freed to a whole other country. This wasn’t sufficient enough. A question rises up “Why would President Lincoln insist in a war for their freedom in America just to be shipped to another country for their efforts? Already knowing about this, it also me was mentioned in Professor Medford’s video where she says that Lincoln did not want to originally include black men in the military because they wouldn’t be strong enough to stand up against their former owners on the battlefield. She also then says “He found out very quickly that black men were anything but cowards and that they were spoiling for a fight”. According to me , I believe that  he was very dismayed in what America has become and he knew that even, the time of African Americans was still being treated wrongly within America but he wanted to make sure that equality was written truthfully within the lines of the constitution.

“After viewing (Professor Medford’s lecture on video), it didn’t really change my viewing of Wilentz but it did make me look more closely into Hannah Jones’ writing in the “The 1619 Project”. In her writing, she holds Thomas Jefferson and James Madison accountable for their actions in the wrong treatment of African Americans but she also makes a point about Abraham Lincoln. She finds him guilty because within his proclamation he allowed ex slaves to join the union army and fight against their former owners. In her writing, she states, He believed that free black people were a ‘‘troublesome presence’’ incompatible with a democracy intended only for white people“. In this section of her writing, she goes into Lincoln’s actions to invite these former slaves and inform them that he was able to get congress to acquire funds to ship black people once freed to a whole other country. This doesn’t add up. Why would President Lincoln insist they fight in a war for their freedom in America just to be shipped to another country for their efforts? Knowing this, it made me question Professor Medford’s statement when she says that Lincoln did not want to originally include black men in the military because they wouldn’t be strong enough to stand up against their former owners on the battlefield. She then states “He found out very quickly that black men were anything but cowards and that they were spoiling for a fight”. I think he was very disappointed in what America has become and he knew that even with time African Americans will still be wrongly treated within America but he wanted to ensure that equality was written truthfully within the lines of the constitution.”

Perhaps this is what Wilentz means about the “relentless unforeseen.”  Despite Lincoln’s fear that free African Americans would never get along with whites in the U.S. after the Civil war, because whites would not accept them, once he took the action to free the slaves in the south during the war and at the same time started the African American brigades in the union army, inviting them to join these brigades, even though he didn’t know it at the time, full citizenship for African Americans would be necessary in the U.S. and perhaps he came to recognize this before he was assassinated.

The point is, once you have the African American military troops, the demand for citizenship and equality is unstoppable. No, it didn’t come immediately; there was continued debate before the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments; and after the 1865-1877 reconstruction period, the south reverted to a racist Jim Crow society.  Nevertheless the idea of asking the U.S. army veterans of the African-American brigades to leave the U.S. after the war was obviously untenable and in fact impossible.  Which is what happened.  They had no intention of leaving and stayed and continued to demand equal rights.

We do not know what is going to happen in the future.  But we must fight for our ideals and what we believe is right.

So for Hannah-Jones to just say that Lincoln didn’t believe in equality does not tell the whole story. Perhaps at one point he didn’t.  Professor Medford in her lecture says he changed his view during this time.

Perhaps it isn’t so much what a person or some people believe, but what we do to change the laws to create a more just society.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?466542-8/abraham-lincoln-emancipation

Super informative lecture.  Please view and discuss in your reflection.  What did you learn that you didn’t know before?  How does this change your thinking on Hannah-Jones and Wilentz?

Hannah-Jones and Wilentz

 

Hannah-Jones, p 18.

“Yet in making the argument against Britain’s tyranny, one of the colonists’ favorite rhetorical devices was to claim that they were the slaves — to Britain. For this duplicity, they faced burning criticism both at home and abroad. As Samuel Johnson, an English writer and Tory opposed to American independence, quipped, ‘‘How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?’’

Here Hannah-Jones criticizes the 1776 founders for claiming they themselves were slaves to the English king; meanwhile they either held African slaves themselves or allowed others (the Southern planter class) to hold slaves.

Yes, this was hypocritical, and it seems that those in this 1776 period were aware of it.

On the other hand, we can also see that there was no simple way in 1776 the break away colonists could have simply abolished slavery at this point. The southern colonies were committed to this economic method of agricultural production. So what did they do? Were they concerned with the injustice of slavery as the first priority? No. They weren’t. Should they have? Perhaps.

Does this make it true that the U.S. was founded on the basis of racism?

Wilentz says that at the time, the people in 1776 did not know what the future would be. This is the “relentless unforeseen.” His article discusses the abolition movement in the 1776 period. He claims that the U.S. revolutionary period was part of and perhaps the major movement towards abolition of slavery.

More and more in these pessimistic times, we are learning once again, and with a sense of justice, that the United States and its past are rooted in vicious racial slavery and the lasting inequities that are slavery’s legacy. We learn too little or not at all that the United States and its past are also rooted in the struggle against slavery, and in the larger revolutionary transformation of moral perception that produced that struggle. (Wilentz p.3)

the United States was defined, from the start, neither by American slavery alone nor by American antislavery but in their conflict (p.4)

 

But to those who believe that the United States was based on racism at the beginning and has always been racist and always will be,

Slavery, in this view, wasn’t simply an important part of American society at the founding and after; it defined a nation born in oppression and bad faith. While this view acknowledges the ideals of equality proclaimed by Jefferson and others, it regards them as hollow. Even after slavery ended, the racism that justified slavery persisted, not just as an aspect of American life but at its very core. (Wilentz p.5)

this (view) is vulnerable to an easy cynicism. Once slavery’s enormity is understood, as it should be, not as a temporary flaw but as an essential fact of American history, it can make the birth of the American republic and the subsequent rise of American democracy look as nothing more than the vindication of glittering generalities about freedom and equality founded on the oppression of blacks, enslaved and free, as well as the expropriation and slaughter of Native Americans. It can resemble, ironically, the reactionary proslavery insistence that the egalitarian self-evident truths of the Declaration were self-evident lies. (Wilentz, p.5)

Some of that cynicism is on display in The New York Times Magazine’s recently launched 1619 Project, enough to give ammunition to hostile critics who would discredit or minimize the entire enterprise of understanding America’s history of slavery and antislavery. (Wilentz p.5)

So this is the big difference between Hannah-Jones and Wilentz. Wilentz points out there was a significant anti-slavery mentality in the 1776 period. To just sweep that away, or dismiss it as hypocrisy, is unfair. It also tends to agree with the southern pro-slavery view, later the confederate belief system, which openly argued for slavery of an inferior race. The confederacy claimed that the true United States was a racist one.

After reading Hannah jones’s views and ideas about slavery on her article on “The 1619 Project”, I can now understand the views of slavery and how it relates to Hannah Jones. I was able to see and understand the main points of this article. It was inevitable that slavery would be abolished. His points was clear where he explained how the conflict between slavery and the abolitionists were. He explains the struggles and hard time that all the people went through to make America. During the moral Revolution people were managing to have full power over society. That was the beginning of slavery. He explained how slavery ended in a crazy situation between the abolitionist and anti-abolitionist.  Since the beginning of slavery white Americans treated not just African Americans poorly it was also Hispanics and other races that was treated poorly. Also explained in the text that a lot of people were against slavery and how they had a huge fight to make things calm down.  The main difference between Hannah Jones story and Wilentz is that Hannah Jones wrote about what African Americans went through when they were mistreated and how they deserve equality like everyone else. Wilentz, the author “Relentless Slavery and the Relentless Unforeseen,” believes that abolishing slavery was inevitable due to the western revolution that was taking place. Essentially, the fight for education and social status as well as human rights became America’s top priority. Wilentz may point was that no one expected it to come as bad as it did when the idea was first brought up. Even though during those hard times people were still being mistreated. Abolishing slavery was really important because at that there was still free labor going on, so, slavery needed to be abolished. There are cheap labor nowadays, but at least people are getting paid some money instead of being a slave. Slavery needed to be abolished. The fight to end slavery was not planned. It just came as a need to the people and it had to be done at that point because African Americans were being mistreated. At that point people thought that it is time that their voice needs to be heard. In the text Wilentz states that, ““Because the ideals that propelled the American Revolution shared crucial origins with the ideals that propelled antislavery, it can be tempting to treat slavery as a terrible appendage to American history, an important but also doomed institution at the nation’s founding”. In my perspective it was really impossible to imagine myself in those days where people were slaves and being mistreated by their owners. It’s like people are working for nothing. Nowadays, we work because we want to make money to take care of our family. But in my opinion, during the slavery days people were following orders to stay alive because if not they would face death. For example: Once the Belgian Congo was the main colony for rubber production. King Leopold II was the leader of Belgium at that time. When someone failed to finish their task or refused to do their task, they would face death. The Belgian Congo had more deaths than the Holocaust. 15 million people died in Congo. Imagining myself in a slavery type environment is just impossible.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/the-story-of-a-coronavirus-infection.html

It’s a more creative genre, but as far as I know, the facts of the scenario are a possible case.  Feel free to comment.

After reading the guidelines of our upcoming essay assignment, I wanted to look more deeply into the writing pieces we could choose from to write about in our essay. I was very aware in Frederick Douglass’ contribution to the rights of African Americans but after reading Chapter XI Secession and War from  Frederick Douglass’ Autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom 1855, I started to see how much of a role he played in getting equal treatment for African Americans enlisting in the civil war. He noticed that there weren’t many people enlisting for the war on the union side and he went to speak with President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary Stanton to try and improve the treatment of African Americans so that they would enlist for the war and fight for their freedom. Douglass had three requests when he came to these powerful men for change and that was equal protection, retaliation for racial crimes done against blacks and black soldiers to have the ability to earn rewards for their war efforts just the same as any white soldier. I thought the way that President Lincoln responded to this request showed how much progress America has made throughout its history with the fact that the president wanted to end slavery entirely. After seeing Lincoln, Douglass went about meeting the Secretary of War, who he assumed would be someone of little time to listen to his request. To Douglass’ surprise and my own, he listened to him and made the promise to make great change for African Americans within the military. To see two very powerful white men doing the best for a race that for so long was pushed aside as if they are nothing was beautiful to see and is often not paid enough attention to. 

 

In Douglass’ writing, he states, “President and Secretary of War assured me that justice would ultimately be done for my race, and I gave full faith and credit to their promise”. This line alone made me connect back to Hannah- Jones’ views of slavery within America, she doesn’t really mention how white people alongside African Americans played a roll in the efforts to better the lives of blacks in her writing. I completely agree with her views that it took African American effort to create change for the minority and that America was built off the backs of slaves. That is true, it’s within the blood, sweat, and tears of many statues and buildings we walk past every day. It’s also important to see the change that took place within the history of America when it came to the fight for humanity, not just one group. It took people to see that respect should be given to every human, not just every white man or woman. It took time for that and for it to have shown within two very strong men of power shows how much progress was happening even then.