1. I especially love the Paul Revere's play-by-playnarrative in the critical days of the American Revolution.This is the real thing -- written by the guy who really did it!! Wow.It truly exhibits the urgency and timing of the situation, as well as thereality of the colonies'assertion oftheir independence. Whatreaction did you have to this?Are you acquainted with this true story?

2.You will likely agree thatFrederick Douglass was a powerfully articulateandrealistic speaker for the equality of the races and all humans,and clearly ahead of his time.Give examples from his speech you feel are especially powerful.

3. What observations can you make about Abraham Lincoln's speeches?Give examples oflanguage he usesthat issignificant forguiding the countryat the time of the Civil War.

4. Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy is without a doubt elusive to understand, but the summaries you read help focus it into some sense. Can you summarize what you read/scanned about Emerson's thinking and give a basic explanation?.

5. Henry David Thoreau focused his philosophy more toward a civil or societal attitude. What attitudes toward life and/or government did he take? Can you provide any examples of them from the summary of "Civil Disobedience"? Consider how starkly the topics of gender inequality and racial inequality stand out in this literature of 250-300 years ago... evidence that these flaws plague human nature across much of time. What examples of the outcry against inequality do you see existing in the literature and entertainment of today?

Later 18th Century & Early 19th Century American Revolution l Industrial Era non-fiction Early American philosophical and political non-fiction Let's re-orient ourselves again in this literary study. As we arrived in the 18th Century, we looked at Romantic poetry as well as some British drama fun stuff, light hearted and musing, comedy and mistaken identities, or \"romanticizing\" about the world, nature and beauty, morals and God, human beings and love. But as you are learning, the types of literature that are emerging through these centuries are varied in both style and purpose. A highly signicant movement in the writings of the later 18th and early 19th centuries consisted of the non-ction prose that focused on the political scene in the world at that time. Naturally the changing population on the globe and the development of a \"New World\" prompted commentary from all the relevant societies as the formation of colonies and ultimately new countries was imminent. This need for commentary produced in a cluster of writers who rallied around various political events in the applicable places, namely, Britain, France, and the American colonies. The late 18th Century churned with social and civil turbulence for all three of these places. Britain had been a world power and commanded a strong foothold in the New World, but now the American colonies there were becoming rebellious, particularly about the amount of taxation being levied upon them, and they wanted independence. Meanwhile, Britain's other neighbor as well as rival for a foothold in the New World, France, was having problems of its own. After a costly and largely unproductive French and Indian War with Britain, the French government inflicted what came to be known as the \"Reign of Terror" in France, raping its common people of their nances and dignity. Consequently, the political idealists of the age had much to write about. The Enlightenment of the century before had set the stage in the mindset and thinking of the people in these new and changing countries and societies to be empowered to take their destiny in their own hands. Revolution against the reigning governments and their abusive treatment of the common people took root in both France and America, even as it also caused great dispute and dissension among the residents in each place. Many political opinions and commentaries came forth from great writers of the time, many of whom you are likely familiar with: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (author of Frankenstein), Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and others. The literature here is again dense and hard to read, although it is not as laden with religious judge-mentality as were the Enlightenment and Puritan writings. This political prose we call non-fiction begins to touch on the country and culture of which we are a part today. You are likely familiar with the beginnings of our country what we will here consider are the writings of some of these key players who helped established what we have and enjoy today. You will read a couple small samples and some general information about various American writers and about the early American situation. There is just too much material to really make a sweep of all of it, so I am having us forego any of the British commentary. You will have your hands full with what is here as it is. Remember that the language used at this time was still changing and had not yet become the easy owing English that we have today. Make your best effort to absorb as much as you are able and to experience the literature for what it is and don't worry about understanding every last sentence and idea. In order to cover the era and the type of writing that represents it, I am also supplying some links that reect the philosophical thinking of the time, one that birthed the idea of \"individualism\" something that really did not exist in any depth for most people at the time. Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson both explored such ideas, albeit in dense prose, and their writings remain today as hallmarks of the time and as grandfathering ideals upon which our modern, and highly individualized world, is founded. 50 too, in the rst half of the 19th Century, did the reaction and outrage toward slavery emerge as America struggled to become a strong and independent nation. In particular, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln exchanged many debates and gave many speeches which triumphed a platform of freedom and equality. We will also look at some of this material. Read the links and absorb what you can - bear in mind that even though this is prose, it still will not be simple to absorb. Be patient with it. This again is material that I do not expect you to know every last inch of, but simply to familiarize yourself with it and gather a general idea for what direction it is heading. Non-fiction writers & influences of the American Revolution Non-fiction writers & influences of the American Revolution Follow these links and read/explore/scan some different types of writings by Paul Revere and Thomas Paine: Paul Revere's own first-hand account of his capture and release by the British: http://www.americanrevolution.org/revere.html Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man (you should peruse through this, but you do not need to read all of it): http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/rights_of_man/part1.html * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Early American political non-fiction We would be remiss to pass by these two huge political figures, but I will be brief about them. Frederick Douglass During the 1850s, Frederick Douglass typically spent about six months of the year traveling extensively, giving lectures. During one winter -- the winter of 1855- 1856 -- he gave about 70 lectures during a tour that covered four to five thousand miles. And his speaking engagements did not halt at the end of a tour. From his home in Rochester, New York, he took part in local abolition-related events. On July 5, 1852, Douglass gave a speech at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, held at Rochester's Corinthian Hall. It was biting oratory, in which the speaker told his audience, "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn." And he asked them, "Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?" Within the now-famous address is what some historians have called "the most moving passage in all of Douglass' speeches": What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour. Read his entire speech: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln really needs very little introduction. This prominent American leader and president was also a compelling speaker and his fame will live on throughout history. Read each of these short speeches by him. Lincoln 's Emancipation Proclamation: http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/emanc.htm Lincoln's 1963 Proclamation of Thanksgiving: http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/thanks.htm The Gettysburg Address and related information: http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/gettysburg.htm th Lincoln 's speech to the 148 Ohio Regiment: http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/ohio.htmThe Gettysburg Address and related information: http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/gettysburg.htm th Lincoln '5 speech to the 148 Ohio Regiment: http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/ohio.htm ************************************ SCAN FROM HERE ON WHAT FOLLOWS IS DENSE PHILOSOPHICAL-POLITICAL PROSE I WILL NOT HOLD YOU ACCOUNTABLE FOR ANY DETAILED ACCOUNTING OF THE FOLLOWING (just so you know...). Scan but don't worry about absorbing it all in detail. Major Themes in Emerson's Philosophy Education In \"The American Scholar,\" delivered as the Phi Beta Kappa Address in 1837, Emerson maintains that the scholar is educated by nature, books, and action. Nature is the first in time (since it is always there) and the first in importance of the three. Nature's variety conceals underlying laws that are at the same time laws of the human mind: \"the ancient precept, 'Know thyself,' and the modern precept, 'Study nature,' become at last one maxim\" (87). Books, the second component of the scholar's education, offer us the influence of the past. Yet much of what passes for education is mere idolization of books transferring the \"sacredness which applies to the act of creation...to the record.\" The proper relation to books is not that of the \"bookworm\" or \"bibliomaniac,\" but that of the \"creative\" reader who uses books as a stimulus to attain \"his own sight of principles.\" Used well, books \"inspire...the active soul\" (88). Great books are mere records of such inspiration, and their value derives only, Emerson holds, from their role in inspiring or recording such states of the soul. The \"end" Emerson nds in nature is not a vast collection of books, but, as he puts it in \"The Poet,\" \"the production of new individuals,...or the passage of the soul into higher forms\" (CW3:14) The third component of the scholar's education is action. Without it, thought never \"ripens into truth .\" Action is the process whereby what is not fully formed passes into expressive consciousness (912). Action is also the scholar's \"dictionary,\" the source for what she has to say. The true scholar speaks from experience, not in imitation of others; her words, as Emerson puts it, are \"are loaded with life...\" (2: 92). The scholar's education in original experience and self- expression is appropriate, according to Emerson, not only for a small class of people, but for everyone. Its goal is the creation of a democratic nation. Only when we learn to \"walk on our own feet\" and to \"speak our own minds,\" he holds, will a nation \"for the first time exist\" (2: 1045). Emerson returned to the topic of education late in his career in \"Education,\" an address he gave in various versions at graduation exercises in the 1860's. Self- reliance appears in the essay in his discussion of respect. The \"secret of Education," he states, \"lies in respecting the pupil.\" It is not for the teacher to choose what the pupil will know and do, but for the pupil to discover \"his own secret.\" The teacher must therefore \"wait and see the new product of Nature" (L: 143), guiding and disciplining when appropriate-not with the aim of encouraging repetition or imitation, but with that of nding the new power that is each child's gift to the world. The aim of education is to \"keep\" the child's \"nature and arm it with knowledge in the very direction in which it points\" (L: 144). This aim is sacriced in mass education, Emerson warns. Instead of educating \"masses," we must educate \"reverently, one by one," with the attitude that \"the whole world is needed for the tuition of each pupil\" (L: 154). Process Emerson is in many ways a process philosopher, for whom the universe is fundamentally in ux and \"permanence is but a word of degrees" (CW 2: 179). Even as he talks of \"Being,\" Emerson represents it not as a stable \"wall" but as a series of \"interminable oceans\" (CW3: 42). This metaphysical position has epistemological correlates: that there is no nal explanation of any fact, and that each law will be incorporated in \"some more general law presently to disclose itself\" (CW2: 181). Process is the basis for the succession of moods Emerson describes in \"Experience," (CW3: 30), and for the emphasis on the present throughout his philosophy. Some of Emerson's most striking ideas about morality and truth follow from his process metaphysics: that no virtues are nal or eternal, all being \"initial,\" (CW2: 187); that truth is a matter of glimpses, not steady views. We have a choice, Emerson writes in \"Intellect," \"between truth and repose,\" but we cannot have both [Mann \"A.\" .- l .u . u m. n \"Mun u\" . l . --nuuuu5n--uIpuu-uuFq7p---- Some of Emerson's most striking ideas about morality and truth follow from his process metaphysics: that no virtues are nal or eternal, all being \"initial,\" (CW2: 187); that truth is a matter of glimpses, not steady views. We have a choice, Emerson writes in \"Intellect,\" \"between truth and repose,\" but we cannot have both (CW2: 202). Fresh truth, like the thoughts of genius, comes always as a surprise, as what Emerson calls \"the newness\" (CW3: 40). He therefore looks for a \"certain brief experience, which surprise[s] me in the highway or in the market, in some place, at some time..." (2: 253). This is an experience that cannot be repeated by simply returning to a place or to an object such as a painting. A great disappointment of life, Emerson nds, is that one can only \"see\" certain pictures once, and that the stories and people who ll a day or an hour with pleasure and insight are not able to repeat the performance. Emerson's basic view of religion also coheres with his emphasis on process, for he holds that one nds God only in the present: \"God is, not was\" (Z: 123). In contrast, what Emerson calls \"historical Christianity\" (114) proceeds \"as if God were dead\" (Z: 116). Even history, which seems obviously about the past, has its true use, Emerson holds, as the servant of the present: \"The student is to read history actively and not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the commentary\" (CW2:5). Morality Emerson's views about morality are intertwined with his metaphysics of process, and with his perfectionism, his idea that life has the goal of passing into \"higher forms\" (CW3:14). The goal remains, but the forms of human life, including the virtues, are all \"initial" (CW2: 187). The word \"initial" suggests the verb \"initiate,\" and one interpretation of Emerson's claim that \"all virtues are initial\" is that virtues initiate historically developing forms of life, such as those of the Roman nobility or the Confucian junxi . Emerson does have a sense of morality as developing historically, but in the context in \"Circles\" where his statement appears he presses a more radical and skeptical position: that our virtues often must be abandoned rather than developed. \"The terror of reform,\" he writes, \"is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices" (CW2: 187). The qualifying phrase \"or what we have always esteemed such\" means that Emerson does not embrace an easy relativism, according to which what is taken to be a virtue at any time must actually be a virtue. Yet he does cast a pall of suspicion over all established modes of thinking and acting. The proper standpoint from which to survey the virtues is the 'new moment' \"the moment of truth rather than repose\" (CW2:202), in which what once seemed important may appear \"trivial\" or \"vain.\" From this perspective (or more properly the developing set of such perspectives) the virtues do not disappear, but they may be fundamentally altered and rearranged... Power I Power is a theme in Emerson's early writing, but it becomes especially prominent in such middle and late-career essays as \"Experience,' \"Montaigne; or the Skeptic\" \"Napoleon," and \"Power.\" Power is related to action in \"The American Scholar," where Emerson holds that a \"true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power\" (2: 92). It is also a subject of \"SelfReliance,\" where Emerson writes of each person that \"the power which resides in him is new in nature\" (CW2:28). In \"Experience" Emerson speaks of a life which \"is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy\" (CW3:294); and in \"Power\" he celebrates the \"bruisers\" (P: 372) of the world who express themselves rudely and get their way. The power in which Emerson is interested, however, is more artistic and intellectual than political or military. In a characteristic passage from \"Power,\" he states: In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beautyz-and you have Pericles and Phidias,-not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still ow plentifully from nature, but their astringency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity" (P: 375). Power is all around us, but it cannot always be controlled. It is like \"a bird which alights nowhere,\" hopping \"perpetually from bough to bough\" (CW3:34). Moreover, we often cannot tell at the time when we exercise our power that we are doing so: happily we sometimes nd that much is accomplished in \"times when we thought ourselves indolent\" (CW3:28). *************************************** An introduction to Thoreau's \"Civil Disobedience\" In 1848, Thoreau gave lectures at the Concord Lyceum that he titled \"The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government.\"[1] This formed the basis for his essay, which was rst published under the title Resistance to Civil Government in 1849 in a magazine called fEsthetic Papers. That title was a way of distinguishing Thoreau's program from that of the \"non-resistants\" (anarcho-pacifists) who were expressing similar views. Resistance also served as part of Thoreau's metaphor which compared the government to a machine, and said that when the machine was working injustice it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be \"a counter friction\" (i.e., a resistance) \"to stop the machine.\"[2] In 1866, four years after Thoreau's death, the essay was reprinted in a collection of Thoreau's work (A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers) under the title "Civil Disobedience," by which it is most popularly known today. Today, the essay is also frequently seen under the title \"On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,\" perhaps to contrast it with William Paley's \"Of the Duty of Civil Obedience\" to which Thoreau was in part responding. For instance, the 1960 New American Library Signet Classics edition of Walden included a version with this title. \"On Civil Disobedience" is another frequently-encountered title. The word civil has several denitions. The one that is intended in this case is \"relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state,\" and so civil disobedience means \"disobedience to the state.\" Sometimes people assume that civil in this case means \"observing accepted social forms; polite\" which would make civil disobedience something like polite, orderly disobedience. Although this is an acceptable dictionary denition of the word civil, it is not what is intended here. This misinterpretation is one reason the essay is sometimes considered to be an argument for pacism or for exclusively nonviolent resistance. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi used this interpretation to suggest an equivalence between Thoreau's civil disobedience and his own satyagraha.[3] \"That government is best which governs least\" An aphorism sometimes attributed to either Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine, \"That government is best which governs least,\" actually was rst found in this essay.[4] Thoreau was paraphrasing the motto of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review: \"The best government is that which governs |east.\"[5] Summary of \"Civil Disobedience" Thoreau asserB that because governments are typically more harmful than helpful, they therefore cannot be justied. Democracy is no cure for this, as majorities simply by virtue of being majorities do not also gain the virtues of wisdom and justice. The judgment of an individual's conscience is not necessarily or even likely inferior to the decisions of a political body or majority, and so \"[i]t is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.\"[6] Indeed, he points out, you serve your country poorly if you do so by suppressing your conscience in favor of the law because your country needs consciences more than it needs conscienceless robots. Thoreau says that it is disgraceful to be associated with the United States government in particular: \"I cannot for an instant recognize as my government [that] which is the slave's government also."[7] The government, according to Thoreau, is not just a little corrupt or unjust in the course of doing its otherwise-important work, but in fact the government is primarily an agent of corruption and injustice. Because of this, it's \"not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize."[8] Political philosophers have counseled caution about revolution because the upheaval of revolution typically causes a lot of expense and suffering. However, Thoreau says that such a cost/benet analysis isn't appropriate when the government is actively facilitating an injustice like slavery. Such a thing is fundamentally immoral and even if it would be difcult and expensive to stop it, it must be stopped because it is wrong. \"This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.\"[9] make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.\"[9] Thoreau tells his audience that they cannot blame this problem solely on pro-slavery Southern politicians, but must put the blame on those in, for instance, Massachusetts, \"who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may.... There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them."[10] (See also: Thoreau's Slavery in Massachusetts which also advances this argument.) He exhorts people not to just wait passively for an opportunity to vote for justice, because voting for justice is as ineffective as wishing for justice; what you need to do is to actually be just. This is not to say that you have an obligation to devote your life to ghting for justice, but you do have an obligation not to commit injustice and not to give injustice your practical support. Paying taxes is one way in which otherwise wellmeaning people collaborate in injustice. People who proclaim that the war in Mexico is wrong and that it is wrong to enforce slavery contradict themselves if they fund both things by paying taxes. Thoreau points out that the same people who applaud soldiers for refusing to ght an unjust war are not themselves willing to refuse to fund the government that started the war. In a constitutional republic like the United States, people often think that the proper response to an unjust law is to try to use the political process to change the law, but to obey and respect the law until it is changed. But if the law is itself clearly unjust, and the lawmaking process is not designed to quickly obliterate such unjust laws, then Thoreau says the law deserves no respect and it should be broken. In the case of the United States, the Constitution itself enshrines the institution of slavery, and therefore falls under this condemnation. Abolitionists, in Thoreau's opinion, should completely withdraw their support of the government and stop paying taxes, even if this means courting imprisonment. Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.... where the State places those who are not with her, but against her, the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.... Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the denition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.[11] Because the government will retaliate, Thoreau says he prefers living simply because he therefore has less to lose. \"I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts... It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.\"[12] He was briey imprisoned for refusing to pay the poll tax, but even in jail felt freer than the people outside. He considered it an interesting experience and came out of it with a new perspective on his relationship to the government and its citizens. (He was released the next day when \"someone interfered, and paid that tax.\")[13] Thoreau said he was willing to pay the highway tax, which went to pay for something of benet to his neighbors, but that he was opposed to taxes that went to support the government itselfeven if he could not tell if his particular contribution would eventually be spent on an unjust project or a benecial one. \"I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually."[14] Because government is man-made, not an element of nature or an act of God, Thoreau hoped that its makers could be reasoned with. As governments go, he felt, the US. government, with all its faults, was not the worst and even had some admirable qualities. But he felt we could and should insist on better. \"The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.... Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."[15]