Moses of Her People. (Module 6)

Harriet Tubman was born around 1814-1821 as Araminta Ross in Dorchester County on the Eastern shore of Maryland. The sources that tried to obtain a definite date of birth decided Araminta was born in 1814 but Araminta didn’t believe that she was so close to rounding a century. (Harriettubman.com) Araminta Ross changed her name to Harriet after her mother. Harriet’s parents were enslaved Ashanti Africans, Benjamin Ross and Harriet Green that had eleven children. Most of the older children were sold into the Deep South. Harriet at five years old wasn’t good at housework so her owners and her neighbors that rented her beat her regularly. Harriet was then assigned to being a field hand. (Lewis)

At 12 years old, Harriet tried to protect an insubordinate slave and she was struck on the head by a metal weight thrown by an angry overseer. Harriet fractured her skull and this caused periodic fits of insensibility during her life. Due to Harriet’s injury she was assigned to work the high class labor driving oxen, carting, plowing and hard manual labor. Harriet’s physically strength developed so greatly that she did more work than a male slave and her market value stood at the current rate paid for a first class male. After the Civil War Harriet agreed to an operation at the Massachusetts General Hospital that largely relieved the injury. The operation was successful even though Harriet insisted that the operation go on without anesthesia. (Harriettubman.com)

In 1844, Harriet’s kind owner allowed her to marry John Tubman, a free man. Soon after the marriage they separated due to Harriet’s owner dying and the slaves being sold to settle the estate. John refused to run away with her and her two brothers became frightened and turned back. Harriet broke out of her shackles and ran following the North Star as her guide. She hid during the day and traveled at night until she reached Philadelphia where Quakers befriended her. Harriet became a household servant and she saved her money so she could help others escape. In 1849, Harriet operated the Underground Railroad for 15 years and personally conducted 300 runaway slaves safely into Canadian territory. (Americancivilwar.com) (Foner 404)

Harriet’s accomplishments forced the State of Maryland to offer $12,000 reward for her dead or alive and an additional reward of $40,000 offered by an association of Southern planters whose slaves she was leading to freedom. Harriet was unable to read so she didn’t know there was a reward out for her. Harriet’s friends thought she was divinely inspired due to having the instinctive knowledge that danger was near. The reward may have been set high but no one was able to capture Harriet. (Harriettubman.com)

In 1862, Harriet served the war as a scout, army nurse, and a spy. Harriet organized sophisticated information gathering operation, she led several forays herself in pursuit of information, persuading slaves to leave their masters and to join the regiments of black soldiers. In July of 1863, Harriet led troops in a mission to disrupt Southern supply lines by destroying bridges and railroads and they also freed more than 750 slaves, transporting them. “Harriet Tubman is credited not only with significant leadership responsibilities for the mission itself, but with singing to calm the slaves and keep the situation in hand. Tubman came under Confederate fire on this mission. General Saxton, who reported the raid to Secretary of War Stanton, said “This is the only military command in American history wherein a woman, black or white, led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted.” (Lewis)

“She made nineteen dangerous trips back and forth, often disguised, escorting more than three hundred slaves to freedom, always carrying a pistol, telling the fugitives, “You’ll be free or die.” She expressed her philosophy: “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive….” (Zinn 132) “Tubman knew that if anyone turned back, it would put her and the other escaping slaves in danger of discovery, capture or even death. She became so well known for leading slaves to freedom that Tubman became known as the “Moses of Her People.” Many slaves dreaming of freedom sang the spiritual “Go Down Moses.” Slaves hoped a savior would deliver them from slavery just as Moses had delivered the Israelites from slavery.” (Americancivilwar.com)

Harriet Tubman was an extraordinary woman with incredible courage. I strongly believe that things happen for a reason whether they are good or bad. I think Harriet Tubman was born into slavery, not being good at housework, being struck in the head causing her to work in the field and making her physically strong, her kind owner dying forcing the slaves to being sold, her escaping slavery, her not being able to read, and all the experience from the Underground Railroad assisted her in the war all happened for a reason. It’s a shame that Harriet had to go through all those experiences but each of them made her even stronger. Each event almost seemed calculated to help her grow into an amazing heroine.

"The Memoriam."

http://www.harriettubman.com/memoriam2.html

Lewis, Jone Johnson. "Harriet Tubman - From Slavery to Freedom."

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/harriettubman/a/tubman_slavery.htm?p=1

Library of Congress. “Harriet Tubman Runaway Slave Underground Railroad Conductor”.

http://americancivilwar.com/women/harriet_tubman.html

Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty! An Amerian History.

Seagull Edition. New York, 2009.

Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States.

Abridged Teaching Edition. New York, 1980.

"The Woman's Place". (Module 5)

“In this invisibility they were something like black slaves. It seems that their physical characteristics became a convenience for men, who could use, exploit, and cherish someone who was at the same time servant, sex mate, companion, and bearer-teacher-warden of his children.” (Zinn 81) As a wife, the woman’s property, life estate, and any income belonged to the husband. (Zinn 83) “The woman’s job was to keep the home cheerful, maintain religion, be nurse, cook, cleaner, seamstress, flower arranger. A woman shouldn’t read too much, and certain books should be avoided.” (Zinn 87) I think the men feared women from being more educated because it was too dangerous to the idea of “the woman’s place”. Women would realize there was more to just being classified as someone’s wife and men would have trouble controlling women. I think Howard Zinn said it best in when he said women were something like black slaves. Women may have been free by law but once married they were someone’s property.

In 1851, Amelia Bloomer suggested that women wear a kind of short skirt and pants, to free themselves from the encumbrances of traditional dress. (Zinn 87) Women activists adopted it in place of the old whale-boned bodice, the corsets and petticoats. The Reverend John Todd commented “Some have tried to become semi-men by putting on the Bloomer dress. Let me tell you in a word why it can never be done. It is this: woman, robed and folded in her long dress, is beautiful. She walks gracefully…. If she attempts to run, the charm is gone…. Take off the robes, and put on pants, and show the limbs, and grace and mystery are all gone.” (Zinn 91) This comment proves that men thought of women as beautiful innocent fragile dolls and nothing more. Men wanted to dictate what women wore, what they owned, what they read or weren’t allowed to read, and what they thought or weren’t allowed to think at all. Men thought women had no brains and were only good for pleasing men.

Women rarely participated openly in public affairs. “A woman’s relationship to the larger society was mediated through her relationship with her husband.” (Foner 231) Occasionally it was possible for women on the southern and western frontiers. Only during the Revolution women formed patriotic groups, carried out anti-British actions, and wrote articles for independence. (Zinn 85) “Woman participated by boycotting British goods, producing goods for soldiers, spying on the British, following armies as they marched, washing and cooking for the soldiers, delivering secret messages, and fighting disguised as men.” (Wikipedia.org) In preindustrial America, women worked at important jobs by publishing newspapers, managing tanneries, keeping taverns, and engaging in skilled work. (Zinn 86) “Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, so many elements of American society were being transformed that changes were bound to take place in the situation of women.” (Zinn 86) Due to the Revolution, women finally had a higher purpose other than being a housewife. The Revolution transformed the ideas of what women were capable of and revealed a stronger woman.

Sarah Grimke said “All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on the ground which God has designed us to occupy…. To me it is perfectly clear that whatsoever it is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do.” (Zinn 92) I think there will always be some form of sexism in the world as there is racism. I think you can never escape it due to the fact that some fear the unknown or something being different. Women still struggle to prove their intelligence and their worth to men and women. I think we will always struggle to obtain equality in the world for sex and race.

• Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States.

Abridged Teaching Edition. New York, 1980.

• Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty! An American History.

Seagull Edition. New York, 2009.

• "Women in the American Revolution".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_American_Revolution

Deborah Sampson. (Module 4)

Deborah Sampson was born on December 17, 1760 in Plympton, Massachusetts and she was the oldest daughter of Jonathan and Deborah Sampson. On Ancestry.com hosted by rootsweb, “Deborah Sampson Soldier of the American Revolution”, “Deborah’s grandmother, the spirited Bathsheba, was very close to her daughter Deborah, often visited her grandchildren in Plympton. She spoiled young Deborah outrageously, according to Deborah’s mother, as Deborah, with her bright mind and warm, affectionate nature, became Bathsheba’s favorite. Deborah remembered her grandmother telling her many times in her French accent the inspiring story of the heroine of France, Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans who in a pair of breeches led the French army to victory over the British. She was burned at the stake for her bravery because she insisted she was responsible only to God and not to the hypocritical rulers of the church.” I think Deborah’s grandmother telling her all the female heroic stories influenced her greatly. Deborah was inspired to create her own heroic stories to be told.

Deborah and her family were poor due to her father leaving them and going off to sea. Deborah’s mother was in poor health and she was unable to care for her and her siblings. Deborah and her siblings were sent to live with various neighbors and relatives to take care of them. (Bois) When Deborah was ten years old, she became an indentured servant for Benjamin Thomas with his wife and eight sons until she was eighteen years old. After her service she stayed with them and helped with the housework and in the fields. Deborah became physically strong due to the hard labor and she learned many things. Deborah learned how to handle a musket and she became a proficient shooter due to going on hunting ventures with the Thomas’ sons. On December 16, 1775, the Revolutionary War from the peeling of the First Presbyterian Church tower bell began and Thomas’ two sons died while fighting with the Marquis de Lafayette in Virginia. Deborah had come to love the Thomas’ sons as brothers and their deaths motivated her to join the fight. (Ancestry.com)

On May 20, 1782, Deborah was twenty one and she enlisted in the Fourth Massaschusetts Regiment of the Continental Army at Bellingham as a man named Robert Shurtleff which was her mother’s first born child’s name that died at age 8 years. Deborah didn’t have any problems disguising herself as a man and her mother didn’t even recognize her. (Wikipedia.org) Deborah was 5’7 and she bound her breasts tightly to approximate a male physique. The soldiers assumed Deborah didn’t have any facial hair due to being a young boy but she was teased about it. (Ancestry.com)

Deborah suffered many injuries from the battles she fought. She was afraid of being discovered as a female so she tried to heal her own wounds. She took a bullet in her thigh that troubled her the rest of her life. Her real identity was revealed when she came down with a “malignant fever”. Dr. Binney, an attending physician of a Philadelphia hospital discovered her true identity and he didn’t say anything. Dr. Binney took her to his house where she would receive better care. When she recovered, Dr. Binney met with the commanding officer and she was ordered to issue a letter to General Washington that revealed her identity. “In silence Washington handed Deborah Sampson a discharge from the service, a note with some words of advice, and a sum of money sufficient to bear her expenses home.” (Ancestry.com) I think the men who discovered that she was a female may have felt she was an extraordinary woman. I make this assumption based on the treatment she was given after they found out.

Deborah was awarded a pension from the state of Massachusetts after nine years. In 1804, she also received a U.S. pension. While at the capital, a bill was passed granting her a pension, certain land and she would receive an acknowledgement for her services to the country in a military capacity as a Revolutionary Soldier. Patrick J. Leonard, Canton Massachusetts Historical Society, writes that Deborah Sampson, alias Robert Shurtleff, soldier of the American Revolution, was honored in a proclamation signed by Governor Michael J. Dukakis on May 23, 1983 to be the “Official Heroine of the State of Massaschusetts.” (Ancestry.com) I can ‘t believe that Deborah Sampson who’s considered an “Official Heroine of the State of Massachusetts” is hardly mentioned in history books. In Eric Foner’s Give Me Liberty! An American History, Deborah is only mentioned briefly regarding Revolutionary Women. I don’t understand how history books can write chapters and chapters about the greed of men and only write four sentences on a heroine.

• Ancestry.com hosted by rootsweb. "Deborah Sampson Soldier of the American Revolution".

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nwa/sampson.html

• Bois, Danuta. "Deborah Sampson (1760-1827)".

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/sampson.html

• "Deborah Sampson".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Sampson

• Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty! An American History.

Seagull Edition. New York, 2009.

William Penn was a slave owner. (Module 3)

William Penn was a devout member of the Society of Friends, or Quakers.  On March 4, 1681 Charles II signed a charter for territory to settle his debt with Penn’s late father.  The King proposed the name “Pennsylvania” which means “Forests of Penn” to honor Penn’s late father, the Admiral.  Penn became the proprietor, owning all the land, accountable directly to the King.  (Powell)  “He hoped that Pennsylvania could be governed according to Quaker principles, among them the equality of all persons (including women, blacks, and Indians) before God and the primacy of the individual conscience.  To Quakers, liberty was a universal entitlement, not the possession of any single people-a position that would eventually make them the first group of whites to repudiate slavery.  (Foner 92)  The Indians stated, “They longed for the days when “old William Penn” treated them with fairness and respect” (Foner 114)  In Foner’s book, William Penn is described as an activist of equality and yet I found in other documents that he owned slaves. 

 

In Douglas Harper’s "Slavery in Pennsylvania" he states, Penn himself owned slaves, and used them to work his estates, Pennsbury.  He wrote that he preferred them to white indentured servants, “for then a man has them while they live.”  On America.gov, Ralph Dannheisser states, Penn believed, author Betty Wood has said that “slavery was perfectly acceptable, provided that slave owners attended to the spiritual and material needs of those they enslaved.”  On US History.org in the "Brief History of William Penn" it states “There have been claims that he also fought slavery, but that seems unlikely, as he owned and even traded slaves himself.  However, he did promote good treatment for slaves, and other Pennsylvania Quakers were among the earliest fighters against slavery.  Penn condoned slavery as long as you treated slaves well.  The documents don’t explore the subject any further but go onto discuss Penn’s other accomplishments.

 

On November 28, 1984 Ronald Reagon declared William Penn and Hannah Callowhill Penn to be an Honorary Citizen of the United States.  (US History.org)  William Penn was the first great hero of American Liberty.  For the first time in modem history, a large society offered equal rights to people of different races and religions.  (Powell)  I don’t think I am able to come to a conclusion about honoring William Penn due to not having all the information.  Jim Powell who wrote "William Penn, America’s First Great Champion for Liberty and Peace", thinks William Penn was the first great hero but how can that be when he contradicted what he was fighting for?  The history of William Penn only states those few sentences on him owning slaves and trading slaves.  I wasn’t able to find further documentation that explains his full involvement in slavery.  Again we don’t have the full details of William Penn’s history to form your own opinion.  

• Foner, Eric.  Give Me Liberty! An American History, Seagull Edition. New York, 2009

• Powell, Jim. "William Penn, America's First Great Champion for Liberty and Peace".

          http://www.quaker.org/wmpenn.html

• Harper, Douglas.  "Slavery in Pennsylvania".

         http://www.slavenorth.com/pennsylvania.htm

• Dannheisser, Ralph.  "Quakers Played Major Role in Ending Slavery In United States".

         http://www.america.gov/st/hr-english/2008/November/20081112170035abretnuh3.838748e-02.html&distid=ucs

• "Brief History of William Penn".

         http://www.ushistory.org/penn/bio.htm

Should we be honoring Christopher Columbus? (Module 2)

Should we be honoring Christopher Columbus?  We are teaching our children and celebrating Columbus Day because he discovered America.  As a child I associated Christopher Columbus as a hero due to only remembering what at that time was thought to be important part of his history.  How can we celebrate Columbus Day when some historians state he did not discover a lost or unknown land because the Indians were flourishing in America for millions of years?  Millions of Native Americans built great civilizations prior to Columbus arriving in America. 

The History channel stated “There are three main sources of controversy involving Columbus’ interactions with indigenous people he labeled “Indians”: the use of violence and slavery, the forced conversion of native peoples to Christianity, and the introduction of a host of new diseases that would have dramatic long-term effects on native people in the Americas.” 

As a child I was not taught about how Christopher Columbus treated the Indians.  I didn’t realize that religion was such a big issue during that time period and that the Indians were basically forced to convert to Christianity.   How Columbus forced Indians into slavery.  The unrealistic tasks Columbus gave to the Indians of obtaining a certain quantity of gold when he knew such amount of gold didn’t exist.  If the Indians didn’t find gold then they were forced into slave labor or their hands were cut off or they bled to death.  The Columbus Exchange created wide spread transfers of people, plants, animals, diseases, and cultures that was an overwhelming benefit.  It also brought new diseases to the world and caused the death of millions of Indians.

As Howard Zinn stated in A People’s History of the United States, “One can lie outright about the past.  Or one can omit facts which might lead to unacceptable conclusions.  To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it’s not that important – it should weigh very little in our final judgments; it should affect very little what we do in the world.  Basically, some historians will state that Columbus committed genocide but they won’t go into detail because it wasn’t that big of deal.  Maybe if we don’t talk about it in detail or mention the millions of deaths to the Indians then Columbus’ so called heroic actions matters more.  How can anyone condone forcing Indians into slavery and the genocide that was brought upon them?  After reading Zinn’s book and other related references below, I want to be taught all aspects of the history of Christopher Columbus.  I think as a child and an adult we should be taught the truth and not different variations of the truth.  We should be able to form our own opinions on the facts and not someone’s version of the truth.

As Jack Weatherford stated in “Examining the reputation of Christopher Columbus”, “In January we commemorate the birth of Martin Luther King Jr, who struggled to lift the blinders of racial prejudice and to cut the remaining bonds of slavery in America.  In October, we honor Christopher Columbus, who opened the Atlantic slave trade and launched one of the greatest waves of genocide known in history.”  Martin Luther King Jr and Christopher Columbus are the only two men that we honor with Federal Holidays.  How can we honor two different men with two opposite agendas?  Christopher Columbus created slavery while Martin Luther King Jr was trying to create an equal world.

References:

• Zinn, Howard.  A People’s History of the United States.  
  

        Abridged Teaching Edition.  New York, 1980.

• “Pre-Columbian Hispaniola – Arawak/Taino Indians”.

          http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/100.html  

• “Columbus Controversy”.

          http://www.history.com/content/columbusday/controversy

• “Christopher Columbus”.         

          http://www.biography.com/columbus/columbus-bio.jsp

• Jack Weatherford, “Examining the reputation of Christopher Columbus”. 

          http://www.hartford-hwp.com/Taino/docs/columbus.html

About Me

My name is Jamie and I am a single mother taking care of my seven year old daughter and my mother.  I work full time and I always work overtime so I hope I can learn how to manage my time.  I enjoy relaxing with my family and friends.  I just started taking classes last year and this is my first online class.  This is also my first time blogging.  I am taking history because it's a required course but I know I will learn many things from it.  I already know this because if it wasn't for this course, I would have never created an account to blog.