The Freedman's Bureau

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread” (Genesis 3:19) is a quote from the Bible that was used in a poster encouraging others that the Freedman’s Bureau was bad and should not be passed. I was kind of confused by the inclusion of this quote in the poster. The poster, as a whole, was trying to show the message that the Freedman’s Bureau would make blacks free and idle and the whites would have to struggle and work hard, and this act would thereby “reverse” the roles of blacks and whites in society. This image further went on to implicate that the passing of this act would create a huge burden on the shoulder’s of white people because not only would they actually have to work, but they would have to pay, through tax dollars, for the improvement of the lifestyle of blacks.  Through this image, it is quite clear that the author wanted to portray the blacks as savage lazy brutes and whites as people who shouldn’t have to work, but now have to because they can’t force other people to do the work for them anymore. This brings me to the quote; This quote is an extract from the Bible and is about Adam and Eve and how they now have to work for their own food because they broke a law and got kicked out of Eden. However, the inclusion of this quote in this picture, implies that the whites did something wrong to the blacks because they did something wrong to have to work for themselves, just as Adam and Eve had to provide for themselves because Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit. Therefore, doesn’t this quote mean that slavery was a sin in this context? This is the way that I interpreted the quote, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the way the author felt because the author of this poster seems very anti-black and pro-white supremacy, and I therefore think that the inclusion of this quote in the author’s poster weakened his argument.

Women During the Era of Reconstruction

            “…he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero,” narrates Washington Irving, the author of Sleepy Hollow. In American Literature, we learned that Sleepy Hollow was written in the 1820s.  Through the above quote, it is quite clearly seen that people during the 1820s believed that women were just meant to be charmed and would help the men who charmed them gain a heroic position in society. Therefore, we can assume that it was believed that women were merely pawns in a man’s journey to success and were meant to do housework and other menial labor.

However, this week in American Studies, we learned that women began to demand rights in the late 1800s and there were big movements that swept the nation. The lead me to wonder why women started to demand rights. Women in all of the preceding generations seemed to be quite content with simply doing housework and slaving away under the control of men. What happened all of a sudden? I think that this all started with equality issues brought up by blacks and the “Am I not a brother?” movement. Women saw this movement and learned that they could be doing so much more if they weren’t always working around the house.  As we all know, it only takes a spark to create a fire, and out of this spark, the “Am I not a sister?” movement began to rage. Also, some women, such as Abigail Adams, had begun to question the patriarchy much earlier, and eventually, all women realized that they deserved their own liberties and rights as well.

Romanticism and The Changing of America

            “Listen to their marvelous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as the sometimes called him”(Irving 4). This is an excerpt from Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. From what we have read in this literature so far, we can clearly see that it is different than the literature in the Enlightenment Period, or the era of documents such as “The Declaration of Independence.”  This new type of literature that came about in the 19^th century was known as Romanticism.  Romanticism was a shift from faith in reason to faith in the senses, feelings, and imagination. Many new tales had new ideals such as intuition, imagination, human rights, and individualism.

This leads one to wonder what brought upon this sudden change in literature. As we learned in American Studies, the 19^th century in America was much different from the previous century. America had gained independence from the British and was now much more interested in affairs within the country such as expansion and human rights (particularly in slavery). These ideals became incorporated within literature. People took a step back from writing about the obvious, to writing with imagination.  For example, due to the interest in expanding westward into “the Frontier,” writing began shift from and interest in urban society to the simple rural and natural world. I find it extremely interesting that the change in America brought on the period of Romanticism. We can see that what goes on in a society changes the ideals and values of the people living in that society, and therefore also changes what the people in that society write about.