The Declaration, Concluded

  Any questions on the assignment?

FOR NEXT MONDAY:

• Finish Allen
• Tocqueville, 9-20, 231-261, 277-315

The Bill of Particulars and the Bill of Rights

Allen, ch. 18: The Bill of Particulars and the Bible (with a Seder cameo at 3:50)  (And a 2019 news story...)

Calhoun articulates an argument against the Declaration 

Text of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. 

Lincoln's comments at Galesburg

Lincoln-Douglas Galesburg debate video at 1:08-- What crucial word did the re-enactor screw up?  

From the Cornerstone Speech by Alexander Stephens (Allen, p. 241):

The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Secession documents

Melia Wong's amazing senior thesis on Union and Confederate songs.

What was Frederick Douglass's take?

• Biblical reference  -- "the rivers of Babylon"
• You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation — a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. [Douglass was way ahead of his time in accepting Chinese immigration.]
• Douglass was also one of the few men at Seneca Falls.