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Social changes in the early antebellum era
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The Freedman’s Bureau
The Freedman’s Bureau was set up after the Civil War even though it went against three main traditional values of the time. The first being limited government, which mean that the government could and could not do certain things. It also was the basis for the idea of the government’s power being limited. The second was sanctity of private property. At this time you made your own money to buy land and it was your land that no one could take away from you. The government did not give handouts. The last was self-help, which meant that if you had problems, and then you and only you solved them. It also made the people question welfare, unemployment, and government aid, and their simple solution was not to have it.
The bureau however had its success and failures contrary to these fundamental ideas. One of the main successes was the education program that the bureau set up. By 1870 there were over 150,000 African American’s enrolled in these schools. Many of the schools set up still stand and educate many today even. Three of the main failures of the bureau came about because of the hatred in the south, and the anti-black attitude. The first being the land that was supposed to be given to the freed men after the civil war, never happened because the land was given back to the plantation owners. The second was the labor contracts, they began as a good idea, but the contracts were often unfair. They were set up to determine wages, clothing, and medical care, often it was made to be worse than slavery was. The final unsuccessful part was the judicial system of the bureau. Over time it became rather unfair and was the main cause for the labor contracts to be so harsh. The other blame of the failure can be linked to the attitude of southerners.
The southerners did not see blacks as equals. They would fight to the end to keep the blacks lower than them.
In the South, black life was very miserable. They worked long hours in harsh conditions, no matter the weather. They did grueling tasks such as picking cotton for long periods of time. In the North, the blacks lived free lives but they weren’t without complications. They had difficulty educating themselves and competing for jobs in the work force.
The Bureau was established in the War Department in 1865 to undertake the relief effort and the unprecedented social reconstruction that would bring freed people to full citizenship. It was supposed to be a temporary agency, under the “guidance” of the U.S Army and General Oliver O. Howard, which issued food and clothing, operated hospitals and temporary camps, helped locate family members, promoted education, helped freedmen legalize marriages, provided employment, supervised labor contracts, provided legal representation, investigated racial confrontations, settled freedmen on abandoned or confiscated lands, and worked with African American soldiers and sailors and their heirs to secure back pay, bounty payments, and pensions. The Bureau also had the huge task of helping southern blacks and whites make the transition from society based slavery to one allowing freedom in every sense of the word. They had the backing of the Northerners who influenced Congress help to re...
Once freed, African Americans believed that the rights of a citizen were granted to them. They truthfully believed this because after a brutally fought war, basic rights such as education, land, and employment were so modest, they were undeniable. Even though they were proclaimed as free, their place is society remained unaffected. The Freedmen's Bureau became one of the earlier agencies to provide support for newly freedmen. The agency offered education, advice and protection to its members. The most significant asset of the bureau was education. The literacy rate of African Americans rose about twenty percent due to the organization. Some freedmen even attended colleges to earn degrees. Many white Southerners viewed the African American attempt at education as a waste of time. They condemned the efforts of their social improvement. With much criticism by racist whites and inadequate funds, the Freedmen's Bureau concluded by 1872 injuring African American hopes of social equality.
In the writing's of the Jonathan Swift we can clearly see issues and concepts with regard to morality, ethics and relations come into play in our society and in Gulliver's Travels, Swift brings those issues to the for front for everyone to see and analyze. The very concepts and beliefs that man holds dear Swift attacks and strongly justifies his literary aggression thought the construct of the society of the Houyhnahnms who truly leads a just and humane society that we as humans (Yahoos) have the faintest concept of. As I will later point out, Swift also deals with human ignorance and the overall belief that nothing in this earth can be more civilized and exert more reason then us. He uses the characters of the Houyhnahnms to demonstrate our inadequacies and overall failures to exert and practice true reason. Issues such as war, corruption, rape, homosexuality, lying (false representation), slavery, bribery, greed, and murder does not exist in a society that understands the true meaning of reason. We can clearly see the metamorphosis of Gulliver from is departure from his wife and children to being mutinied to his initial encounter with the Yahoos as well as the Houyhnahnms, to his experiences over a 5 year period in his interactions with the Houyhnhnms to his departure and return home to his wife and kids we can clearly see the change from a man (yahoo) to a Houyhnhnm (in spirit). So as we take a closer look at Gulliver's travels, we will see that the Voyage of the Houyhnhnm is about change, understanding, and clarity of oneself, his beliefs, morals and values.
The efforts of the Freedmen’s Bureau included provision of relief food, offering health services to the sick, allocating land for settlement to the former slaves, setting up of a judicial system, enacting an education system and enforcing labor laws that allowed the freed men to seek employment. While they were unable to help everyone, they did set precedents and have a huge impact on reconstruction.
They tried to prove black people were lesser and it worked. “...slave status was increasingly associated exclusively with Africans. It was this association which served to denigrate black people whatever their status” (Madge Dresser 2). This racial rift would keep blacks and whites apart until around the 1900s. This made lives difficult on any black person.
Swifts Gulliver’s Travels enables us to critically and harshly analyse our world and encourages us to evaluate the customs of early 18th century English society in relation to an ideal humanity. In order to address the injustices prevalent in human constructs and behavior, Swift uses literary techniques to induce a state of extreme self-doubt. The satire's assessment of humanity's positive and negative traits is developed through Gulliver's awkward process of identifying with the loathsome Yahoos and idolising the rational Houyhnhnms. The allegory of a domestic animal portraying more "humanity" than humans exemplifies the flaws of human nature and the tumultuous, uncertain philosophical, ethical, and scientific thought, of Swifts period. The portrayal of the Houyhnhnms involves a direct attack on human nature. Although Gulliver's Travels Book IV makes a satirical attack on human nature in general, it does have specific targets in mind: namely, war and its associated destruction, the verminous, lying, criminal activities of lawyers, and the cruel shallowness of consumerism and wealth disparity. In intellectual terms the text leaves the reader feeling quite disturbed despite the use of humor and adventure telling. This essay will analyse Gulliver’s Travels Part 4 in terms of genre and will explore how the satire uses rhetorical means to provide commentary on rational humanity. In addition the essay will examine how Swift promoted change to early 18th century England by constructing an intricate attack on the philosophical position of his political adversaries.
With both the north and the south having differences they do have similarity's on how African Americans were treated during the Civil War. Slaves and free slaves fought for both sides for many reasons of freedom and how they were being treated. Also, once they fought the president sought that they fought they were awarded the medal of honor.
Past the political satire and laughable motifs in the book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, the purpose of this story is to show everything ignoble and tactless of the human species in general and that humans are truly disgusting. Also exploring the idea of a utopia. Swift uses the literary device of political satire to show how childish and ignorant human acts were. This is because during Swift's time in the eighteenth century, Britain was modernizing at this time. The reader follows the four narrative travels of the main character, Lemuel Gulliver. Each of the four voyages Gulliver has traveled to, is a different society that portrays one of the main ideals of the eighteenth century in Britain. The four places Gulliver has traveled to were Lilliput; being Gulliver's first voyage, Brobdingnag; his second voyage, Laputa; the third voyage, and lastly to the land of the Houyhnhms; being his last voyage and afterwards traveling back home to England. The experience from being exposed to these four societies has had a huge impact on how Gulliver now sees humans.
Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift, is regarded as one of the greatest satires in modern history. The purpose of the book, although some of his contemporaries didn’t realize it, is to ridicule his government, his rulers, and human nature as a whole. His generalization of the human condition doesn’t manifest itself completely until Part IV of the book, where the main character, Lemuel Gulliver, finds himself on an island inhabited by two main species – the Houyhnhnms, horse-like animals, and the Yahoos, human-like animals. The difference between this island and reality as we know it is the fact that the Houyhnhnms are intelligent, noble creatures governed wholly by reason, and the Yahoos are naked, dirty humanoids that seem at best, barbaric creatures. The purpose of Part IV is to show the extremities of human nature, and to display both the good and bad qualities through two different examples. Swift makes the good quality of human nature seem more foreign to the reader by attributing that good quality, reason, to a horse. It also puts the period of Enlightenment in perspective for the reader. The main purpose of Book IV of Gulliver’s Travels is to exemplify the two extremes of human nature, as well as show what position on that spectrum we humans should strive to achieve.
Jonathan Swift's story, Gulliver's Travels, is a very clever story. It recounts the fictitious journey of a fictitious man named Lemuel Gulliver, and his travels to the fantasy lands of Lilliput, Brobdinag, Laputa, and Houyhnhmn land. When one first reads his accounts in each of these lands, one may believe that they are reading humorous accounts of fairy-tale-like lands that are intended to amuse children. When one reads this story in the light of it being a satire, the stories are still humorous, but one realizes that Swift was making a public statement about the affairs of England and of the human race as a whole.
An endeavor, such as the one taken by Gulliver always comes with a risk. Considering the fact that he was not content with his human nature, and demonstrated his preference for animals and their set of organization. One may ask why Gulliver preferred the lifestyle of horses to that of men. Answering this question, gives us a lead to track the madness that evolved as he went along this journey. Gulliver was unsatisfied with the state of affairs in his own country and was looking for a country which is Utopian with what he had. His anger was first against the authority of the land, the Kings and Queens, the religious set up and how these authorities proclaim laws and procedures that don’t favor the masses. To some extent it can be said that Jonathan Swift who chose this satirical method of writing was an agent of change for the ordinary people.
Lemuel Gulliver recounts his findings over four of his most impactful voyages in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver gives his own candid account of all significant characters encountered and manages to fall into almost every influential person’s favor. Swift tactically shapes Gulliver’s encounters with characters from varying backgrounds to compare the behavior of the esteemed nobility with the behavior of commoners. Swift has Gulliver alter his demeanor based on his present surroundings to appeal to those around him and maintain his pride. By doing so, Swift intended to didactically explain his contempt for nobility, his misanthropy, and the dangers of pride.
Gulliver's Travels reflects characters to the reader in numerous inventively nauseating ways. Quick uses his imaginative revamping of every day life to make the meanest, most clever, dirtiest tirade of the whole eighteenth century. Throughout this novel, Swift utilizes amazing misrepresentation and parody to make a figurative association between the distinctive societies experienced on Lemuel Gulliver's excursions and about his own particular society, reprimanding his general public's traditions.
What Swift has accomplished by making Gulliver the embodiment of common English values and beliefs and then having him visit far away lands that are really the mirrors of English society is an interesting satirical device. He forces the English reader to unknowingly judge English society, not according to some higher law or pristine observer, but through the lens of their own cherished values. This effectively turns English beliefs and values in on themselves as a test of their merit. Swift echoes this structure by first having Gulliver visit a land of little people, which causes one to observe them with scrutiny. Then Gulliver immediately travels to a land of giants which causes scrutiny of Gulliver, who is now the little one.