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The influence of transcendentalism
Reflection about transcendentalism
Transcendentalism essays
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The Garies and Their Friends: An Argument for Environmentalism
The 19th-century in America was a time of blossoming new philosophies that resulted from a curious amalgam of the lingering ripples of the Revolution and the discord between the North and South. One of the philosophies developed during the time period was transcendentalism, the philosophical movement that at its core believed in the “inherent goodness of both people and nature” (“Transcendentalism”). Transcendentalists held the conviction that it was society and its institutions that corrupted the human being, an ideology titled environmentalism. Abolitionists adapted the idea of environmentalism to slavery forming the notion that “circumstances—previous enslavement, the lack of formal education, and the absence of remunerative employment—explained African American degradation” (Newman, 33).
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Webb addresses the theme of environmentalism and conveys the statement that African Americans are not congenitally improvident and ignorant, but instead are this way because of the conditions of slavery and the persistent nature of racism. Webb argues against the fallacy that African Americans are inherently ignorant by way of signification in both irony and allusion. The most artful example of this occurs during the first chapter of the novel, “In which the Reader is introduced to a Family of Peculiar Construction”, whilst wealthy white ladies and gentlemen have a light dinner
When reading about the institution of slavery in the United States, it is easy to focus on life for the slaves on the plantations—the places where the millions of people purchased to serve as slaves in the United States lived, made families, and eventually died. Most of the information we seek is about what daily life was like for these people, and what went “wrong” in our country’s collective psyche that allowed us to normalize the practice of keeping human beings as property, no more or less valuable than the machines in the factories which bolstered industrialized economies at the time. Many of us want to find information that assuages our own personal feelings of discomfort or even guilt over the practice which kept Southern life moving
The North is popularly considered the catalyst of the abolitionist movement in antebellum America and is often glorified in its struggle against slavery; however, a lesser-known installment of the Northern involvement during this era is one of its complicity in the development of a “science” of race that helped to rationalize and justify slavery and racism throughout America. The economic livelihood of the North was dependent on the fruits of slave labor and thus the North, albeit with some reluctance, inherently conceded to tolerate slavery and moreover embarked on a quest to sustain and legitimize the institution through scientific research. Racism began to progress significantly following the American Revolution after which Thomas Jefferson himself penned Notes on the State of Virginia, a document in which he voiced his philosophy on black inferiority, suggesting that not even the laws of nature could alter it. Subsequent to Jefferson’s notes, breakthroughs in phrenological and ethnological study became fundamental in bolstering and substantiating the apologue of racial inadequacy directed at blacks. Throughout history, slavery was indiscriminate of race and the prospect acquiring freedom not impossible; America, both North and South, became an exception to the perennial system virtually guaranteeing perpetual helotry for not only current slaves but also their progeny.
The scope of the investigation is limited to the Second Great Awakening and the American Abolitionist Movement from 1830-1839, with the exception of some foundational knowledge of the movement prior to 1830 to highlight the changes within the movement in the 1830s. The investigation included an exploration of various letters, lectures, and sermons by leading abolitionists from the time period and a variety of secondary sources analyzing the Second Great Awakening and the Abolitionist Movement from 1830-1839.
The Antebellum Era between the years of 1825 to 1850 was abundant with many reform movements that signified great change within the people of the nation. Although many of these changes were good and lasting reforms, extremists’ stark views did the contrary and inhibited change. Luckily, reform movements such as the women’s rights movement, the abolition of slavery, and temperance all led the nation in the right direction towards the expansion of democratic ideals. These ideals encompass the belief that all citizens are equal and are entitled to certain unalienable rights.
In the 1830’s the Southerners thought, or made themselves think, slavery was a necessary evil. They thought that the Negroes were as helpless as children, without foresight or faculties that would enable them to depended upon anybody else but the white race. Southerners saw themselves as the great people who helped accelerate the transition process of this inferior tribe; the process from barbarianism to civilization. They felt enslavement benefited slaves; heaven forbid slaves were free,...
Black and white abolitionists shared common assumptions about the evil of slavery, the "virtue of moral reform", and the certainty of human progress"(1). Schor, Garnet,1877, & Lanngston, 1989). This shared understanding provided "the basic for the interracial solidarity" and cooperation so vital in the crusade against slavery"(2). (Schor and Garnet, 1877). But blacks also brought a distinct perspective to the antislavery movement. Their abolitionism was shaped profoundly by their personal experience and racial oppression. Unlike most white abolitionists, they conceived of antidlavery as an all-encompassion struggle for racial equality, and they took a more pragramatic, less doctrinaire approach to antislavery tactics. The contrast between the two abolitionists -- black and white -- become increasingly apparent in the 1840s and 1850s as black expressed a growing militancy, asserted greater independence, and called for racially exclusive organization and initiatives.
I am going to focus on the narratives of Frederick Douglass and Linda Brent as examples of a refusal of racial ideologies and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as an example of replicating (although attempting to refute) racial ideologies of the day. Douglass’s Narrative and Brent’s Incidents follow them from ignorance to knowledge; knowledge and freedom gained through their own doing. I think that Stowe is in a way both trying to write an anti-slavery novel, however, I can’t see her as anti-racist because Romantic Racialism is what grounds her arguments. In all three, I am going to prove that the relationship between and the representations of the body and the mind are what either refuse or support racial ideologies of the nineteenth century.
Since the beginning of slavery in the America, Africans have been deemed inferior to the whites whom exploited the Atlantic slave trade. Africans were exported and shipped in droves to the Americas for the sole purpose of enriching the lives of other races with slave labor. These Africans were sold like livestock and forced into a life of servitude once they became the “property” of others. As the United States expanded westward, the desire to cultivate new land increased the need for more slaves. The treatment of slaves was dependent upon the region because different crops required differing needs for cultivation. Slaves in the Cotton South, concluded traveler Frederick Law Olmsted, worked “much harder and more unremittingly” than those in the tobacco regions.1 Since the birth of America and throughout its expansion, African Americans have been fighting an uphill battle to achieve freedom and some semblance of equality. While African Americans were confronted with their inferior status during the domestic slave trade, when performing their tasks, and even after they were set free, they still made great strides in their quest for equality during the nineteenth century.
Slavery in the eighteenth century was worst for African Americans. Observers of slaves suggested that slave characteristics like: clumsiness, untidiness, littleness, destructiveness, and inability to learn the white people were “better.” Despite white society's belief that slaves were nothing more than laborers when in fact they were a part of an elaborate and well defined social structure that gave them identity and sustained them in their silent protest.
Slavery was an accepted way of life in America during the nineteenth century. Public sentiment on the subject formed largely from the writings of southerners who rationalized slavery’s existence. White people enslaved black people and believed the Negro race was naturally inferior and would benefit under the white man’s care. However, as Douglass pointed out in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, slavery provided no such benefits.
In Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers, Nancy Unger synthesizes a trans-historical and cultural synthesis of American women’s experience and their relationship with the environment in her 333 pg book. The language she uses in capable of being grasped by someone from any back ground. Unger text contains thoughtful connections between the exploitations of capitalism, failures of legislation, gender oppression, racism, and environmental justice. Unger's purpose is to show that these connections have been as relevant to U.S. history and how it is still affecting modern environmental relationships. Beyond Nature's Housekeepers is an extensive examination that employs
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, and especially after the War of 1812, America has taken on yet another revolution. In this time period, the country saw a rapid expansion in territory and economics, as well as the extension of democratic politics; the spread of evangelical revivalism; the rise of the nation’s first labor and reform movements; the growth of cities and industrial ways of life; a rise in abolitionism and reduction in the power of slavery; and radical shifts in the roles and status of women.
(Part 4: Antebellum slavery) A glimpse into the life of plantation slaves in the mid-1800’s is troubling to say the least. Every plantation owner dictated independently the type of environment that the slavers were to live in. There were no rules or regulation for treating slaves after they were purchased. Merciful slave masters let black slave communities grow and exist inside the plantation, which led to African-Christian practices as well as a sense of human-worth by letting the slaves tend to gardens and do other tasks other than physical labor. Unfortunately, this scenario might have been statistically uncommon in the larger scheme of plantations.
The novel is loaded with a plethora of imageries of a hostile white world. Wright shows how white racism affects the behavior, feelings, and thoughts of Bigger.
During the late 19th and early 20th century, racial injustice was very prominent and even wildly accepted in the South. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois were two of the most renowned “pioneers in the [search] for African-American equality in America” (Washington, DuBois, and the Black Future). Washington was “born a slave” who highly believed in the concept of “separate but equal,” meaning that “we can be as [distant] as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress” (Washington 1042). DuBois was a victim of many “racial problems before his years as a student” and disagreed with Washington’s point of view, which led