Herbert Gutman’s book, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom 1750-1925 (1976), is a part of revisionist literature in reaction to earlier literature on slavery that emphasized the destructive impact of the institution on African American life. Gutman’s main purpose is to dispel the assertion made by Daniel P. Moynihan in The Negro Family in ...
As a defender of slavery, John C. Calhoun made arguments explicitly opposed to the Founders’ conception of individual rights. Calhoun, in his Disquisition on Government, denied the existence of a state of nature in which people are born free and equal. For Calhoun, this state of nature never did nor can exist; all men are ...
December 15, 2011 marked the 220th anniversary of our Bill of Rights. As usual, it passed without much fanfare, yet it’s been protecting American rights for more than two centuries. The Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution–our nation’s primary legal document–and they are law. As Americans, we expect our government to honor our ...
The issue of post-Civil War conditions has many intricacies and matters to consider but, in the end, one can state with absolute certainty that the North won the war. With that being said, though, it is important to recognize that the South’s general ideology, sans slavery, reigned powerfully for a century after. Let us examine ...
With the end of the Civil War in 1865 African-Americans still had fewer rights than white people. Even with the passing of laws such as the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifthtenth amendments, which were aimed at giving them equal protection under law, blacks were still discriminated against. Although under law African-Americans had equal rights they were ...
Once Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the War Between the States came to represent the fight of decent people to end the horrors of slavery. It was a move of genius on Lincoln’s part that provided a surge in Union numbers when ‘freed’ blacks enlisted, depleted labor sources in the South when ...
Racial segregation in the United States has had a long and interesting history. But unfortunately, because of white America’s underlying sense of shame and the unresolved hurt and anger of many African-Americans surrounding anything to do with slavery, segregation, the Civil Rights Movement and modern race relations, students of all races are being shortchanged. In ...