HIST 1301:
“Virginian Luxuries”
This assignment has several documents for you to read and view in order
to answer the four required questions. Please follow any formatting
guidelines and minimum length requirements as set by your professor.
Please take your time to analyze these documents and submit thoughtful
arguments supported by the evidence these documents provide.
Documents:
1. “Virginian Luxuries” by unknown artist (ca. 1800)
2. Alexis de Tocqueville Describes the Three Races in the United States (1835)
3. Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
4. “The Discord” by F. Heppenheimer (1855)
5. Abraham Lincoln’s speech in Peoria, Illinois (October 16, 1854)
6. Abraham Lincoln’s Fourth Debate with Stephen Douglas (September 18, 1858)
7. The Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th)
Document 1: Virginian Luxuries (ca. 1800 – artist unknown)
Document 2: Alexis de Toqueville Describes the Three Races in the United
States (1835)
In a landmark examination of the American society and culture, Alexis de Toqueville’s Democracy in America
offered a unique outsiders perspective on liberty and its limitations amongst the inhabitants of the United
States, particularly in the relations of three races “naturally distinct…and hostile to one another.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve (London: Longman,
1862), Book 1, chapter 18.
THE PRESENT AND PROBABLE FUTURE CONDITION OF THE THREE RACES
THAT INHABIT THE TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES
THE principal task that I had imposed upon myself is now performed: I have shown, as far as I was able, the
laws and the customs of the American democracy. Here I might stop; but the reader would perhaps feel that I had not
satisfied his expectations.
An absolute and immense democracy is not all that we find in America; the inhabitants of the New World
may be considered from more than one point of view. In the course of this work my subject has often led me to speak
of the Indians and the Negroes, but I have never had time to stop in order to show what place these two races occupy
in the midst of the democratic people whom I was engaged in describing. I have shown in what spirit and according
to what laws the Anglo-American Union was formed; but I could give only a hurried and imperfect glance at the
dangers which menace that confederation and could not furnish a detailed account of its chances of survival
independently of its laws and manners. When speaking of the united republics, I hazarded no conjectures upon the
permanence of republican forms in the New World; and when making frequent allusions to the commercial activity
that reigns in the Union, I was unable to inquire into the future of the Americans as a commercial people. . . .
The human beings who are scattered over this space do not form, as in Europe, so many branches of the same
stock. Three races, naturally distinct, and, I might almost say, hostile to each other, are discoverable among them at
the first glance. Almost insurmountable barriers had been raised between them by education and law, as well as by
their origin and outward characteristics, but fortune has brought them together on the same soil, where, although they
are mixed, they do not amalgamate, and each race fulfills its destiny apart.
Among these widely differing families of men, the first that attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in
power, and in enjoyment, is the white, or European, the MAN pre-eminently so called, below him appear the Negro
and the Indian. These two unhappy races have nothing in common, neither birth, nor features, nor language, nor habits.
Their only resemblance lies in their misfortunes. Both of them occupy an equally inferior position in the country they
inhabit; both suffer from tyranny; and if their wrongs are not the same, they originate from the same authors.
If we reason from what passes in the world, we should almost say that the European is to the other races of
mankind what man himself is to the lower animals: he makes them subservient to his use, and when he cannot subdue
he destroys them. Oppression has, at one stroke, deprived the descendants of the Africans of almost all the privileges
of humanity. The Negro of the United States has lost even the remembrance of his country; the language which his
forefathers spoke is never heard around him; he abjured their religion and forgot their customs when he ceased to
belong to Africa, without acquiring any claim to European privileges. But he remains half-way between the two
communities, isolated between two races; sold by the one, repulsed by the other; finding not a spot in the universe to
call by the name of country, except the faint image of a home which the shelter of his master’s roof affords.
The Negro has no family: woman is merely the temporary companion of his pleasures, and his children are
on an equality with himself from the moment of their birth. . . . The Negro, plunged in this abyss of evils, scarcely
feels his own calamitous situation. Violence made him a slave, and the habit of servitude gives him the thoughts and
desires of a slave, he admires his tyrants more than he hates them, and finds his joy and his pride in the servile imitation
of those who oppress him. His understanding is degraded to the level of his soul.
The Negro enters upon slavery as soon as he is born, nay, he may have been purchased in the womb, and
have begun his slavery before he began his existence. Equally devoid of wants and of enjoyment, and useless to
himself, he learns, with his first notions of existence, that he is the property of another, who has an interest in
preserving his life, and that the care of it does not devolve upon himself; even the power of thought appears to him a
useless gift of Providence, and he quietly enjoys all the privileges of his debasement.
If he becomes free, independence is often felt by him to be a heavier burden than slavery; for, having learned
in the course of his life to submit to everything except reason, he is too unacquainted with her dictates to obey them.
A thousand new desires beset him, and he has not the knowledge and energy necessary to resist them: these are masters
which it is necessary to contend with, and he has learned only to submit and obey. In short, he is sunk to such a depth
of wretchedness that while servitude brutalizes, liberty destroys him.
Oppression has been no less fatal to the Indian than to the Negro race, but its effects are different. Before the
arrival of white men in the New World, the inhabitants of North America lived quietly in their woods, enduring the
vicissitudes and practicing the virtues and vices common to savage nations. The Europeans having dispersed the Indian
tribes and driven them into the deserts, condemned them to a wandering life, full of inexpressible sufferings.
Savage nations are only controlled by opinion and custom. When the North American Indians had lost the
sentiment of attachment to their country; when their families were dispersed, their traditions obscured, and the chain
of their recollections broken; when all their habits were changed, and their wants in- creased beyond measure,
European tyranny rendered them more disorderly and less civilized than they were before. The moral and physical
condition of these tribes continually grew worse, and they became more barbarous as they became more wretched.
Nevertheless, the Europeans have not been able to change the character of the Indians; and though they have had
power to destroy, they have never been able to subdue and civilize them.
The lot of the Negro is placed on the extreme limit of servitude, while that of the Indian lies on the uttermost
verge of liberty; and slavery does not produce more fatal effects upon the first than independence upon the second.
The Negro has lost all property in his own person, and he cannot dispose of his existence without committing a sort
of fraud. But the savage is his own master as soon as he is able to act; parental authority is scarcely known to him; he
has never bent his will to that of any of his kind, nor learned the difference between voluntary obedience and a
shameful subjection; and the very name of law is unknown to him. To be free, with him, signifies to escape from all
the shackles of society. As he delights in this barbarous independence and would rather perish than sacrifice the least
part of it, civilization has little hold over him.
The Negro makes a thousand fruitless efforts to insinuate himself among men who repulse him; he conforms
to the tastes of his oppressors, adopts their opinions, and hopes by imitating them to form a part of their community.
Having been told from infancy that his race is naturally inferior to that of the whites, he assents to the proposition and
is ashamed of his own nature. In each of his features he discovers a trace of slavery, and if it were in his power, he
would willingly rid himself of everything that makes him what he is.
The Indian, on the contrary, has his imagination inflated with the pretended nobility of his origin, and lives
and dies in the midst of these dreams of pride. Far from desiring to conform his habits to ours, he loves his savage life
as the distinguishing mark of his race and repels every advance to civilization, less, perhaps, from hatred of it than
from a dread of resembling the Europeans.
While he has nothing to oppose to our perfection in the arts but the resources of the wilderness, to our tactics
nothing but undisciplined courage, while our well-digested plans are met only by the spontaneous instincts of savage
life, who can wonder if he fails in this unequal contest?
The Negro, who earnestly desires to mingle his race with that of the European, cannot do so; while the Indian,
who might succeed to a certain extent, disdains to make the attempt. The servility of the one dooms him to slavery,
the pride of the other to death. . . .
The expulsion of the Indians often takes place at the present day in a regular and, as it were, a legal manner.
When the European population begins to approach the limit of the desert inhabited by a savage tribe, the government
of the United States usually sends forward envoys who assemble the Indians in a large plain and, having first eaten
and drunk with them, address them thus: “What have you to do in the land of your fathers? Before long, you must dig
up their bones in order to live. In what respect is the country you inhabit better than another? Are there no woods,
marshes, or prairies except where you dwell? And can you live nowhere but under your own sun? Beyond those
mountains which you see at the horizon, beyond the lake which bounds your territory on the west, there lie vast
countries where beasts of chase are yet found in great abundance; sell us your lands, then, and go to live happily in
those solitudes.” After holding this language, they spread before the eyes of the Indians firearms, woolen garments,
kegs of brandy, glass necklaces, bracelets of tinsel, ear-rings, and looking-glasses. If, when they have beheld all these
riches, they still hesitate, it is insinuated that they cannot refuse the required consent and that the government itself
will not long have the power of protecting them in their rights. What are they to do? Half convinced and half
compelled, they go to inhabit new deserts, where the importunate whites will not let them remain ten years in peace.
In this manner do the Americans obtain, at a very low price, whole provinces, which the richest sovereigns of Europe
could not purchase.
These are great evils; and it must be added that they appear to me to be irremediable. I believe that the Indian
nations of North America are doomed to perish, and that whenever the Europeans shall be established on the shores
of the Pacific Ocean, that race of men will have ceased to exist. The Indians had only the alternative of war or
civilization; in other words, they must either destroy the Europeans or become their equals.
At the first settlement of the colonies they might have found it possible, by uniting their forces, to deliver
themselves from the small bodies of strangers who landed on their continent. They several times attempted to do it,
and were on the point of succeeding; but the disproportion of their resources at the present day, when compared with
those of the whites, is too great to allow such an enterprise to be thought of. But from time to time among the Indians
men of sagacity and energy foresee the final destiny that awaits the native population and exert themselves to unite
all the tribes in common hostility to the Europeans; but their efforts are unavailing. The tribes which are in the
neighborhood of the whites are too much weakened to offer an effectual resistance; while the others, giving way to
that childish carelessness of the morrow which characterizes savage life, wait for the near approach of danger before
they prepare to meet it; some are unable, others are unwilling, to act.
It is easy to foresee that the Indians will never civilize themselves, or that it will be too late when they may
be inclined to make the experiment. . . .
The Indians will perish in the same isolated condition in which they have lived, but the destiny of the Negroes
is in some measure interwoven with that of the Europeans. These two races are fastened to each other without
intermingling; and they are alike unable to separate entirely or to combine. The most formidable of all the ills that
threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating
the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to
this as a primary fact. . . .
It is important to make an accurate distinction between slavery itself and its consequences. The immediate
evils produced by slavery were very nearly the same in antiquity as they are among the moderns, but the consequences
of these evils were different. The slave among the ancients belonged to the same race as his master, and was often the
superior of the two in education 31 and intelligence. Freedom was the only distinction between them; and when
freedom was conferred, they were easily confounded together. The ancients, then, had a very simple means of ridding
themselves of slavery and its consequences: that of enfranchisement; and they succeeded as soon as they adopted this
measure generally. Not but that in ancient states the vestiges of servitude subsisted for some time after servitude itself
was abolished. There is a natural prejudice that prompts men to despise whoever has been their inferior long after he
has become their equal; and the real inequality that is produced by fortune or by law is always succeeded by an
imaginary inequality that is implanted in the manners of the people. But among the ancients this secondary
consequence of slavery had a natural limit; for the freedman bore so entire a resemblance to those born free that it
soon became impossible to distinguish him from them.
The greatest difficulty in antiquity was that of altering the law; among the moderns it is that of altering the
customs, and as far as we are concerned, the real obstacles begin where those of the ancients left off. This arises from
the circumstance that among the moderns the abstract and transient fact of slavery is fatally united with the physical
and permanent fact of color. The tradition of slavery dishonors the race, and the peculiarity of the race perpetuates the
tradition of slavery. No African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the New World, whence it follows that
all the blacks who are now found there are either slaves or freedmen Thus the Negro transmits the eternal mark of his
ignominy to all his descendants; and although the law may abolish slavery, God alone can obliterate the traces of its
existence.
The modern slave differs from his master not only in his condition but in his origin. You may set the Negro
free, but you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European. Nor is this all we scarcely acknowledge the
common features of humanity in this stranger whom slavery has brought among us. His physiog- nomy is to our eyes
hideous, his understanding weak, his tastes low; and we are almost inclined to look upon him as a being intermediate
between man and the brutes.32 The moderns, then, after they have abolished slavery, have three prejudices to contend
against, which are less easy to attack and far less easy to conquer than the mere fact of servitude: the prejudice of the
master, the prejudice of the race, and the prejudice of color. . . .
I see that in a certain portion of the territory of the United States at the present day the legal barrier which
separated the two races is falling away, but not that which exists in the manners of the country, slavery recedes, but
the prejudice to which it has given birth is immovable. Whoever has inhabited the United States must have perceived
that in those parts of the Union in which the Negroes are no longer slaves they have in no wise drawn nearer to the
whites. On the contrary, the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in
those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known.
It is true that in the North of the Union marriages may be legally contracted between Negroes and whites;
but public opinion would stigmatize as infamous a man who should connect himself with a Negress, and it would be
difficult to cite a single instance of such a union. The electoral franchise has been conferred upon the Negroes in
almost all the states in which slavery has been abolished, but if they come forward to vote, their lives are in danger. If
oppressed, they may bring an action at law, but they will find none but whites among their judges; and although they
may legally serve as jurors, prejudice repels them from that office. The same schools do not receive the children of
the black and of the European. In the theaters gold cannot procure a seat for the servile race beside their former
masters; in the hospitals they lie apart; and although they are allowed to invoke the same God as the whites, it must
be at a different altar and in their own churches, with their own clergy. The gates of heaven are not closed against
them, but their inferiority is continued to the very confines of the other world. When the Negro dies, his bones are cast
aside, and the distinction of condition prevails even in the equality of death. Thus the Negro is free, but he can share
neither the rights, nor the pleasures, nor the labor, nor the afflictions, nor the tomb of him whose equal he has been
declared to be; and he cannot meet him upon fair terms in life or in death.
In the South, where slavery still exists, the Negroes are less carefully kept apart; they sometimes share the
labors and the recreations of the whites; the whites consent to intermix with them to a certain extent, and although
legislation treats them more harshly, the habits of the people are more tolerant and compassionate. In the South the
master is not afraid to raise his slave to his own standing, because he knows that he can in a moment reduce him to
the dust at pleasure. In the North the white no longer distinctly perceives the barrier that separates him from the
degraded race, and he shuns the Negro with the more pertinacity since he fears lest they should some day be
confounded together.
Among the Americans of the South, Nature sometimes reasserts her rights and restores a transient equality
between the blacks and the whites; but in the North pride restrains the most imperious of human passions. The
American of the Northern states would perhaps allow the Negress to share his licentious pleasures if the laws of his
country did not declare that she may aspire to be the legitimate partner of his bed, but he recoils with horror from her
who might become his wife.
Thus it is in the United States that the prejudice which repels the Negroes seems to increase in proportion as
they are emancipated, and inequality is sanctioned by the manners while it is effaced from the laws of the country.
But if the relative position of the two races that inhabit the United States is such as I have described, why have the
Americans abolished slavery in the North of the Union, why do they maintain it in the South, and why do they
aggravate its hardships? The answer is easily given. It is not for the good of the Negroes, but for that of the whites,
that measures are taken to abolish slavery in the United States. . . .
The same abuses of power that now maintain slavery would then become the source of the most alarming
perils to the white population of the South. At the present time the descendants of the Europeans are the sole owners
of the land and the absolute masters of all labor; they alone possess wealth, knowledge, and arms. The black is destitute
of all these advantages, but can subsist without them because he is a slave. If he were free, and obliged to provide for
his own subsistence, would it be possible for him to remain without these things and to support life? Or would not the
very instruments of the present superiority of the white while slavery exists expose him to a thousand dangers if it
were abolished?
As long as the Negro remains a slave, he may be kept in a condition not far removed from that of the brutes;
but with his liberty he cannot but acquire a degree of instruction that will enable him to appreciate his misfortunes and
to discern a remedy for them. Moreover, there exists a singular principle of relative justice which is firmly implanted
in the human heart. Men are much more forcibly struck by those inequalities which exist within the same class than
by those which may be noted between different classes. One can understand slavery, but how allow several millions
of citizens to exist under a load of eternal infamy and hereditary wretchedness? In the North the population of freed
Negroes feels these hardships and indignities, but its numbers and its powers are small, while in the South it would be
numerous and strong.
As soon as it is admitted that the whites and the emancipated blacks are placed upon the same territory in the
situation of two foreign communities, it will readily be understood that there are but two chances for the future: the
Negroes and the whites must either wholly part or wholly mingle. I have already expressed my conviction as to the
latter event.46 I do not believe that the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing. But
I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the United States than elsewhere. An isolated individual may surmount the
prejudices of religion, of his country, or of his race; and if this individual is a king, he may effect surprising changes
in society; but a whole people cannot rise, as it were, above itself. A despot who should subject the Americans and
their former slaves to the same yoke might perhaps succeed in commingling their races; but as long as the American
democracy remains at the head of affairs, no one will undertake so difficult a task; and it may be foreseen that the
freer the white population of the United States becomes, the more isolated will it remain.47
I have previously observed that the mixed race is the true bond of union between the Europeans and the
Indians; just so, the mulattoes are the true means of transition between the white and the Negro; so that wherever
mulattoes abound, the intermixture of the two races is not impossible. In some parts of America the European and the
Negro races are so crossed with one another that it is rare to meet with a man who is entirely black or entirely white;
when they have arrived at this point, the two races may really be said to be combined, or, rather, to have been absorbed
in a third race, which is connected with both without being identical with either.
Of all Europeans, the English are those who have mixed least with the Negroes. More mulattoes are to be
seen in the South of the Union than in the North, but infinitely fewer than in any other European colony. Mulattoes
are by no means numerous in the United States; they have no force peculiar to themselves, and when quarrels
originating in differences of color take place, they generally side with the whites, just as the lackeys of the great in
Europe assume the contemptuous airs of nobility towards the lower orders.
The pride of origin, which is natural to the English, is singularly augmented by the personal pride that
democratic liberty fosters among the Americans: the white citizen of the United States is proud of his race and proud
of himself. But if the whites and the Negroes do not intermingle in the North of the Union, how should they mix in
the South? Can it be supposed for an instant that an American of the Southern states, placed, as he must forever be,
between the white man, with all his physical and moral superiority, and the Negro, will ever think of being confounded
with the latter? The Americans of the Southern states have two powerful passions which will always keep them aloof:
the first is the fear of being assimilated to the Negroes, their former slaves; and the second, the dread of sinking below
the whites, their neighbors.
If I were called upon to predict the future, I should say that the abolition of slavery in the South will in the
common course of things, increase the repugnance of the white population for the blacks. I base this opinion upon the
analogous observation I have already made in the North. I have remarked that the white inhabitants of the North avoid
the Negroes with increasing care in proportion as the legal barriers of separation are removed by the legislature; and
why should not the same result take place in the South? In the North the whites are deterred from intermingling with
the blacks by an imaginary danger; in the South, where the danger would be real, I cannot believe that the fear would
be less. . . .
The danger of a conflict between the white and the black inhabitants of the Southern states of the Union ( a
danger which, however remote it may be, is inevitable ) perpetually haunts the imagination of the Americans, like a
painful dream. . . .
I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of
the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if they are once
raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot
become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies. In the North everything facilitated
the emancipation of the slaves, and slavery was abolished without rendering the free Negroes formidable, since their
number was too small for them ever to claim their rights. But such is not the case in the South. The question of slavery
was a commercial and manufacturing question for the slave-owners in the North; for those of the South it is a question
of life and death. God forbid that I should seek to justify the principle of Negro slavery, as has been done by some
American writers! I say only that all the countries which formerly adopted that execrable principle are not equally
able to abandon it at the present time.
When I contemplate the condition of the South, I can discover only two modes of action for the white
inhabitants of those States: namely, either to emancipate the Negroes and to intermingle with them, or, remaining
isolated from them, to keep them in slavery as long as possible. All intermediate measures seem to me likely to
terminate, and that shortly, in the most horrible of civil wars and perhaps in the extirpation of one or the other of the
two races. Such is the view that the Americans of the South take of the question, and they act consistently with it. As
they are determined not to mingle with the Negroes, they refuse to emancipate them. . . .
These evils are unquestionably great, but they are the necessary and foreseen consequences of the very
principle of modern slavery. When the Europeans chose their slaves from a race differing from their own, which many
of them considered as inferior to the other races of mankind, and any notion of intimate union with which they all
repelled with horror, they must have believed that slavery would last forever, since there is no intermediate state that
can be durable between the excessive inequality produced by servitude and the complete equality that originates in
independence
The Europeans did imperfectly feel this truth, but without acknowledging it even to themselves. Whenever
they have had to do with Negroes, their conduct has been dictated either by their interest and their pride or by their
compassion. They first violated every right of humanity by their treatment of the Negro, and they afterwards informed
him that those rights were precious and inviolable. They opened their ranks to their slaves, and when the latter tried
to come in, they drove them forth in scorn. Desiring slavery, they have allowed themselves unconsciously to be swayed
in spite of themselves towards liberty, without having the courage to be either completely iniquitous or completely
just.
If it is impossible to anticipate a period at which the Americans of the South will mingle their blood with that
of the Negroes, can they allow their slaves to become free without compromising their own security? And if they are
obliged to keep that race in bondage in order to save their own families, may they not be excused for availing
themselves of the means best adapted to that end? The events that are taking place in the Southern states appear to me
to be at once the most horrible and the most natural results of slavery. When I see the order of nature overthrown, and
when I hear the cry of humanity in its vain struggle against the laws, my indignation does not light upon the men of
our own time who are the instruments of these outrages; but I reserve my execration for those who, after a thousand
years of freedom, brought back slavery into the world once more.
Whatever may be the efforts of the Americans of the South to maintain slavery, they will not always succeed.
Slavery, now con- fined to a single tract of the civilized earth, attacked by Christianity as unjust and by political
economy as prejudicial, and now contrasted with democratic liberty and the intelligence of our age, cannot survive.
By the act of the master, or by the will of the slave, it will cease; and in either case great calamities may be expected
to ensue. If liberty be refused to the Negroes of the South, they will in the end forcibly seize it for themselves; if it be
given, they will before long abuse it.
Document 3: Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
Produced at the first women’s rights convention in the United States in Seneca Falls, NY, the “Declaration of
Sentiments” was adopted to reflect the fundamental issues shaping and constraining women’s liberties in the
mid-19th century.
Declaration of Sentiments
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume
among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the
laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes that impel them to such a course.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to
secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever
any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse
allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence,
indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and
accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to
right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their
duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient
sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the
equal station to which they are entitled.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman,
having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a
candid world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and
foreigners.
Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without
representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided
they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to
her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power to deprive her of her
liberty, and to administer chastisement.
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper causes of divorce; in case of separation,
to whom the guardianship of the children shall be given; as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of women—the
law, in all cases, going upon the false supposition of the supremacy of man, and giving all power into his hands.
After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the owner of property, he has taxed her to
support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those she is permitted to follow, she
receives but a scanty remuneration.
He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself.
As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not known.
He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education—all colleges being closed against her.
He allows her in Church as well as State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her
exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of the Church.
He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women,
by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account
in man.
He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action,
when that belongs to her conscience and her God.
He has endeavored, in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her
self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious
degradation,—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved,
oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all
the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.
In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception,
misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall
employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the
press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of
the country.
RESOLUTIONS
Whereas, the great precept of nature is conceded to be, “that man shall pursue his own true and substantial
happiness,” Blackstone, in his Commentaries, remarks, that this law of Nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated
by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and
at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, and such of them as are valid, derive all their force,
and all their validity, and all their authority, mediately and immediately, from this original; Therefore,
Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and substantial happiness of woman, are
contrary to the great precept of nature, and of no validity; for this is “superior in obligation to any other.
Resolved, That all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience
shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and
therefore of no force or authority.
Resolved, That woman is man’s equal—was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the
race demands that she should be recognized as such.
Resolved, That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they –
live, that they may no longer publish their degradation, by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position,
nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all the rights they want.
Resolved, That inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual superiority, does accord to woman
moral superiority, it is pre-eminently his duty to encourage her to speak, and teach, as she has an opportunity, in all
religious assemblies.
Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior, that is required of woman
in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same tranegressions should be visited with equal severity
on both man and woman.
Resolved, That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when
she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her
appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in the feats of the circus.
Resolved, That woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a
perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged
sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.
Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the
elective franchise.
Resolved, That the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in
capabilities and responsibilities.
Resolved, therefore, That, being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities, and the same
consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man,
to promote every righteous cause, by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals
and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public,
by writing and by speaking, by any instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be held; and
this being a self-evident truth, growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or
authority adverse to it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be regarded as self-evident
falsehood, and at war with the interests of mankind.
Document 4: The Discord (F. Heppenheimer 1855)
Please read below for the dialogue being spoken in this political cartoon:
Man on far left – “Fight courageous for sovereign authority neighbor, or your wife will do to you as mine
has done to me – She’ll pull your hair off your head and compel you to wear a Wig!”
Man in center – “Rather die! than let my wife have my pants. A man ought always to be the ruler!”
Male child on left – “Oh Mamma please leave my Papa his Pants!”
Woman in center – “Sam’y help me! Woman is born to rule and not to obey these contemptible creature
called men!”
Woman on far right – “Bravo Sarah! Stick to them, it is only us, which ought to rule and to whom the pants
fit the best.”
Female child in center – “Oh Pa! let go, be gallant or you’ll tear ‘em.”
Document 5: portion of Lincoln’s Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854
In speaking out against the Kansas-Nebraska Act and resurrecting his political career, following a two-year
term in the House of Representatives and a subsequent return to his law practice, Abraham Lincoln offered
some early public insights into his feelings towards slavery:
…. This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but
hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example
of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-
–causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men
amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty—criticising the Declaration
of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.
Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we
would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist
amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses north and south. Doubtless there are
individuals, on both sides, who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would gladly introduce
slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know that some southern men do free their slaves, go north, and become
tip-top abolitionists; while some northern ones go south, and become most cruel slave-masters.
When southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery, than we; I acknowledge
the fact. When it is said that the institution exists; and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I
can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to
do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution. My first
impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,—to their own native land. But a moment’s reflection
would convince me, that whatever of high hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden
execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are
not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then?
Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I
think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon.
What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this;
and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords
with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether
well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded. We can not, then, make them equals. It does seem to me that systems
of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of
the south.
When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly;
and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more
likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one.
Document 6: portion of Lincoln’s Fourth Debate with Stephen Douglas,
September 18, 1858
In campaigning for the Senate (and really on behalf of their respective party’s candidates for the state
legislature which would actually select the Senator), Lincoln engaged Stephen Douglas in a series of seven
debates generally considered some of the most important in American History. During the early debates, the
Democrat candidate Douglas tried to paint a portrait of Lincoln and the Republican Party as one of
abolitionists who believed the races were equal. As he opened the Fourth Debate in which a reported 12,000
people were in attendance, Lincoln answered these charges:
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It will be very difficult for an audience so large as this to hear distinctly what
a speaker says, and consequently it is important that as profound silence be preserved as possible.
While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor
of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this
occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes
in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any
way the social and political equality of the white and black races, – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making
voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say
in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever
forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live,
while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am
in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that
because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing. I do not understand
that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that
I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave
or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will
add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman or child who was in favor of producing a perfect
equality, social and political, between negroes and white men. . . . I will add one further word, which is this: that I do
not understand that there is any place where an alteration of the social and political relations of the negro and the white
man can be made except in the State Legislature-not in the Congress of the United States-and as I do not really
apprehend the approach of any such thing myself . . .
Document 7: Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th)
For these documents, please read the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments found in the
Appendix of your textbook Give Me Liberty!: An American History (pages A-40 and A-41)
Realizing one’s “liberty” in the wake of the American Revolution was a very
difficult task for many peoples living in the United States of America. To be “free”
in nineteenth-century America largely depended upon the ability to exert power
over others, whether society at large or within individual relationships. The
republican government created at this nation’s founding was an attempt to find a
medium through which unequal relationships of power could be mediated,
including those between local, state, and federal authorities. Ultimately, the Civil
War was a referendum on the power of government over individuals’ lives and
their “liberties” to own slaves, be free, or accept the very notion of equality.
Based upon your reading of these selected primary documents and
incorporating such secondary sources as your textbook and notes, I would like
you to answer the following 4 Questions. Please provide specific examples
from these documents that support your arguments.
1) What relationships of power are featured in “Virginian Luxuries” (Document 1)? How are
unequal power relationships reflected in Toqueville’s distinctions between the three races
(Document 2)? What future does Toqueville predict for these groups of people and why? Based
upon your own knowledge, how accurate do you believe Toqueville’s observations and
predictions were?
2) What relationships of power are featured in “The Discord” (Document 4)? How does the
Declaration of Sentiments (Document 3) reveal the nature of gender relationships in nineteenth
century America? Based upon your knowledge of this time period, do you agree with these
sentiments, why or why not?
3) What are Abraham Lincoln’s views on the institution of slavery and notion of racial equality
(Documents 5 and 6)? Because these speeches were made on the “campaign trail,” how much do
you believe these statements reflect Lincoln’s real thoughts or do you believe he is “playing
politics?”
4) Based upon your knowledge of the Civil War and reading of the Reconstruction
Amendments (Document 7), in what specific ways were the questions and crises of liberty and
unequal power relationships contained in these various documents resolved or exacerbated by the
1870s?
