History 156/November 2006/Exercise #3

American nationality was founded on the Jeffersonian doctrine of “all men are created equal” and not the Winthropian idea that “some high and eminent in power and dignity, others mean and in subjection."  You have already explained the transit from the world of Winthrop to the world of Jefferson, Madison, Paine, and others. 

But EQUALITY did not become the focal point of American nationality until the 1820s.  When it did, many different groups laid claim to meaning of equality.  

You have been given five documents that speak to radically different notions of equality:

     Andrew Jackson’s veto the bill to recharter the Bank of the United States

     Thomas Skidmore’s Plan for Equalizing Property

     William Lloyd Garrison’s Speech to the Colonization Society

     Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Speech prior to the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention

     Frederick Douglass’ speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=162 (also in your edition of his Narrative)

All these documents are posted in the class website. http://www.history.umd.edu/Faculty/IBerlin/HIST156/

NOW…..Based upon your understanding of American history and THINKING HISTORICALLY, write an essay of about three but no more than five typewritten pages explicating the competing understandings of equality and their relationship to one another as they emerged in United States of the 1830s. 

Exercise #3 is due in class on Monday November 27.