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LEARNING HOW TO REFORM SOCIETY
Written By: Sumara Coury
Grade Level/Discipline: 11th grade Regents U.S History and Government
Instructional Objectives:
- Students will explore concepts related to the reform movements in the late 1800s.
- Students will understand the notion of reform, and how society makes changes.
- Students will evaluate how effective reform is for a society and analyze whether or not it always brings progress.
- Students will synthesize the primary source material provided and create their own meaning from the information.
- Students will demonstrate their knowledge on the given concepts in an authentic manner.
N.Y.S Learning Standard/Performance Indicator:
- 1.13: Analyze historical narratives about key events in U.S history.
- 1.5: compare and contrast the experiences of different groups in the U.S.
- 1.11: prepare essays and oral reports about the important social, political, scientific, technological, and cultural developments, issues and events from U.S history.
Materials:
- Writing utensil
- Paper
- Poster board
- Drawing paper
Procedure:
- Students will be divided into groups of 4-5, each group assigned to a different station.
- Groups will move through all stations with their group on a rotating basis.
- Groups will receive 20-25 minutes of time to read, and create an output for each station.
- The teacher will select one group to present their product from each station.
- Groups will create questions based on the student presentations.
Assessment:
Students will complete an essay (provided) designed to address themes and concepts derived from the lesson material.
Station 1: Letter from abolitionist John Jay in 1861
We have an agency at work for the abolition of slavery in the pending war more powerful than all the Conventions we could assemble. Every battle fought will teach our soldiers & the nation at large that slavery is the great cause of the war, that it is slavery which has brutalized & barbarized the South & that slavery must be abolished as our army advances as a military necessity....
I look presently see the entire north...demanding the abolition of slavery not from their Christian regard for the rights of the slave but from motives that partake rather of self-interest--& from a conviction induced only by arguments and by facts that it is slavery alone that has reduced us to our present state.
The continuance of the war, with the unanimous and hearty approval of the whole north...that I would not run the risk of weakening it by an active antislavery movement. Let us polish our tones in patience--for I think I have already seen the beginning of the end.
Source: The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Document Number: GLC2222
<http://www.gilderlehrman.org/search/display_results.php?id=GLC2222>
Title: The War and the Fate of the Slave Power
Author: John Jay
Year: 1861
Task: Based on the information provided in the letter, act as if you are an abolitionist during the 1800s in the North. Compose an original brief speech pleading your cause to President Lincoln. Your speech should clearly support the end of slavery and should give clear reasons as rationale.
Station 2: Speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois in 1858
Although I have ever been opposed to slavery, so far I rested in the hope and belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. For that reason, it had been a minor question with me. I might have been mistaken; but the whole public mind, that is the mind of the great majority, had rested in that belief up to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise [in 1854, as part of the Kansas-Nebraska Act]. But upon that event, I became convinced that either I had been resting in a delusion, or the institution was being placed on a new basis--a basis for making it perpetual, national and universal. Subsequent events have greatly confirmed me in that belief. I believe that [Kansas-Nebraska] bill to be the beginning of a conspiracy for that purpose.... So believing, I thought the public mind will never rest till the power of Congress to restrict the spread of it [slavery] shall again be acknowledged and exercised on the one hand, or on the other, all resistance be entirely crushed out....
Mr. [Preston] Brooks, in one of his speeches, when they were presenting him canes, silver plate, gold pitchers and the like, for assaulting Senator [Charles] Sumner [of Massachusetts], distinctly affirmed his opinion that when this Constitution was formed, it was the belief of no man that slavery would last to the present day.
He said, what I think, that the framers of our Constitution placed the institution of slavery where the public mind rested in the hope that it was in course of ultimate extinction. But he went on to say that the men of the present age, by their experience, have become wiser than the framers of the Constitution; and the invention of the cotton gin had made the perpetuity of slavery a necessity in this country....
My declarations upon this subject of Negro slavery may be misrepresented, but can not be misunderstood, I have said that I do not understand the Declaration to mean that all men are created equal in all respects. They are not our equal in color; but I suppose that it does mean that all men are equal in some respects; they are equal in their right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Certainly the Negro is not our equal in color--perhaps not in many other respects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man, white or black. In pointing out that more has been given you, you can not be justified in taking away the little which has been given him. All I ask for the Negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.
When our Government was established we had the institution of slavery among us. We were in a certain sense compelled to tolerate its existence. It was a sort of necessity. We had gone through our struggle and secured our own independence. The framers of the Constitution found the institution of slavery amongst their other institutions at the time. They found that by an effort to eradicate it, they might lose much of what they had already gained. They were obliged to bow to the necessity. They gave power to Congress to abolish the slave trade at the end of twenty years. They also prohibited it in the Territories where it did not exist. They did what they could and yielded to the necessity for the rest....
One more point.... I expressed my belief in the existence of a conspiracy to perpetuate and nationalize slavery.... I showed the part Judge Douglas had played in the string of facts, constituting to my mind the proof of that conspiracy. I showed the parts played by others.
I charged that the people had been deceived into carrying the last Presidential election, by the impression that the people of the Territories might exclude slavery if they chose, when it was known in advance by the conspirators, that the Court was to decide that neither Congress nor the people could so exclude slavery.... I charge him with having been a party to that conspiracy and to the deception for the sole purpose of nationalizing slavery.
Task: Based on the text above, create a poster supporting candidate Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1860. This poster should serve as a campaign tool for Mr. Lincoln, and should clearly identify why he is the best candidate and what his position is on slavery and civil rights.
Station 3: Letter written by Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C to Alphonzo Hopkins in 1883
A.A. Hopkins Esqr
Washington D.C. Nov. 6. 1883
Dear Sir:
I was absent from
home campaigning in Maryland
when your letter came and
hence the delay in answering
your letter. It would have given
me pleasure to have sent you
an article had I been at home,
though I doubt if I could have
added anything to what I
have already said of the late
decision of the Supreme Court.
The demands upon my time
and attention are very pressing
and leave me little space for
letter writing, but I am always
glad to do honor to the old
friends of the lately enslaved.
I never was antislavery
because of my color. Had
I been I should have been less
than half antislavery -- but
my antislavery being based
broadly upon my manhood
I have been a thorougoing [one?]
abolitionist. I am charged
all over the country with
attacking the decision of the
Supreme Court on the civil
rights Bill. I am not ashamed
of that attack. That decision
is surrender of the main
result of the war and is
a shocking departure from
the rules of legal interpretation
laid dwn by that court in
the days of slavery, and which
served to support the
constitutional pretentions
of slavery [page torn, line missing]
But I merely wished to
acknowledge your note.
This hasty word of course
is [private?].
My best wishes for
your success and the success
of your enterprize.
Yours truly
Fredk Doug
lass
Source: University of Rochester, Rare Books and Special Collections Library, Douglass Letter #22 <http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=2792>
Task: Using Frederick Douglass' letter, create an original work of art representing the ideas and themes addressed in Douglass' letter and what he represented as an agent of reform for African-Americans. Brainstorm themes from letter and concerning Douglass.
Station 4: Speech delivered by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Rochester, N.Y in 1870
We are assembled to protest against a form of government, existing without the consent of the governed--to declare our right to befree as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and in case of separation, the children of her love; laws which make her the mere dependent on his bounty....
And, strange as it may seem to many, we now demand our right to vote according to the declaration of the government under which we live... To have drunkards, idiots, horse-racing, rumselling rowdies, ignorant foreigners, and silly boys fully recognized, while we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong to citizens, it is too grossly insulting to the dignity for woman to be longer quietly submitted to....
One common objection to this movement is, that if the principles of freedom and equality which we advocate were put into practice, it would destroy all harmony in the domestic circle. Here let me ask, how many truly harmonious households have we now?... The only happy households we see now are those in which husband and wife share equally in counsel and government. There can be no true dignity or independence where there is subordination to the absolute will of another, no happiness without freedom.
Source: Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Address Delivered at Seneca Falls and Rochester, New York (New York: Robert J. Johnson Printers, 1870).
Task: Imagine you are Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or one of her fellow activists. Write a journal entry detailing your experience fighting for women's rights. Be sure to include relevant information from Ms. Stanton's speech.
Station 5: Women's Suffrage & Susan B. Anthony
Official program, Woman Suffrage parade, Washington, D.C. March 3, 1913. The U.S. Capitol is in the background at right. A woman on a white horse leads the procession. The banner on the woman's long horn says "Votes for Women." The marcher following the woman on the horse is wearing a white dress and a red, white and blue ribbon (see photo below).
Picture #1
Image source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division <http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3g02996>
The first picket line, February 1917: After the second inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson, suffragists started non-stop picketing around the White House to hold Wilson to his promise of support for woman suffrage.
Picture #2
Image source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division <http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a32338>
Susan B. Anthony quotations:
Quotation #1: "The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it."(1870, in: Harper, Ida Husted. Life and work of Susan B. Anthony [Indianapolis; Kansas City: Bowen-Merrill; Indianapolis: Hollenbeck, 1898-1908) p. 365-66)
Quotation #2: "There is not the woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence, no matter whether it be from the hand of father, husband, or brother; for any one who does so eat her bread places herself in the power of the person from whom she takes it." (Equal Rights Association Meeting, May 12-14, 1869)
Quotation #3: "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences." (May, 1860; in: Harper, Ida Husted. Life and work of Susan B. Anthony [Indianapolis; Kansas City: Bowen-Merrill; Indianapolis: Hollenbeck, 1898-1908] p. 197)
Task: Using the pictures and quotations provided, respond to the following questions.
- How does picture #1 challenge the traditional role of women in society in the early 1900's?
- In picture #2, protesters are demanding the attention of President Wilson, do you think he felt pressure to address the situation immediately, why or why not?
- Analyze and interpret quotation #1, put it into your own words.
- Analyze and interpret quotation #2, put it into your own words.
- Analyze and interpret quotation #3, put it into your own words.
- Based on the quotations, what type of person do you think Susan B. Anthony was? Why was she able to exert so much influence over society?
Analyzing students' presentations: For each presentation, write two questions you have to ask the group members.
Essay: Exploring Reform
Task: You are to compose a reflective essay on the concept of reform based on your experience in this lesson. In your essay you may choose to consider the following essential questions:
- What is reform?
- Why is progress important for a society?
- Who defines equality?
- Are all people equal?
- Does a democratic society always include everyone?
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