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Barbarians Burned Washington City, Library, White House ...

 
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 8:16 pm    Post subject: Barbarians Burned Washington City, Library, White House ... Reply with quote

British Colonialist Barbarians Burned Library Of Congress, Washington City. White House On August 24, 1814




The Burning of the City of Washington (Memory): American Treasures of the Library of Congress
Source:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm001.html

At about 8 p.m. on the evening of August 24, 1814, British troops under the command of General Robert Ross marched into Washington, D.C., after routing hastily assembled American forces at Bladensburg, Maryland, earlier in the day. Encountering neither resistance nor any United States government officials--President Madison and his cabinet had fled to safety--the British quickly torched the White House, the Capitol, which then housed the Library of Congress, the navy yard, and several American warships. However, most private property was left untouched. In 1815 Congress approved the purchase of Thomas Jefferson's library to replace the one lost in the fire.



Source: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/aug19.html
Capture and Burning of Washington by the British, in 1814 (detail),
wood engraving, 1876.
Prints and Photographs Division

On August 19, 1814, during the War of 1812, British troops under the command of Major General Robert Ross and Rear Admiral George Cockburn landed at Benedict, Maryland on the shores of the Patuxent River. The British fleet, under the command of Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, had chased U.S. Commodore Joshua Barney's flotilla into the Patuxent River, but their true goal was the capture of the nation's capital, Washington, D.C. — only a few days march away. At the same time, Vice Admiral Cochrane ordered Captain James Gordon to sail other British warships up the Potomac River towards Washington which was defended only by Fort Warburton (later renamed Fort Washington) on the east bank of the river, twelve miles south of the nation's capital. News of this British onslaught caused panic in Washington and many of its residents fled.

[url][/url]
The Taking of the City of Washington (detail),
G. Thompson, publisher, 1814.
By Popular Demand: Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies

Commodore Joshua Barney commanded an assortment of small, quick gunboats, galleys, and barges that for weeks prior had outmaneuvered the larger British ships in the shallow Chesapeake waters. However, after being forced up the Patuxent, Barney and his men abandoned and destroyed their flotilla, linked up with a contingent of marines, and marched to Washington. Unsure of where the British would attack, American volunteers and militiamen from Maryland, Virginia, and Washington also scrambled to the capital and its outskirts. When word reached them that the British were marching towards Bladensburg, the American forces moved there to take up defensive positions.

Although the Americans outnumbered the British at Bladensburg, they were no match for the well-disciplined professional soldiers under the command of Major General Ross. On August 24, after thousands of American militiamen had retreated, only a small contingent of flotilla men and marines under Barney's command managed a valiant but futile counterattack. The British troops then continued on to Washington.


Mrs. James Madison, (Dolley Payne),
Gilbert Stuart, artist,
between 1804 and 1855.
By Popular Demand: Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies

Before leaving the city, First Lady Dolley Madison ordered White House possessions be packed and removed from the city — silverware, books, clocks, curtains, and most importantly, Gilbert Stuart's full-length portrait of George Washington. President James Madison escaped only hours before the British entered the city. In order to prevent the British from capturing it, the Americans set fire to the Washington Navy Yard. Upon entering the city, the British set fire to the White House, the Capitol, and many of the other public buildings. The Patent Office, however, was saved from destruction by the superintendent of patents, Dr. William Thornton, who convinced the British of the importance of its preservation.

The Battle of Bladensburg and the burning of Washington were humiliating defeats for the United States. Within a few days, however, citizens were able to return to the decimated city. The British left Washington as swiftly as they had entered, moving on to capture the City of Alexandria and lay siege to Baltimore.

Search on Battle of Bladensburg in the collection A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation to read petitions regarding compensation for wounds and damages received at the Battle of Bladensburg. Also, search on burning of Washington or Fort Warburton for similar petitions.
Learn more about the City of Bladensburg. Search on Bladensburg in Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present. Although some of the photographs have not yet been digitized, the data pages concerning the buildings in Bladensburg provide background information about the city and the people who lived there. Also search this collection for buildings that were burned in Washington, D.C., such as the White House, and buildings that were saved, such as the Patent Office.
To learn more about the War of 1812, see Today in History features on the declaration of war against Great Britain and the assault on Baltimore which inspired Francis Scott Key to write the "Star-Spangled Banner."
Children's Television

Father Reading Newspaper, Two Children Viewing Television,
New York, New York,
Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc., photographer, July 15, 1950.
Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955

The American Broadcasting Company first aired Saturday morning television shows for children on August 19, 1950. The network introduced two shows: Animal Clinic featured live animals, while the variety show Acrobat Ranch had a circus theme. Placed against a Western backdrop, acrobats Tumbling Tim and Flying Flo lent an air of spectacle to Acrobat Ranch. In one segment, Host Uncle Jim presided over a game in which children from the studio audience competed for merchandise prizes.

The first children's entertainer to perform for television was Burr Tillstrom, who broadcast live from the New York World's Fair in 1939. The National Broadcasting Company began the first regular television broadcasts in the United States the same year. Initially, the network offered just two hours of programming per week.

Quote:

Symbol Of British Colonialists Barbarian Who Burned Library Of
Congress, City Of Washington, White House On August 24, 1814 Welcomed To White House On May 7, 2007

Approximately 7,000 guests attended the Arrival Ceremony, including the American and British delegations, British Embassy staff, State Dinner guests, Members of Congress, Cabinet Members, White House staff and their guests, State Department staff, and students.



Quote:
Video Clip Of Cleopatra - The Burning of the Library of Alexandria
Elizabeth Taylor gives voice to the rage still felt over the loss of the Great Library because of Roman/Republican bungling. More ravishingly beautiful ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bY4-PzHgA0


Last edited by cyrus on Tue May 15, 2007 11:05 pm; edited 13 times in total
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 8:36 pm    Post subject: The massive libraries so carefully collected by the Reply with quote

The massive libraries so carefully collected by
the Sassanian kings Burned By Barbarian Arabs


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452275636/shortsearch

According the book, THE IRANIANS PERSIA, ISLAM AND THE SOUL OF A NATION by Sandra McKay " A tour de force of intellectual comprehension, summary, and balance." -- Washington Times Pg 46.

"Finally on a day in June 637, the Sassanian commander, Rustam, reluctantly opened the battle. But the Saddanian army, like Sassanian society had grown ponderous. With its spirit drained off in the futile campaigns against Byzantium, the famous Persian cataphracts became clumps of fat, immobile men battlin a swarm of wasps. The heavily armed cavalry with its supporting elephants which had punished Romans and Byzantines proved powerless against the Arabs on swift camels who attacked and then withdrew into the desert. Over three days, the two sides engaged. On the fourth, the Persians' reluctant commander, Rustam, died. His army went into pell-mell retreat, leaving the Sassanian Empire open to invasion.
In 638, the vaulted palace at Ctesiphon, the physical embodiment of late Sassanian art and knowledge, fell to the Arabs. Its fabulous prizes dazzled the poor, unlearned tribesmen of the Arabian Peninsula. A life-size camel crafted of silver and a golden horse with emerald teeth and a garland of rubies draped around its neck were only two among the hundreds of objects of art that passed from the cultured hands of the Sassanians into the rough, callused hands of Arab warriors. The incredible carpet, "Spring of Khosrow," went to Mecca where Islam's religious leaders, disdainful of
material posessions, cut it into pieces. The destruction wreaked by the ignorant Arabs went on. The massive libraries so carefully collected by the
Sassanian kings scattered in the capricious wind of the Arab edict:

If the books herein are in accord with Islam,
then we don't need them.
If the books herein are not in accord with Islam,
then they are kafir (of the infidel)


[/quote]
Quote:
Video Clip Of Cleopatra - The Burning of the Library of Alexandria
Elizabeth Taylor gives voice to the rage still felt over the loss of the Great Library because of Roman/Republican bungling. More ravishingly beautiful ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bY4-PzHgA0


Last edited by cyrus on Tue May 15, 2007 10:10 pm; edited 2 times in total
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PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2007 9:31 pm    Post subject: History of slavery in the United States Reply with quote

Ancient Persia wrote:
Ancient Persia
Persia (Iran) was the first civilization to ban slavery from its foundation and used paid labor for all of the empire's constructions and army. Cyrus the Great, founder of first Persian Empire, banned slavery in his charter of human rights, now kept in the British Museum.


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery


British Colonialist Barbarians wrote:

History of slavery in the United States


Peter, a slave from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1863. The scars are a result
of a whipping by his overseer, who was subsequently discharged.
It took two months to recover from the beating.


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Slave sale in Easton, Maryland


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The history of slavery in the United States began soon after Europeans first settled in what became the United States. Many slaves were freed by 1865 during the American Civil War, many by Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation but finally and completely by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

From about the 1640s until 1865, people of African descent were legally enslaved within the boundaries of the present United States by whites, American Indians and free blacks. Holding Indians as slaves was practiced in the 17th century and as late as 1867 in the case of the Tlingit tribe in Alaska which owned Indian slaves. The economy of the country was enhanced by the labor afforded by slavery.

While estimates of the number of slaves brought to North America vary from a few hundred thousand to a few million, and thus cannot be stated for certain, it is known that the slave population in the United States had grown to 4 million by the 1860 Census. In other countries, the slave population barely reproduced itself. From the later eighteenth century, and possibly before that even, and until the Civil War, the rate of natural growth of North American slaves was much greater than for the population of any nation in Europe, and was nearly twice as rapid as that of England. [1]

Contents [hide]
1 Colonial America
1.1 Native Americans
1.2 Decline of slave trade
2 1776 to 1850
2.1 Treatment of slaves
2.2 Rising tensions
2.3 Nat Turner, anti-literacy laws
3 1850s to the Civil War
3.1 California Indian slavery
3.2 Bleeding Kansas
3.3 Dred Scott
3.4 1860 presidential election
3.5 War and emancipation
4 Reconstruction to present
4.1 Sharecropping
4.2 Educational issues
4.3 Apologies
5 Black slave owners
6 See also
7 Notes
8 Bibliography
8.1 Primary Sources
8.2 Historical studies
9 Reference
9.1 State and local studies
9.2 Historiography
10 Further reading
10.1 Oral histories of ex-slaves
10.2 Historical fiction
11 External links



[edit] Colonial America
Main article: Slavery in Colonial America
The first record of African slavery in Colonial America is of a Dutch ship which brought twenty blacks recorded and sold them to the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619 as indentured servants. However, these individuals were freed as were other indentured servants after the stated period, and at least one, Anthony Johnson, eventually became a landowner on the Eastern Shore and a slave owner himself.

The transformation from indentured servitude to racial slavery happened gradually. There are no laws regarding slavery early in Virginia's history. However, by 1640, the Virginia courts had sentenced at least one black servant to slavery. In 1654, a court in Northampton County ruled against one John Casor, declaring him the property of Anthony Johnson, also a black man, for life.

The Virginia Slave codes of 1705 made clear the status of slaves. During the British colonial period, every colony had slavery. Those in the north were primarily house servants. Early on, slaves in the South worked on farms and plantations growing of indigo, rice, and tobacco; cotton became a major crop after 1790s. Slaves were expensive and were used by rich farmers and plantation owners with commercial export-oriented operations on the best lands. The backwoods subsistence farmers seldom owned slaves.


[edit] Native Americans
During the 17th century, enslavement of Native Americans was common. Many of these Native slaves were exported to other colonies, especially the "sugar islands" of the Caribbean. Historian Alan Gallay estimates the number of Natives in the South sold in the British slave trade from 1670-1715 at between 24,000 and 51,000. [2]

After 1800, the Cherokees and other tribes started buying and using black slaves, a practice they continued after being relocated to Indian Territory in the 1830s. In the American Civil War they sided with the Confederacy; their slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.


[edit] Decline of slave trade
Some of the British colonies attempted to abolish the international slave trade, fearing that new Africans would be disruptive. Virginia's Acts to that effect were vetoed by the British Privy Council; Rhode Island forbade the importation of slaves completely in 1774. All of the states except Georgia had banned or limited it by 1786; Georgia did so in 1798 - although some of these laws were later repealed.[3]


[edit] 1776 to 1850

[edit] Treatment of slaves
Treatment of slaves was very harsh and inhumane. Whether laboring or walking about in public, people living as slaves were regulated by legally authorized violence. On large plantations, slave overseers were authorized to whip and brutalize noncompliant slaves. Slave codes authorized, indemnified or even required the use of violence, and were denounced by abolitionists for their brutality. Both slaves and free Negroes were regulated by the Black Codes, and had their movements monitored by slave patrols conscripted from the white population which were allowed to use summary punishment against escapees, sometimes maiming or killing them. In addition to such physical abuses, slaves were at constant risk of losing members of their families if their owners decided to trade them for profit or to pay debts. Some slaves retaliated by murdering owners and overseers, burning barns, killing horses, or staging work slowdowns. [4]

Slaves were a very expensive investment and were fed, clothed, housed and provided medical care. It was common to pay bonuses at Christmas season and allowed slaves to keep earnings and gambling profits. (One slave, Denmark Vesey, won the lottery and bought his own freedom.) In many households, treatment of slaves varied with the slave's skin color. Darker-skinned slaves worked in the fields, while lighter-skinned house servants had better clothing, food and housing.[5]

Beginning in the 1750s. There was widespread sentiment during the American Revolution that slavery was a social evil (for the country as a whole and for the whites) and should eventually be abolished. All the Northern states passed emancipation acts between 1780 and 1804; most of these arranged for gradual emancipation and a special status for freedmen, so there were still a dozen "permanent apprentices" in New Jersey in 1860. [6]

The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 declares all men "born free and equal"; the slave Quork Walker sued for his freedom on this basis and won his freedom, thus abolishing slavery in Massachusetts.

Throughout the first half of the 19th century, a movement to end slavery grew in strength throughout the United States. This reform took place amidst strong support of slavery among white Southerners, who began to refer to it as the "peculiar institution" in a defensive attempt to differentiate it from other examples of forced labor.

The large, well-funded American Colonization Society had an active program of shipping ex-slaves and free blacks who volunteered back to Africa to the American colony of Liberia.

After 1830, a religious movement led by William Lloyd Garrison declared slavery to be a personal sin and demanded the owners repent immediately and start the process of emancipation. The movement was highly controversial and was a factor in causing the American Civil War.

A very few abolitionists, such as John Brown, favored the use of armed force to foment uprisings among the slaves; others preferred to use the legal system.


Peter, a slave from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1863. The scars are a result of a whipping by his overseer, who was subsequently discharged. It took two months to recover from the beating.Influential leaders of the abolition movement (1810-60) included:

William Lloyd Garrison - Published The Liberator newspaper
Harriet Beecher Stowe - Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin
Frederick Douglass - Nation's most powerful anti-slavery speaker, a former slave. Most famous for his book, "Narrative in the Life of Frederick Douglass.
Harriet Tubman - Helped 350 slaves escape from the South, became known as a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad.
Slave uprisings that used armed force (1700 - 1859) include:

New York Revolt of 1712
The Stono Rebellion (1739) in South Carolina
New York Slave Insurrection of 1741
Gabriel's Rebellion (1800) in Virginia
Louisiana Territory Slave Rebellion, led by Charles Deslandes (1811)
George Boxley Rebellion (1815) in Virginia
Fort Blount Revolt (1816) in Florida
Denmark Vesey Uprising in Virginia (1822)
Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831) in Virginia
The Amistad Seizure (1839) on a Spanish ship
See also: List of notable opponents of slavery‎

[edit] Rising tensions
The economic value of plantation slavery was reinforced in 1793 with the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney,a device designed to separate cotton fibers from seedpods and the sometimes sticky seeds. The invention revolutionized the cotton-growing industry by increasing the quantity of cotton that could be processed in a day by fiftyfold. The result was explosive growth in the cotton industry and a proportionate increase in the demand for slave labor in the South.

At the same time, the northern states banned slavery, though as Alexis De Toqueville pointed out in Democracy in America (1835), this was not always done with the best of motives. As the northern states abolished slavery, it did not always mean that the slaves were freed. In many cases, it simply encouraged slave owners to move their slaves to states which still allowed slavery. This resulted in a population movement of black Americans to the South. The southern states did not have this option of removing their black population since slaves were already a much higher proportion of the total population, and the international slave trade had been abolished. This led to a hardening of opinions in favor of slavery in the southern states out of fear of what the slaves would do if they were freed.

Just as demand for slaves was increasing, supply was restricted. The United States Constitution, adopted in 1787, prevented Congress from banning the importation of slaves before 1808. On January 1, 1808, Congress acted to ban further imports. Any new slaves would have to be descendants of ones that were currently in the U.S. However, the internal U.S. slave trade, and the involvement in the international slave trade or the outfitting of ships for that trade by U.S. citizens, were not banned. Though there were certainly violations of this law, slavery in America became more or less self-sustaining; the overland 'slave trade' from Tidewater, Virginia, and the Carolinas to Georgia, Alabama, and Texas continued for another half-century.

Because of the three-fifths compromise in the United States Constitution, slaveholders exerted their power through the Federal Government and the resulting Federal Fugitive slave laws. Refugees from slavery fled the South across the Ohio River to the North via the Underground Railroad, and their physical presence in Cincinnati, Oberlin, and other Northern towns agitated Northerners. After 1854, Republicans fumed that the Slave Power, especially the pro-slavery Democratic Party, controlled two or three branches of the Federal government.

Because the Midwestern states decided in the 1820s not to allow slavery and because most Northeastern states became free states through local emancipation, a Northern bloc of free states solidified into one contiguous geographic area. The dividing line was the Ohio River and the Mason-Dixon line (between slave-state Maryland and free-state Pennsylvania).

North and South grew further apart in 1845 with the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention on the premise that the Bible sanctions slavery and that it was acceptable for Christians to own slaves (the Southern Baptist Convention has since renounced this interpretation). This split was triggered by the opposition of northern Baptists to slavery, and in particular by the 1844 statement of the Home Mission Society declaring that a person could not be a missionary and still keep slaves as property. The Methodist and Presbyterian churches likewise divided north and south, so that by the late 1850s only the Democratic Party was a national institution, and it split in the 1860 election.


Distribution of slaves in 1820Census
Year # Slaves # Free
blacks Total
black % free
blacks Total US
population % black
of total
1790 697,681 59,527 757,208 7.9% 3,929,214 19%
1800 893,602 108,435 1,002,037 10.8% 5,308,483 19%
1810 1,191,362 186,446 1,377,808 13.5% 7,239,881 19%
1820 1,538,022 233,634 1,771,656 13.2% 9,638,453 18%
1830 2,009,043 319,599 2,328,642 13.7% 12,860,702 18%
1840 2,487,355 386,293 2,873,648 13.4% 17,063,353 17%
1850 3,204,313 434,495 3,638,808 11.9% 23,191,876 16%
1860 3,953,760 488,070 4,441,830 11.0% 31,443,321 14%
1870 0 4,880,009 4,880,009 100% 38,558,371 13%
Source: http://www.census.gov/population/documentation/twps0056/tab01.xls




[edit] Nat Turner, anti-literacy laws
In 1831, a bloody slave rebellion took place in Southampton County, Virginia. A slave named Nat Turner who was able to read and write and had "visions" led what became known as the Southampton Insurrection. On a murderous rampage without an apparent goal, Turner and his followers killed men, women and children, but were eventually subdued by the militia.

Nat Turner and many of his followers were hanged. They had accomplished little except to harm the relationship between the races and generate new fears among whites, an effect which spread far beyond the area of his violent acts. All across the South, new laws were enacted in the aftermath of the 1831 Turner Rebellion. Typical was the Virginia law against educating slaves, free blacks and mulattos. These laws were often defied by individuals, among whom is noted future Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, but they did so at risk to themselves.


[edit] 1850s to the Civil War

[edit] California Indian slavery
Slavery of Indians was organized in colonial and Mexican California through Franciscan missions, theoretically entitled to ten years of Native labor, but in practice maintaining them in perpetual servitude, until their charge was revoked in the mid-1830s. Following the 1848 American invasion, Native Californians were enslaved in the new state from statehood in 1850 to 1867.[7] Slavery required the posting of a bond by the slave holder and enslavement occurred through raids and a four-month servitude imposed as a punishment for Indian "vagrancy".[8]


[edit] Bleeding Kansas
After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act,1854, the border wars broke out in Kansas Territory, where the question of whether it would be admitted to the Union as a slave state or a free state was left to the inhabitants. The radical abolitionist John Brown was active in the mayhem and killing in "Bleeding Kansas." At the same time, fears that the Slave Power was seizing full control of the national government swept anti-slavery Republicans into office.


[edit] Dred Scott
The Supreme Court tried to resolve the issue, but its 1857 Dred Scott decision only inflamed tempers. The deciding opinion claimed that slavery's presence in the Midwest was lawful (when owners crossed into free states)—further proof for Republicans like Abraham Lincoln that the Slave Power had seized control of the Supreme Court.


[edit] 1860 presidential election
The divisions became fully exposed with the 1860 presidential election. The electorate split four ways. One party (the Southern Democrats) endorsed slavery. One (the Republicans) denounced it. One (the Northern Democrats) said democracy required the people themselves to decide on slavery locally. The fourth (Constitutional Union Party) said the survival of the Union was at stake and everything else should be compromised.

Lincoln, the Republican, won with a plurality of popular votes and a majority of electoral votes. Lincoln however, did not appear on the ballots of ten southern states: thus his election necessarily split the nation along sectional lines. Many slave owners in the South feared that the real intent of the Republicans was the abolition of slavery in states where it already existed, and that the sudden emancipation of 4 million slaves would be problematic for the slave owners and for the economy that drew its greatest profits from the labor of people who were not paid.

They also argued that banning slavery in new states would upset what they saw as a delicate balance of free states and slave states. They feared that ending this balance could lead to the domination of the industrial North with its preference for high tariffs on imported goods. The combination of these factors led the South to secede from the Union and thus began the American Civil War. Northern leaders like Lincoln had viewed the slavery interests as a threat politically, and with secession, they viewed the prospect of a new southern nation, the Confederate States of America, with control over the Mississippi River and the West, as politically and militarily unacceptable.


[edit] War and emancipation
The consequent American Civil War, beginning in 1861, led to the end of chattel slavery in America. Not long after the war broke out, through a legal maneuver credited to Union General Benjamin F. Butler, a lawyer by profession, slaves who came into Union "possession" were considered "contraband of war" and therefore, he ruled that they were not subject to return to Confederate owners as they had been before the War. Soon word spread, and many slaves sought refuge in Union territory, desiring to be declared "contraband." Many of the "contrabands" joined the Union Army as workers or troops, forming entire regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT). Others went to refugee camps such as the Grand Contraband Camp near Fort Monroe or fled to northern cities. General Butler's interpretation was reinforced when the U.S. Congress passed the Confiscation Act of 1861, which declared that any property used by the Confederate military, including slaves, could be confiscated by Union forces.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, was a powerful move that promised freedom for slaves in the Confederacy as soon as the Union armies reached them. The proclamation made the abolition of slavery an official war goal that was implemented as the Union took territory from the Confederacy. According to the Census of 1860, this policy would free nearly four million slaves, or over 12% of the total population of the United States.


Simon Legree and Uncle Tom: A scene from Uncle Tom's Cabin, history's most famous abolitionist novel.The Arizona Organic Act abolished slavery on February 24, 1863, in the newly formed Arizona Territory. Tennessee and all of the border states (except Kentucky) abolished slavery by early 1865. Some slaves were freed by the operation of the Emancipation Proclamation as Union armies marched across the South. Emancipation as a reality came to the remaining southern slaves after the surrender of all Confederate troops in spring 1865. There still were over 250,000 slaves in Texas. They were freed as soon as word arrived of the collapse of the Confederacy, with the decisive day being June 19, 1865. Juneteenth it is celebrated in Texas, Oklahoma, and some other areas and commemorates the date when the news finally reached the last slaves at Galveston, Texas.

Legally, the last 40,000 or so slaves were freed in Kentucky[9] by the final ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865.


[edit] Reconstruction to present
During Reconstruction, it was a serious question whether slavery had been permanently abolished or whether some form of semi-slavery would appear after the Union armies left.


[edit] Sharecropping
An 1867 federal law prohibited a descendant form of slavery known as sharecropping or debt bondage, which still existed in the New Mexico Territory as a legacy of Spanish imperial rule. Between 1903 and 1944, the Supreme Court ruled on several cases involving debt bondage of black Americans, declaring these arrangements unconstitutional. In actual practice, however, sharecropping arrangements often resulted in peonage for both black and white farmers in the South.


[edit] Educational issues
The anti-literacy laws after 1831 undoubtedly contributed greatly to the widespread illiteracy facing the freedmen and other African Americans after the American Civil War and Emancipation 35 years later. After Emancipation, the unfairness of such laws helped draw attention to the problem of illiteracy as one of the great challenges confronting these people as they sought to join the free enterprise system and support themselves during Reconstruction and thereafter.

Consequently, many religious organizations, former Union Army officers and soldiers, and wealthy philanthropists were inspired to create and fund educational efforts specifically for the betterment of African Americans in the South. They helped create normal schools to generate teachers, such as those which eventually became Hampton University and Tuskegee University. Stimulated by the work of educators such as Dr. Booker T. Washington, by the first third of the 20th century, over 5,000 local schools had been built for blacks in the South with using private matching funds provided by individuals such as Henry H. Rogers, Andrew Carnegie, and most notably, Julius Rosenwald, each of whom had arisen from modest roots to become wealthy.


[edit] Apologies
On 2007-02-24 the Virginia General Assembly passed House Joint Resolution Number 728 acknowledging "with profound regret the involuntary servitude of Africans and the exploitation of Native Americans, and call for reconciliation among all Virginians."[10] With the passing of this resolution, Virginia becomes the first of the 50 United States to acknowledge through the state's governing body their state's negative involvement in slavery. The passing of this resolution came on the heels of the 400th anniversary celebration of the city of Jamestown, Virginia, which was one of the first slave ports of the American colonies.
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PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 2:39 pm    Post subject: Washington Burned Reply with quote

Washington Burned
British forces march on Washington. At a brief battle on the road, known as the Battle of Bladensburg; the British forces defeat the American forces, who withdraw in disarray, thus opening the road to Washington. The British burn the White House and the Capitol, but the rest of Washington is saved by a strong rain storm. The British, under orders not to hold any territory, withdrew.

Multimedia Presentation

http://www.multied.com/1812/Bwash.html
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PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2007 3:53 pm    Post subject: Watch Video: Manifest Destiny: Still Alive and Kicking Reply with quote

Watch Video: Manifest Destiny: Still Alive and Kicking

1 hr 16 min 57 sec - Apr 5, 2006
Average rating: (32 ratings)
Description: American nationalism, what Americans call “patriotism,” is grounded in this belief that Liberty and Empire are uniquely reconciled in the history of the rise of the United States to world superpower status. Most Americans who tell this history, tell it in the language of “Manifest Destiny”, while excluding from that history the voices of others who see it differently.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6109789685218125116
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