The Others in America - Essay Example

 The Others in America The writings of John Smith, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton provide detail about how the English colonies and United States (U. S.) government designed to keep others out of the mainstream. Natives, slaves, and women were treated as others in a nation that supposedly espoused equality for all. In 1776, The Declaration of Independence announced to the world “all men are created equal” and stated that men had certain “rights” given to them by “their Creator.” Those rights were “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” However, in the newly created U. S. “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” only belonged to a select few people – men who owned land and could vote because they paid taxes. Those ideals did not belong to Native American groups because the U. S. continued to treat them as the British did – as foreign nations. The only Natives considered Americans were those who paid taxes. The ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” surely did not apply to slaves or African-Americans because the Constitution continued the institution of slavery. In fact, while Thomas Jefferson, writer of The Declaration of Independence, wanted to eliminate slavery in the Declaration, but in order to get the southern colonies to join the others in declaring independence from Britain slavery remained. Slaves were not considered citizens, but counted as 3/5ths of a person for representational purposes only. The Founding Fathers were short sighted in not thinking about adding other states to the union and how they would either enter the union as slave or free. As more states joined the union, the argument of slave or free grew to its highest pitch and finally caused the south to succeed from the union – even though the Constitution states that once a state joins it may not leave the union. The ideals expressed in The Declaration of Independence also did not include women. In fact, women were still considered to be feme covert before the law. The Founding Fathers did not define citizenship in the Constitution, so women were not really considered citizens until 1868 when the 14th Amendment announced that women and former slaves, among others, were citizens of the U. S. because it was the place of their birth. Owning land meant one was a citizen and women could not own land. Smith, Lewis and Clark wrote about Native Americans from different groups. Smith, one of the first English settlers in Virginia, described the Chesapeake Indians for people back in England. He noted how they dressed, how they acted, where they lived, how they farmed and called them “savage.” After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark on an expedition into the west. They were supposed to accomplish several things. One was to tell the Native groups about their new “white father.” These Natives now “belonged” to the U. S. and not the French. Another was to find a waterway leading to the Pacific Ocean. The expedition was also to record and catalog flora and fauna. Much of Lewis and Clark’s diaries read like anthropological and botany notebooks. They describe the Indians in scientific terms, naming each group, giving information about who their enemies and friends are, what their villages look like, what weapons they use and so on. For example, when describing the Yankton Indians Lewis and Clark wrote, “In person they are stout, well-proportioned, . . . being generally armed with bows and arrows . . .they do not appear as expert as the more northern Indians” (Coues 95). Thus, writers who wrote about Natives were recording how they lived for posterity because most people thought Indians were a dying “race” of people. Former slaves Equiano and Douglass wrote about how they were treated as slaves. Their lives as slaves were horrible but both were aware education was a way to get out of slavery. Both learned to read and write. Equiano, however, was only in North America for a short time before taking off to sea where he would eventually purchase his freedom in England. Douglass spent his entire life in the U. S. but only a portion of it under slavery. Douglass worked tirelessly for abolition and when accomplished he continued to work for women’s enfranchisement. He never missed a women’s rights annual meeting (except for one in the south in the 1890s). He was a good friend to Stanton and Lucy Stone, the two Quaker women who organized the first women’s rights convention in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York. It is marked as the beginning of the quest for women’s rights in the U. S. To begin that quest, Stanton drafted “The Declaration of Sentiments.” This document modeled The Declaration of Independence by declaring all the “sins” man made toward women. For example, she wrote, “He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law civilly dead (Casper and Davies 157). Stanton spent the rest of her life working toward getting women suffrage, but she never saw the outcome of her work because she died before the 19th Constitutional Amendment took place in 1919. She wrote about her life’s experiences in Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1819-1897. The quest for suffrage was thrown off track when African-American males were given the right to vote with the 15th Amendment in 1870. She was very upset that white women were considered less than Black men. It caused Stone to split with Stanton, and they did not reunite for 20 years. It also should be noted that suffrage and equal rights were two different arguments. Some women thought suffrage did not equal having the same rights as men. In retrospect, those women proved correct as it wasn’t until 2009 that President Obama signed the equal pay act into law, as he said “for his daughters.” Classmate Cynthia Cole commented on December 5, 2011 that: Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the most influential and famous of the women's suffrage movement. She was born to a family of wealth and influence. Since all her brothers died young, her father told her he wished she was a boy. This impacted her life from a young age when she realized that women had virtually no rights and were not even considered citizens. This led to a lifelong commitment to secure the not only the right to vote for women but also "her inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." . . . All women have Ms. Stanton to thank for the rights that we as women all tend to take to granted today. She was an amazing women working with other great men and women of her time. We are the success of her labor. (Cole) Cole was so correct in saying that women of today owe Stanton everything. Women have their freedom because of women like Stanton and those who worked with her. In sum, people identified as others in the U. S. fought since the inception of the Constitution to have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” just like the Founding Fathers had in 1776. Natives were thought to be disappearing and treated as anthropological specimens and recorded for posterity. Slaves were treated without regard for their humanness. Women were not citizens and had no rights before the law until Stanton and Stone starting fighting for those rights in 1848. The Founding Fathers created the U. S. for a select few men who had money and property, and thus, the right to vote. They did not want to share the wealth with the rest of the nation’s people. Thus, the Founding Fathers limited voting rights to land owners who paid taxes, declared slaves 3/5ths of a person for representational purposes only, and kept women dead before the law. In shedding off the British in 1776, nothing much changed for people considered others. The Revolution was not very revolutionary at all. However, the Constitution gave people the right to fight for their equality and fight they did. Natives, slaves and women are but three examples of people who fought and won. Works Cited Casper, Scott E., and Richard O. Davies. Five Hundred Years: America in the World. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. Print. Cole, Cynthia. Class Comments. 5 Dec. 2011. Web. Constitution of the United States. 12 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html. Coues, Elliot ed. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark: The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Volume 1. New York: Dover Publications. Original reprint of the 1893 edition. Print Declaration of Independence. 12 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document. Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. 12 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p276.html. Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1819-1897. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993. Print. Read More