As part of this written homework, I must explore and talk about the major themes and issues in at least two of the iCollege documents. The documents I chose are; African Americans Petition for Freedom, The Cherokee Removal Through The Eyes of a Private Soldier, written by John G. Burnett, and finally Frederick Douglass’s speech on The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro. All three of these documents show the reality about how white Americans treated people that were other races.
Since the English arrived during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), while they were more interested in raiding Spanish cities and treasure fleets in the Caribbean, they were granted to entitle and colonize what land they got in the New World, but they had to do it at their own expense. But since they had little to no support from the crown, both their ventures failed. (Forner,49-50). By the 1600’s, the life in England was below the poverty line. The government was struggling dealing with the social crisis. Another solution was to encourage the unruly poor to move to the new world. (Forner,52). It chose the new world as a unique place of opportunity, where also criminals could enjoy a second chance, and be the lord of 200 acres of land. (Forner, 53). Between 1607 and 1700 more than half a million people left England. The English people who went to North America, unlike the Spanish Conquerors were there just to claim land and make it better for their interests. They also started to make slaves work on their plantations to increase their production and income. Slavery has been in the society since nearly the entire span of human history.
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Although slavery wasn’t started in north America, it has been around since the roman empire, and probably before that. (Forner, 98). There is evidence that in North America, the slave owners treated them, and referred to them in remarkably similar language as savage, pagan, and uncivilized. Even going as far as to compare them to or just called them animals. (Foner, 98). In the 4th of July, 1777 the independence was established and one of the primary rights was the right of freedom; it wasn’t like that for the African Americans. In the African American petition for freedom, 1777 it’s described how cruel they have been treated from the people who have power; in violation of laws of nature and off nations and in defiance of all the tender feelings of humanity. Slaves felt that white Americans condemned them to slavery for life. They asked in the document for the same rights that white people have in the constitution. African Americans felt that every person must have the same rights in the land of liberty.
There is not much difference between the way African Americans and Indians were being treated. In the document named “The Cherokee Removal Through the Eyes of a Private Soldier”, It describes the suffering of the Cherokee when they were forced to walk to the west of the United States. In the document the soldier exposes the Cherokees as helpless without warmth on the cold weather, without blankets, enough food, having to suffer through storms, also dying because of the cold weather. The soldier mentions that the white race was the cause of all of the suffering that the Cherokee went through. Government agents paid no attention to the rights of the Indians. “Men were shot in cold blood, lands were confiscated”. In the year of 1828, an Indian boy sold a gold nugget to a white trader, and then government agents came and confiscated their lands, killed people, and took away their rights due to their hunger for gold. Washington, D.C., had decreed that they (the Cherokees) must be driven West and the lands be given to the white man, and in May, 1838, an army of 4000 regulars, and 3000 volunteer soldiers under command of General Winfield Scott, marched into the Indian country and wrote the blackest chapter on the pages of American history.
It caused the biggest crisis in Native American Indian history, since the English were only there for their interests, not caring about how they would affect the Indians' life.
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