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Go directly to the collection, The Nineteenth Century in Print: Books, in American Memory, or view a Summary of Resources related to the collection.
The materials found in
The Nineteenth Century in Print provide opportunities to chronicle
the political and geographical development of the United States. They
also allow for discussions on the use of violence to bring about social
change and an examination of the regional tensions that preceded the
Civil War. Books and reports pertaining to Native Americans can be analyzed
to discern contemporary attitudes towards Native Americans as well as
the concept of race. Additional materials support the research of nineteenth-century
social history.
Chronological Thinking Skills: Westward Expansion
These materials can be used to create a series of maps charting the
progression of westward expansion. For example, one might create a map
chronicling events from 1845 to 1855 that depicts events occurring across
the nation such as the acquisition of Southwest territories in the wake
of the Mexican-American War (1848), the admission of the state of California
to the Union (1850), exploration of the Colorado territory (1852), and
the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854).
By creating such maps, one may gain additional insight into the factors
influencing political debates such as slavery in the territories (e.g.,
Compromise of 1850), the treatment of Native Americans, and the industrial
growth of the nation. For example, territorial expansion and exploration
played an integral role in planning the transcontinental railroad authorized
by Congress in 1862. A search
on the phrase, war dept., produces 12 volumes of Reports
of Explorations and Surveys, to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical
Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean,
chronicling the massive effort to link eastern cities with new areas
on the Pacific coast. Create a map that depicts the relationship between expansion and exploration and the development of railroads.
Historical Comprehension
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Popular sovereignty gave way to mob rule in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act of 1854 as both proslavery and abolitionist emigrants
raced to settle the area. The assaults and armed conflicts surrounding
the debates on slavery and statehood in Kansas manifest a growing
rift in the Union in the decade prior to the Civil War.
Geary
and Kansas (1857) chronicles the history of Kansas and describes
a number of the conflicts: “Party spirit increased daily in violence
. . . and hordes of desperadoes rushed into the country to take
advantage of its disturbed condition . . . Brutal and shocking
crimes were of daily occurrence, and a state of affairs existed
too disgusting and deplorable for language properly to describe,”
(page
70).
The conflict in Kansas also spilled into the halls
of the United States Senate in 1856. In a speech on the subject
of slavery in the territory entitled, “The
Kansas Question,” Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner took issue
with proslavery senators from South Carolina and Illinois “who
have raised themselves to eminence on this floor in championship
of human wrongs,” (page
5).
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Cover
Image,
from The
Kansas Question. |
Arguments
of the Chivalry,
from American Treasures of
the Library of Congress |
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Sumner repeatedly insulted Senator A.P. Butler of South Carolina
in his speech, describing him as someone who “touches nothing
which he does not disfigure—with error, sometimes of principle,
sometimes of fact” (page
29). Two days later, Butler’s cousin, South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks,
clubbed Senator Sumner over the head with a cane in the Senate
chambers and injured him so severley that Sumner did not return
to the Senate for two and a half years.
Senator Butler was not in the Senate when Sumner was
attacked, but he defended his cousin’s actions in his “Speech
. . . on the Bill to Enable the People of Kansas Territory to
Form a Constitution.” Butler described Sumner’s divisive attacks
on proponents of slavery, quoted some of the more personal insults
featured in “The
Kansas Question,” and announced:
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It is impossible for self-respect to allow me to sit here
and listen quietly to such a speech. If there were separate confederacies
to-morrow . . . [Sumner] would then put his section in a position to
make war . . . I hope the day is fast coming when the fires of that
limited sectionaliam will burn out, or will be reduced to the ashes
of disappointment and disgrace.
page
27
- What are the similarities and differences between the causes of
violence among the general populace in Kansas and among the Congressmen
in the Senate?
- What do these incidents of violence in Kansas and in Congress suggest
about the state of the Union approximately five years before the start
of the Civil War?
- What do these incidents suggest about possible causes of the war?
- Why do you think that both territorial settlers and Senators were
so passionate about the issue of slavery in Kansas?
- Do you think that Preston Brooks was justified in attacking Senator
Sumner?
- Do you agree with Butler’s defense that Sumner’s personal attacks
against proslavery senators amounted
to putting “his section in a position to make war”?
- Do you think that Sumner's insults or Brooks's attack was more inflamatory?
- Do you think that the senators were more interested in promoting
Union solidarity or sectional differences?
Historical Analysis and
Interpretation: Native American Policies
In March 1865, a Congressional
committee examining the Condition
of the Indian Tribes reported that the Native American population
was decreasing rapidly due to disease, intemperance, wars, white emigration,
and “the irrepressible conflict between a superior and an inferior race
when brought in presence of each other,” (page
3). The report explained that conflicts among tribes and
between Native Americans and white settlers were “becoming a war of
extermination,” (page
5).
| A search on the term, Indian,
produces books written by military officers disturbed by the incessant
conflicts of the Indian wars. Colonel R.B. Marcy’s Thirty
Years of Army Life on the Border (1866) explains, “Those
dingy noblemen of nature . . . have been despoiled, supplanted,
and robbed of their just and legitimate heritage by the avaricious
and rapid encroachments of the white man,” (page
66). Meanwhile, General George Custer explains in My
Life on the Plains (1874), “that of all classes of our population
the army and the people living on the frontier entertain the greatest
dread of an Indian war, and are willing to make the greatest sacrifices
to avoid its horrors,” (page
20). |
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Keep
Away!
Illustration from Thirty
Years of Army Life on the Border. |
That same year, former U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Francis
Walker articulated his opinion of the Indian War in The
Indian Question. He explained that Indians who experienced “the
military power of the whites” became “the most commonplace person imaginable,
of very simple nature, limited aspirations, and enormous appetites,”
(page
16). Walker criticized the federal government for subsidizing
Native Americans and declared that there was not any “national dignity
involved in the treatment of savages by a civilized power . . . . With
wild men, as with wild beasts, the question whether to fight, coax,
or run, is a question merely of what is easiest or safest in the situation
given,” (page
34).
- What does the language of these documents suggest about the authors’
assumptions and opinions about Native Americans? What attitudes do the authors have towards
Native Americans? Are they sympathetic, hostile, ambivalent, patronizing,
reverential?
- What do the authors' assumptions, opinions, and attitudes suggest
about their concepts of race and culture?
- How do the authors' assumptions and attitudes differ? How might the assumptions and attitudes of each author reflect
his relationship to Native Americans or the purpose of his document?
- How do the authors’ attitudes towards and assumptions about Native
Americans relate to their opinions about conflicts with Native Americans?
- How might the attitudes and assumptions of each author have contributed
to the development of conflicts with Native Americans?
- How does the history of the treatment of Native Americans reflect
the assortment of attitudes and opinions expressed in these documents?
- Is there a way that the near extermination of Native Americans could
have been avoided? If so, how, given the opinions
and attitudes expressed in these nineteenth-century documents?
Historical Issue-Analysis and Decision-Making: John Brown and Violence
and Social Change
John Brown was a radical abolitionist who had once
worked as a stationmaster in the Underground Railroad and farmed alongside
freed slaves in the Adirondack Mountains. In October 1855, Brown joined
his sons in Kansas as part of the abolitionist emigrants looking to
influence the pending vote on slavery in the territory.
After learning that proslavery forces from Missouri rampaged through
Lawrence, Kansas, and that Senator Charles Sumner was seriously assaulted
on the Senate floor, Brown led an assault on five people at a proslavery
settlement near Pottawatamie Creek. Geary
and Kansas(1857) explains that Brown’s victims “ were there
assembled to assassinate and burn the houses of certain free-state men
. . . These five men were seized and disarmed . . . [and] shot in cold
blood,” (page
87).
John
Brown's Fort,
Harper's Ferry,
between 1861 and 1865,
Civil War
Treasures. |
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Brown soon established a reputation as a guerilla fighter and
as an advocate for recruiting weapons and money in support of
abolitionist efforts. In October 1859, Brown led eighteen men
in seizing a federal arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia to enable
a slave revolt. The threat of the rebellion ended when United
States Marines recaptured the fort and killed ten of Brown’s men.
Brown and five survivors were subsequently tried and executed
for murder, treason, and insurrection.
A search on John
Brown provides documents relating to the U.S. Senate investigation
of the raid. The Report
[of] the Select Committee . . . Appointed to Inquire into the
Late Invasion . . . at Harper’s Ferry noted that while
Brown was in Kansas, “he was extensively connected with many of
the lawless military expeditions . . . [and] . . . that, before
leaving the Territory . . . his purpose was . . .to keep the public
mind inflamed on the subject of slavery in the country . . . as
might enable him to bring about servile insurrection in the slave
States,” (page
2).
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The report also notes that while evidence did
not suggest that Brown was supported by a specific abolitionist group,
“money was freely contributed by those styling themselves friends of
this man Brown, and friends alike of what they styled ‘the cause of
freedom,’ . . . without inquiry as to the way in which the money would
be used by him to advance such pretended cause,” (page
8).
- Do you think that it was right for John Brown to have led the assault
near Pottawatamie Creek in the interest of either protecting abolitionists
or subduing proslavery forces?
- Do you think that Brown’s raid at Harper's Ferry to procure weapons
for a slave revolt was justified?
- Do you think that a slave rebellion is a justifiable or effective
way to combat slavery?
- What are the intended and actual consequences of each of these three
attacks?
- Why do you think that John Brown was charged with treason for his
attack at Harper's Ferry?
- Do you think that Brown targeted the government in his attack on
the federal arsenal? Might he have associated the fort with proslavery
forces? Why or why not?
- What are the dangers of participating in violent attacks when a
state of war has not been declared?
- What is the purpose of declaring a state of war? How might such
a declaration protect the efforts made in war time? How might such
a declaration minimize the violence of war?
- At what point does a nation or individual decide that it is necessary
to resort to violence to further a cause?
- In what situations might it be acceptable or even necessary to oppose
someting with illegal violence?
- Had you been an abolitionist in John Brown's time, might you have
supported him? Why or why not?
Historical Research Capabilities: Social History
This collection contains a wide variety of resources with which to
investigate the social history of the nineteenth century. A search on the term, temperance,
yields cautionary tales such as Ruined
by Rum (1877) as well as guides such as The
Bases of the Temperance Reform (1873) and the Text-book
of Temperance (1869). The latter book was designed “for the
use of young people between the ages of fourteen and twenty, as a means
of teaching them the great facts and principles which
lay beneath the Temperance Reformation,” (page
3).
- Who is the intended audience of these sets of books?
- What do you think that these various guides reveal about the interests
and ideas of people living during the nineteenth century?
- Do you think that contemporary society has any similar types of
interests or ideas? If so, how do these guides compare to contemporary
discussions?
- How do you think that our cultural interests might appear to people
living in the next century?
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