Modern America Class 2002

Day 3 15 Jan. 2002

 

1. Names—write first: what do you think is the most important “issue in modern America,” right now? Say, as I call names.

 

Pass WORTH Center sheet around.

 

2. A bit more on issues, and information—what we can find, and what we choose to do with it. Already I’ve been impressed with the kind of reflections that are turning up in your responses, the way people are grappling with issues. At least three parts to the process: accumulating new information, processing and analyzing it, deciding what to do with it. They may overlap, in fact they surely will. My hope initially was that as we read this first book and explore the new information that we get from it and the other sources we discover, we’ll both think carefully about details and historical events and ask large questions that we may not be able to answer fully or confidently till later.  And I see that happening already.

 

Web sites found in the first round, Introduction and Native American Peacemakers

:

http://members.aol.com/mayflo1620/indian_relations.html On Metacom and early relations between Native Americans and Mayflower colonists.

 

http://www.prairiewoman.com/article1001.html The Potlatch ritual of the northwest tribes.

 

www.warresisters.org/ The War Resisters League home page.

 

www.dickshovel.com/genosite About a “Petition to Re-name The Washita Battlefield National Historic Site to The Washita National Historic Site of Genocide ©.”

 

www.crystalinks.com/cheyenne  (wouldn’t work)

 

www.constitution.org/cons/iroquois.htm.  Deganawidah’s vision for the Iroquois Confederation.

 

http://www.geocities.com/CapitalHill/7153/index.html (wouldn’t work)

 

http://www.journeytowardforgiveness.com/stories/hart/biography.asp Biography of Lawrence Hart, Cheyenne Peace Chief and Mennonite pastor.

 

Second round, on Rev. War and Republican Peace Experiments:

 

www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/89jpr.html A review essay on Gene Sharp’s theory of power by Brian Martin.

 

http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/01nvc/ The entire text, available in html or pdf format, of Brian Edwards’ recent book Nonviolence Vs. Capitalism.

 

http://www2.gol.com/users/quakers/how_did_the_quaker_peace_testimo.htm On peace witness in Quaker history.

 

The Treaty of Paris: http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/paris.html

George Clymer, chairman of the committee of the Philadelphia Tea Party, and signer of the Declaration of Independence: http://maxlets.com/clymer1776/A_Brief_CLYMER_History

 

http://earlyamerica.com/review/fall96/loyalists.html This web site deals with a pamphlet called “Plain Truth,” written by James Chalmers.  This pamphlet was a loyalist response to Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,”  which can be found at

http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1776-1800/paine/CM/sensexx.htm . Also see

http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1776-1800/paine/AC/crisis01.htm for “The American Crisis,” which begins with the famous “These are the times that try men’s souls . . .”

 

http://www.matriarch.com/wafaacn.htm A skeptical look at the claim that the U.S. was founded as a “Christian Nation.”

 

Questions and comments from responses:

 

From Angel:

-The problem of patriarchy. To what extent is violence a male behavior? What if women “withdrew their consent” from our society? “Perhaps I am off base, but what I thought this to mean is that men’s domination over women is a big issue when we look for peaceful alternatives in our country.”

 

From Erika: “The book also mentions how Canada has a stronger claim to being a "Christian nation" than does the United States.  This is a crazy thought to me.  I guess I just never considered anyone else but the U.S. a "Christian nation."

 

Is it America's way to end conflict by war, or does this simply cause more conflict?  Would things have been different if we had never fought that first war for independence?  Was America founded as a Christian nation?  These are a few questions that I am curious about.”

 

From Brad: “I had no idea that there was another, more “peaceful” Tea Party in Philadelphia at the same time as the one in Boston, and I live only an hour north of Philadelphia.  Another thing I found interesting was that many Puritan preachers preached Revelation during the war, describing the British tyrants as the “antichrist” and used this to justify the war.”

 

From Jillian: “It all comes down to whether we will seek alternative forms of nonviolence in order to prevent massive losses of human life or seek to right the wrongs done unto us with the betterment of the nation in mind.  This is a hard decision for me.  If only we needn't choose between the two - that America could have achieved the rights, freedoms, and privileges that we enjoy today without the death and destruction that enabled them to exist.  In this sense, the passage, "For a war to be justifiable, not only must the goals be worthy, but the killing and destruction must not be so extensive that they outweigh the higher objectives" (p. 45) seemed plausible to me because I live to see the benefits that I have been so blessed to receive in this country, but haven't experienced the losses resulting from the struggle to achieve them.” 

 

From Lisa: “Because I had only heard the American version of things up until this point, I wanted to try and find a British view of the events.  I did a search at YahooUK, and came up with this website: http://earlyamerica.com/review/fall96/loyalists.html This web site deals with a pamphlet called “Plain Truth,” written by James Chalmers.  This pamphlet was a loyalist response to Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.”“  

 

         

Re chapter 2 in Juhnke/Hunter:

 

What about the “sacred” qualities of the War of Independence? What do you think about the mixing of categories (politics and religion) implied here? How comfortable are you with the idea of “civil religion”—that the United States is a country specially favored by God, that being a good Christian and a good citizen are more or less the same thing?

 

If the colonists were among the freest and most prosperous people on earth in the mid-18th century, why did they feel the need to rebel?

            (British miscalculations re taxes, colonists had bad theory of “grand tyranny,” overreacted to new policies.)

 

What other options were available, besides revolution?

            (colonial representation in House of Commons, Albany Plan for colonial union without total separation, Galloway Plan for American branch of Parliament.)

            (nonviolent resistance—Stamp Act was successfully resisted (42), as were other oppressive policies. The Philadelphia Tea Party.

 

What major religious event played a part in the Revolution?

            (Great Awakening, 1730s and 40s. War as crusade. Rhetoric vs. actual casualties. Desertions and mutinies and executions, 46-47.)

 

What effects did the war have on Native Americans and African Americans?

            (most Indians fought on British side, if at all. Slaves/blacks fought for union, but colonists’ victory came with slavery as its price.)

 

What about the Canadian alternative?

            (Mark Noll says Canada is a more “Christian” nation than the U.S., 50.)

 

Ch. 3. Republican Peace Experiments: A Usable Past

What was the role of Quaker pacifism in early American history?

            (J/H argue that American “democratic republicanism was itself a peace movement,” 53.” Discussion of the Quaker social experiment, which lasted 70+ years. The ideal of harmony, love, cooperation, liberty of conscience, toleration, vs. the New England Puritan theocracy and the Virginia hierarchy: which is more “American”? Where would you most like to live? Denominations, political parties as public-minded, the Golden Rule.)

 

Who were “classical republicans,” and why do J/H call them “peace-minded”?

            (People like Jefferson, who thought that kings and aristocrats made wars and that ordinary people wouldn’t, if freed to develop their civic virtue. Jefferson and the yeoman farmer.

 

What was the “duty to retreat” in English common law, and what doctrine came to replace it in America?

            (It meant that self-defense was only legal in extreme cases, that one must try to escape if at all possible. Faded in US only in early 20th century, when Supreme Court ruled on self-defense.)

 

What early president was celebrated upon his death not for his military exploits but as a peacemaker who disbanded the U.S. army when he had a chance?

            (Washington. 60 ff. on the contradictory moods and impulses towards peace and war fervor in the early republic.)

 

What president avoided a war with France, despite fear of being accused of “the babyish and womanly blubbering for peace at any price”?

            (John Adams, in the wake of the XYZ Affair, 1798-1800.)

 

What president imposed a controversial embargo on all goods rather than go to war?

            (Jefferson, 1807-09. It was either a disaster or not, depending, 65 ff. He was frustrated by the lack of support—so much harder to stir up enthusiasm for peacetime sacrifice than for war.)

 

Which “successful” American war included the sacking of Washington, the burning of the White House, a failed invasion of Canada, and a grand victory in a battle fought two weeks after the war was over?

            (The War of 1812.)

 

What two regions of the world do the authors connect to the development of an American culture of violence?

            (The English-Scotch-Irish border region, home to Andrew Jackson and many other immigrants post-1717, and the frontier. 69 ff. Also the Old South, with its code of honro and its rigidly layered society.)

 

What 19th-century war led to the Civil War? What literary figure spent a night in jail due to it? What Civil War general warned about “warfare leading to even more destructive warfare” and tried to imagine “alternative histories less afflicted by violence”?

            (The Mexican War, Thoreau, Grant, 72-73.)

 

A park along what international border is celebrated as a place “people celebrate by forgetting its name”?

            (U.S.-Canada border, Wm. Stafford, 75.)

 

Is the U.S. special, and if so, how? “It is ironical that the nation founded to oppose a militarist-aristocrat-government complex created the largest interlocking military-industrial-government complex in the world.” (76)