ATU Workshop I Amerikansk Historie Stanford Historical
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Indholdsfortegnelse – ATU Workshop i Amerikansk Historie Stanford Historical Thinking Chart Jourdon Anderson – ”There never was any pay-day for the Negroes” 1865 Mississippi Black Codes 1865 Alexander Stephens – Cornerstone Address 1861 – (Denne tekst får kun halvdelen af holdet. Den anden halvdel får en anden tekst til en øvelse i tekstformidling) Herald and Advertiser – “The Lynching of Sam Newnan” 1899 John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist – “Why we should keep the confederate monuments right where they are” 2017 Podcast transcript: Into America – “My body is a monument” 2020 Optional reading: David Blight, The New Yorker - “Europe in 1989, America in 2020, and the Death of the Lost Cause” 2020 HISTORICAL THINKING CHART Historical Reading Questions Students should be able to . Prompts Skills • Who wrote this? • Identify the author’s position on • The author probably Sourcing • What is the author’s perspective? the historical event believes . • When was it written? • Identify and evaluate the author’s • I think the audience is . • Where was it written? purpose in producing the • Based on the source • Why was it written? document information, I think the author • Is it reliable? Why? Why not? • Hypothesize what the author will might . say before reading the document • I do/don’t trust this document • Evaluate the source’s because . trustworthiness by considering genre, audience, and purpose • When and where was the document • Understand how context/ • Based on the background created? background information influences information, I understand this Contextualization • What was different then? What was the content of the document document differently the same? • Recognize that documents are because . • How might the circumstances in products of particular points in • The author might have which the document was created time been influenced by _____ affect its content? (historical context) . • This document might not give me the whole picture because . • What do other documents say? • Establish what is probable by • The author agrees/disagrees Corroboration • Do the documents agree? If not, comparing documents to each with . why? other • These documents all agree/ • What are other possible • Recognize disparities between disagree about . documents? accounts • Another document to • What documents are most reliable? consider might be . • What claims does the author make? • Identify the author’s claims about • I think the author chose these Close Reading • What evidence does the author use? an event words in order to . • What language (words, phrases, • Evaluate the evidence and • The author is trying to images, symbols) does the author reasoning the author uses to convince me . use to persuade the document’s support claims • The author claims . audience? • Evaluate author’s word choice; • The evidence used to support • How does the document’s language understand that language is used the author’s claims is . indicate the author’s perspective? deliberately STANFORD HISTORY EDUCATION GROUP SHEG.STANFORD.EDU “There Was Never Any Pay-day For the Negroes”: Jourdon Anderson Demands Wages As slavery collapsed at the close of the Civil War, former slaves quickly explored freedom’s possibilities by establishing churches that were independent of white control, seeking education in Freedmen’s Bureau schools, and even building and maintaining their own schools. Many took to the roads as they sought opportunities to work and to reconstitute their families. Securing their liberty meant finding the means of support to obtain land or otherwise benefit from their own labor, as Jourdon Anderson made clear in this letter to his former owner. He addressed Major Anderson from Ohio, where he had secured good wages for himself and schooling for his children. Many freedpeople argued that they were entitled to land in return for their years of unpaid labor and looked to the federal government to help achieve economic self-sufficiency. Black southerners understood the value of their own labor and looked for economic independence and a free labor market in their battle over the meaning of emancipation in post-Civil War America. Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865 To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance. I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy, —the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson),—and the children—Milly, Jane and Grundy—go to school and are learning well; the teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday- School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again. As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost- Marshal- General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire. In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve, and die if it comes to that, than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood, the great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits. P.S. —Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me. From your old servant, Jourdon Anderson Source: Reprinted in Lydia Maria Child, The Freedmen’s Book (Boston: Tickenor and Fields, 1865), 265–67. 324 PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION ------------ The Mississip sions and prejudices of the masses, and commands vate conversation, but in the public press and in pi Black Codes (1865) 325 the admiration of the women. the speeches delivered and the resolutions passed 4: The multitude of people have no definite at Union meetings. Hardly ever was there an ex ideas about the circumstances under which they pression of hearty attachment to the great republic, live and about the course they have to follow; or an appeal to the impulses of patriotism; but o o on o o o The Missis wh se intellects are weak, but wh se prejudices whenever submissi t the nati nal auth rity was sippi Black Codes (1865) and impulses are strong, and who are apt to be car declared and advocated, it was almost uniformly n er U d An�re o nson ried along by those who know how to appeal to the o o o w J h 's pro r m o e placed up n tw principal gr unds: That under g a f R constr on so �cted a ser es o ucti , uther� s e s latter.