Inequality and Equality Roles in the United States Before the American Civil War

Essay Instructions:

Instructions
This comprehensive essay is the culminating assignment. Using only materials from our course, answer the following question:
Considering the topic of race relations, what roles did equality and inequality play in the United States before the American Civil War? How did the personal experiences of individuals concerning race relations shape the foundation of the country? How can we better understand the early years of our nation’s history through these accounts?
Your task is to demonstrate the ability to think like an historian by critically analyzing the types of evidence that scholars utilize to make sense of the past. To achieve this goal, you will examine a minimum of three primary sources from the period of 1492-1861 that offer different perspectives on the nature of racial equality and inequality in the United States and explain how they relate to this topic.
When examining personal documents, we cannot fully appreciate the words of people from the past without also understanding the world in which they lived. To achieve this, your essay will focus on the primary sources as well as offer the proper historical context with support from a minimum of four secondary sources (the textbook and three additional resources such as readings, videos, or lectures). This means that a complete paper will integrate seven sources (three primary, three secondary, and the textbook) and list them in the bibliography/works cited.
A successful essay will weave these stories together along with an historical underpinning to form a cohesive explanation of the prompt. In order to accomplish this assignment, your paper needs a clear thesis statement that will advance your central argument. The goal of this essay is for you to showcase what you have learned and demonstrate your understanding of the topic by synthesizing relevant course materials into one robust paper.
Because I am solely interested in your comprehension of what we have covered, you can only use sources provided in the class: No materials or websites from outside the course are allowed, as using those will result in failing the assignment.
As with all assignments, be sure to avoid plagiarism. All ideas and words in your essay need to be your own. All direct quotes from a document need to be inside quotation marks followed by a full citation. All paraphrased content must also be properly cited. Review the sections on plagiarism and paraphrasing in the syllabus for more information.
Be sure to not to extend your discussion beyond the year 1861. For instance, do not discuss the significance of the topic on life today, as the state of the current world is beyond the scope of this class. This assignment tests your mastery of course content and the historical period that it encompasses, so do not cover information beyond it.
Present your essay in 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins. A complete document will be at least 2,400 words of original writing: Quotations, citations, and references will push the total word count higher.
Formatting and citations need to follow an academic style guide such as: APA, Chicago, or MLA; the choice is yours. Keep in mind, if you choose a format such as APA that uses parenthetical notation, you must provide not only the source, but also the page number when referencing a paginated document. Simply placing the author's name and date are not sufficient for in-text citations for this assignment. Your document will be evaluated using the rubric in the syllabus.
Select Add a File, choose your document, and then select Submit. Late work is not accepted, so be sure to check after submission that your file loaded correctly and that the essay displays as you expected. Save your paper as either a Word file or PDF. If you experience any difficulties in this process, email your work to me.
Content
Additional resources for the course can be found at the following websites, many of which contain other interesting articles relevant to topics in this course:
On Spanish colonization, see https://www(dot)nps(dot)gov/fora/learn/education/unit-1-spain-in-the-new-world-to-1600.htm
On English colonization at Plymouth, see https://www(dot)nps(dot)gov/jame/learn/historyculture/jamestown-and-plymouth-compare-and-contrast.htm
For slavery in the British Americas: http://whitneyplantation(dot)com/the-atlantic-slave-trade.html
On the Enlightenment in the colonies: http://benjaminfranklina(dot)weebly(dot)com/benjamin-franklin-and-the-american-enlightenment.html
On the issue of the radicalism of the Revolution: http://www(dot)theamericanconservative(dot)com/repository/was-there-an-american-revolution/
On Hamilton and Jefferson: http://www(dot)let(dot)rug(dot)nl/usa/outlines/history-2005/the-formation-of-a-national-government/hamilton-vs-jefferson.php
More on the impact of the War of 1812: https://www(dot)battlefields(dot)org/learn/articles/outcomes-war-1812
The Cotton South: http://www(dot)pbs(dot)org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/why-was-cotton-king/
The Abolitionist Movement: http://americanabolitionist(dot)liberalarts(dot)iupui(dot)edu/brief.htm
The Woman's Rights Movement: http://www(dot)nwhp(dot)org/resources/womens-rights-movement/history-of-the-womens-rights-movement/
John Brown and the crises of the 1850s: https://www(dot)archives(dot)gov/publications/prologue/2011/spring/brown.html
The Civil War: http://www(dot)historynet(dot)com/civil-war
Little History of the United States 2015
Author: Davidson, James West
ISBN-13: 978-0-300-18141-8
ISBN-10: 0-300-18141-8
Edition/Copyright: 2015
Publisher: Yale University Press

Essay Sample Content Preview:

Race Relations – Roles in Inequality and Equality in the United States Before the American Civil War
Student Name
Program Name or Degree Name (e.g., Master of Science in Nursing),
COURSE XXX: Title of Course
Instructor Name
Month XX, 202X
Race Relations – Roles of Inequality and Equality in the United States Before the American Civil War
Over the decades, since medieval times, humans have engaged in conflicts mainly motivated by the desire to own more. The insatiable desire for material possession and wealth accumulation was the fundamental motivation behind colonial activities worldwide. For instance, Spain’s New World mines on the South and Central American mainland produced 35 million pesos’ worth of silver and gold, with a fifth going to the Spanish crown by 1519 (Houston & Dough, 2015). At this time, Spain’s biggest fear was that other European countries like France would threaten this tremendous source of wealth. In this case, race as a social construct engineered to subjugate natives of these foreign lands to accumulate wealth. Therefore, in the United States, before the Civil War, race relationships were used as tools by those who yielded power to plunder and steal labor and natural resources from one race by another race. These toxic relationships fueled inequality and made it difficult to achieve equality.
The Pursuit of Wealth
The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 intended to exclude Spain from India and Africa and Portugal from America. Ratified under the Pope, the treaty’s purpose was to ease tension between the two countries because Portugal was emerging as a critical threat to Spain’s sea trade monopoly. These were two countries with the same type of race but from different countries, agreeing on sharing the wealth from other countries across the sea. They agreed on how to do it, and there was no subjugation of one country over the other in terms of race. The disagreement between the two countries was not a result of racial differences but a desire to secure land and minerals overseas. When Queen Elizabeth came to power in 1558, she disestablished Roman Catholicism and further widened the breach with Spain by declining to marry Philip. She also overlooked the actions of her subjects, who covertly traded with Spanish colonies and even invested in the second and third wave of voyages after John Hawkin’s first voyage to the Caribbean involving African slaves (Houston & Dough, 2015). Further, when the Spanish clashed with the English at the Mexican port of San Jan de Ullua, it was not a clash between two racial enemies. Instead, it was a clash between two parties looking to accumulate wealth for their crowns.
Among the European countries that clashed overseas because of colonial territories, it is clear that racial differences did not play a part. However, the interaction between Europeans and other races, including Native Indians, Africans, and South Americans, differed. Since race stood out between these communities and the Europeans, the race became the basis of the argument that one race was superior to the other. Everywhere the colonialists arrived, they killed or coerced local communities into agreements that favored Europeans. For i...

Updated on January 26, 2024

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Inequality and Equality Roles in the United States Before the American Civil War

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