fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007 - Ethical Culture ...

John Collier, an American scholar who lived among Indians inthe 1920s and l930s in the American Southwest, said of theirspirit:“ Could we make it our own, there would be an eternallyinexhaustible earth and a forever lasting peace.”Perhaps there is some romantic mythology in that. But theevidence from European travelers in the sixteenth, seventeenth,and eighteenth centuries, put together recently by an Americanspecialist on Indian life, William Bruadon, is overwhelminglysupportive of much of that myth.” Even allowing for theimperfection of myths, it is enough to make us question, forthat time and ours, the excuse of progress in the annihilationof races, and the telling of history from the standpoint of theconquerors and leaders of Western civilization.Edmund Morgan: Slavery and Freedom- The American Paradox (1972)The following are excerpts from an article by historian and professorEdmund Morgan published in 1972. In the article, Morgandiscusses the relationship between the rise of slavery and the riseof democracy in the colonial Chesapeake. As you read, notice whatfactors Morgan highlights as leading to the rise of racial slaveryin the Chesapeake. And, think about how the conditions of theChesapeake region during colonial times could have simultaneouslygiven rise to both slavery and democracy.American historians interested in tracing the rise of liberty,democracy, and the common man have been challenged in thepast two decades by other historians, interested in tracing thehistory of oppression, exploitation, and racism. The challenge...made us examine more directly than historians hitherto havebeen willing to do, the role of slavery in our early history.Colonial historians, in particular, when writing about theorigin and development of American institutions have foundit possible until recently to deal with slavery as an exceptionto everything they had to say...We owe a debt of gratitude tothose who have insisted that slavery was something more thanan exception, that one fifth of the American population at thetime of the Revolution is too many people to be treated as anexception.We shall not have met the challenge simply by studyingthe history of that one fifth, fruitful as such studies may be,urgent as they may be. Nor shall we have met the challengeif we merely execute the familiar maneuver of turning ourold interpretations on their heads. The temptation is alreadyapparent to argue that slavery and oppression were the dominantfeatures of American history and that efforts to advance libertyand equality were the exception, indeed no more than a deviceto divert the masses while their chains were being fastened. Todismiss the rise of liberty and equality in American historyas a mere sham is not only to ignore hard facts, it is also toevade the problem presented by those facts. The rise of libertyand equality in this country was accompanied by the rise ofslavery. That two such contradictory developments were takingplace simultaneously over a long period of history, from theseventeenth century to the nineteenth, is the central paradoxof American history.The challenge, for a colonial historian at least, is to explain howa people could have developed the dedication to human libertyand dignity exhibited by the leaders of the American Revolutionand at the same time have developed and maintained a systemof labor that denied human liberty and dignity every hour ofthe day...88 fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007