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The Evolution of a Political Cartoon

In support of the Albany Congress, Benjamin Franklin published the now-famous cartoon entitled “Join, or Die.”

What is the message of this cartoon?

This image has become an iconic image in the annals of political cartoons. Now view this cartoon, which was released in 2004:

What is the message of this cartoon? Compare and contrast this cartoon to the original. In what ways are the situations addressed in these cartoons similar?

And in answer to the question: “Why weren’t Georgia and Delaware included in the original cartoon (or plan)?” Here is your answer: http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/19227

Blog readings questions- Ch. 5

Questions to consider:
1. Which of the Enlightenment thinkers seem to express sympathy for Christianity?
2. What does Rousseau claim is the purpose for laws?
3. What does Hobbes say about the equality of humankind?
4. What was the purpose of the ads taken out by the husbands in the Runaway wives post? What did the wives claim?
5. In the Edwards piece, what are three images used to describe God’s anger besides holding a spider over a fiery pit?
6. In the Overview I posted, How did Connecticut try to prevent itinerant preachers from being able to evangelize there?
7. In the Overview, How did the Great Awakening help encourage the separation of church and state?
8. In the Heyrman article, who were two Anglican clergymen (and brothers) who allied with George Whitefield to try to reform the Church of England– and later founded Methodism?
9. According to Heyrman, what were two denominations who gained members who disapproved of the emotional excesses of the Great Awakening?
10. According to Heyrman, what was actually similar in the message of the New Lights with the orthodox Puritan beliefs? What was the main difference?

Overview: The First Great Awakening

The roots of the Great Awakening of the early 18th century lie in several places, not the least of which was the challenge that the Enlightenment posed to religious faith. Although the revivalism of the Great Awakening influenced England and all the American colonies, we will focus here on how the religious movement unfolded in New England. There, the Puritans were at the same time experiencing internal stresses as the number of people who met the requirements for church membership dwindled. Enlightenment thought challenged common assumptions and inverted the traditional primacy of faith over reason. The Great Awakening was a reaction to these challenges.

The scientific movement known as the Enlightenment spread from Europe to America. Common names associated with this time of flowering rationalism include Sir Isaac Newton and John Locke. Newton’s theories about the laws that governed the motions of celestial bodies showed that the tracks the stars and planets traced through the sky were predictable and could be understood by humans. Likewise, Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) argued that children were not born with innate knowledge planted in them by God, but were instead capable of reasoning and gaining knowledge by experience, which contradicted the prevailing view of many. Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers believed that people were capable of great progress and of improving the conditions in which they lived, especially through science and reasoning. This challenged the foundations of ideas like predestination, for the idea that one can change and improve the conditions of life implied that God had not created humans as cogs in a machine, but as active players in the universe. However, neither man challenged the existence of God. There was room for faith in a world of reason.

One attempt to reconcile faith and reason was called Christian rationalism, which stressed that humans were born with free will and through moral, rational behavior they could gain salvation. The rationalists accepted all into church membership who were trying to live Christian lives, instead of merely the “visible saints.” Thus rationalism directly challenged the core beliefs of Calvinism, especially predestination. Instead, some rationalist Puritans began espousing a belief in Arminianism, that humans had the freedom to choose salvation through good works and faith. Arminianism dovetailed very well with Enlightenment thought about how humans were free to influence their own destinies. Rationalists believed that salvation could be gained through actions, not just as a capricious gift from God. Traditionalists, of course, rejected these ideas as heretical. Arminianism became an influential theory in the early 18th century at Harvard College, which served as a training ground for Congregationalist ministers. The new generation of Puritan ministers began assuming leadership roles in the Congregationalist churches of New England. Thus, a tension between these two opposing factions caused great unrest among Christians in America.

Further complicating matters was the fact that the Puritans had experienced a serious reduction in membership. Since about 1650, membership had declined, especially among men, whom some ministers accused of being too worldly. Women definitely seemed to have an advantage in exhibiting what was called ‘regeneration’ after a believable conversion experience. In some congregations, women made up sixty to seventy-five percent of new members. In 1662, the Puritan clergy created the Half-Way Covenant, which allowed adults who had been baptized as children but not yet saved “half-way” membership. These members could not take communion, but could have their children baptized as long as they demonstrated understanding of Christian beliefs and lived in obedience to God’s laws. On a practical note, the Half-Way Covenant was also an attempt to keep influential people within the Puritan faith, for no matter how strictly the Puritans had attempted to wipe out dissenters and other denominations, the Puritans now faced competition from Baptists and Quakers, among others. But the Half-Way Covenant was not accepted by all congregations, and thus caused more dissension rather than growth.

The increasing stratification within society also affected the discontent felt by many within the second generation of Puritans. As the older generation increasingly concentrated upon attaining wealth, some churches also allowed a differentiation within the sanctuary itself, as wealthy families were given prominent pews within the church during services (during the early years of settlement in America, it was a common practice for a family to subscribe for a pew, thereby paying for the privilege of one’s seat). Naturally, some of the younger, less wealthy Puritans felt further estrangement, and soon stopped attending services. The Rev. Jonathan Edwards of Northampton, Massachusetts focused his attention upon this disaffected generation. He tried to reawaken their piety by appealing to their emotions in a series of sermons that sought to impel his congregants to examine their lives, come to grips with their fate as sinners unless saved by God. This appeal to emotionalism worked, and people felt reconnected to their faith. Soon Edward’s congregation was growing in membership. Revivals of religious feeling were also sweeping through the Methodist and Presbyterian churches in the colonies.

This effort by Edwards marked the beginning of the Great Awakening in New England. Into this time of crisis burst a new attempt to revive religious enthusiasm: the First Great Awakening, which erupted in New England between the years of 1734 and 1745. Those who supported the ideals of the Great Awakening became known as New Lights; traditionalists were called Old Lights.

There were several identifying features of this movement. New Light pastors thundered from their pulpits. Itinerant preachers roamed the countryside, sometimes speaking from the pulpits of churches they visited, but also drawing large crowds in fields or on the steps of meetinghouses. From 1739 to 1741, the youthful Rev. George Whitefield, an Anglican evangelist from England, toured around the Middle Colonies, and several of his sermons were printed by his friend Benjamin Franklin, who was known as a religious skeptic. He was invited to preach in the Connecticut River Valley by Jonathan Edwards, and from there he moved through New England preaching in various places to enthusiastic reviews. Crowds as large as 8,000 listened to him preach in Boston. Instead of dry, reasoned sermons, listeners were painted vivid pictures of the fires of hell in highly emotional language. Audiences often responded in kind, being driven to shrieks of horror, panic, and tears. People grew pale and sometimes collapsed in the arms of their loved ones; others cried out to God for mercy in the middle of a service. Those who experienced this step often moved to a state of euphoria as the last phase of their reawakening, as the feeling of God’s salvation gathered within their hearts and overwhelmed them.

Soon these different approaches to religious feeling flared into open confrontation. An implicit thread running through New Light sermons was criticism of mainline Protestantism as being spiritually dead and decadent. Clergy became subject to criticism and dismissal. Some churches broke into factions or split along doctrinal lines. In one congregation, the minister was asked to step down because he lacked the emotional fire his awakened congregants wanted. When he refused, he was pulled from the pulpit, assaulted, and thrown out the door of the church. . Ideas about education were also affected by this criticism of the “spiritual coldness” of unconverted ministers. A Presbyterian minister, William Tennent, established a school in New Jersey to train preachers in the New Light methods and theology. Originally called the “Log College,” this school was later christened the College of New Jersey and is today known as Princeton. Tennent’s son Gilbert Tennent became an influential New Light preacher.

These Presbyterian graduates of the Log College were soon making their way down the coastline to the southern colonies. By the 1740s, the revival had spread to the southern colonies, carried by William Tennent’s troops. Methodists and Baptists also reaped a windfall of converts, and during the Awakening in this era, many slaves were exposed to Christianity for the first time. Some churches even had both black and white members for a time. For the next twenty years, revivalism played a strong part in the religious experiences of many Southerners.

The Great Awakening also had political and educational consequences. Some Old Lights, particularly in New England, attempted to pass laws to quell the influence of the New Lights. This religious division had political consequences in New England, since the church and government were so tightly intertwined. The Connecticut Assembly passed a law forbidding a clergyman to preach from another’s pulpit without permission and repealed toleration laws passed in 1708. This heavy-handedness ultimately created a backlash in support of religious freedom that would resonate even to the present day. Higher education in the colonies benefitted from this religious revival. Besides Princeton, several colleges sprung up during this time, including Brown, Rutgers, and Dartmouth, for the purpose of meeting the increased need for preachers. These institutions introduced a new curriculum that emphasized mathematics, science, and modern languages in addition to the classical studies and theology which had prevailed previously in older schools. Students at Yale who were swayed by New Light theology began stirring up so much unrest that the Connecticut Assembly allowed expulsion for any student who attended New Light services. The Great Awakening pitted the New Lights’ call for a return to Calvinism against the Old Lights’ more liberal tendencies, which would eventually lead to the founding of the Unitarian and Universalist churches.

To this day, a split remains within American Protestantism, a split that was first articulated during the First Great Awakening. The Christian Charismatic movement, which emphasizes emotion, spiritual gifts such as prophecy, and shattering conversion experiences, still dominates some denominations, such as the Assembly of God based in Springfield, Missouri, as well as the work of evangelists such as Billy and Franklin Graham. The Great Awakening encouraged democratic tendencies and also promoted the separation of church and state, since New Lights were rebelling against the control Old Lights were able to wield through the administration of anti-revivalist laws. Although the religious fervor that was encouraged by the Great Awakening has experienced varying levels of influence throughout American history up to the present, the dichotomy between faith and reason has never completely subsided from the American social landscape.

The Differences Between the New England Confederation and the Dominion of New England

The colonies were very much separate in terms of their governance and operation regardless of our discussion of similarities in culture and beliefs among the Chesapeake and New England. However, there were some definite disadvantages to too much independence, especially when it came to matters of defense.

One of the earliest attempts at colonial unity (a theme that runs throughout the development of America to the present day) was the New England Confederation, which was formed in 1643. This was an invitation-only alliance among the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth, and the two colonies that eventually made up Connecticut. Only those who were orthodox Puritans were welcomed– Rhode Island didn’t make the cut. The main goal of the Confederation was, first of all, mutual defense against attacks from Native tribes or other European colonial powers. The Confederation also dealt with the extradition of runaway criminals or servants.

The Confederation was seen as necessary due to the salutary neglect from the mother country. As you may have noticed, there is always tension between liberty or freedom and security in making decisions about how much power to surrender to government or other outside groups. The Confederation is an example of this in a very mild way– the colonies in the Confederation were willing to give up a limited amount of autonomy (your text notes that the Confederation was very weak) in order to improve security. But note that each individual colony still retained much of its independence– which may have doomed the chances of success of this enterprise. Confederation by its very name implies cooperation.

Why were the colonists so leery of unity? The problem is, unity takes away autonomy. That is one of the reasons why England attempted to impose unity on the New England colonies to enhance control.

Just before the Glorious Revolution, the English government realized that its colonies had been given far too much leeway, particularly when it came to obedience to the Navigation Laws. These laws restricted the colonists to trade only with the mother country or other English possessions. The laws also listed, or enumerated, goods that colonists were not allowed to manufacture– usually goods produced in the mother country. This kind of law would create an artificial monopoly and prevent competition from developing manufactures in the colonies. Lack of enforcement of these laws was costing the mother country money in the form of taxes and higher prices.

Therefore, the Dominion of New England was created in 1686 by the English government under James II and was imposed upon the colonies. The use of the term “Dominion” is indicative of the desire of England to — rightfully in its view– dominate colonial affairs and trade. Amalgamating the several colonies into one organizational struction would enhance English control. In this much more powerful structure, town meetings– a staple of New England’s political landscape– were sharply limited and civil rights, such as freedom of the press and colonial courts (as in a “jury of one’s peers”) were limited to enhance English authority over its colonial subjects. Under the direction of the autocratic Sir Edmund Andros, enforcement of the Navigation Laws– and severe restrictions on smuggling– ensued.

Naturally, intense resentment arose on the part of many colonists at this new attempt to restrain their independence and liberty. Thus when the Glorious Revolution of 1688 produced a massive upheaval of English political structures, the colonists utilized the chaos to run Andros out of town– in a dress, no less. The Dominion of New England then collapsed again, and salutary neglect resumed.

The ultimate difference between the New England Confederation and the Dominion of New England is that the Confederation was imposed upon the member colonies at their own instigation, and was only as powerful as the colonists were willing to allow it to be. The Dominion of New England was imposed from without, and was an attempt to strip the colonies of autonomy and independence that was seen as a threat to the interests of the mother country. The Dominion left the colonists ever more leery of ceding their autonomy to anyone– a fear that would make their dealings with England much more complex.

Cold War Military Spending Chart

Attached is a copy of the chart that was handed out in class. Please analyze and infer from the data the impact of major Cold War events upon military spending. I would suggest you also remember who was president during each of these years. Remember that an event could actually be from the previous year before it impacts budgetary items. You may write the analysis as annotations, and this is due the next time class meets. Remember, I am no longer accepting late assignments (not even photographs of the completed assignments!), so make sure you have it with you.

Cold War Military Spending in Equivalent Dollars

FRQ Outlining assignment for EVERYONE

EVERYONE:
Especially given the reworking of our Monday schedule, this is for everyone to turn in to me by the beginning of class on Monday. You are to write an OUTLINE only, which should show your basic paragraph structure to organize your information. An FRQ when WRITTEN COMPLETELY should be at least a solid 400-500 words, so your outline should be able to support that length of analysis at a MINIMUM.

You need to write an OUTLINE for one of these two FRQ prompts. The outline would include a potential specific thesis, at least 15 statement pieces of relevant historical information or analytical statements ( have at least three minimum of each).

Although the 1960s are usually considered the decade of greatest achievement for Black civil rights, the 1940s and 1950s were periods of equally important gains.
Assess the validity of this statement.

OR

The Bill of Rights did not come from a desire to protect the liberties won in the American Revolution, but rather from a fear of the powers of the new federal government.
Assess the validity of this statement.

This should take no more than 15 minutes, and needs to be ready on Monday.

Your chapter 41 questions are due on Tuesday. You are welcome.

Dulce et Decorum Est

I want you to read the annotated version of this poem by Wilfred Owen, so go here: http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html

Here is the story of Owen and Sassoon: http://theredanimalproject.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/poets-of-the-great-war-siegfried-sassoon-and-wilfred-owen/

Possible essay topics for 5th period final

It wouldn’t hurt all classes to rough out an answer to these, but here are the essay topics that 5th hour will face on their final:

I would strongly suggest that you outline these– it will also help you study in general. Use of specifics will be a major way you earn points.

A. Explain and trace the problems of unity faced in America from its founding through Reconstruction.

B. Compare and contrast the “achievements” of Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan as major contenders for the title of “worst president of the semester.” Ironic that they bookended one of the greatest ever….

C. Explain the development of political parties in the United States through Reconstruction.

Possible essay topics for 1st period final

It wouldn’t hurt all classes to rough out an answer to these, but here are the essay topics that 1st hour will face on their final:

I would strongly suggest that you outline these– it will also help you study in general. Use of specifics will be a major way you earn points.

A.”Manifest Destiny and its changes made the Civil War inevitable.”
Assess the validity of this statement.

B. Compare and contrast the precedents that the presidencies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln established, and consider how that changed American government.

C. Explain the development of political parties in the United States through Reconstruction.