Monday

Finish viewing the film.

Iconoclastic Individualism - Keynote

Homework- Write argument essay on the following topic:

Krakauer observes that it is not “unusual for a young man to be drawn to a pursuit considered reckless by his elders.” After graduating college, McCandless begins, “an epic journey that would change everything” (22).  He saw his time in college as “an absurd and onerous duty” (22).  In heading west he felt freed “from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess” (22).  Write a persuasive essay that supports McCandless’ journey as an “epic” adventure deeply rooted in Transcendentalist ideals. Be sure to quote Emerson, Thoreau and others to support your claims.

Tuesday

How to Write The Argument Essay

Writing time in class.

Homework- Read pages 337-347 in the textbook.

Wednesday 

Peer Edit/Writing time in class. Essays due at end of period. 

Homework- Read pages 337-347 in the textbook.

Thursday

Small Group Discussion:
1. Explain the differences between the Upper and Lower South. What tied them together?

2. Explain why the Old South failed to industrialize.

3. Summarize the proslavery argument developed by southern intellectuals to defend the "peculiar institution."

4. Discuss the free black population of the Old South. How many were there by the eve of the Civil War? Where did most of them live? Under what economic and legal constraints did they exist?

1. Describe the "furtive resistance" of slaves in the Old South.

The American Economy and Slavery

Read American Economic Growth - What were the major factors that led to economic growth in the 1800’s? How do the North and South develop differently?

Read and analyze documents: The Southern Economy, Slavery Statistics

What did you learn about slavery from these documents and facts? What connections can you make between these documents and the documentary?

Finish the chapter.

Homework- Read Chapter 1 In Frederick Douglass and answer the following questions. I will check these tomorrow. Here is the link to the PDF: https://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Douglass/Narrative/Douglass_Narrative.pdf

QUESTIONS 

1. Why is Frederick not sure when he was born? 

2. What is Frederick’s last name at birth? 

3. Why would slaveholders want to keep a slave ignorant of such a simple thing as the date of his birth? (Education) 

4. Who were Frederick’s mother and father? 

5. Why does Frederick make the point that a slaveholder who has fathered a child is likely to be tougher on that child? 

6. Why does Frederick only rarely see his mother? 

7. Is Frederick’s relationship with his mother typical of other slave children? What is the role of the overseer on the plantation? 

8. What is the relationship of the slaveholder to the overseer to the slave on the plantation? (History) 

9. What do we learn about Plummer, the overseer? 

10. Who is Frederick’s first master? 

11. Why does Frederick tell the story of Lloyd’s Ned? 

QUOTATIONS 

“By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters to keep their slaves thus ignorant” (p. 21). [The intentional ignorance of slaves plays an important role in Frederick’s understanding of the system.] (Education) 

“He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slaveholding” (p. 24). [This is an important point that Frederick will continue to make throughout the narrative.] (History)

“It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass” (p. 25). 

Friday

Begin the Narrative of Frederick Douglass

Read and analyze this poem. What connections can you make to Douglass‘ Narrative?
 

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

Robert Hayden 

Frederick Douglass Narrative

How does Douglass describe slavery?  Analyze both the specific details of what he says and the way and language he uses to describe slavery.

How does Douglass learn to read and write and why is it so important? Think back to this early painting from the Chesapeake Bay colonies. What connections can you make?

How did Sectional differences, Slavery, Reform, Transcendentalism and Individualism influence Douglass’s work?

How does knowledge affect Douglass's experience as a slave?

The Narrative of Frederick Douglass

  “My father was a white man. He was admitted to
be such by all I ever heard speak of my parentage.
The opinion was also whispered that my master was

my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I

know nothing; the means of knowing was withheld

from me.” (13)

Consider and make connections to this Virginia slave law from 1662.

VIRGINIA SLAVE LAWS

December 1662

Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a Negro woman should be slave or free, be it therefore enacted and declared by this present Grand Assembly, that all children born in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother; and that if any Christian shall commit fornication with a Negro man or woman, he or she so offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act.

“The whisper that my master was my father, may or may
not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little con-
sequence to my purpose whilst the fact remains,
in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have
ordained, and by law established, that the children
of slave women shall in all cases follow the condi-
tion of their mothers; and this is done too obviously
to administer to their own lusts, and make a grati-
fication of their wicked desires profitable as well as
pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the
slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves
the double relation of master and father.” (14)

The Economics of Slavery

   “To describe the wealth of Colonel Lloyd would
be almost equal to describing the riches of Job. He
kept from ten to fifteen house-servants. He was said
to own a thousand slaves, and I think this estimate
quite within the truth. Colonel Lloyd owned so
many that he did not know them when he saw them;
nor did all the slaves of the out-farms know him. It
is reported of him, that, while riding along the road
one day, he met a colored man, and addressed him
in the usual manner of speaking to colored people
on the public highways of the south: "Well, boy,
whom do you belong to?" "To Colonel Lloyd," re-
plied the slave. "Well, does the colonel treat you
well?" "No, sir," was the ready reply. "What, does
he work you too hard?" "Yes, sir." "Well, don't he
give you enough to eat?" "Yes, sir, he gives me
enough, such as it is."” 

“They seemed to think that the great-

ness of their masters was transferable to themselves.

It was considered as being bad enough to be a

slave; but to be a poor man's slave was deemed a

disgrace indeed!” (24)

“I knew THEY were exceedingly poor, and I had
been accustomed to regard their poverty as the nec-
essary consequence of their being non-slaveholders.
I had somehow imbibed the opinion that, in the
absence of slaves, there could be no wealth, and very
little refinement. And upon coming to the north, I
expected to meet with a rough, hard-handed, and
uncultivated population, living in the most Spartan-
like simplicity, knowing nothing of the ease, luxury,
pomp, and grandeur of southern slaveholders.” (78)

Homework- Read the next 20 pages in Douglass.