Dark Artillery : New Contrabands, No Change

The left side of the painting includes American icons such as Steve Irwin, Prince, Abraham Lincoln, and the “army” being led by George Washington. This could symbolize the American lifestyle that focuses and is represented mainly by society's take on who is important to the culture. This is often popular or influential celebrities, iconic presidents and/or leaders such as Abraham

Racial ideas and violence would deter black officers from achieving a higher status in the Union army. Blackness being associated with feminine qualities was the factor that made black officers fight to prove their manhood and achieve their freedom. Even though the wage discrepancy would become a problem that was solved as the war went on, black soldiers would leave the army because of the financial stress that their family endured. All in all, black soldiers proved their abilities but were not able to achieve equality status as their white

Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.

sward.” One Northern newspaper, praised Butler in his action to use the term of contrabands of war rather than declaring them free. “The promptness and sagacity of General Butler have increased the dilemma of the Secessionists to a remarkable degree; since it is at once equally hostile to Abolitionism and Secession. By declaring that slaves are contraband of war he

Contrabands was a term established during the Civil War, by General Benjamin Butler. It was given to “slaves who had escaped to the Union or were captured by the Unions troops”(220). Additionally, the were considered enemy property by the Union. Union troops did not free them, but they did not reenslave them either. Instead, the Union put them to work, fed, clothed, and housed the slaves. They also still were not permitted to go and come as they pleased. However, on August 6th, 1861 congress passed the First Confiscation Act. This clarified the status of runaway’s slaves and it allowed federal forces to obtain any property that belong to the Confederates used in the war. In addition, this act declared that slaves who were used by their masters

The contour lines of the painting are drawn strong and hard, isolating each figure. The lines in the painting are mainly vertical. The majority of the people are all standing up, the soldiers weapons are pointed upward, and the pillars are painted tall. The vertical lines communicates a sense of heighten spirituality. Also, if you look closely behind John Brown, the artist manipulates the lines of the building to put a cross-shaped figure right above his head. The combination of these two factors gives us the feeling that Thomas Hovenden was trying to portray John Brown as a Christ-like Martyr heading to his crucifixion.

slaves themselves took actions that helped propel a reluctant white America down the road to emancipation. Well before Lincoln made emancipation a war aim, blacks, in the North and the South, were calling the conflict the “freedom war.” In 1861 and 1862, as the federal army occupied Confederate territory, slaves by the thousands headed for Union lines. Unlike fugitives before the war, these runaways included large numbers of women and children, as entire families abandoned the plantations. Not a few passed along military intelligence and detailed knowledge of the South’s terrain. In southern Louisiana, the arrival of the Union army in 1862 led slaves to sack plantation houses and refuse to work unless wages were

Abolitionists responded with outright discontent for this law, arguing that the Fugitive Slave Act was a frightening image of the Slave Power, a political symbol used as a conspiracy to describe a so-called capture of the federal government by Southerners for “the purposes of expanding slavery and crushing all opposition to it” (Barney 47). Abolitionists continued to extend their voices in opposition to the act, but eventually the controversy died

After four years of bloody battles and 620,000 deaths, the North finally won the war slavery, and African Americans were free; but the freedom that they envisioned was nonexistent. Their freedom was tied down by numerous of factors, including South’s effort to re-establish slavery conditions, wavering support from the North, White Supremacy organizations, Capitalism, and most importantly, the failed Reconstruction Acts. This Is a White Man’s Government is a cartoon that was published in Harper’s Weekly, a popular cultural newspaper that advocated equality for Blacks, and was predominantly read by Northerners and Union workers. Some say that an image can speak a thousand words, this cartoon by Thomas Nast effortlessly succeeds in doing so by capturing the bleak reality of the freedom that African Americans had in the 1860s thanks to the ineffective implementation of the Reconstruction Acts by the Democrats, who did little to break down the facade of freedom that was given to the Blacks after the Civil War.

Indeed, the soldiers are dehumanised to the point that they are considered property, “It certainly is not your leg! […]. That leg belongs to the U.S. government. It’s no different than a gear or a bed pan”. Yossarian is reduced to the equivalent of a “bedpan”, the lowest of the low, a humiliating comparison. Such an allusion to a vulgar object demonstrates the impersonality and callous inhumanity of war, where courage, bravery and humans themselves account for little. Yossarian here is illustrated as a mere production unit, a ‘worker’. Marxist critics argue that capitalism, which dominates US politics, turns peoples into things, it reifies them. In Marxist terms, such a capitalist mode of production generates a materialistic view of the world, in which ultimately all of us function as objects and become alienated from ourselves.

Painters enormously manipulated the truth in their portraits they painted since they aimed to present a specific meaning or feeling to their observers. One of the results, paintings of America`s wars especially before the Civil War had a

The artwork is a colorful representation of the nature of the farmworkers on a hot summer day. Thompson uses a variety of contrast of hues to represent the summer day and the nature of the farmworkers. For example, the man cheeks are a vivid red making it appear to be a long day of work and portrays the heat. He also

Some of the colors seem out of place. The variation in color may be a result of the author emphasizing certain areas of the sculpture. Most notably, the artist selects to present the sculpture in three-dimensions, using this technique to accentuate and magnify the combatants and their physical attributes. Certain parts of these dimensions seem to stick right out at you, giving the viewer a good impression of the violence and hatred of war.

The first sign of imagery shown by the author was when he was describing the location of the story. Early in chapter 1 it states, “One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861 a soldier lay in clump of laurel by the side of a road in western Virginia.” This quote alone lets the reader know the story not only does the story take place during the civil war but also that the soldier is asleep on duty. It also says, “He lay at full length upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, his head upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped his rifle…He was asleep at his post of duty. But if detected be would be dead shortly afterward.” This quote implies that if caught by his superior the soldier would be sentenced to death,

The colors in this painting are mostly dark because the perilous trek to the northern states was done at night. The darkest element in the painting is Harriet Tubman. The depiction of Harriet Tubman is that of a dark and mysterious superhero. Jacob Lawrence doesn't sugarcoat the blackness in his artwork so he made sure to make Harriet Tubman unmistakably black. The lines in the art seem to be shading for all the dark spots in the painting. The dark horizontal lines on Harriet Tubman's white shirt is a great sign of her blending into the darkness.