Essay about The Whipping Boy

In his short book or novella Of Mice and Men, author John Steinbeck draws attention to migrant farm workers in the Depression era of the 1930s. Through his story he looks at human nature in the areas of men’s friendship, loneliness, and meanness or bullying. This essay looks at Steinbeck’s depiction of the tendency to bully others and that the tendency seems to come from their own weakness. This meanness is shown in the relationships of the characters. The bullying is physical, psychological, and emotional and nearly all of the characters demonstrate it, including George, Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s wife and it is contrasted to the unintentional violence of Lennie.

Slavery has had its roots deep in the soil that is our American history, dating back to the 1600s in America. After fighting the revolutionary war and obtaining independence from Great Britain, America would soon face another nemesis- The Confederate forces. The Confederate forces or the Confederacy is the name given to the slave-holding states of America which were prominent in the 1800s amid the Civil War era. It started when southern states, in favor of slave labor, seceded from the Union after the election of a more liberal present, Abraham Lincoln who aimed for the abolition of slavery. This marked the beginning of the civil war that lasted approximately fourteen bloody years. For long, African Americans were not allowed to fight alongside their fellow white citizens due to a prejudice climate. In an attempt to recruit African Americans to join the Union Army, Alfred M. Green an African American man himself, used emotional appeal, historical context, and ethical appeal during his speech to create a convincing, and persuasive argument for a better future.

Beginning in 1861, the civil war was fought over many political questions regarding slavery, yet was barely focused on the actual freedom of the slaves themselves. It is often taught that the Union fought for the freedom of slaves at the beginning of the war. However, it is more accurate to say that Abraham Lincoln’s primary goal at the beginning of the war was to reunite the Union after the majority of the slave-owning states seceded to protect their way of life: slavery. Yet, by the end of the war, the Union’s goal was to free the slaves. Though the laws securing slaves freedom and suffrage were contributed to by many, the primary driving forces behind them was the African Americans. Through their willingness to fight and support the Union cause, African Americans made the United States acknowledge their struggles and transformed the war into a fight for reconnection and freedom. Though hindered by racist people and policies, the African Americans’ participation during the war and Reconstruction greatly contributed to tremendous cultural change as well as the securing of legal rights to blacks.

The American Civil War is also referred to as the war between the Northern and Southern States or the Rebellion War that began in 1861. Slavery was regarded as the main cause leading to the start of the war, as a high level of discrimination against the African Americans existed upon their arrival in the United States. The African Americans were either sold and traded by the elders in their villages or plucked from their native countries for a sometimes deadly transatlantic journey to serve wealthy southern families. They were not viewed as peers but as laborers and farmers. Americans who were rich and owned large plantations took the African Americans as their slaves. They suffered as if they were not worthy of compensation including working without pay and the standard consequence was lynching. During the period, they fought for their freedom, which was not given to them until the Civil War was fought. Consequently, they aligned themselves with the white men who were also soldiers in fighting for their freedom.

Throughout the colonial period and the time leading up to the American civil war, one of the most important and controversial topics facing Americans was the idea of slavery. The notion of slavery is an odd and incredibly horrifying concept, that one man can own another man, or two men, or an entire family, just because of the color of their skin. No doubt the idea was racist and repulsive, but to many Men and Women in history, across the country and across the world, slavery was just a part of everyday life: they knew no different. So when those people who were being stripped from their homeland and brought over on ships to be sold at auction to the highest white bidder, began to question the sacredness of this terrible

The documentary Slavery by Another Name reveals an astonishing fact that slavery in America went on until World War II even with the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Based on Douglas A. Blackmon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book titled Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, the film depicts how new forms of forced labor and slavery emerged in America. This was indeed a contributing factor to the Civil war, especially to the southern whites.

The Civil War caused a shift in the ways that many Americans thought about slavery and race. Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over helps readers understand how soldiers viewed slavery during the Civil War. The book is a narrative, which follows the life of Union soldier who is from Massachusetts. Chandra Manning used letters, diaries and regimental newspapers to gain an understanding of soldiers’ views of slavery. The main character, Charles Brewster has never encountered slaves. However, he believes that Negroes are inferior. He does not meet slaves until he enters the war in the southern states of Maryland and Virginia. Charles Brewster views the slaves first as contraband. He believes the slaves are a burden and should be sent back to their owners because of the fugitive slave laws. Union soldiers focus shifted before the end of the war. They believed slavery was cruel and inhumane, expressing strong desire to liberate the slaves. As the war progresses, soldiers view slaves and slavery in a different light. This paper, by referring to the themes and characters presented in Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over, analyzes how the issue of slavery and race shifted in the eyes of white Union soldiers’ during Civil War times.

In American history violence occurs throughout even at the conception of our country, but most historians write about the violence of our wars with other countries and our own civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and seem to forget about the hundreds of thousands of people that did not gain their independence in 1776 but had to wait nearly another decade. The book “The Half Has Never Been Told” depicts the lives of these men, women, and children that we exposed to untold horrors under the iron whip that was slavery that have never been taught in schools. Throughout the book the author Edward E. Baptist describes in detail how slavery played an inspirational role in shaping the way capitalism was manipulated throughout 19th century America particularly in the southern states and how violence was a key aspect in the way slave owners managed their enslaved people.

Over 150 years ago, the slaves were proclaimed free by President Lincoln. However many people even today still consider the african-americans under the bindings of slavery and barred from true freedom. The african-american slaves were brought to America while it was still being colonized to replace the rather expensive indentured servants. They were sold into slavery to carry out often harsh chores and tasks for their owner. Eventually, a civil war broke out between the north and south over the south not wanting slavery to be abolished. However, the south lost and President Lincoln established the Emancipation Proclamation, which completely freed the slaves. The period following the civil war, known as reconstruction, was a failure due to the fact that the newly freed slaves still experienced inequality, racism, and exclusion.

Most literature about the American Civil War will discuss the intricacies of battle strategy in great detail. These accounts may also painstakingly discuss the rationale of the presidents, the generals, and even some of the soldiers involved in perhaps the greatest American conflict, divulging further and further into how the war began, what could have been done to prevent it, and whether or not the Civil War was in fact about slavery. However, there is very limited literature on the people directly at the center of this conflict: the enslaved. Tennessee Civil War 150, a documentary series produced by Nashville Public Television, included a thirty-minute segment discussing this very subject. “Looking Over Jordan” from Tennessee Civil War 150 not only includes African Americans in the discussion regarding the social

One of the contributing factors which led to the Civil War were the social disputes between the North and the South. The morality of the issue of slavery was one which was highly debated. The North found that slavery was immoral and should be abolished. Frederick Douglass, a former slave, in his speech on “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” holds little back and criticizes the happening of the white man in

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

During the 1840s, America saw increasingly attractive settlements forming between the North and the South. The government tried to keep the industrial north and the agricultural south happy, but eventually the issue of slavery became too big to handle, no matter how many treaties or compromises were formed. Slavery was a huge issue that unraveled throughout many years of American history and was one of the biggest contributors leading up to the Civil War (notes, Fall 2015). Many books have been written over the years about slavery and the brutality of the life that many people endured. In “A Slave No More”, David Blight tells the story about two men, John M. Washington (1838-1918) and Wallace Turnage (1846-1916), struggling during American slavery. Their escape to freedom happened during America’s bloodiest war among many political conflicts, which had been splitting the country apart for many decades. As Blight (2007) describes, “Throughout the Civil War, in thousands of different circumstances, under changing policies and redefinitions of their status, and in the face of social chaos…four million slaves helped to decide what time it would be in American History” (p. 5). Whether it was freedom from a master or overseer, freedom from living as both property and the object of another person’s will, or even freedom to make their own decisions and control their own life, slaves wanted a sense of independence. According to Blight (2007), “The war and the presence of Union armies

The American Civil War raged on between 1861 and 1864, pitting the Northern States against the Southern States. There was great tension that had been building up for several reasons, and the biggest issue was slavery in the South. Southerners fought to keep their slaves, while Northerners wanted to eliminate the spread of slavery. These letters show the shift in gender roles, feelings toward the enemy, and the experiences the soldiers had during the war.

The American Civil War was a time wrought with peril. Families were split along party lines and took up arms against one another to fight for what they believed was right. Yet there was one group of people who had more to gain than any other present in the war, and that was the African American slave. This war was one of the biggest turning points in the morality of America all because of what happened to the slave in this war. They enlisted in the army, fought bravely, and after long last, gained their freedom.