Throughout my time at my current
school I can honestly say that up until this semester, I have learned relatively
little as most of the material covered seems to have been material that was
rehashed from high school. However, this
semester has surprisingly been different.
Within this class, the main thing that I have learned is the differences
in the way people thought back in the 1600s through the 1800s as opposed to how
people think today. While I was aware
that people had different thought patterns it never really set in just how
differently people thought.
One of the eras that really stood
out was the 1600s and just how different it was and how terrible the conditions
were for early settlers. Now, anyone who
took an early American History class in any grade knows that life was extremely
difficult for early settlers. There was
constant war with the natives, the weather was bad, food was often scarce and
many of the settlers would die. However
before I took this class, I was never truly understood just how miserable these
people were. My true understanding of
this came when I read a letter by a man of the era by the name of Richard
Frethorne. In the letter he writes to
his mother and father, regarding the horrible conditions of the colony. Within the letter, he describes that he is
often malnourished, eating only gruel and peas, has had things stolen from him
by his fellow colonists, and is constantly afraid of native attacks. He truly makes you feel his situation in the
New World and I honestly can’t help but wonder why schools do not require this
as reading for the time period.
Our study of New England literature from
this era also proved to be enlightening.
Today, we now know that many of the indigenous populations were wiped
out by disease brought over from Europe, particularly Small Pox. Now, the ways that people interpreted the
cause of these massive deaths was quite interesting. Again, we now know that it was Small Pox that
killed off most of the indigenous population.
However, the Puritans believed that it was the will of God that the land
be cleansed of the heathens in order for their religion and populations to
prosper. On the side of the natives,
they believed that the settlers were some kind of gods or wizards who were able
wipe out entire populations on a whim.
While I always knew that people from that time period were a little zealous
when it came to their religion and that most explanations they had to major
events had something to do with God or the spirits I had no idea just how far
this went with these people and I found it a little disconcerting.
Later on in the century there was
the conflict known as King Philip’s War.
Now as with most wars with the natives, the general consensus seems to
be that during this war King Philip was in the right. That it was the settlers who were the
invaders and constantly mistreating the natives in various ways. However, again, the settlers had a very
different way of looking at things. In
many ways they saw the war with the natives as almost a war forces that were an
affront to God. In one particular piece
we read, A Narrative of the Captivity and
Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, we see this war in a much different
light. In the narrative she graphically
describes the deaths of her friends and family and in what light she views
them. It is something that is difficult
to put into words but you really get a sense of what her mind set was like and
just how different the settlers were from the natives.
This was something that I ultimately
took two things away from. The first was
that I was a bit more sympathetic towards the settlers who, up until now, had
been the villainous invaders who had wiped out the native population and these
reading made me see them more as people then these faceless monsters. The second, and possibly the most important,
was that the main cause of many of these conflicts was simple ignorance on both
sides. They didn’t understand each
other’s ways of thinking and this was what ultimately led to conflict. The ideas of property, religion, and ones
role in society were radically different.
This would lead to people getting into wars that were often
misunderstandings and I can’t help but believe that if both sides had made more
effort to reach out and understand one another many of the conflicts that arose
may have been prevented. Perhaps this is
naïve of me to think so but it’s one of the many what-ifs we will never get to
experience.
Another major thing that I took away
from this class was the thought process of the founding fathers while forming
the nation and the political battles that ensued after the constitution was
ratified. Now I had always known that things
like the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution were documents
that were founded on compromise but what I did not know was just how bitter
some their arguments got and these arguments often tore families and friends
apart. During the Revolutionary War, for
example Ben Franklin and his son were on opposite sides of the war and the two
never spoke again after the lines were drawn in the sand and actually inspired
him to write his autobiography as a kind of explanation of his actions. Several of the founding fathers argued over
what rights the individual should have and how the government should be
run. One of the most notable examples
was an argument between Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson over the separation of
Church and State. Before I had taken
this class I had always assumed that all of the founding fathers had agreed on
this and I hadn’t realized that this was something that was ever open for
debate. Patrick Henry was firmly against
this mainly citing that the church needed to be a kind moral compass for the
government and in order to do this it had to be directly involved in its
running. Thomas Jefferson argued for
this, citing that it would eventually violate people’s right to freedom of
religion and that such things always led to one group dominating the other,
ensuring some form of tyranny. While it
is obvious who won this argument this was a debate that I honestly did not know
happened and feel more enlighten for the information.
On
a similar note, when the founding fathers were forming the nation under the Constitution many of them argued over
what should be or what should not be part of it. Some of the founding fathers argued that a bill
of rights should be added to the Constitution
in order to prevent the Federal Government from violating them. However, others argued against having them
included and the readings in this class offered an alternate explanation as to
why this may have been. Before, I had
assumed that their arguments against the passage of the amendment was just a
way for the upper class to try to restrict the rights of the lower classes, as
men of power usually do. And to be
perfectly honest, I’m not entirely convinced that this is entirely untrue as
some of the actions of the founding fathers, (such as the Electoral College
process or the restricted voting rights), could easily be interpreted as
actions to keep the lower classes down.
However, the explanations given by some of these founding fathers were
valid. The main argument basically said
including a bill of rights into the Constitution
would ultimately limit the rights that the individual would ultimately
have. Now, in the long term this turned
out to be inaccurate and to this day we have arguments over how far these rights
go and without them in the Constitution
it would be a much more bitter battle.
All the same, you can see where these founding fathers were coming from
in this belief and it may have very well ended up that way if certain events in
history had gone one way rather than the other.
However, I’m still not entirely convinced that my theory was wrong and believe
that arguments such as these should be viewed with caution at best.
Jumping ahead a few decades, I’ve often
found books, novels and stories from this period to be really dull, dry and
often incoherent and just assumed that was the way people wrote in those days
and just hadn’t aged very well. I also
never entirely understood why it was that authors were often either broke or
had other professions in this era and this class served to enlighten me in both
areas. As it turned out, I was only
partly right on the former and this directly affects the latter. What I had not realized was just how
expensive books were in this era and were not available for mass
distribution. It was because of this
that making a living as an author was next to impossible, hence the poverty or
multiple carriers of said writers. I
also discovered that the reason why these books were so long and cryptic was
that they were supposed to be that way.
Again, books were very expensive in those days so the consumer would
want the book to last for as long as possible and the authors would
intentionally write the books so they would have to be read multiple times
before the reader could decipher the author’s true meaning. It’s a concept that may be alien to the
general reader today, but when you put all of these things into context, it
makes a lot more sense and I have viewed literature from that era in a whole
new light.
But perhaps the greatest thing that I
took away from this class was the information I gained while reading The Way to Wealth by Benjamin Franklin. One thing that I have constantly heard throughout
my life is to save money but I have never really had a proper guide as to how I
would do it. This is where The Way to Wealth came in as it told me blatantly
how to do it; work hard, avoid being lazy and don’t buy things you don’t need
and save your money. This is an over
simplification of what the almanac said but it described how to do it in such a
way that I have never heard before. Even
if all of what I have learned in this class proves relatively useless in the
long term this is one thing that I will keep in mind for the rest of my life
and have vowed to reread his advice at least once a year.
So, what have I ultimately taken away
from this class? The most important
thing was probably the advice I received from The Way to Wealth as it seems to have given me a way to avoid bankruptcy
so long as I follow its advice and I intend to so long as I can. The other main thing and almost as important
is the broader understanding I have gained for people of these eras. Before the events and hardships of the people
of Jamestown were just words in books but because of this class I have really
gained a feeling and insight into the suffering of these people. These feelings can also be said of the wars
with the natives fought in New England and the plagues that spread to them as
this class really allowed me some insight into how the people on both sides
thought. I was also astounded at just
what the Revolutionary War did to some families and how the game of politics
was played during the nation’s formation and the immediate rivalries that came
after. And of course there is my
understanding of what books were truly for in the 18th/19th
centuries; to be read again and again to find the true meaning of the
words. Maybe this was not what was
intended for me to take away from this class but I feel enlighten by taking it
for these reasons all the same.
