Memes Who Pervert It - The Enemy of History?

I admit...I had to look the dang thing up.  What the heck is a meme and do you say it "me-m" (MEE-m silent e) or "mem" - rhymes with them????  This is exhausting for my 40-something year old brain.  The definition of meme is:

noun
-an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.
-a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.

If you still don't know what the heck I am talking about...I love you, but....Here's an example of a meme -

Recently in class, the issue of memes has surfaced.  In searching for images or cultural visuals for class, I am happening on more and more memes or gifs on the internet.  I landed on this little dandy the other day while looking for a visual of Benedict Arnold.

This is wrong.

Arnold could never have said this.  The Constitution did not exist when Arnold was still one of "we the people" or a Patriot.  The quote actually belongs to Abraham Lincoln in his notes on a speech given in September 1859 before he was elected President.  He said, 

But we must, by a national policy, prevent the spread of slavery into new territories, or free states, because the constitution does not forbid us, and the general welfare does demand such prevention — We must prevent the revival of the African slave trade, because the constitution does not forbid us, and the general welfare does require the prevention — We must prevent these things being done, by either congresses or courts — The people — the people — are the rightful masters of both Congresses, and courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it —"1

I'm so curious as to the motivation for creating this inaccurate meme, attributing to Arnold.  I have my theories.  My class came up with their own.  

Now do I expect every Facebook user to check the authenticity of a meme?  Practically speaking, no. But I'm a historian and I feel like it's my job to start these conversations.  We need to learn to question print media in a whole new way now.  Our 21st century society and political climate DEMAND that.  

Or we could just harken back to the wise words of Lincoln:

Yeah.  This is why I am bringing it up more in class.  When it's important, check the source.  

JJ

1 Library of Congress, Abraham Lincoln Papers, https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/abraham-lincoln-papers/history3.html

Madison and Fed #51

Brilliant.

Brilliant.

I am not a big James Madison fan, but this entire week we have been reading the Federalist papers in class, and every time the class begins, I remember what brilliance our 4th president brought to the process of writing the United States Constitution, single-handedly writing the Bill of Rights and finally defending the Constitution for ratification in the Federalist Papers.

I've tried to love Alexander Hamilton's contributions to the papers.  Hamilton, Madison, and New Yorker John Jay collaborated to write the Federalist papers in in 1787 as a way to campaign for the ratification of the new Constitution.  9 of the original 13 states had to ratify the new US Constitution to supplant the Articles of Confederation which was a weak and ineffective form of central government.  This Coup d'état (stroke of the state) gave us our "more perfect union."

Illustration showing the campaign for institutional acceptance of the new Constitution.  Massachusetts Centinel, Jan 30, 1788 1

It is Madison's language in Federalist #51 that gives me chills every time we engage with it in class.  I always personally read aloud the passages in class that really get to me.  I'm such a ham, I can't give up power to a student to read them and do them justice.   Here is the passage I will be reading again this morning:

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." - Federalist #51

Invariably a conversation about government checks and balances ensues.  Why do we need them?  What is Madison saying?  

Checks and balances.  Consent of the governed.  Hmmm.  Timely.  #ConnectHistory

JJ

1 Great resource for Massachusetts' history on the ratification process - https://www.masshist.org/objects/cabinet/february2003/february2003.htm 

American Luster and Religious Freedom

This week we have been discussing the American Revolution and I always try to take a few minutes in class to explore the time immediately following the American War for Independence; a time of democratic and federal exploration or, as Eric Foner refers to it, the "Revolution Within."1  Our identity as the United States didn't just blossom from the ground or get marched in on the back of Washington's horse.  The years between 1783 and 1787 were filled with trial, error and ideological exploration.

Yesterday in class, we looked at a quote from James Madison exploring the issues of religious freedom.  Madison, continuously emerges as one of my favorite authors from the early republic (Sorry Hamilton!).  To teach, Madison is clear and assessable without the characteristic run-on sentences of the period.  The quote we looked at was from a Madison document written to the Virginia General Assembly in 1785 in which he describes America as an "asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every nation and religion.”  He continues that this idea of America adds a "lustre" to our country.  A great sheen or soft glow, luster.   The full link to the Madison document is below.2

By now, my students recognize that I am going to ask them to think about connecting our history.   The period following the American Revolution is ripe with inquiry into what is an American, what are the freedoms of Americans and who we should invite to this lustrous party, if indeed, I hope, it still has luster.

Read Madison, he matters.


1 Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty, W.W. Norton, 2012.
2 James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, ://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions43.html

Spinners - not the fidget kind.

Today in Women's History we will be looking at the mill girls of Lowell, MA and their struggles in an industrialized market economy at the beginning of the 1820s.  These were young, unmarried women who went to work in an ever more industrializing economy.  Incidentally, if they remained unmarried, we see the origins of the term, "spinster."  Below is a song I was able to find to analyze with my class.  It is dated 1841.

How does music speak to us from the past?  What does this piece of music say about the girls working in these factories?  What can we infer from the fact that this song was formalized enough to be printed as sheet music?

I am particularly curious about the last line of the song -
Dependent on others we ne'er will be.
So long as we're able to spin.

Economic independence set to music.  Makes my head spin with ideas.
JJ

Sons of Liberty - Terrorists, Insulant Children or Slave Traders

Wow - history is complicated lately and I LOVE it!  Today in class we are talking about the American Revolution and the Sons of Liberty.  This group of colonial men who acted against British intolerable acts of empire have no shortage of press or dramatic representation in today's world.  The History Channel miniseries, Sons of Liberty, has helped propagate their image as American heroes fighting tyranny at the dawning of our American Revolution.

Today, I am using a quote from the British Parliament for perspective.  Here's a screenshot of my lecture slide:

Often, my students recognize the acts of the Sons of Liberty, particularly the destroying of British East India Company's tea in Boston Harbor as an act of terrorism.  Townshend's reference to the Americans as "children"  is curious in this context.  But today, an article about one son of liberty caught my eye.

Dr. Joseph Warren was one of the members of the Sons of Liberty in Boston and he famously lost his life in the Battle of Bunker Hill early in the Revolutionary War.  Warren is remembered and emulated throughout Massachusetts.    This article (here) from yesterday's Bay State Banner looks at efforts to re-write some of Boston's landmarks that bare historic names of people who owned slaves.  Faneuil Hall is featured prominently in the article because Peter Faneuil was a slave trader.

The very current debate about history, memory and memorials continues.
JJ

From Betsy Ross to Francis Scott Key

Today in Women's History we will be discussing Revolutionary women and the nation's progress into  the early 19th century.  I tell my students that labor is a huge part of our investigation of the 19th century.  Indeed, for all my US history classes, a focus on labor through the 1800s is key to understanding motivations and consequences.  But today is the anniversary of when Francis Scott Key wrote the poem that was to become the Star Spangled Banner. 

The Star-Spangled Banner
O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,
’Tis the star-spangled banner - O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto - “In God is our trust,” 
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.1

Betsy's participation in the creation of the American flag is speculative, but positioning a picture of Betsy and some female friends sewing the flag seems like a nice entry point into the Cult of Domesticity and ideas of female labor.  The Cult of Domesticity outlined the TRUE role of women in the new Republic and created a system that treated men and women as complete opposites.  Women were to focus on a moral code focused on piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity.

Allegedly, Washington wanted 6 point stars for the flag, but Betsy thought that 5 points better and easier to cut.
JJ

Sources:
1https://amhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/the-lyrics.aspx

American Identity and the Language of Liberty

This morning in one of my many dorky history notebooks, there was this quote from George Washington in a letter to James Warren, March 31, 1779.

"Our cause is noble...it is the cause of Mankind!"

Here is a link to the full letter.

Of course, in 1779, Washington was in the midst of fighting for the American cause in the American Revolution.  But as we are discussing the Revolution this week in class, I was intrigued by the quote.

So I asked my students, what do you think the American Revolution was about?

Often they tell me, freedom.  In class, I ask them to think about the "Language of Liberty" as part of our American dream.  Do all of the cultures interacting in the 18th century have access to that "Language of Liberty?"  Do women have access to this liberty? How do gender and race - even from the founding of our noble cause - calculate into the idea of freedom?

Perhaps there are more questions then answers, but we must examine Washington's cause of Mankind.

Asking the questions is the first step.

JJ

Comparing Mercy Otis Warren to Thomas Paine

I am working on a lesson for this week's Role of Women in History and I have decided to compare Mercy Otis Warren's writing with contemporary Thomas Paine.  Two quotes I am looking at:

Paine Thomas in Common Sense, 1776:
“Until an independence is declared the continent will feel itself like a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done, hates to set about it, wishes it over, and is continually haunted with the thoughts of its necessity.”

Mercy via her husband's letter to John Adams, Nov, 1775:

“She [Mrs. Warren] sits at the table with me, will have a paragraph of her own; says you [Congress] 'should no longer piddle at the threshold. It is time to leap into the theatre, to unlock the bars, and open every gate that impedes the rise and growth of the American republic, and then let the giddy potentate send forth his puerile proclamations to France, to Spain and all the commercial world who may be united in building up an Empire which he can’t prevent.”

Observation - I should consistently refer to the authors by their last name or first names.  It is more common for women writers to be referred to by their first names.  There are just too many Thomas(es) or Warrens in Revolutionary literature.  

JJ

Making that first CONNECTION

I am starting this blog for my students, family and friends who ask me all the time to help them understand history.  I am dedicated to finding the path in history that enlightens us all.  Teaching American history, I encourage my students to connect the motivations and stories they are studying in class to the world around them today.  I ask them to CONNECT History.  #ConnectHistory

I am dedicated to this connection.  

Last week in a used bookstore, (Yes, I encourage you all to stroll through a used bookstore) I encountered a book titled Gems of Modern Wit and Humor published in 1903.  I immediately gobbled it up for a mere $5.  The binding is breaking and the pages are more than fraying.  It's heaven.