Battle of Power

The reasons for which the revolutionary war was fought were faulty. How can you demand your own freedom from those who own you, yet still have slaves that are flogged for misbehaving and woman who you buy and trade as property? I know that we, as a country, wanted freedom from the high taxes that Brittan brought upon us after the fight with the French. However, how can we fight for freedom only to take land from the Indians who live there? I don’t see how you could say this war was fought for freedom and independence, rather I believe it was fought for power.

At the time that the revolutionary war was fought, the colonies were also in a war with the Indians. The colonists wanted to move west and claim the land for themselves, which is rarely read in the history books, and I will always wonder why. Many of the Indians fought alongside the British because Britain had promised to keep the colonists from moving further onto Indian land. Britain restricted the colonists from moving past the Appalachian Mountains. However, every once and a while a colonist would try to move west on his own and he would be attacked and stopped by the Indians who lived there. This inability to expand and grow caused much frustration among the colonists because as the economy grew, so did they as well as the amount of land they needed.

The slave trade started in Africa and eventually reached the colonies for they needed free labor to stay alive and slaves were the way to go. The slave trade in the colonies was still going strong during the revolutionary war because the colonists wanted their freedom; they did not however, want to give it to the slaves that kept the economy thriving.  Darwin’s Theory, the belief that the stronger race will survive and the weaker will die out, provided much fuel to put the slave trade in motion. It caused people to begin to believe that blacks were less human and thus inferior to the whites. There were sketches showing a black man’s skull compared to a white man’s skull. These sketches showed where the black men had a more prominent mouth portraying them as if they were monkeys, and the white men with the average human skull. This was meant to show the belief I previously mentioned, in which black men were seen as almost inhuman, thus making them good candidates for slaves. Thomas Jefferson never wanted to give up his slaves because he was too far in debt, and that he would free them if he ever got out of debt. 1   He was best known as the one who rewrote the constitution, he took most of the credit for it. When he wrote “all men equal”, he must not of meant all men, but rather “white” men.

1  Thomas Jefferson died before he got out of debt: It wasn’t till 1870 that black men were able to vote and were deemed mostly equal in society.

It was an even later date when woman were able to vote and were deemed equal in America. 1920 was when they were allowed to vote. Going back to the time of the revolution; women were considered the property of men, whether it was their father, their brother, or their husband that had control over them. During the time that slaves were being shipped in to the colonies, so were women. There was a need for more women in the colonies because the colonies consisted mostly of men. In the beginning the women would agree to wed the colonists as long as they had a boat ride over from Britain, not much later they were brought over as indentured servants and were sometimes treated worse than slaves. A Woman’s role throughout history was to stay at home with the children and do chores, such as washing dishes and tending the house. America was a country that desperately wanted freedom, but for only half of its population.

The revolution was fought to be free and I accept that, but we were only being the greater evil by doing so. We did not want to be oppressed, nor did we want to have no voice or power yet we   continued to take away the voice of women, black men, and anyone else that we deemed less than our equals. The founding fathers did not want to stop oppression, they only wanted to stop being the oppressed. That is why I believe the reason behind why the revolutionary war was fought is faulty.

Columbus Is a Villian

Synthesis of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was needed in American history to show how the United States came to be, and in order to have become that civilization, a weaker (or maybe less developed) had to suffer the consequences. If Columbus had not sailed to the islands off of America, someone else would have, whether they would have been kind to the natives, no one will ever know. The idea of the world being round was not only his idea, there were others who thought the same thing and one of them would of acted on that idea eventually. Columbus is a Hero in the eyes of those he helped succeed, but in any other he was a murderous greedy man after gold.

People used to think that a ways away from shore the ocean ended in darkness and there were monster that would swallow your ship and you would never be seen again, but that didn’t stop Columbus.  He was so sure that the world was round he convinced Queen Isabella to let him sail and find out. He said that he would bring back goods from India, and that it was on the other side of the Ocean. His first voyage he found Islands with native who had tiny bits of gold hanging from their ears. He thought that these people would make good slaves and that they had to have gold, so he sailed back to Spain to tell the queen and promise her gold and slaves. It was his job to do so. This is why he massacred the people and took what little gold they had, and used them as slaves. If he didn’t he would of came back empty handed, which wouldn’t be good for him, especially in the eyes of the people who funded his four voyages. In this sense Columbus was only doing his job.

What came to follow after Columbus is not his fault. He merely did his job for the queen, and sparked interest in other to travel the sea. Columbus is not responsible for the other explorer’s behaviors. If there is anything to blame him for, it would be setting the standards on how to treat the natives. In that sense he is guilty of more deaths than just the ones upon the island which he sailed. But he was not in control of those Conquistadors. To blame him for their deaths is ignorance; he can only be blamed for what he did upon those islands. Manifest Destiny was becoming the norm for men. They saw it as it was their right to explore and claim the land as their own or for their king and queen. If the natives never claimed the land as theirs, (They never believed the earth should be owned) then the explorers and the settles would take it for their own. That was not Columbus’s fault.

Conquest was a necessary part of human progress but only for this reason, Freedom. The colonies who eventually became the United States began to build upon the idea of no king and queen to rule them and further more the right to choose who would rule them. People began to claim rights for themselves. They began to have morals on what was right and wrong within society, not just what your ruler told you to do. In order for people to form such a group many loses occurred. In order to give a little, you have to lose a little. In order win, someone has to lose. Otherwise our pride in which we are would diminish; our hope that others give us would cease to exist.

My question is this: If the conquests never happened and America was still in habited by those who were first there would society be better or worse, and where would I be today? When I think about this question I think about my roots on my mother’s side. Would I even be here? Would I be me? Would I be Irish? I can’t answer these, and never will for that fact, but I am proud to be here and I am grateful for whom I am, and to the people who died getting me to where I am now. As for society we would probably have Kings and Queens ruling us. We would probably be waging war upon our neighboring countries, just like in renaissance times but with more sophisticated weapons. Woman would probably still have no rights and slavery would be just another stock market. But I will never know and nor will you. But relies we are here for a reason, whether we know what it is or not.