Honest History
In recent days, our country has been bombarded with anti-American statements and demonstrations. While this is to be expected, it is nonetheless aggravating as well and upsetting. However, I fear that many American’s have a wrong picture about America and its history as the “protector of Freedom”. Recently, I traveled to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. It is because of this trip that I began to think of all the shortcomings and/or blatant violations of human rights that the United States has passively or actively participated in since its inception. I would like you to keep in mind that I am an American to the core and support my country. If I were called to go and fight for my country, I would not hesitate. While most of this article is negative, it is important to remember that, though our country has made mistakes, it is still the bastion of freedom for the world to see and to enter. It is very important though to have a balanced and true view of our country’s history.
Our country’s history began with the violation of the American Indians. The American Indian population before the founding of Jamestown colony in 1607 has been estimated to have been between 40 and 100 million. Yet by the time of the Revolutionary war the numbers had dwindled drastically. A little known fact about the Indians is that they were the first slaves that were used in North America. They were here when the extreme labor shortage began with the founding of the south as an agricultural society. They were used to grow cotton and tobacco for a short time but were more trouble than they were worth. They could easily run away and survive in the forest on their own. They also were culturally opposed to doing field labor. The male Indians life consisted of hunting, fighting, and sitting around talking. The women were the ones who did most of the labor in Indian society. When the Europeans tried to get them to do field work, they resisted - sometimes with violence.
After the American Revolution, the Indian’s problems resumed. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson used every possible way they could to rid the east coast of Indians. Jefferson instituted the land allotment strategy with the Indians in the Northwest Territory. The Northwest Territory had been closed to settlement by the Treaty of Paris, 1783. Jefferson was forced to institute the Northwest Ordinance to open this land for settlement to whites. The Indians were “given” lands to the west so they would stay out of the way of whites and not cause problems. In the South, the situation did not go downhill fast, but was rather started most of the way down that hill. Jackson had grown up fighting Indians and was intensely violent. He was known for his duels and brawls. He forcibly evicted the Cherokee and Choctaw tribes from the south to points west of the Mississippi. The “Trail of Tears” is the infamous path that took the Cherokee to their new home in modern-day Oklahoma. Almost one quarter of the Indians who left the south never made it to their destination.
The next example in our history of this saga is the institution of slavery. Slavery had existed in our country since its birth and, while it was a controversial issue, it was not dealt with. Many people thought that slavery was wrong but were not willing to do anything about it. Many of those people were white. The free blacks in the North were the major driving force for the abolition of slavery. They wanted it to be abolished immediately instead of the preferred gradual method. This issue was a big deal to the early years of our country. It lead to on of the bloodiest war that our country has fought in which all of the casualties were Americans. The blacks were enslaved, not because they were lower class, but because they were thought to be less the human. They had been compared to Caliban in William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. Because of the misconception that was established by the British our country was exposed and infected by the greatest prejudice that the world has ever seen.