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9 - People That Were Left Behind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2021

Alin Fumurescu
Affiliation:
University of Houston
Anna Marisa Schön
Affiliation:
University of Houston
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Summary

Chapter 9 gives attention to some of the voices and groups that were often excluded during the founding period. From the destitute dreams of a complete make-over of property laws, to individuals mistrusting all governments, to Native Americans, to women, and—last but not least—African Americans; what was their place and role in the body politic? The chapter includes selections from Thomas Skidmore’s The Rights of Men; from the American Transcendentalists; from speeches by Native Americans, including Tecumseh and Pushmataha; and from the early nineteenth-century women’s rights movement as represented by Abigail Adams, Mary Wollstonecraft, who as widely read among American women, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The arguments of these authors reveal inherent tensions between the liberal and the republican view of society, i.e., between the idea of fundamental equality of all individuals, regardless of their race, gender, or beliefs, and the classical republican recognition of diversity among members of society. The chapter thus raises questions about the relative merit of abstract and descriptive representation.

Type
Chapter
Information
Foundations of American Political Thought
Readings and Commentary
, pp. 317 - 358
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Suggested Readings

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Man the Reformer” [1841] in Sacks, K. (ed.), Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp.101–14.Google Scholar
Thoreau, Henry David, Walden, or Life in the Woods (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitman, Walt, Leaves of Grass (Brooklyn, 1855).Google Scholar
Blaisdell, Bob (ed.), Great Speeches of Native Americans (Mineola: Dover, 2000).Google Scholar
Sargent Murray, Judith, “On the Equality of Sexes” [1770], Massachusetts Magazine, 2:2–3 (1790), pp. 132–5, 223–6.Google Scholar
Cady Stanton, Elizabeth, Anthony, Susan B., and Joslyn Gage, Matilda, History of Woman’s Suffrage, Vol. I: 1848–1861, and Vol. II: 1861–1876 (Rochester, 1881/1882).Google Scholar
Gordon, Ann. D. (ed.), The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Vol. I: In the School of Anti-Slavery, 1840–1866 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

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