The main idea of American History will be debated as long as people can remember the United States. For this web log, and the cover letter to the resume of your portfolio, you will write about the metaphoric character of American History.
1. Do any of these authors appear to disagree with each other? Explain.
2. Which statement about US history comes closest to your own beliefs? Explain by using three significant events from American History to support your belief.
3. In your own words, what’s a central theme in American History?
The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.
– Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
– Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH (April 14, 1889 – October 22, 1975) was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global perspective.
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows... If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
– Frederick Douglass (February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer.
You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.
– Will Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was a Cherokee-American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer and actor.
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
– Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist.
I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.
– John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American politician and the second President of the United States (1797–1801), after being the first Vice President (1789–1797) for two terms
I am more and more convinced that Man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or a few is ever grasping, and like the grave cries give, give. The great fish swallow up the small, and he who is most strenuous for the Rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of Government. You tell me of degrees of perfection to which Humane Nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances.
– Abigail Adams (née Smith) (November 11, 1744 – October 28, 1818) was the wife of John Adams, the second President of the United States, and mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
– George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist.
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
– Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was the third President of the United States (1801–1809), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States.
We meet no Stranger, but Ourself
– Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830– May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life
In Memoriam: John Hope Franklin, January 2, 1915 – March 25, 2009. May he rest in peace.
