Frq Articles of Confederation Essay Example for Free

Frq Articles of Confederation Essay The Articles of Confederation from 1781 to 1789 did not provide the United States with an effective form of government because of its problems in terms of domestic policy, foreign policy, and economics. Domestic policy, or the set of decisions that a government makes relating to things that directly affect the people in its own country, was not adequate enough to solve strife between states. The Articles stated that state legislatures chose representatives for the house, rather than the people themselves. This began to lean toward the British practices of virtual representation, which the U. S. fought a war to be rid of. Another problem was that each state only received one vote, which was unfair to the larger states with a greater population. With a super majority required to pass laws, almost no laws were passed because no one was able to agree. The lack of federal courts also made it difficult to solve disputes, more specifically those between states, making them all grow more independently rather than as a unified nation. Foreign policy was a mess under the Articles of Confederation. The states were unwilling to give up their land and power as they were afraid that is the federal government gained any more power then they would return to a monarchical type system. With no president, there was no figure to enforce laws or make negotiate with other countries, and the governors were only concerned with the welfare of their own state, preventing the states from becoming more unified. Because the federal government lacked any power, it was impossible to solve the problem with the Mississippi river and fishing rights, and there was no one to stop Shays Rebellion. This lack of power caused great fear that the British could easily come and take us over once again. Massive debts had piled up from the Revolution and from starting a new country, so states were looking for a way to pay them off. They began printing their own currency, only to cause massive inflation and difficulties trading both with other nations, and even from state to state. This inability to trade caused further problems, and they went into a recession. This all resulted from states holding most of the power, rather than their being a balance between state and federal. As the states did not want to lose their power, they would not give up any land to the federal government even if it were to pay off some of its debts. Congress did not have the ability to tax, causing further economic strain and making it difficult to pay off their many debts.

george washington carver :: essays research papers

Links Related to this Entry Commemorating Carver Related Categories 1860-1920 1920-1960 Educators Entries A-F Entries A-L History People Listed By Name Political Activists Technology Archive Photos George Washington Carver at Tuskegee Institute In 1896 George Washington Carver, a recent graduate of Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts (now Iowa State University), accepted an invitation from Booker T. Washington to head the agricultural department at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for Negroes (now Tuskegee University). During a tenure that lasted nearly 50 years, Carver elevated the scientific study of farming, improved the health and agricultural output of southern farmers, and developed hundreds of uses for their crops. As word of Carver's work at Tuskegee spread across the world, he received many invitations to work or teach at better-equipped, higher-paying institutions but decided to remain at Tuskegee, where he could be of greatest service to his fellow African Americans in the South. Carver epitomized Booker T. Washington's philosophy of black solidarity and self-reliance. Born a slave, Carver worked hard among his own people, lived modestly, and avoided confronting racial issues. For these reasons Carver, like Booker T. Washington, became an icon for white Americans. George Washington Carver's interest in plants began at an early age. Growing up in postemancipation Missouri under the care of his parents' former owners, Carver collected from the surrounding forests and fields a variety of wild plants and flowers, which he planted in a garden. At the age of ten, he left home of his own volition to attend a colored school in the nearby community of Neosho, where he did chores for a black family in exchange for food and a place to sleep. He maintained his interest in plants while putting himself through high school in Minneapolis, Kansas, and during his first and only year at Simpson College in Iowa. During this period, he made many sketches of plants and flowers. He made the study of plants his focus in 1891, the year he enrolled at Iowa State College. After graduating in 1894 with a B.S. in botany and agriculture, he spent two additional years at Iowa State to complete a master's degree in the same fields. During this time, he taught botany to unde rgraduate students and conducted extensive experiments on plants while managing the university's greenhouse. These experiences served him well during his first few years at Tuskegee. When George Washington Carver arrived in Tuskegee in 1896, he faced a host of challenges.

Harlem Analysis Essay

Langston Hughes short poem, â€Å"Harlem,† seeks to understand what happens to a dream when it is put on hold. Hughes uses vivid imagery and similes to make an effort to describe what the consequences are to a dream that is lost. He attempts to bring to the attention the life of a Negro and how so many dreams are put off to the side because of prejudice against African Americans. The tone, imagery, and diction of Langston Hughes poem, â€Å"Harlem,† will be discussed in this paper. â€Å"Harlem† was written in 1951, which was around the time where prejudice against African Americans was still present (Cummings). Earlier, the civil war â€Å"had liberated them from slavery, and federal laws had granted them the right to vote, the right to own property, and so on† (Cummings). Although these civil rights were given to African Americans, prejudice continued to be a problem in society. They were put into poorly run segregated schools, given unskilled jobs, and were not allowed to use the same â€Å"public facilities† as white people (Cummings). This background information helps define the tone of the poem. The feeling of anger and frustration are conveyed through Hughes poem. Hughes was frustrated with the fact that their skin color was holding them back from pursuing their dreams. He asks a series of rhetorical questions to build up to the last line â€Å"Or does it explode? † (Hughes 691). This line sets the overall tone of the poem by describing the build up of the anger the blacks had toward the white oppression. Hughes final message of the poem is that this resentment they have held inside for so long will soon explode causing both political and social damage. The use of imagery is prevalent throughout this poem. Hughes begins the poem by asking, â€Å"What happens to a dream deferred? † (690). From there he uses vivid imagery in the form of similes to paint a picture of someone’s dream that is wasting away. The images he uses touch on all five senses: sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing. In the first two lines he uses the sense of taste by comparing a deferred dream to a raisin drying up in the sun. The original dream is a fresh, sweet grape but when it is put off to the side it dries up and turns into a black raisin. In lines four and five Hughes uses the sense of touch by comparing a dream to a sore by stating â€Å"Or fester like a sore/ and then run? † (609). A sore on our body is apart of us, just like an unfulfilled dream. An untreated sore will eventually become infected, just like a deferred dream will become more intense over time. The next line uses the sense of smell to describe a dream by comparing it to a â€Å"stink of rotten meat† (Hughes 690). Hughes is trying to convey that a dream that is put off will become less appealing. Lines seven and eight compare a dream to the sense of taste by stating, â€Å"Or crust and sugar over/ like a syrupy sweet? † (Hughes 690). This simile is describing that over time this dream will be â€Å"crusted† over and forgotten about. This last question then transitions into the only statement in the poem, â€Å"Maybe it just sags/ like a heavy load. † (Hughes 691). This statement is describing the heavy burden that is put on the dreamer. It creates an image of defeat. The final question uses the sense of hearing by saying â€Å"Or does it explode? (Hughes 690). This line describes that if this dream continues to be put off, it will eventually explode and chaos will spread. These images help establish the situation and setting of the poem. The oppression of African American’s dreams will ultimately cause an â€Å"explosion† of resentment and hate toward the white race. The diction of the poem seems to be very straightforward. Hughes chose his words very carefully to have a meaning that must be interpreted by the reader. In line four, Hughes chose the word â€Å"fester† to represent the anger and resentment that had been building up inside African Americans from being treated unequally. The word â€Å"explode† is used to represent the violence and chaos that will be the result of the festering anger that’s building up. The word â€Å"rotten† also has significance towards it. If you put something aside and leave it there for a long period of time, especially meat, it will become rotten. Hughes is trying to convey that putting dreams to the side will cause them to become â€Å"rotten† and forgotten about. Hughes uses the word â€Å"crust† to describe the dream being set aside for too long causing it to â€Å"crust and sugar over† making it no longer usable (690). Just like syrup that is set out for too long causing it to harden and become no longer usable. Hughes uses the term â€Å"heavy load† to describe the burden society put on African Americans by holding them back from pursuing their dreams. They must live with the â€Å"what if† weighing them down like a heavy load. Hughes use of diction is chosen very carefully to depict the anger of African Americans for having to hold back their dreams and goals because of their race. Langston Hughes uses tone, imagery, and diction to convey the deferred dreams and white oppression of African Americans. Racial prejudice caused many African Americans to lose sight of their dreams. Although they were granted their civil rights at this time period, racial discrimination was still prevalent in society and prevented them from pursuing their dreams. Hughes tries to bring to the attention the consequences of the built up resentment and thrown away dreams of African Americans to the reader in his short poem, â€Å"Harlem. †

The Best Quotes From 19th Century Feminist Lucy Stone

Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was a 19th-century feminist and abolitionist who is known for keeping her own name after marriage. She married into the Blackwell family; her husbands sisters included pioneer physicians  Elizabeth Blackwell  and Emily Blackwell. Another Blackwell brother was married to Lucy Stones close confidant, pioneer woman minister  Antoinette Brown Blackwell. On Equal Rights The idea of equal rights was in the air. I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned. (From her speech, The Progress of Fifty Years) We, the people of the United States. Which We, the people? The women were not included. We want rights. The flour-merchant, the house-builder, and the postman charge us no less on account of our sex; but when we endeavor to earn money to pay all these, then, indeed, we find the difference. I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex. I was a woman before I was an abolitionist. I must speak for the women. We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power... On the Right to Education Whatever the reason, the idea was born that women could and should be educated. It lifted a mountain load from woman. It shattered the idea, everywhere pervasive as the atmosphere, that women were incapable of education, and would be less womanly, less desirable in every way, if they had it. However much it may have been resented, women accepted the idea of their intellectual inequality. I asked my brother: Can girls learn Greek? The right to education and to free speech having been gained for woman, in the long run every other good thing was sure to be obtained. Henceforth the leaves of the tree of knowledge were for women, and for the healing of the nations. On the Right to Vote You may talk about Free Love, if you please, but we are to have the right to vote. Today we are fined, imprisoned, and hanged, without a jury trial by our peers. You shall not cheat us by getting us off to talk about something else. When we get the suffrage, then you may taunt us with anything you please, and we will then talk about it as long as you please. On Occupations and a Womans Sphere If a woman earned a dollar by scrubbing, her husband had a right to take the dollar and go and get drunk with it and beat her afterwards. It was his dollar. Women are in bondage; their clothes are a great hindrance to their engaging in any business which will make them pecuniarily independent, and since the soul of womanhood never can be queenly and noble so long as it must beg bread for its body, is it not better, even at the expense of a vast deal of annoyance, that they whose lives deserve respect and are greater than their garments should give an example by which woman may more easily work out her own emancipation? Too much has already been said and written about womens sphere. Leave women, then, to find their sphere. Half a century ago women were at an infinite disadvantage in regard to their occupations. The idea that their sphere was at home, and only at home, was like a band of steel on society. But the spinning-wheel and the loom, which had given employment to women, had been superseded by machinery, and something else had to take their places. The taking care of the house and children, and the family sewing, and teaching the little summer school at a dollar per week, could not supply the needs nor fill the aspirations of women. But every departure from these conceded things was met with the cry, You want to get out of your sphere, or, To take women out of their sphere; and that was to fly in the face of Providence, to unsex yourself in short, to be monstrous women, women who, while they orated in public, wanted men to rock the cradle and wash the dishes. We pleaded that whatever was fit to be done at all might with propriety be done by anybody who did it well; that the tools belonged to thos e who could use them; that the possession of a power presupposed a right to its use. I know, Mother, you feel badly and that you would prefer to have me take some other course, if I could in conscience. Yet, Mother, I know you too well to suppose that you would wish me to turn away from what I think is my duty. I surely would not be a public speaker if I sought a life of ease, for it will be a most laborious one; nor would I do it for the sake of honor, for I know that I shall be disesteemed, even hated, by some who are now my friends, or who profess to be. Neither would I do it if I sought wealth, because I could secure it with far more ease and worldly honor by being a teacher. If I would be true to myself, true to my Heavenly Father, I must pursue that course of conduct which, to me, appears best calculated to promote the highest good of the world. The first woman minister, Antoinette Brown, had to meet ridicule and opposition that can hardly be conceived to-day. Now there are women ministers, east and west, all over the country. ... for these years I can only be a mother—no trivial thing, either. But I do believe that a womans truest place is in a home, with a husband and with children, and with large freedom, pecuniary freedom, personal freedom, and the right to vote.  (Lucy Stone to her adult daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell) I know not what you believe of God, but I believe He gave yearnings and longings to be filled, and that He did not mean all our time should be devoted to feeding and clothing the body. On Slavery If, while I hear the shriek of the slave mother robbed of her little ones, I do not open my mouth for the dumb, am I not guilty? Or should I go from house to house to do it, when I could tell so many more in less time, if they should be gathered in one place? You would not object or think it wrong, for a man to plead the cause of the suffering and the outcast; and surely the moral character of the act is not changed because it is done by a woman. The anti-slavery cause had come to break stronger fetters than those that held the slave. The idea of equal rights was in the air. The wail of the slave, his clanking fetters, his utter need, appealed to everybody. Women heard. Angelina and Sara Grimki and Abby Kelly went out to speak for the slaves. Such a thing had never been heard of. An earthquake shock could hardly have startled the community more. Some of the abolitionists forgot the slave in their efforts to silence the women. The Anti-Slavery Society rent itself in twain over the subject. The Church was moved to its very foundation in opposition. On Identity and Courage A wife should no more take her husbands name than he should hers. My name is my identity and must not be lost. I believe that the influence of woman will save the country before every other power. Now all we need is to continue to speak the truth fearlessly, and we shall add to our number those who will turn the scale to the side of equal and full justice in all things. In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything disappointment is the lot of women. It shall be the business of my life to deepen that disappointment in every womans heart until she bows down to it no longer. Make the world better. Source Quote collection  assembled by  Jone Johnson Lewis.