Introduction to American
Studies
Identity and the Declaration of
Independence
• National identity
– What is it based on?
• Which of these hold for the United States?
Language?
• What is the national
language of the United
States?
• Pennsylvania Dutch
(Amish/Mennonites)
– 1736, 225,00
• Cajun French (Louisiana)
– 1760s, 400,000
• Spanish
– 1598, N. New Mexico
• Chinese
– 1849, originally California
Information on driver’s license exams in California
(www.dmv.ca.gov)
• What other languages is the written or audio test available in?
• Besides English, the basic Class C written driver license exam is also
available in the following languages:
• Amharic Arabic Armenian Cambodian
• Chinese Croatian French German
• Greek Hebrew Hindi Hmong
• Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese
• Korean Laotian Persian/Farsi Polish
• Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian
• Samoan Spanish Tagalog/Filipino Thai
• Tongan Turkish Vietnamese
• Besides English, the basic Class C audio driver license exam is also
available in the following languages:
• Armenian Chinese/Mandarin Hindi Hmong
• Japanese Korean Portuguese Punjabi
• Russian Spanish Vietnamese
Food?
• Regional diversity
– South: cornbread, grits,
biscuits and gravy,
barbeque
– Midwest: German, Polish
(kielbasa), Greek
– Northeast: Jewish (bagels),
Italian
– Southwest: Mexican
(tamales, tacos, burritos,
enchiladas), Asian food
Thanksgiving
• Tradition goes back to
the seventeenth
century
– “Pilgrims”
• Fourth Thursday in
November
• Dated fixed by
Abraham Lincoln
during Civil War
Thanksgiving Dinner organized by
Asian Students
American National identity
• So if these other things don’t seem to
work, what is American identity based on?
• Flag
– “Patriotism”
• “Charters of Freedom”
– Declaration of Independence
– Constitution
– Bill of Rights
No presidential portrait(s) in US
classrooms
The Pledge of Allegiance
I Pledge Allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the
Republic for which it stands, one Nation
under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.
• Originally written by Francis Bellamy in
1892
– Words “under God” added in 1954
Outside a Confucian temple in
Chicago
New York:
St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Sak’s
Fifth Avenue department store
Flag controversy in Lawrence,
Kansas
• The 600-square-foot (55 sq.
m) brightly illuminated U.S.
flag flying outside Heritage
Baptist Church, 1604 E. 1100
Road, is causing a stir among
church neighbors, some of
whom say the lights are a
nuisance. The church has no
intention of giving up the
display. “As far as I’m
concerned, the people
complaining are un-American,”
said Rev. Scott Hanks, right,
pastor at the church.
The Flag pin “controversy”
• Presidential hopeful
Barack Obama tours
the Chrysler
Stamping Plant in
Sterling Height,
Michigan, on
Wednesday, May 14.
Declaration of Independence
• Copy of the original kept at the National
Archives
– Visited by more 1 million annually
– Building built in 1952 specifically to house
these documents
• Together with the Constitution and Bill of
Rights they form the “Charters of
Freedom”
President and Mrs. Bush at the
reopening of the National Archives
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united
States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it
becomes necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to assume among the
powers of the earth, the separate and equal
station to which the Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to
the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them
to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these
rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed, –That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light
and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shewn, that mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than
to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which
they are accustomed. But when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the
same Object evinces a design to reduce them
under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their
duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide
new Guards for their future security.–
Such has been the patient sufferance of
these Colonies; and such is now the
necessity which constrains them to alter
their former Systems of Government. The
history of the present King of Great Britain
is a history of repeated injuries and
usurpations, all having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute Tyranny over
these States. To prove this, let Facts be
submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the
public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing
importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be
obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
…
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and
waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and
destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat
the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances
of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally
unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear
Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and
Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to
bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose
known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and
conditions.
…
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the
most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by
repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which
may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
• In the original draft this last complaint is
followed by one further charge leveled
against George III.
• Here it can be seen in the original draft in
Jefferson’s own hand:
American handwriting (cursive)
he has waged cruel war against human nature
itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and
liberty in the persons of a distant people who
never offended him, captivating and carrying
them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to
incure miserable death in their transportation
hither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of
infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian
king of Great Britain. [determined to keep open
a market where MEN should be bought and
sold,]
he has prostituted his negative for suppressing
every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain
this execrable commerce [determining to keep
open a market where MEN should be bought
and sold]: and that this assemblage of horrors
might want no fact of distinguished die, he is
now exciting those very people to rise in arms
among us, and to purchase that liberty of which
he had deprived them, by murdering the people
upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying
off former crimes committed against the liberties
of one people, with crimes which he urges them
to commit against the lives of another.
• Thomas Jefferson, quintessential
Enlightenment figure
– Author of Declaration of Independence
– University of Virginia (1825)
– Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom
– Monticello
– Notes on the State of Virginia
University of Virginia
• Jefferson even
designed some of the
buildings, including
this Rotunda
Monticello
• Jefferson not only
designed all the
buildings but ran the
estate as a model
farm
• Estate covered more
than 5000 acres
(2000 hectares)
• Thomas Jefferson, Slave owner
– Owned more than 600 individuals over the
course of his life
– Inherited first at the age of 14
– Sold more than 110 slaves during his life and
gave a further 85 as gifts
• Jefferson’s
“Memorandum Book”
for 1773:
• January 29.:
sold Sandy to Colo
[Colonel] Chas [Charles]
Lewis for £100 paiable
[sic] in June. From which
deduct £9.4.8. my
present debt with him;
leaves £90.15.4. to be
sec’d [secured]
Isaac Jefferson (1775-1850) in 1845
• Thomas Jefferson, father of slaves
– Sally Hemmings
• As early as 1802 rumors existed that Jefferson had
fathered children by one or more of his slaves
– In 1802, the journalist James Thomson Callender wrote in the
newspaper The Richmond Recorder, “The PRESIDENT AGAIN.
It is well known that the man, whom it delighteth the people to
honor, keeps, and for many years past has kept, as his
concubine, one of his own slaves. Her name is SALLY. The
name of her eldest son is TOM. His features are said to bear a
striking although sable resemblance to those of the president
himself. The boy is ten or twelve years of age…We hear that our
young MULLATO PRESIDENT begins to give himself a great
number of airs of importance in Charlottesville, and the
neighbourhood…By this wench, Sally, our president has had
several children. There is not an individual in the neighborhood
of Charlottesville who does not believe the story, and not a few
who know it…The AFRICAN VENUS is said to officiate, as
housekeeper at Monticello.”
• 1873 memoirs of Sally’s son Madison claimed that
Jefferson was the father of at least three of her children
• Sally Hemmings’ children were light-skinned, and three
of them (daughter Harriet and sons Beverly and Eaton)
lived as members of white society as adults.
• According to contemporary accounts, some of Sally
Hemmings’ children strongly resembled Thomas
Jefferson.
• Thomas Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemmings’ children:
Beverly and Harriet were allowed to leave Monticello in
1822; Madison and Eston were released in Jefferson’s
1826 will. Jefferson gave freedom to no other nuclear
slave family.
• DNA analysis has shown that Thomas Jefferson and one
of Sally’s children (Eaton) share their Y-chromosome
– A male Jefferson other than Thomas (e.g. his brother Randolph)
could also have been the father
The descendents of Thomas
Jefferson and Sally Hemmings
Jefferson’s own recognition of the
problem
• Jefferson discussing the Missouri question
and slavery to John Holmes April 22,
1820:
• “But as it is, we have the wolf by the ear,
and we can neither hold him, nor safely let
him go. Justice is in one scale, and selfpreservation
in the other.”