S. Danver – Revolts Protests Demonstrations and Rebellions in American History

Автор: S. Danver
Название книги: Revolts Protests Demonstrations and Rebellions in American History
Формат: PDF
Жанр: История Америки, Австралии, Океании
Страницы: 1274
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

This three-volume work traces the history of revolts and rebellions from the colonial era to the 20th century.

• 71 chronologically arranged entries detail the revolts and uprisings that have shaped the history of the United States, with 2–5 subentries that drill down into those histories

• Each entry includes an overview essay, followed by entries on related people, groups, organizations, ideas, and places, along with select primary sources

• Contributions come from a distinguished group of American historians from across the nation and across historical disciplines

• One volume is comprised entirely of primary source documents

• Illustrations and photographs show events discussed

In one of the most misused quotations in American history, Thomas Jefferson
famously said that the “tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with
the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure” (Jefferson 1955). This
phrase has been used to justify many violent actions throughout the nation’s history,
many of which would be actions that might cause Jefferson, as president,
many nights of troubled thought. Its consistent use, however, reflects a simple truth
about people in general and Americans in particular. When a situation is perceived
as unacceptable, people take action. Although some pursue change on an individual
basis, when it comes to large social issues, Americans have tended to form
groups of like-minded people to achieve the desired ends. Americans, throughout
their history, have addressed the circumstances of their lives by taking collective
action.
It is not the intent of the essays collected in the volumes of Revolts, Protests,
Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History to argue whether such
actions were justified. Obviously, in any such situation, there are two sides that
usually see things quite differently. Sometimes, basic morality dictates that one
side is “right” and the other is “wrong.” But determining such things is not our
task. Rather, it is more instructive for historians to look at the situations that
brought about such actions. What were the circumstances that caused people to
decide that collective action was necessary? Who was involved? Why did people
respond the way they did? What were the events that were the turning points in
such actions? By finding the answers to all these questions, we can take some
important steps toward understanding how these revolts, protests, and other collective
actions function within American society. To do so, it might be instructive to
look at the different types of events and movements that qualified for inclusion
in this work.
Among the most basic forms of revolt (not to mention the earliest) are the reactions
that American Indian peoples had when their rights, their land, or their cultures
were being taken from them. The Pueblo Revolt, in 1680, was one of the earliest
large-scale uprisings against the encroaching European presence on the continent.
It had many elements: land loss, cultural repression, religious suppression, and
forced labor. Similarly, the Pima Revolt in 1751, Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763, the
Flight of the Nez Perce´ in 1877, the Sioux resistance that culminated in theWounded
Knee Massacre of 1890, though all different in their expression, shared the common
feature of a group or groups of American Indians taking action, sometimes against
hopeless odds, to defend different aspects of their way of life. Similarly, a revitalized
“Red Power” movement during the 1960s and 1970s saw a revival of resistance in
the Alcatraz Island Occupation of 1969–1970, the Trail of Broken Treaties protest
in 1972, and the Wounded Knee Occupation in 1973.
Of course, the United States was founded as a result of a collective action that
was, at times, called a revolt or a rebellion. Going back as far as Bacon’s Rebellion
in 1676, those who came over to North America showed a propensity for taking
action against the government when they felt that it was not serving their interests.
With the onset of the 1760s and the growing debate over taxation in the American
colonies, the pace of revolt quickened. In 1765, the Stamp Act Protests gave the
colonists a common cause. The Boston Massacre in 1770 galvanized the colonists
through the effective use of propaganda. The Regulator Movement in 1771 gave
those theoretical movements some meaning, with the addition of violent action.
The Pine Tree Riot in 1772 again protested the rising royal authority over the colonies’
economic lives. The move toward revolution became almost inevitable after
the Boston Tea Party in 1773 led to greater repression by the British government,
which led to greater resistance by the colonies. The onset of the American Revolution
was, largely, the culmination of this particular set of revolts and protests over
the prior 12 years.
But even after the American Revolution ended, the colonists-turned-Americans
were not averse to protesting against the government they had just installed if they
felt that their needs were not being met. Only three years after the end of the Revolution,
Shays’ Rebellion demonstrated that the newly elected leaders could not
afford to rest on their laurels at the expense of the common farmers. The Whiskey
Rebellion in 1794, the Dorr Rebellion in 1841, the actions of the Molly Maguires
in the 1870s, the Brooks-Baxter War in 1874, the Black Patch War in 1909, the
Bonus Army protests in 1932, the Battle of Athens in 1946, the Sagebrush Rebellion
in 1979, and the World Trade Organization protests in 1999 all had to do with
the discontent different groups of Americans felt over political and economic conditions,
and that the governing authorities were to blame.
But one of the most common ways that Americans collectively protested
against economic injustice was through organized labor action. As America’s population
grew with the arrival of many immigrants during the late 19th century,
labor activism began to take over as one of the most common forms of revolt.
The Great Railroad Strikes of 1877, the Haymarket Square Riot in 1886, the
Homestead Strike in 1892, the Pullman Strike in 1894, the Ludlow Massacre in
1914, the Boston Police Strike in 1919, the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, the
Toledo Auto-Lite Strike in 1934, and the West Coast Longshoremen’s Strike the
same year all featured organized labor as one of the moving forces in American life, allowing ordinary people to take an active role in advocating for better treatment
in society.
American Indians, of course, were not the only ethnic group to take action to
defend their cultural heritage and to fight for the rights they should have been
rightfully accorded in American society. Slave rebellions were also among the earliest
collective actions against the imposition of racial power. Africans and African
Americans naturally found slave life intolerable, and resisted their situations in
many ways. Some acted as individuals, slowing their work or breaking the
machines used in their labor. Occasionally, armed insurrection was a more attractive,
more immediate alternative. Sometimes, it was all the people had left. Many
examples can be cited: the Stono Rebellion in 1739, the New York Slave Insurrection
in 1741, Gabriel Prosser’s Virginia Uprising in 1799, Charles Deslondes’s
German Coast Uprising in 1811, the abortive effort of white abolitionist George
Boxley to spark an insurrection in 1815, and Denmark Vesey’s uprising in 1822.
All these actions caused Americans, especially southerners, to be extremely vigilant
and watchful over their slaves’ actions. But none of these incidents had the
society-wide impact of Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831. In its aftermath, vigilance
committees roamed the South, looking out for possible insurrections. Largely
because of this, John Brown’s takeover of the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry in
1859 with the goal of sparking a large-scale slave insurrection scared white southerners
to such a degree as to make it one of the factors that contributed to the onset
of the Civil War two years later.
Even after slavery ended in 1865, African Americans and Americans of many
other minority groups had to take action to have their constitutional and other
social rights recognized by mainstream American society. Women began to advocate
for voting rights in the 1830s, with their movement really gaining momentum
by the 1870s. Hispanic Americans included African Americans and members of
other marginalized groups in the Plan de San Diego in 1915. The Zoot Suit Riot
in 1942 showed that even though Mexican Americans were serving in the military
during World War II, they still were not viewed as equal partners in American
society. Of course, the African American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s–
1960s is one of the most notable examples of the creation of a large-scale movement
to achieve some significant changes. It became the model for many other
later movements, such as the Red Power Movement, the Chicano Movement,
and the Feminist Movement. But even though the Civil Rights Movement
achieved important things in terms of expanding the constitutional rights of all
Americans, it did not address all the issues, such as the economic and social
aspects of life that many people saw as important. As such, the Civil Rights Movement
spawned other protests, such as the Watts Riots in 1965, the Detroit Riots in 1967, the Attica Prison Riot in 1971, the Los Angeles Uprising in 1992, and the
“Day without an Immigrant” protests in 2006.
The dark side of protest by ethnic groups in the United States, however, was
always present as a counterpoint. Frequently taking the form of race riots, Americans
protested and sometimes resorted to violence when they felt their lifestyle
was being threatened by minority ethnic groups. The Philadelphia Nativist Riots
in 1844 saw many people protest the increasing presence of German Americans,
most of whom were Catholic. A decade later, Bleeding Kansas, although technically
over states’ rights, had a significant racial component, as Jayhawkers did
not want slavery in their free-soil territory. The list that follows is almost too long
to believe. A selective recounting would include the Portland Rum Riot in 1855,
the Know-Nothing Riots in 1855–1856, the New York Draft Riots in 1863, the
New Orleans Riot of 1866, the Colfax Massacre in 1873, the Seattle Riot in
1886, the Lattimer Massacre in 1897, the New Orleans Race Riot in 1900, the
Atlanta Race Riot in 1906, the Springfield Race Riot in 1908, the Houston Riot
in 1917, the Red Summer of 1919, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.
These are but a few of the reasons that groups of Americans, over the course of
their histories, have chosen to rise up against what they saw as the powers of
repression in their lives. There are many other reasons why revolts have broken
out. Religion (Leisler’s Rebellion in 1689, the Philadelphia Election Riot in
1742, and the Utah War in 1857), independence movements (the Texas Revolt in
1835, the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846), and antiwar activism (the Green Corn
Rebellion in 1917 and the Chicago Riots in 1968) have all been powerful motives
causing Americans to turn to collective action. If this history shows us anything,
it must be obvious that collective rebellion and revolt is a constant theme in
American life. The reasons have changed through the years, but the fact that
Americans take action to feed the “tree of liberty” with regularity has not. A look
at the news in early 2010 shows that a new movement known as the Tea Party,
whose history is still being written, is taking collective action against what they see
as troubling signs of leftist leanings in their government. Although violence has
not yet broken out, there has been enough violent rhetoric—with gun-owning Tea
Partiers congregating on the banks of the Potomac, across from Washington, DC—
to cause concern. Whether or not one agrees with the Tea Partiers’ agenda, it is
obvious that they are more than willing to stage another revolt, rebellion, or even a
revolution, if it means a restoration of their vision of America.
Intended for high school and undergraduate students and for the interested
general public, Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American
History is divided into 71 topic sections, which each section containing from three
to seven essays. An introductory essay describes the causes, course, and consequences
of the particular rebellion, revolt, riot, or uprising, with subsequent essays providing more detailed information on specific persons, organizations, concepts,
battles, or groups related to the event. Each essay concludes with a Further Reading
bibliography, and many sections conclude with relevant primary documents,
which open with brief introductions describing the document and discussing its
importance. “See also” cross-references at the ends of the introductory essays in
each section direct the reader to related sections. Finally, a detailed subject index
provides additional access to the sections and to the essays within them.
—Steven L. Danver