Exam3

American History Jacksonian Democrats viewed themselves as the guardians of the United s Constitution, political democracy, individual liberty, and equality of opportunity. In light of your knowledge of the 1820s and 1830s, to what extent do you agree with the Jacksonians’ view of themselves?
The United States has had a long protracted history of excessive capitalist conspiracies in government and among private businesses from the very founding fathers. Self interest seems to always override official state programs and time after time demand correction from politicians. In the 1820s and the 1830s, the scenario was not about excessive trusts running monopolies like the Rockefellers and the other robber barons, or scandals of hedge funds and financial markets like recently witnessed. The 1820s and 1830s were times of excessive banking operations that were thought to stifle the welfare of the ordinary citizen who did not have meaningful financial enlightenment and economic power. Jacksonians therefore viewed themselves as breaking the mighty alliance created by the Federal Bank and the Second Bank of the United States with their massive powers over the economy. The struggle was provoked by the recognition among elites that foreign money from European Jewish investors would give such foreigners excessive power over the very government and the Jacksonians successfully affected a redress.
The Jacksonians therefore believed in expanded suffrage, manifest destiny by enriching the whites, patronage of elected officials appointing their supporters to positions and strict constitutionalism to avoid the meddle of the private institutions encroachment of state sovereignty. They believed thus in laissez-faire economics so that individuals would channel their destinies. Jacksonians reviled the centralization of political and economic power in the state. The central government was seen as the enemy of individual liberties and they effectively initiated reforms in the Democratic Party to make useful changes.
2. Use TWO of the following categories to analyze the ways in which African Americans created a distinctive culture in slavery: Family, Music, Oral traditions, Religions. African Americans created distinctive slave cultures due to the conditioning they received from their masters. The interactions between masters and slaves was characterised by indoctrination and Christianization. Whereas the slave always viewed his master as a monarch, their languishing in helplessness would only intensify their quest for spiritual redemption in humility and resignation rather than confrontations. The mothers would be separated from their children at a tender age and therefore the slave child grew without recognizing family systems or lineages. Human conditions often force people to seek a mode of stability and balance when faced with grave odds. The inevitability of slavery and the wretched methods of punishment that were deployed on the African Americans made them particularly humble and reduced creatures. As a result of intense indoctrination the resigned, humbled and annihilated slave was a perfect chattel of labour.
In the narratives of Moses Roper, the excoriating suffering he underwent serve as testimonies told in melancholic tone and resignation about the master and there is nothing to be done ever to redress such suffering other than forgiveness. Roper escapes and flees the country into England because the thought of staying again on the very land where he experienced all that annihilation was impossible for him. Such reduced creatures as the slaves were made them to embrace religion and spiritual redemption as the only solace from the daily burdens. The distinctive culture of slavery therefore manifested silent ruminations, occasional dissenting voices that disappeared into oblivion and despair and perfect struggle to attain spiritual revival and purification from the torment of hard labour, ignorance and poor nutrition. The families were defragmented and what kept a few bands together substantially were mere comradeship forged on the fields of hard labour with the bonds of tears and sweat.