Thirst for Freedom essays

Thirst for Freedom essays Thirst for freedom HARRIET TUBMAN In 1820, Benjamin Ross and Harriet Greene both slaves in Buck Town Maryland gave birth to Araminta Greene also born a slave. Araminta lived some 90 years of hardship and peerless journeys to free her people from slavery. Cruelty and unbearable living conditions were a norm for these times. First, we'll need some background on the institution of slavery, which began in the early 15th and 16th century recorded in the ancient history of Babylon and Rome. Portuguese explores living east of Africa provided slave labor for Whites, West Indies and Spanish Plantation owners; in 1660 Virginia Law decreed slaves would serve their masters for life. With the development of plantation land and its five staples of produce Rice, Cotton, Sugar, Tobacco and Coffee required strenuous work to harvest. At the age of six Araminta was taken from her parents to live with James Cook, whose wife was a weaver, to learn the skills of weaving. James Cook would order her to guard his muskrat traps, which compelled her to wade through the water. Once she was sent when she was ill with the measles, and caught a cold from wading in the water and she grew very sick. Her mother convinced her master to take her away from the Cooks until she could recuperate. After she entered her teens she was hired out as field hand. In the fall of that same year slaves were required to work evenings, cleaning up wheat, husking corn, etc. On one afternoon one of the slaves of a farmer named Barrett, left work and went to the village store without permission. The overseer and Araminta followed him. When the slave was found, the overseer swore he would whip the slave, and called on Araminta and others to help tie him. She refused and as the man ran away the overseer picked up a two-pound ...

Text of Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg Address

Text of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address In November 1863, President Abraham Lincoln was invited to deliver remarks at the dedication of a cemetery on the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, which had raged in the Pennsylvania countryside for three days during the previous July. Lincoln used the opportunity to write a brief yet thoughtful speech. With the Civil War in its third year the nation was enduring a staggering cost in human life, and Lincoln felt compelled to offer a moral justification for the war. He deftly connected the founding of the nation with the war to keep it united, called for a new birth of freedom, and ended by expressing his ideal vision for the American government. The Gettysburg Address was delivered by Lincoln on November 19, 1863. Text of Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg Address: Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.