The Underground Railroad Essay Example for Free

The Underground Railroad Essay The Underground Railroad was an important element in the fight for and promotion of freedom for blacks enslaved within the United States during the 19th century. However, in order to understand its importance to the development of U. S. society it is necessary to understand its historical and contextual basis. Leading off from the Mexican-American war which ended in 1848 there was increasing tension between Americans living in the northern section of the United States and those living in the south particularly over the issue of slavery (Epps, 2004). Those in the North had long demonstrated their intolerance for the continuance of slave practices in the Union and those in the South had long expressed sentiments that the practice of slavery would continue. This variance in viewpoint soon led to the North-South divide which also took on a strongly political aspect. Blacks in the South, jealous of their counterparts in the North and craving freedom from a lifetime of slavery, had long been exploiting this variance in viewpoint with regard to slave since the 1780s by finding opportunities to escape their plantations in the South and find refuge in the North or in Canada. This practice kept increasing as the divide between the North and South widened. Run-away slaves were often quite welcomed in the North and some sympathizers, beginning with the Quakers, assisted them in their escape. The practice of helping slaves cross over into the North and Canada was figuratively referred to as the Underground Railroad or the Liberty line. The literal Underground Railroad was a network of safe havens (Hicks, Montequin Hicks, 2000, p. 27) in the form of safe houses, churches and shelters (Anonymous, 2003, p. 10) to which safes running away could turn to facilitating their onward progress to the North, which represented freedom. The network of safe havens stretched from the states in the South to as far as Canada (Hicks, Montequin Hicks, 2000). The concept of this network as a railroad is evident in the codes that those involved used to refer to various components of the movement. Slaves that were running away were referred to as passengers, persons who were guiding them along the different routes were called conductors and the places at which they stopped were named stations. Thus the Underground Railroad was not a physical place or space but a movement aimed at liberating blacks from slavery. Numerous individuals collaborated in making this movement into the success it is now proclaimed to have had. Some estimates are that about 30, 000 blacks were able to escape via the Underground Railroad (Anonymous, 2000, p. 10) and still others put the figure at twice as much. Though the precise numbers are not known it is still very evident that the work of the individuals involved in the Underground Railroad movement was quite effective in bringing many blacks out of a lifetime of slavery. As has been noted before the movement began with the work of the Quakers. Over the lifetime of the Underground Railroad countless other individuals, the majority of whom were black but including whites and women, were involved in the process. One of the names most notably associated with the Underground Railroad is Harriet Tubman. She had herself been a slave when she took the opportunity, in 1849, to head north along the Underground Railroad. She subsequently became actively involved in helping other blacks escape slavery. It is reported that she made a total of nineteen round trips between the North and South bringing to freedom approximately 300 African slaves (Chism, 2005, p. 47). The persons who facilitated the slaves moving between safe houses on the Underground Railroad, were putting themselves at considerable legal risks and thus activities had to be carried out as clandestinely as possible. There were laws designed and implemented specifically to curb the rate of assistance that escaped slaves were given in the North. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 gave owners the power to retrieve their slaves from whatever state they escape to, even in the North. This act proved to be unsuccessful so it was later reinforced with additional provisions in 1850. Under the new act persons were obligated to return runaway slaves to their owners and law officials in all states were mandated to upkeep this law and participate in active slave recovery (Williams-Myers, 2005). With these stringent legal conditions it was indeed with fear and trepidation that many slaves took on the challenge of running for the North. The efforts made by the conductors, the keepers in the safe houses and all who facilitated the journey, are indeed commendable since they reached out to humanity without regarding person safety. Several states northern states, as a result of the large genesis of African Americans into the North, soon became de jure slave settlements. In Mid-West states such as Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan as well as in Northeast states such as Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine (Sayers, 2004, p. 437) large numbers of newly escaped blacks took up permanent residence and began to make a life in freedom. The Underground Railroad indeed represents not only the struggles towards emancipation but also, according to Williams-Myers (2005) â€Å"a moral challenge to an immoral mindset† References Epps, Garrett. (2004, Summer). The Antebellum Political Background of the Fourteenth Amendment. Law and Contemporary Problems, 67(3), 175-211. Williams-Myers, A.J. (2005, Jul). Some notes on the extent of New York Citys involvement in the Underground Railroad.  Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, 29(2), 73. Sayers, D. O. (2004). The Underground Railroad Reconsidered. The Western Journal of Black Studies, 28(3), 435-443. Hicks, B., Montequin, L. Hicks, J. (2000, Jan). Learning about our community: From the underground railroad to school lunch. Primary Voices K – 6, 8(3), 26-33. Chism, K. (2005, Mar). Harriet Tubman: Spy, veteran, and widow. OAH Magazine of History, 47-51. Anonymous. (2003, Feb 13). Researchers to study Natchezs role in Underground Railroad. Black Issues in Higher Education, 19(26), 10.

Terrorism - Its Time to Stop the War :: Argumentative Persuasive Topics

It's Time to Stop the War Military measures intended to support the arrest of a terrorist have turned into a large-scale attack on several of the poorest countries in the world, as well as on their populations, which is tormented by hunger and poverty and threatened by uprooting and death. As little as the gap between rich and poor in the world was the cause of the murderous attack on Sept.11, all the more are the attacks against Afghanistan and the Philippines are deepening this gap and thereby multiplying reasons to hate the West and its civilization. In the future the West will be less identified with its best qualities, with democracy, a constitutional order and prosperity than with its shadowy sides, with a lack of respect, arbitrary acts and violence. With every bomb that falls and every western soldier who kills on Afghan soil, the rich part of this world closes its eyes to the suffering of the peoples in the south. Even the apparent successes presently do not change this. With its offensive the West is not only undermining the idea of a collective legal effort to counteract terror, but is also betraying its own principles. In the final analysis this undeclared war is no longer being waged to combat terrorism but rather to preserve a reputation of military invincibility. Finally, with every day that war is waged there and with every new security law passed here (in the western world) , that very freedom which is supposedly being defended is threatened and those refugees, who are the products of this military action and its consequences, are marginalized. On September 11, not only did thousands of people suffer an agonizing death, but even western civilization suffered a defeat. Those murdered in the attack will not be restored to life through the war against the Taliban.

Character Education and Core Virtues Essay

When I signed on to teach English at a core virtues school, I had no idea what I was in for. I nodded and smiled in my interview when the Headmaster explained the virtues curriculum, and I parried back with everything I thought she wanted to hear; how I could infuse my lessons on To Kill a Mockingbird with discussions about empathy and courage. I may have even quoted Atticus’ line about walking around in someone else’s skin. I figured I could tack on some of that quaint â€Å"virtue† stuff before getting to the real meat of the lesson, the academic stuff. And for the first year I taught at Crossroads Academy, that’s pretty much what I did. I made some empty gesticulations toward the core virtues bulletin board in my classroom and made some token mentions of fortitude at obvious moments in our reading of The Illiad and The Aeneid. I was teaching literature, but I certainly wasn’t doing Aristotle proud. I mean come on. Character education? Core virtues? I teach English, not Sunday school, and besides, I teach middle school. If I were to walk into my eighth grade English class and wax rhapsodic about prudence and temperance, those kids would eat me alive. It’s hard enough to keep the attention of a classroom full of middle school students without coming on like an 18th-century schoolmarm. Character education is not old-fashioned, and it’s not about bringing religion in to the classroom. Character is the â€Å"X factor† that experts in parenting and education have deemed integral to success. Somewhere along the way, someone must have started dosing me with the character education Kool-Aid, because five years in, I have come to understand what real character education looks like and what it can do for children. I can’t imagine teaching in a school that does not have a hard-core commitment to character education, because I’ve seen what that education can mean to a child’s emotional, moral, and intellectual development. Schools that teach character education report higher academic performance, improved attendance, reduced violence, fewer disciplinary issues, reduction in substance abuse, and less vandalism. At a time when parents and teachers are concerned about school violence, it is worth noting that students who attend character education schools report feeling safer because they know their fellow students value respect, responsibility, compassion and hard work. From a practical perspective, it’s simply easier to teach children who can exercise patience, self-control, and diligence, even when they would rather be playing outside – especially when they would rather be playing outside. American schools used to focus on character education and civic virtue. The founders of this country, including John and Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin wrote about the importance of character education in maintaining the new republic. Those founders would likely be horrified by the loss of this goal, as they all cite character education as the way to create an educated and virtuous citizenry. As Gallup polls show that over ninety percent of American adults support the teaching of honesty, democracy, acceptance of people of different races and ethnic backgrounds, patriotism, caring for friends and family members, moral courage, and the Golden Rule in public schools, it seems odd that this facet of American education has disappeared from public debate over curriculum and academic content. The core virtues — prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice — make it into nearly every lesson we teach at our school and every facet of our daily lives on campus. The curriculum we use, designed by Mary Beth Klee, is a non-sectarian education in intellectual, moral, and civic virtues through literature, and can be used in conjunction with any academic curriculum. As the core virtues program uses examples to literature in order to illustrate character, I choose my texts accordingly. In my middle school Latin and English classes, we explore the concept of temperance through discussions of Achilles’ impulsive rages, King Ozymandias’ petulant demand that we â€Å"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair,† Macbeth’s bloody, â€Å"vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other. † This week, I gained a fantastic teaching assistant who has raised my character education skills to the next level, a wise teacher who has illustrated the importance of temperance far better than I — or Achilles or Macbeth — ever could. A Mallard duck (Mom Mallard to our students) took up residence on our campus this week. Mallards, or anas platyrhynchos, are also known as â€Å"dabbling ducks,† and this particular duck has apparently been dabbling in Aristotelian philosophy, because she’s presented our students with a real-life lesson in the core virtue of temperance. Her nest, made from feathers she’s plucked off her own breast and filled with ten eggs, lies about eighteen inches from the entryway to our main building, a path our students take in out of school at least six times a day. Mom Mallard doesn’t seem too worried about our students’ feet†¦ as long as they keep moving. However, the second those feet stop and one of the children pauses to take a good, long, look, she quacks angrily and abandons her nest. Her first day in residence, she spent more time off the eggs than she did on them, and we realized we were going to have to find a way to teach our students some self-control. It just so happens that this month’s virtue is temperance; stopping to think about our actions before we enact them, giving the best of ourselves, and saying â€Å"no† to our weaknesses. The middle school students use the term â€Å"temperance,† and the lower school kids use the term self-control, but tomato, tomato, it’s all the same idea. In Stanford’s famous experiment on self-control, children were faced with the immediate reality of one marshmallow versus the promise of two marshmallows if they can just wait for fifteen minutes. The children who were able to resist temptation and wait fifteen minutes for that second marshmallow had better life outcomes in the form of lower obesity rates, higher SAT scores, and higher levels of education. Self-control itself does not make a kid smarter, or fitter, or more proficient at test-taking, but it’s the essential skill hidden within all of these positive outcomes. Character education is not old-fashioned, and it’s not about bringing religion in to the classroom. Character education teaches children how to make wise decisions and act on them. Character is the â€Å"X factor† that experts in parenting and education have deemed integral to success, both in school and in life. Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed, calls that character-based X factor â€Å"grit,† while educational consultant Dr. Michele Borba calls it â€Å"moral intelligence. † When I asked parenting expert Borba to explain why she thinks character education is so overlooked as a vital part of children’s success, she wrote, â€Å"That’s what parents don’t seem to get, the hidden values of character traits for success. They see character education as fluff, because that’s often how it’s taught — posters and worksheets. Character education needs to be relevant. It needs to be woven in curriculum, not tacked on. We are such a trophy-, SAT-obsessed society, but if parents would recognize the value beyond the humanness, civility and ethics, they might get it. † Here on our campus, our marshmallow is a duck. Our students must weigh their desire for a quick peek at Mom Mallard with the promise of ten ducklings waddling around our playground in 28 days. If everyone, even the youngest, most impulsive kindergarteners, can learn to exercise self-control, we will all benefit. Next week, Mom Mallard will catch a bit of a break from our students, because they will be confined to their classrooms for a week of standardized testing. Our character education curriculum may not show up as an increase in this year’s test scores — but then again, it could: self-control, after all, is exactly what’s needed to put off a video game or a TV show for another 20 minutes to finish reading or studying. Though temperance isn’t easily measured with number two pencils and bubble forms, it has the capacity to foster and reinforce the skills those bubble forms do test.

You Have Benefited From Animal Testing - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 1 Words: 361 Downloads: 8 Date added: 2019/04/04 Category Biology Essay Level High school Tags: Animal Testing Essay Did you like this example? If you have ever taken any type of medicine or had a vaccine, you have benefited from animal testing: Research with animals led to vaccinations against smallpox, measles, mumps, and tetanus. The worlds first vaccine was tested on a cow in 1796 during the observation of milkmaids who caught cowpox, which is now called smallpox, from infected cow utters. This disease was eradicated in 1980 with the help of lab animals. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "You Have Benefited From Animal Testing" essay for you Create order Looking at the more frequent viruses in our everyday lives like bacterial infections, which are extremely common and affect most people many times throughout their lives, today most of them are readily treatable with antibiotics such as penicillin. The effectiveness of penicillin and other antibiotics as treatments for bacterial infections was established through research using mice and other rodents. Scientists continue to use animals to determine what antibiotics are effective against specific organisms, their toxicity, and their potential side effects. Medical researchers need to understand health problems before they can develop ways to treat them. Another significant vaccine that was discovered with the service of animals in medical research was the polio vaccine. Polio is a highly infectious disease that mainly affects children under the age of 5. It invades the nervous system and can cause permanent paralysis in a matter of hours. The polio vaccine which was tested on chimpanzees, reduced the global occurrence of disease from 350,000 cases in 1988 to just 22 cases in 2017. Polio is now practically unknown in the USA and Europe and more than 16 million people have been saved from paralysis. Animal Testing ProCon.org. (2016, March 24). Another very important discovery was in the early 1920s when Frederick Banting found the hormone insulin in the pancreatic extract of dogs. He instituted that it significantly lowered the dogs blood glucose levels to normal. Banting and his medical student, Charles Best, continued working on their discovery and perfected it in 1922. They used it to successfully treat a young boy with severe diabetes and went on to win the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Roughly one million people in the world use insulin for their diabetes (Virginia, 2016). Thanks to lab animals, we now have important vaccines to treat everyday illnesses. (Rogers, K. 2014)