Social & Cultural

Sojourner Truth was a slave-turned abolitionist. She became a Methodist and was called to ministry. Truth delivered a speech entitled “Ain’t I a Woman?” in 1851 that demanded equality for women and African Americans. As a preacher, she said that Jesus overcame her hatred of white people. Her faith gave her the ability to love everyone. The speech was briefly reported in two contemporary newspapers, and ...

The American women's rights movement began with a meeting of reformers in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Out of that first convention came a historic document, the 'Declaration of Sentiments,' which demanded equal social status and legal rights for women, including the right to vote. Purpose of the Convention The first convention for women's rights in the United States was held in Seneca Falls, New ...

Emperor Ferdinand and his chief advisor Metternich directed troops to crush the demonstration. Peaceful student demonstrators were shot and killed causing the working class to join the demonstrations, developing an armed insurrection demanding Metternich's resignation. Ferdinand reluctantly complied and dismissed him, and tried to appease the people with a cleverly written constitution, but they rejected it. He later issued two manifestos which gave concessions to the people, ...

Karl Marx, completes “The Communist Manifesto.” He not only advocates economic and political changes; he advocates moral and spiritual changes as well. He believes the family should be abolished, and that all children should be raised by a central authority. He expresses his attitude toward God by saying: “We must war against all prevailing ideas of religion, of the state, of country, of patriotism. The idea ...

It was an unlikely candidacy: a thirty-eight-year-old mayor from the heartland who pitched himself as the solution to partisan gridlock, played up his military experience, talked often about his faith, and promised to end the country’s moral decline. He was fond of quoting the Founding Fathers, had an army of grassroots supporters, and came from a swing state. But the year was 1844, the state was ...

One of the first mentions of communism in print appaears in the New-York Daily Tribune on August 25, 1843, page 2: “Social Movement.–We learn from the Onondaga Standard that a company of Communists, or advocates of the doctrine that no individual has an exclusive right to any portion of the earth or its products, have made a contract for a tract of land near Skaneateles, in that County, ...

On July 2, 1839, Sengbe Pieh and 56 fellow Africans mutiny aboard the ship La Armistad enroute to Cuba. The ship is captured off Long Island, NY, and the resulting U.S. Supreme Court case rules that since the importation of slaves into the United States had been prohibited since 1808, the mutineers are to be freed. In 1839 slave traders kidnapped Pieh while he was working in the ...

As one of Abraham Lincoln's earliest published speeches, this address has been much scrutinized and debated by historians, who see broad implications for his later public policies. Lincoln was 28 years old at the time he gave this speech and had recently moved from a struggling pioneer village to Springfield, Illinois. William Herndon, who would become Lincoln's law partner in 1844, describes the event this way: ...

"I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger." Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837 ...

Florence Nightingale did not think herself deeply religious and never thought she became so. But, on February 7, 1837, when she was scarcely 17 years old, she felt that God spoke to her, calling her to future “service.” From that time on her life was changed. At first the call disturbed her. Not knowing the nature of the “service,” she feared making herself unworthy of whatever ...