COASTLINE JOURNAL

A Canadian PhD student, studying at Duke University in North Carolina, has found the only printed copy of Haiti’s Declaration of Independence, dated Jan.1 1804. Quoted in the Globe and Mail, Julia Gaffield says, “My life is not usually quite as exciting as Indiana Jones.” The document was found in a bound book of documents held at the British National Archives in London. Grad student uncovers Haiti’s Declaration of Independence. (See also press release from Duke University.)

Jean Jacques Dessalines

The Haitian Declaration of Independence

1804

The Commander in Chief to the People of Haiti

Citizens:

It is not enough to have expelled the barbarians who have bloodied our land for two centuries; it is not enough to have restrained those ever-evolving factions that one after another mocked the specter of liberty that France dangled before you. We must, with one last act of national authority, forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhuman government that for so long kept us in the most humiliating torpor. In the end we must live independent or die.

Independence or death… let these sacred words unite us and be the signal of battle and of our reunion….

Haiti Declaration (pdf file)

By Corey Sampson, Fort Hays State University

download this essay (pdf): Is the Republican Party.pdf

This paper examines the issue of human trafficking or modern day slavery in the United States and the role the Republican Party is playing to eradicate it.  After defining human trafficking and looking at the historical role of the Republican Party as the Antislavery Party the paper will examine the three supply side causes of human trafficking in this country.  The three supply side causes are immigration, labor rights, and the unequal status of women.  These three issues were chosen based on a report by the U.N.  After examining these three causes, this paper will look at the Republican Party Platform and policies to determine if they continue to stand for the values of the Antislavery Party.

Slavery Still Exists.

The grassroots campaign by The Polaris Project, has a goal to raise public awareness about the realities of modern day slavery or human trafficking that continues exist in this world.[1] The fact that this campaign is needed speaks to the problem of modern day slavery in society today. While legal slavery was prohibited in this country in 1865,[2] the existence of slavery has not ceased.  Similar to the end of legal slavery in the United States, there needs to be a political response to end illegal slavery in this country.  Since the Republican Party was instrumental in the process of making slavery illegal, the assumption would be that they are leading the current fight to eradicate slavery in this country today. This proves not to be the case. Despite the Republican Party’s historical origins, they can no longer be considered the Antislavery Party.  This paper will examine what human trafficking is and will briefly examine the historical origins of the Republican Party as the Antislavery Party. The paper will examine three major supply side causes of human trafficking, including immigration, labor rights, and the unequal status of women, as well as how Republican Party platforms and policies are ineffective in their effort to end slavery in the United States.

What is Human Trafficking?

According to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, human trafficking is:

1) Sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion or in which the person induced to perform such an act is under 18, or

2) The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, for the purpose of subjecting that person to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.[3]

This law defines human trafficking for purposes of prosecution of the crime.  It is important to note within this definition that it is not just the process of moving a person that makes it trafficking, but any action that can be defined as recruitment, harboring, transporting, obtaining etc., of a person against their will for the purpose of labor or services.  With the problem defined, the next exploration needs to be the scope of this pernicious issue.  According to reports by the U.S. State Department on the website Trafficking 101 on the page Human Trafficking in the U.S., “between 14,500 and 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked annually into the U.S. and the National Runaway Switchboard assesses that thousands of American children are lured into trafficking situations every year.”  Given the scope of this human rights problem, a response is needed.  The government, as in 1865, is best positioned to rectify it. Why would the Republican Party be best equipped to answer this question?  The answer to that is history.

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Christopher Aceto, Wesleyan University

download this essay: the long road home – aceto

What are the limits of values?  Would an “environmentalist” stick his head in the sand of rejection and the status quo so long that the environment suffered because of it?  Would a “market capitalist” scream the word “free” so long that she passed out while the economy fell down in shambles?  The answer to both is “maybe.”  It is very likely that those on the two poles, the extremes of environmental policy will reject anything that infringes on their idealistic representations of the world that the rest of us have to actually live in.  It is therefore essential that policy be developed by and for the vast majority of people: the groups, corporations, and nations that comprise the expanse inside these margins.  The tensions between these absolutist margins have painted a clear picture, one that shows that following a single path alone will not work.  Willingness at all levels to accept and adopt change must be matched by incentives to achieve reform and build quality environments from the local to the global.

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Christopher Aceto, Wesleyan University

download this essay: what did Chesterton really see

“the only nation in the world founded on a creed”

“America is a nation guided by faith.  Someone once called us ‘a nation with the soul of a church.’  Ninety-five percent of Americans say they believe in God, and I’m one of them” (George W. Bush, Tsinghua speech).  To peel back the layers of the onion which compose a culture, it sometimes takes a foreigner to travel and experience that land first hand.  Likewise sometimes a man must travel to a foreign land to be at liberty to speak of his own homeland in a way that he would not otherwise.

G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton, the 20th century’s Alexander de Tocqueville, was that foreigner looking to peel that onion while President Bush was the hombre that did not feel free enough to let it all out here, in “the home of the brave.”  President Bush’s only speech that quotes Chesterton’s “soul of a church” assertion (according to a search of the White House’s website) is the one he made to Tsinghua University in China during February of 2002.  In that speech, he referred to Chesterton as “someone” and not by name when he quoted him.  Could it be that people in the United States do not want to see or hear that “soul of a church” rhetoric?  Chesterton’s assertion is still fitting today but not for the reasons I originally thought.

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Susan Burt-Collins, University of Pennsylvania

This was Susan’s final paper for a course in The Literature of the American Political History and Political Culture, taught by Professor Richard Beeman, and her Capstone project.

download this essay (43pp): burt-collins_citizenship

photo by KCH Brown

Along the east bank of the Schuylkill river on Kelly Drive there is a group of statuary that is part of the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial. It is entitled “A History of the American People.” This statuary extols America as a place of energy and possibility. It was created seventy years after the Statue of Liberty’s passionate call to immigrants, “”give me your hungry, your tired…….those yearning to breather free” ,America is the place of possibility, the future and freedom. By including immigrants and a slave in the tableau it echoes the theme of America as a place where all are welcome to join in this American future. Yet, the immigrants and slave are denoted as different: inelegant, rough, not the same as the Americans within the twin arcs of the composition.

Looking at the tableau one sees the forward thrusting shape in the center, grasping and almost becoming one with an eagle. He is an athlete: strong and always in forward motion. It is made of bronze. It is smooth and unblemished. It is entitled Enterprise and beneath it are words of Theodore Roosevelt extolling the youth and energy of the American spirit. “Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with fearless and eager eyes, as vigorous as a young man to run a race.” Within the twin arcs of the plaza are additional bronze figures. In the northern arc are figures of two young men, very athletic, with aquiline noses and even features. These figures convey strength and the promise of youth. The words inscribed around the circle by William Cullen Bryant, suggest the opportunity of America. “Here the free spirit of mankind at length throws its first fetters off and who shall place a limit to the giant’s unchained strength, or curb his swiftness in the forward race.”[1] In the opposite arc to the south is a couple beside a large wheel, all done in bronze. The woman wears a bonnet and full skirt common to frontier women. The man is in boots, hat, pants, his shirt sleeves rolled up suggesting he is hard at work.

The contrast with these handsome, strong figures is immediately obvious when you step out of the arcs and look at the figures atop each pillar leading into the arcs. Each figure is done in limestone, not bronze. Each figure is crouching (the slave) or bent by burdens (the immigrant his sack, the miner his ax, the ploughman his bundle of tools). Finally, none of the four figures has the smooth, even features of the people depicted in bronze. Instead the slave has exaggerated lips and nose with an overhanging forehead giving him a decidedly simian appearance, the immigrant, miner and ploughman all have heavy, harsh features and downcast eyes.

Do these contrasts suggest that the arguments of nineteenth century phrenologists still had currency in the mid-twentieth century? Is there a hierarchy of Americans, some being more able, more suited to America than others? Becuase these figures are perched at the entrances to the arcs, is there a suggestion in their appearance and placement that they are not fully American and not fully a part of the American community? (more…)