History of Hinduism Page

Aarav Ghosh, Junior School

Most scholars believe Hinduism started somewhere between 2300 B.C. and 1500 B.C. in the Indus Valley, near modern-day Pakistan. Around 1500 B.C., the Indo-Aryan people migrated to the Indus Valley, and their language and culture blended with that of the indigenous people living in the region. This period was called the Vedic period and is when Hinduism first started.

Hindus only believe in one God, Brahman but in many forms, the eternal origin who is the cause and foundation of all existence. However other gods & goddesses such as Shiva, Krishna or Lakshmi are also recognized by Hindus to whom they pray regularly. Unlike all other major

religions, Hinduism does not have a founder. According to Hindus, the religion has no origin. Hinduism has no concept of conversions. All the people following the faith have either willingly embraced it or acquired. Hinduism has spread across many countries over the years, especially in Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and other South East Asian countries. Hindu temples are not just architectural marvels, they are energy centers and hold great scientific significance which was proven. The usage of metals and construction patterns are proven to transmit positive energy.

During the Gupta empire—from about 320 to 550 CE—emperors used Hinduism as a unifying religion and helped popularize it by promoting educational systems that included Hindu teachings; they also gave land to brahmins. The Gupta emperors helped make Hinduism the most popular religion on the Indian subcontinent.

Hindus believe in the doctrines of samsara (the continuous cycle of life, death, and reincarnation) and karma (the universal law of cause and effect). One of the key thoughts of Hinduism is “atman,” or the belief in soul. One fundamental principle of the religion is the idea that people’s actions and thoughts directly determine their current life and future lives.

Some interesting facts about Hinduism one may not have known;

· Hinduism believes in a circular rather than a linear concept of time- Time is divided into four ages - the Satya yuga (golden age of innocence), Tretha yuga, Dwapara yuga and Kali yuga.

· The Rig Veda was written more than 3800 years ago making Hinduism one, if not the, oldest religion in the world.

· 108 is a scared number in Hinduism and is considered auspicious, the reason why most of our prayer beads have 108 beads.

· The institution of marriage was founded and put forth by Hinduism.

· Hinduism has reformed itself multiple times to get rid of any practices like Sati Sahagamana to suit humanity.

· Yoga, the world’s most practiced form of spiritual and physical fitness procedure, originated from Hinduism in the Indus- Saraswati civilization 5000 years ago.

· In Hindu cosmology, it is believed that the universe is created and destroyed in a cycle every 4.32 billion years. Quite interestingly, this period is quite close to the current scientific age of the earth.

· J. Robert Oppenheimer , the American theoretical physicist (considered ‘Father of the Atomic Bomb’) learned Sanskrit in 1933 and used to frequently quote from the sacred Hindu book –the ‘Bhagwad Gita’. He used his Sanskrit knowledge to decode the Vedas and ancient scripts to form the basis of the Manhattan Project and probably many more.The first atomic bomb was successfully detonated on July 16, 1945, in the Trinity test in New Mexico. Oppenheimer later remarked that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." In August 1945, the weapons were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

· “Om” is actually believed to be the manifestation of consciousness in sound form.

· Both male and female deities are worshipped with equal reverence in Hinduism

Adam Smith, Middle School

This essay was inspired by the book ‘Divided: why we are living in an age of walls’ by Tim Marshall. It is a remarkably interesting book about divisions and walls in the modern world, from the wall through Jerusalem to The Great Wall of China. Its chapters reference different locations on Earth, and the divisions that people have made within them. It is not a historical book, but I saw it as an inspiration to look at the history of walls and barriers. It is a fascinating read, and well worth the price to buy it!

How have walls developed? From a dirt pile to a high-tech metal barrier with guns and soldiers patrolling, walls have evolved significantly. In the stone age, walls were usually tree trunks or dirt stacked up, to protect a tribe from the elements, wild-life, or from marauders wanting to steal or enslave. We then move into the bronze age. Technology, and with it walls,had evolved. No longer are people simple tribes, but massive city states, like Athens, Rome, and Sparta. Now walls are usually colossal stone structures, with watchtowers and garrisons along their length. And with the advances in defence, offence advances considerably too. This is with the inventions of weapons like pikes, metal shields and swords. Straight through the iron age, and into the days of the Roman empire, walls become thicker and more advanced. Walls such as Hadrian’s Wall, separating entire countries, are built, to permanently protect the might of Rome from the Pictish assaults. On a smaller scale, the Roman army built overnight camps during campaigns that they walled off to protect them from barbarians.

For many centuries after that, wall technology does not seem to improve, and almost becomes worthless, with the inventions of weapons like Trebuchets, Cannons and Guns. However, Leonardo Da Vinci, the amazing Italian Inventor, had the idea of putting straw up in front of walls, to help stop cannon balls from cracking the walls as the impact is absorbed by the straw, making the walls much harder to get through.

We still see Roman walls, not as dividers but as historical artifacts, windows into the past. But then, during the 20th century, walls spring up again. This time massive lumps of Concrete or Metal, patrolled by soldiers armed with advanced guns, with search lights and later cameras, to help stop common people from escaping their homeland, into freedom. Now walls are everywhere, not to defend cities against other cities, not even to defend Roman Britain from the Picts, but simply to stop common people, like you and me, from escaping or entering.

Throughout history, there have been many examples of walls separating people from each other. It is an age-old practice, usually driven by the belief of ‘us and them’ or ‘the other’. The concentration camps of WWII were, we thought, the apotheosis of “Them” and “Us”.

Sadly, nowadays, many walls are springing up or being proposed. Take the proposed wall on the American/Mexican border. The reason for it is to supposedly keep ‘illegal Mexican immigrants out’ who the proponents, namely Donald Trump and his supporters, see as the root of all evil. This seems to be akin to the Great Wall of China, which was used to keep the Mongols out of China, as they raided northern Chinese towns for centuries, by exploiting their mastery of the horse and bow. It was an effectively impenetrable barrier until the Mongols under Genghis Khan used their superior tactics to overrun China and take their weapons and scientific prowess. This may be what Trump fears, Mexicans overrunning the US and taking everything, which is an irrational fear but, in his eyes, possible.

Another example of a modern wall as opposed to a historical example is the wall separating Israel from Palestine. The reason for the wall lies in some overly complex geopolitics, which can be simplified to the idea that both sides claim Israel/Palestine as their homeland and are in a state of conflict: us and them.

Going 30 years back, the Berlin Wall was the last major wall in Europe erected in 1961. It separated Capitalism from Communism, West from East, a physical manifestation of Churchill’s iron curtain. This wall was different to other walls, as it separated the same German citizens and their families. Many people tried to escape from East to West, often getting shot and killed in the process. Yet in 1989 the wall was destroyed by the people after the East German official Gunter Schabowski announced that East Germanies borders will be open and like that the East-West division in Europe fell. This wall is akin to Hadrian’s Wall, which separated the Celts from each other, just because the Romans were afraid of the Northern Picts, which oddly enough, is similar to how the Soviets were afraid of the Americans in the Cold War and vice versa. Yet, having fallen, the separation has not been resolved and Putin is slowly biting away at rapprochement, to rebuild that East-West separation using Belarus and east Ukraine.

Another Example of a Wall, or at least extremely hard border, would be the demarcation zone between North and South Korea. After the Korean War [1950-1953], which was a war between the Communist North and Democratic/Capitalist South, the two sides agreed on a border, which is now the demarcation zone. Soldiers patrol this area, it is full of mines and wire, and is effectively impenetrable other than at two very closely guarded huts, which act as the only opening between the two Koreas. The fact that a hard border and such a deadly area is needed between two countries that share the same history, culture, and people. It is a symbol of a failure of diplomacy, and of hatred and spite. In contrast, the Schengen zone in the EU allows free movement between countries and represents a hard-fought diplomatic success.

Lines in the sand crisscross the Middle East. These walls are fake walls, separating the same people from each other. They were drawn up by western powers (by Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot) in 1916 at the beginning of the end of colonialism, with complete disregard for the people living there. This explains why the middle east is such a warzone today, as different nationalities are forced together, ones that were never historically unified. In history, walls and boundaries like this have never seemed to exist, outside of the 20th and 21st centuries when these borders were drawn up by colonial powers.

However, walls do not necessarily need to be physical. Take the Great Firewall of China. It separates the Chinese people from the outside world mentally, so that they do not question the Communist regime that rules their country. This means that 1.4 billion people effectively have their own internet. This is akin to the medieval idea of an absolute monarchy where the citizens are not permitted to think badly about the monarch or criticise the monarch. This kind of medieval ideology still exists in Thailand, were Western tourists got into serious trouble for making fun of the previous king’s name, Bhumibol.

These are just six examples of the many walls, virtual or real, around the world. In a historical sense, walls and divisions are inherent to human nature, given that they have been around effectively since the stone age [3000000 BCE- 2000 BCE ]. People have built walls mainly to protect themselves, from what they consider the ‘other’ or a faction that they are generally at war with. Yet the walling off entire areas, often goes down to pride. And sadly, that is something that has been a human trait for centuries. People often fight wars, especially in history, not for territory or justice, but often for pride. Look at WW1 for example, it was a 20th century war fought by 19th century empires, for the domination of Europe, but not for justice but for regal pride.

In Conclusion, I think that walls and divisions are integral to human nature, as humans have a fear of difference and change, and humans feel safe behind a pile of bricks and stones that separate them from a perceived threat. As demonstrated by the past, and the present, humans are still inherently tribalistic, and sadly, whether it be a dictator or the people, walls will always be erected, in some form or another, to separate peoples.

Daniel Levy, Senior School

“I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves, are, and henceforth shall be free.’ On the 1st of January, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation issued by Abraham Lincoln would come into effect, and all African-American people in the USA would be free. Of course, things were not that simple.

Recent events concerning BLM and racism in the USA have made the phrase ‘systematic’ or ‘institutionalised racism’ increasingly common, and with reason. But what I’ve personally noticed is that a lot of people don’t really get what that means. In fact, whilst almost everyone I’ve spoken to appreciates that the USA has a problem with racism, the extent of this racism, its prevalence and bitterness throughout history, and its cruelty and repulsiveness are far less appreciated. Talking to people about this, I ran into surprise again and again and again. I think that to really grasp how important the issue of BLM and racism in the USA is, the context of these things is so important. There is a real lack of understanding of just how dark U.S. history is with regards to racism. Racism is such a prominent issue today because, as the phrase ‘institutionalised racism’ suggests, it is intertwined with U.S. history, laws, and institutions. It is something that exists, and it is something that will not just be willed out of existence. But to tackle an issue, you have to understand it, and I feel that with regards to that, the history of U.S. racism needs to be tackled. Perhaps I only attribute such importance to history because I myself take and have always been passionate for the subject. But based on what I’ve seen, the meaning of the phrase ‘institutionalised racism’ needs to be clarified and to understand it, the history of racism needs to be explored. This is my attempt at doing that.

An idea as complex as institutionalised racism needs to be examined in proper depth, and because racism is so prevalent in U.S. history, the origin of the United States of America itself

needs to be examined. The sectional (i.e. North vs South) difference in racial views originates from 17th century economics. The first English colony was Virginia, established in 1601, and it was a commercial adventure. The climate there allowed for plantation agriculture, so cash crops could be grown and harvested for high profit. The plantation system was most prevalent in the Lower South- in the Upper South, the climate and soil were more suited to subsistence agriculture, so slavery was less prevalent. The point is that Southern society became based on plantation agriculture, which required cheap labour. This is where tri-point trade came in: trading goods (e.g. guns) could be taken from Britain to Africa and traded for slaves- which were voluntarily given to the Europeans by African warlords. The slaves were taken across the Atlantic to the Americas, wherein cash crops were grown and taken to Britain to be sold. The prime cash crop was initially tobacco- this would later become cotton.

The North developed in a very different way. It was settled not by wealthy, connected Englishmen seeking profits- but exiles seeking to establish a new England. The Pilgrim Fathers arrived in 1620 as Puritans who wanted to create an idealised, democratic English society which followed Puritan values. As the North became settled, society emerged in the form of communities of independent farmers and in mercantile trading settlements. The Northern climate was incompatible with plantation agriculture, so Northern wealth was generated through mercantile/industrial work, and slavery was simply not as profitable in this context. Slavery was still present, of course- Massachusetts’ rum industry was partially based on slavery, for example. But factory work, trading, manufacture, fur trading, subsistence agriculture, and fishing was actually less profitable with slavery. It was easier in the North to just pay a worker a (meagre) wage because paying for a man’s food, water, clothes, goods, and shelter is only profitable when that man generates considerable profit- in the South, cheap slave labour was economical because cash crops were so profitable.

Yet if you asked a Southerner what they thought of slavery in the 1700s, they would not say a ‘positive good’- all countries in the world at this time saw it as a ‘necessary evil’. But because all countries partook in it, none were condemned for it. As the North slowly emancipated their slaves by gradual emancipation (emancipating slaves’ children but not freeing the slaves themselves), with all states enacting such legislation by 1804, abolitionist sentiment was mild enough that the South did not feel threatened. This was because there were comparatively few abolitionists at the time and those who did support emancipation wanted to do so gradually, and they were willing to discuss the matter of abolition calmly with others. Besides, the North and South had economic parity and roughly the same population, so the same representation in the House of Representatives and the same GDP. So the North- even if it suddenly moved towards a more radical form of abolitionism- couldn’t force the South to do anything. Slavery and abolition was at the back of U.S. politics, and would only be brought to the forefront later. Either way, many thought in the 1700s that slavery would soon die out- this was one of the reasons why the Constitution doesn’t address it. It was only the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 by Eli Whitney that massively increased the profitability of slavery and thus ensured its survival. This was undoubtedly a tragedy, but nonetheless racial views were not as harsh as they would later be. There was an omnipresent belief in white superiority- but this superiority was sociological and not biological. Few believed African-Americans were inherently inferior to whites by biology- but they believed that their culture and civilisation was.

The North, with a mercantile/trading society, began industrialising in the 1820s, and slowly the economic sectional parity began to vanish. Yet this was accompanied a decade later by

considerable developments in abolitionism. The 1830s saw a transformation in abolitionist sentiment. Previously, it had been a lukewarm, genteel desire for gradual emancipation of slaves. It began becoming a passionate, radical desire for immediate and total emancipation. This occurred for two reasons- the first was an influx of British abolitionist sentiment. Britain had abolished slavery in 1833, and abolitionist propaganda and general sentiment from there had an impact on Northern feeling. The second was a more home-grown change: a rise in evangelical feeling and activity called the Second Great Awakening. The combination of these forces led to a more strident abolitionist movement. William Lloyd Garrison launched a new abolitionist journal, The Liberator, advocating immediate abolition. In 1833, the National AntiSlavery Society was founded. By 1838, it has 250,000 members, churning out anti-slavery propaganda using steam-driven printing presses. Abolitionist noise began rising to such a volume that Congress introduced the ‘gag rule’ in 1836 to preserve the Union, preventing the discussion of abolitionist petitions in Congress and discussion of slavery in general.

The significance of this was that it caused a major ideological backlash in the South. Southerners were now forced to justify their ‘peculiar institution’, and that is precisely what they did. Faced with real pressure concerning slavery for the first time, they no longer accepted it as a ‘necessary evil’. They began seeing slavery as a ‘positive good’. Southern churches split from Northern ones and preached that the Bible never explicitly condemned slavery. Southern ideology began to assert that African-Americans were incapable of independence and would die if not protected by paternalistic slaveholders who looked after them. It declared that African-Americans were better off in plantations than in Northern factories or in Haiti, a country having recently gained independence via a slave revolt (this was the only successful slave revolt in human history). New pseudoscience emerged which showed that AfricanAmericans were biologically inferior to whites, replacing the belief that racial differences were only sociological. Abolitionists in the South began to be tarred and feathered, buried alive for 7 hours, and then dug back up. People who protested against slavery could find their houses and buildings burnt down. It was no longer socially acceptable in the South to see slavery as a negative thing. Southern literature began to become synonymous with pro-slavery propaganda. Paranoia began to mount. The South began to fear that the North, with their rising wealth and population, would eventually force the South to abandon slavery.

The tragedy is that this was far from true because the North was also heavily racist. Indeed, observers like Alexis de Tocqueville (a French aristocrat and political scientist who toured the USA) noted in the early 1800s that the North was more racist than the South. In several states, African-Americans weren’t even allowed to enter. Many Northerners feared an exodus of liberated slaves from the South and so hated abolitionists, breaking up their meetings. AfricanAmericans always got the worst jobs and were treated like second class citizens. Even as late as 1860, African-Americans could only vote in three states in the Union. Yet despite this, Southern paranoia would eventually lead to Civil War.

The Civil War was not fought over the existence of slavery. The Civil War was fought over the extension of slavery. From the 1840s, the normative belief in American society was that the future of America lay in the West. If the Western states were slave states, slavery would be irreversibly preserved in the Union. If the Western states were free states, slavery would eventually die out. Ironically, this wasn’t true at all. The real future of the USA lay in industrialisation and the North had already won on that front. But that is not the point. What matters is that everyone believed that the future of the USA lay in the West. The point is that because the South became paranoid that the North would eventually forcibly end slavery, they sought to expand slavery to the West in order to eternally preserve it. This, in turn, made the

North paranoid that there was a ‘slave state power conspiracy’ afoot. They knew that the South, lacking the North’s industrialisation or immigration, had fewer inhabitants and thus had a minority in the House of Representatives. This meant that they lacked the power in the federal government to bring slavery into the West by legal means. Thus, they feared that the South would try and advance slavery by illicit, subversive means- i.e., in a conspiracy. Northerners did not want slavery to enter the West-but this was not because they necessarily wanted slavery to die. Slavery drove down wages for white workers, and so Northern whites didn’t want to see it expand as it would impact them economically. There was also an ideological motivation: Northerners were heavily racist and did not want to see African-American people in what they saw as America’s Manifest Destiny, their rightful land. But many Northerners didn’t really have a problem with slavery in the South. Of those that did, a small minority were actually abolitionists who wanted to forcibly end it there. Most saw slavery as bad- but the South’s problem. They believed that the federal government shouldn’t interfere, either because they didn’t see slavery as particularly morally wrong or they thought the federal government shouldn’t be strong enough to do so.

And yet conflict over slavery in the West was enough to amplify tensions and paranoia to the point of Civil War. The Wilmot Proviso and the resulting Compromise of 1850 massively increased sectional tension- arguably irrevocably so- but a study of all the events of American history is not the point of this document. The Wilmot Proviso and the Compromise of 1850 are relevant to U.S. because they relate to U.S. party politics, and an understanding of U.S. party politics is an integral part of understanding attitudes towards racism and slavery in the USA.

The second party system in the USA had emerged in the 1830s, more specifically in the 1832 ‘Bank War’ election. The two parties that emerged for this election were the Whigs and the Democrats. The Whig voter-base was mostly Northerners, specifically conservative, businessclass Northerners. Yet, they also had support from Upper South yeomen who didn’t own plantations and who resented the wealth and political power of the aristocratic plantationowners in the South. The Whigs did appeal to a few plantation-owners, however. The Whigs supported centralisation, Hamiltonian economics, industrialisation, protectionism, and high federal spending. The Democrats, in contrast, supported decentralisation, Jeffersonian economics, free trade, and lower federal spending. Their voter-base consisted of the establishment of the South and the excluded of the North. Wealthy planters who served as the South’s socioeconomic and political elites were the former category. The latter were resentful, poor working-class Northerners- for example Irish immigrants- who were particularly prone to racism as they had to compete with cheap African-American labour. Naturally, the Democrats were the more racist of the two parties. Southern Democrats obviously supported slavery, but the Democrats were at this point still a national party which appealed to both sections. There were many Northern Democrats as well, and these were voters and politicians who were either indifferent to slavery or supported it. The Whigs were better, but not by much. ‘Conscience Whigs’ were those who disapproved of slavery and ‘cotton Whigs’ were those who didn’t care about slavery as it was profitable. Even within the ranks of the former wing, radicals who actually supported abolition in the South were rare. Conscience Whigs typically just disliked slavery, but were willing to tolerate it in order to preserve the Union.

This second-party system endured until 1850. The Compromise of 1850 had delivered the USA from a national crisis concerning the status of slavery in newly acquired land in the West from Mexico, the dispute being whether the new territories would be brought into the Union as slave or free states. The Whig party had been the one brokering the compromise- yet because the compromise pleased neither section, this greatly worked against them. For the sake of concision, I won’t go into detail about the Compromise’s terms here- what is important is that despite widespread Southern dissatisfaction, they were still willing to enforce it. The 1850 Georgia Platform was a statement issued by a Georgia Convention, and it articulated the views of cooperationist Southerners, specifying that the South would stick to the Compromise as long as the North did the same. Yet Northerners, recognising their superiority to the South in terms of population and wealth, were less willing to compromise, and thus sought to ignore the terms of the Compromise of 1850. One of the most hated terms in the Compromise was the new Fugitive Slave Law, and it became a genuine, ongoing problem in the North. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, established in the Constitution, meant that slaveholders had to find and capture fugitive slaves, bring them in front of a magistrate, and prove ownership. Some individual states passed laws giving accused fugitive slaves the rights to habeas corpus and trial and jury and imposed penalties for kidnappings. This had been an ongoing source of anger for the South, as the North had no involvement in helping Southern slaveholders recapture their fugitives and some states had passed laws hindering it.

The Compromise of 1850 brought in a new Fugitive Slave Law. U.S. marshals in the North would now be responsible for raising posses to recapture fugitives, and refusing to join a posse would result in a heavy fine. Fugitives now had to prove their own innocence and lost the rights to testify on their own behalf, habeas corpus, and trial by jury. The greatest injustice was that judges were paid $10 every time an accused person was found guilty and $5 if the accused was found innocent. The system was rigged against the accused, and out of 332 people convicted as fugitives, only 11 were declared free. It also became a criminal offence to harbour a fugitivewhich it was not under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793.

The significance of this was that whilst the North was content to let slavery be present in the South as a far-away phenomenon, it was now their own responsibility to enforce slavery. It was a reality which they now had to confront, as it was within their own section. The result was a substantial upsurge in abolitionist feeling. Anti-slavery lawyers challenged the new Fugitive Slave Law several times in the 1850s but the federal government refused to relax it. The Law was held in Ableman vs Booth, and this caused so much panic among the African-American population that 3,000 of them fled to Canada. Abolitionism rose considerably, however. They preached that the new Law was amoral and irreligious, and therefore should be disregarded.

When William and Ellen Croft escaped from Georgia in 1848, they were hidden by Theodore Parker, an abolitionist in Boston. The Crofts’ owners hired and sent professional slavecatchers to recapture the Crofts in October 1850- the hiring of professional slavecatchers being a common practice. Parker gave Ellen Croft a loaded pistol and told William to stay in the basement with a match and two kegs of dynamite. The Boston Anti-Slavery Society publicly shamed the slavecatchers, calling them ‘man-hunters’. The Crofts were eventually smuggled on a ship to England, amidst the condemnation of the federal government and President Fillmore, who had been the President to pass the Compromise of 1850.

Abolitionist feeling flared again in February 1851. Shadrach Minkins had escaped from Virginia and was working in a Boston coffee-house when he was seized by slave-catchers and taken to federal jail. Other members of the African-American community raided the facility,

freed him, overwhelmed his guards, and smuggled him to Montreal in an act of heroism and bravery. Theodore Parker himself said that ‘It was the most noble deed done in Boston since the Boston Tea Party.’ Yet, many Northern newspapers condemned the act as ‘mob rule’, saying that whilst they may have disliked slavery they respected the country’s laws and feared rioting and armed conflict. The federal government angrily ordered a federal investigation and indicted four African-Americans and four whites. However, when put in front of a grand jury, the jury refused to see any crime. Attitudes to slavery in the North were evidently beginning to meaningfully shift. Southern newspapers, on the other hand, were furious, and the South had always regarded the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 as a test of Northern goodwill and trustworthiness. They had been left wanting.

For the forces of abolitionism, there were significant defeats as well as victories. Thomas Sims was an escaped slave from Georgia who found in Boston and arrested in April. This time, 300 federal troops were deployed to prevent his rescue. The abolitionists had failed to stop his case from progressing, demonstrating the continued influence of slavery in U.S. justice and politics. However, the fact that the government had been forced to use military force was also significant. A second escape saw Sims’ return to Boston in 1863, and he would later hold a position in the U.S. Department of Justice in 1877. For now, abolitionists were outraged, and for the first time abolitionist sentiment began to resonate with general Northern feeling. Northerners had been forced to enforce slavery and whilst many Northerners still were not abolitionists, abolitionism had undoubtedly grown. Hatred of the new Fugitive Slave Law- and therefore the Compromise of 1850- began to increase. This would have significant political consequences.

The Whig candidate for the 1852 election, Winfield Scott, recognised that general Northern feeling was anti-Compromise and general Southern feeling was cooperationist: they begrudgingly supported it as long as the North did the same. However, the North had a higher population, and thus more voters. Scott decided to appeal to the larger voter-base, and was deliberately ambiguous on his support of the Compromise. In the 1852 election, the Whigs only got 35% of the Southern vote, proving Democrat eminence in the South. The Democrats had Northern supporters as well. In the North, the Democrats were able to capitalise on the wave of white immigration to the USA (3,000,000 immigrants from 1845-1854, mainly Irish and German) to bolster their voter-base considerably, using Tammany Hall as a base for securing Democrat voters in New York City. The lack of a Whig condemnation of this immigrantion alienated its core Protestant voter-base, further securing Democrat dominance in this section. The collapse of the Whigs left the Democrats dominant, winning 27 states in the 1852 election, and there were Democrats in both sections. Northern Democrats were highly racist (due to typically being immigrants competing with African-Americans in labour) and thus totally willing to sanction slavery as an institution in the South. Moreover, the Whigs’ decline was self-perpetuating: once politicians realised the Whigs couldn’t win, they withdrew their support for them, as they would not be able to be rewarded for their support with lucrative federal posts. Without this support, the Whigs could never win. Their downfall accelerated from 1850-1854.

It seemed as if the new party to replace the Whigs would be the Populist Party, an antiimmigrant, anti-Catholic party, but events conspired to change things. In January 1854, Senator Steven Douglas of Illinois changed history by proposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It proposed that in the Northern territories of Kansas and Nebraska, inhabitants there would vote on whether they wanted to be a slave state. The idea of popular sovereignty (individual states voting on whether they wanted to allow slavery) was not new. This was so shocking because

it was in the North. In 1821, the Missouri Compromise had explicitly stated that the territory of Nebraska (at this time, the territory of Kansas was included in this) had to be brought into the Union as free states. Douglas and his supporters repealed this legislation. Douglas didn’t actually want to expand slavery- he believed that as the North had a higher population than the South, more Northerners than Southerners would enter these territories and vote to bring them in as free states. What Douglas didn’t foresee was the immense Northern backlash and the colossal political consequences. A new coalition of politicians emerged, united in their belief that slavery must not spread to the West. These included ex-Whigs, Populists, Free-Soilers (a previously existing small party that held the balance between Whigs and Democrats in highly contested states- they supported the idea of a free-state West) and Northern Democrats. This grand coalition was called the Republican Party.

The Republican Party had three wings. Radical Republicans, a stark minority, advocated for the immediate abolition of slavery in the West and the South. Salmon Chase, the author of the first manifesto of Republican ideology, was one of these. Moderate Republicans disapproved of slavery in the South, but were not willing to abolish it. Abraham Lincoln was one of these people- he disliked slavery, but was far more concerned with preserving the Union. ‘If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it’ is a famous quote of his which encapsulates his (and to an extent the Moderate Republican) ideology. Conservative Republicans were those who had no problem with slavery in the South, they simply didn’t want it in the West. The Northern Democrats who had left the party aligned with this group, but some others did as well.

Initially, it was unclear whether the Republican or Populist Party would emerge as the main challenger to the Democrats. The Republican Party overtook the Populist Party in significance in the 1850s due to events like Bleeding Kansas and the Caning of Charles Sumner. Whilst these were highly significant events in U.S. history, for the purposes of this document I will simply say that they galvanised the North into abolitionism and fear of a ‘slave state power conspiracy.’ The Dred Scott case did much the same. These events resulted in the Republican Party becoming the 2nd biggest party in the 1856 election- the Republicans would later win the 1860 election. They did so with no Southern support, simply carrying 17/18 free states. As the North had 66% of the Union’s population, this was enough to bring about a Northern victory. The victory of the Republicans was the direct cause of the Civil War. The victory of a party founded on opposition to slavery expansion was anathema to the South, and the Southern states therefore seceded. The key lesson to take away was that the War was not fought over the existence of slavery. Most Republicans didn’t want to abolish slavery in the South, and Lincoln certainly didn’t. Even if he had wanted to, he couldn’t have. It would require immense Congressional support, and the Democrats still controlled both houses of Congress in 1860. The Supreme Court was also dominated by Southerners. Fundamentally, the North was still racist and even the small minority of abolitionists almost always didn’t believe in full racial equality, merely an end to slavery.

Jack Cobb, Senior School

When the Spanish philosopher George Santayana wrote “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” he revealed an important truth; that today, the value of history as a subject, and the legitimacy of the knowledge gained by historians is often taken for granted. This essay focuses on understanding what the discipline of history is, as well as exploring some of the epistemological problems with studying the past. I will argue that both the positivistic view of history as a science with complete separation between subject and object, and the idealist theory of all history as the history of thought are unconvincing. Instead, it is necessary to emphasis the methods of the historian, in terms of a reliable cognitive process that understands the intentions, context and provenance of evidence. Only by defining history in this way can the problems of historical scepticism be overcome.

What is history?

Firstly, it is important to recognise that the word “history” has morphed into multiple meanings. It is used both in reference to what is supposed to have happened in the course of human existence and experience, and also to the written accounts of these events. Even among this second meaning, there is room for distinctions to be made. Some differentiate between annals, a mere chronological recording by someone living at the time of what is supposed to have happened during some period, and history taken to be a narrative or explanatory discipline. Defining history is debating the relationship between the two meanings and building it into a whole subject of evidence and interpretation, of fact and theory.

The common-sense view of history sees it as a subject concerned with a corpus of ascertained facts. Facts about the past are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, and it is the role of the historian to draw conclusions from them. As E.H. Carr noted in “What is History?” this view of history fitted in perfectly with the empiricist tradition which was the dominant strain of British philosophy from Locke to Bertrand Russell. An empirical theory of knowledge presupposes a complete separation between subject and object. Facts, like senseimpressions, impinge on the observer from the outside, and are independent of his consciousness. Thus a fact is defined by this tradition as “a datum of experience as distinct from conclusions.” By emphasising the separation of the fact and its passive reception, the empiricist view of history conflates historical and scientific knowledge. Just as science aims at being wholly impersonal, and tries to state what has been discovered by the collective intellect of mankind, so too historians search for the objective truth about the past.