Pol Assignment 7

Assignment (Due 11/12): Choose one passage from Thoreau write out the passage and interpret them and explain why you chose them.

Go to the link for African-American Odyssey and under the section Abolition choose two topics from part 1 and part 2, research these topics, and summarize them and explain how they relate to the readings by Thoreau.


Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. 

To me this passage is saying is that the government can show it has no problem taking advantage of its own people and the situations they might be in. If a problem arises that could somehow benefit the government than the government should allow it. The government however does not help situations that could use help such as education, freedom of all its people, trouble in the wild west. Had the government in fact not got in the way people on their own would have accomplished so much more.

The two readings I chose from part one were: plea for the suppression of the slave trade, and Christian Arguments against slavery. In christian Arguments against slavery in 1737 Benjamin Lay printed an article stating  that there are people claiming to be holiest of Christians not realizing that slavery is a sin.

The article plea for the suppression of the slave trade was an article talking about the many reasons slave trade needed to be abolished while also stating that the slave trade is part guilty on all sides not just Americans but people all over the Atlantic.

I think they relate to Thoreau's article in a sense because they are talking about how the government can help but they don't and let problems persist and slavery would be similar because it a problem the government doesn't control and these people don't see it that way so people are trying to take the action that the government refuses to take.