Rising with the Underclass and Poems

By Walter Rice

Trek through a different time and place as author Walter Rice combines poetry and history into one riveting book. Rising with the Underclass and Poems brings you a collection of unforgettable literary pieces. Its last section, the poetry, emancipates the authors innermost emotions and desires that you will be inspired with. History, the other part, captures his sentiments over the events that shaped the world today. Both entertaining and educational, this collection allows you to visit worlds that only youre imagination can take you. Find yourself lost in a captivating flow of melodic words through this anthology today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9781469128634

Walter Rice

WALTER RICE is the author of several works of crime fiction and is a former newspaper editor and reporter in the Pacific Northwest. He also paints, often digitally, and plays the piano and writes music. He lives near Seattle with his wife and pets.

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Copyright © 2010 by Walter Rice.

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Contents

Introduction

The Nature of the Revolution

The Liberation of Slaves in the North

The United States and other Countries with Democratic Development

The Major compromises in the Constitution (and Modern Implications)

The Conditions of Working People in Post Revolution America

The Native Americans Become Dispossessed

Movement Against the Spread of Slavery In the North From the 1840’s

Education in the South

Blacks and schools after the Civil War

Education during the Congressional Reconstruction

Teachers During Reconstruction

Post Reconstruction Movement That Supported Equal Rights

Human Rights in the Constitution

The Anti Slavery Movement in England

Working People From the 1850’s Through The Early 1920’s

Setting The Stage For The New Deal

The Argument for a Revolution to replace Capitalism

Reforms and Labor Law of the New Deal

Corporations Gain the Rights of Individual human beings

Something for The 21st Century, The Innocence Project

The Ocean and the Sandy Beach

To Josephine (from high school days)

The Lagoon at Sunset

Sunlight Spirits

The Forest

Impressions of the Ocean

Impressions of the Bay

The Great Dawn

To Diane

Blossom Time

A Song of Life (at a pond)

To Rose

Dedicated to Alistair Hulett, a great songwriter, singer, and guitarist, From Scotland and also Australia, who was such an enjoyable voice for the common people and the underclass, and who died unexpectedly on January 28, 2010

Introduction

This is a short book but it seems to me like a long one, because as I have discovered, writing a book is not a simple thing. In expectation that many people may read this book, I want it to say something but I also want it to say it very well. The poetry section was something much more natural for me, and it became an inspiration, my own inspiration, and that part I have little concern for. The other part, the history part is the part I always feel I can never get to be what I want it to be. When I try to organize it and I then try to add new sections to it seems to flow out the wrong way and then I have to reorganize it again.

I have been inspired by stories from history from many different people, and feel compelled, perhaps too often to put what I learned from them into my story line. I do not know that I always do it appropriately, but I try very hard to do so, and I believe adding some of their stories adds dimensions to the whole story I am trying to tell, it expands the whole picture. I try to attribute what is derived from another writer, and although their name shows up very often where I try to tell their story, I sometimes feel I fall short in some of the details of attributing every detail I should have attributed to them. To that I apologize very deeply. There are parts that I gathered together for this story that I wrote myself, especially about New Deal labor law but there are other parts that I borrowed from some very professional writers, such as Adam Hochschild. I even used the on-line Wikipedia Encyclopedia which many authors would shun, but it does contain some very detailed information that would be difficult to find in other places, and it does provide good background and saves me from multiplying the amount of research I would have to gather for my first stab at doing something entirely new, writing a book.

Walter Rice, July 2010, Sacramento California

A short look at the history of the United States

The Nature of the Revolution

This can be known to most people who have some knowledge of American history that do not have deep prejudices about it. It is a highlight and looks at some specific unconventional details.

We Issued a Declaration of our independence and fought a revolutionary war that is our birth. We declared our right to be independent in the highest terms, declaring that all men are created equal and that they have certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This examination begins with how this was not true, that it was not at all reflected in American reality during the revolution, or for a very long time afterward. In some important senses such a grand declaration may have been better than an honest one, because an honest one would have given the advantage to exalt to those to entrench us in all the real bad things America had at the beginning. It would have attracted all the same support that our other great document, the Constitution, has. The fact is we were not born as a complete revolution, in the sense that our new vision did not threaten the ruling classes of the important countries, which were monarchies mixed with industrial and merchant elites. At our founding conventions, representatives of ordinary working people were not present as stakeholders, which will be explored. We appealed for Britain’s rivals, especially France and adventuresome soldiers from Prussia. We were nationalists and our common people did not challenge our economic elites. We, meaning our elites who were also colonial subjects, did advance some particular issues, related to what we were as colonial subjects that focused on human rights and rights and procedures before the law that appeared to be universal and have great value in them, but did not apply to everyone, and quite often applied less as our country’s institutions and establishments (as plantations, and later such as corporations) developed. History is by no means monolithic, the more powerful may turn it in directions that serve people on their same level, but change for the better or worse does not spring from any single source. Profound changes can come from outside of the mainstream of history, but they mainly reflect the issues that are shared by large groups of people, or powerful elite groups that place themselves above other people, and sometimes people who have no voice. Where a break occurs such, as with a Revolution, different opportunities open and not just one group can contend, and they may battle it out to prevail.

The Liberation of Slaves in the North

An unintended consequence in American history from a very opposite direction happened during the Revolutionary War, in Massachusetts. I came aware of this from the ‘Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia’. I looked up Aaron Burr, Burr’s daughter Sara, and the man she married, a lawyer named Tapping Reeve. Reeve was an historic figure who founded the first law school in America, the Litchfield Law School, in Litchfield Connecticut. In 1781, Reeve worked with Theodore Sedgwick to defend Elizabeth Freeman (known as Mum Bett) who had been a slave in Sheffield, MA. Mum Bett had listened to discussions related to the Massachusetts Constitution, and heard the phrase ‘All men are created equal’. Sedgwick and Reeve would successfully employ this argument in Court to secure her freedom. This case (Brom & Bett v Ashley) would set a