Freedom & Responsibility: Readings for Writers

Progress in American society comes through careful analysis of the past, choosing the best path forward by interrogating what has come before. Freedom & Responsibility collects philosophical, political, and personal readings from the past and present that showcase the progress of American society through the themes of taking responsibility for the things that have afforded us the freedoms we enjoy in the USA.

Freedom & Responsibility is designed for a wide range of courses and readers. The many shorter, accessible works can serve students of rhetoric, history, and composition. By providing a broad spectrum of complexity in these anthologized readings, students also have access to higher-order works that address the inherent complexity of American society.

Authors include Susan B. Anthony, Marcus Aurelius, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, Zora Neale Hurston, Thomas Jefferson, Helen Keller, John F. Kennedy, Winona LaDuke, Abraham Lincoln, Niccolò Machiavelli, Angela Morales, Barack Obama, Richard Rodriguez, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Henry David Thoreau, Sojourner Truth, Mark Twain, Jose Antonio Vargas, Woodrow Wilson, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chemeketa Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781943536825

Book preview

Introduction

Democracy is an on-going debate — and sometimes a shouting match — that tries to figure out the best way to live with others in a community. The writing in this anthology ponders what it means to be free and what it means to live responsibly, both individually and as a part of society.

These voices approach their shared subject differently. Ralph Waldo Emerson claims that Only in freedom can man grow to his full stature. W. E. B. DuBois decries the freedom of former slaves while they still lack voting rights. Jean-Jacques Rousseau defines what each person must contribute to society. Winona LaDuke urges us to live sustainably, balancing society’s needs with the needs of the environment. Mark Twain suggests we consider our opinions before sharing them with the world. Each voice adds a crucial argument to the discussion.

Freedom & Responsibility also includes key historical documents that frame the discussion. The Declaration of Independence captures the founding of our country’s liberty from colonial rule. The Bill of Rights outlines the critical collective freedoms that our leaders look to for guidance and inspiration. The Gettysburg Address reminds Americans of their ongoing responsibility to maintain the principles of equality on which the country was founded.

Democracy, however, does not stand still. While the causes of abolition and suffrage won out, the selections in this anthology remain relevant to the issues of today. How would Clarence Darrow react to the state of prisons in today’s era of mass incarceration? What would Zora Neale Hurston say to those championing a post-racial America? Would Henry David Thoreau urge civil disobedience to today’s government? Would Elizabeth Cady Stanton sound out against settling for narrow compromises on important issues?

Today, you too are part of the debate about how to live freely and responsibly in a community of competing ideas and diverse people. It’s our hope that reading and thinking about what others have said will help you to figure out for yourself what you will say, and ultimately, how you will come to shape the democracy of tomorrow.

Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?

by Susan B. Anthony

Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906) was an abolitionist, reformer, and activist best known for her work promoting women’s voting rights. After her arrest for voting in the 1872 federal election, Anthony undertook a lecture tour where she delivered this speech so often that prosecutors believed it would be difficult to find jurors unprejudiced by her words. While she was ultimately found guilty, the case brought widespread attention to the cause of women’s suffrage and solidified her role as its most visible champion.

Friends and Fellow-citizens:

I stand before you tonight, under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen’s right, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the national constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny.

Our democratic-republican government is based on the idea of the natural right of every individual member thereof to a voice and a vote in making and executing the laws. We assert the province of government to be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty, and property. And when 100 or 1,000,000 people enter into a free government, they do not barter away their natural rights; they simply pledge themselves to protect each other in the enjoyment of them, through prescribed judicial and legislative tribunals. They agree to abandon the methods of brute force in the adjustment of their differences, and adopt those of civilization.

Nor can you find a word in any of the grand documents left us by the fathers that assumes for government the power to create or to confer rights. The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the constitutions of the several states and the organic laws of the territories, all alike propose to protect the people in the exercise of their God-given rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights:

All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

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Here is no shadow of government authority over rights, nor exclusion of any from their full and equal enjoyment. Here is pronounced the right of all men — and consequently, as the Quaker preacher said, of all women — to a voice in the government. And here, in this very first paragraph of the Declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for, how can the consent of the governed be given, if the right to vote be denied? Again:

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Surely, the right of the whole people to vote is here clearly implied. For however destructive in their happiness this government might become, a disfranchised class could neither alter nor abolish it, nor institute a new one, except by the old brute force method of insurrection and rebellion. One-half of the people of this nation today are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are with this form of government, that enforces taxation without representation, that compels them to obey laws to which they have never given their consent, that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a jury of their peers, that robs them, in marriage, of the custody of their own persons, wages and children — are this half of the people left wholly at the mercy of the other half, in direct violation of the spirit and letter of the declarations of the framers of this government, every one of which was based on the immutable principle of equal rights to all? By those declarations, kings, priests, popes, aristocrats, were all alike dethroned and placed on a common level politically with the lowliest born subject or serf. By them, too, we, as such, were deprived of their divine right to rule, and placed on a political level with women. By the practice of those declarations all class and caste distinction will be abolished; and slave, serf, plebeian, wife, woman, all alike, bound from their subject position to the proud platform of equality.

The preamble of the federal Constitution says:

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and established this constitution for the United States of America.

It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens, but we, the whole people, who formed this Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people — women as well as men. And it is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic — republican government — the ballot. …

For any State to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it, the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them, this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy, a hateful oligarchy of sex. The most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe. An oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor; an oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant; or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household; which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord and rebellion into every home of the nation. And this most odious aristocracy exists, too, in the face of Section 4, of Article 4, which says: The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government.

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What, I ask you, is the distinctive difference between the inhabitants of a monarchical and those of a republican form of government, save that in the monarchical the people are subjects, helpless, powerless, bound to obey laws made by superiors — while in the republican, the people are citizens, individual sovereigns, all clothed with equal power, to make and unmake both their laws and law makers? The moment you deprive a person of his right to a voice in the government, you degrade him from the status of a citizen of the republic to that of a subject, and it matters very little to him whether his monarch be an individual tyrant, as is the Czar of Russia, or a 15,000,000 headed monster, as here in the United States; he is a powerless subject, serf or slave; not a free and independent citizen in any sense.

But, is urged, the use of the masculine pronouns he, his, and him, in all the constitutions and laws, is proof that only men were meant to be included in their provisions. If you insist on this version of the letter of the law, we shall insist that you be consistent, and accept the other horn of the dilemma, which would compel you to exempt women from taxation for the support of the government, and from penalties for the violation of laws. …

In all the penalties and burdens of the government (except the military), women are reckoned as citizens, equally with men. Also, in all privileges and immunities, save those of the jury box and ballot box, the two fundamental privileges on which rest all the others. The United States government not only taxes, fines, imprisons and hangs women, but it allows them to pre-empt lands, register ships, and take out passport and naturalization papers. Not only does the law permit single women and widows to the right of naturalization, but Section 2 says: A married woman may be naturalized without the concurrence of her husband. (I wonder the fathers were not afraid of creating discord in the families of foreigners); and again: When an alien, having complied with the law, and declared his intention to become a citizen, dies before he is actually naturalized, his widow and children shall be considered citizens, entitled to all rights and privileges as such, on taking the required oath. If a foreign born woman by becoming a naturalized citizen, is entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizenship, is not a native born woman, by her national citizenship, possessed of equal rights and privileges?…

Though the words persons, people, inhabitants, electors, citizens, are all used indiscriminately in the national and state constitutions, there was always a conflict of opinion, prior to the war, as to whether they were synonymous terms, as for instance:

No person shall be a representative who shall not have been seven years a citizen, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he is chosen. No person shall be a senator who shall not have been a citizen of the United States, and an inhabitant of that state in which he is chosen.

But, whatever there was for a doubt, under the old regime, the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment settled that question forever, in its first sentence: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

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And the second settles the equal status of all persons — all citizens:

No states shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The only question left to be settled, now, is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens, and no state has a right to make any new law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against negroes.

On Getting Out of Bed

by Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius (121-180) was Emperor of Rome from 161 to 180. He death is widely regarded as the end of the Pax Romana, a period of relative peace during the reign of the Roman Empire. This text comes from Book Five of what we now call Meditations, a collection of personal and philosophical reflections Aurelius considered addresses to himself. It is not likely that Aurelius intended these writings to be published but rather as a source for guidance and self-improvement.

In the morning, when you rise unwillingly, let this thought be present — I am rising to do the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in bed and keep myself warm?

But this is so pleasant!

Do you exist then to take your pleasure, and not at all for action or hard work? Do you not see how all other things in the world are — all trees and plants, sparrows and ants, spiders and bees? They are all working together to put in order their various parts of the universe. And are you unwilling to do the work of a human being? Do you hold back from doing the work appropriate for your nature?

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But one must rest, too!

Rest is necessary, but nature has set boundaries for this, too. She has set boundaries both for eating and drinking, yet you go beyond those boundaries, beyond what is sufficient. However, in your actions, this is not so. You stop short of what you can do. Thus you do not love yourself, for if you did, you would love your human nature and its will.

Others — as many as take pleasure in their trade and profession — will exhaust themselves for that work. But you value your own nature less than the carpenter values his craft, less than the dancer values his dancing, less than the greedy man values his money, less than the vain man values his applause. These people, when they have a strong attraction to a thing, choose to go without food or sleep for the sake of the things they care about. Do actions taken for the common good of human society appear more vile to you or less worthy of your respect and labor?

The Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights is a document that contains the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. James Madison (1751-1836), who later served as fourth president of the United States, introduced the Bill of Rights as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in order to address concerns by the Anti-Federalists about the scope of the government’s authority given by the Constitution. On December 15, 1791, the amendments were formally ratified. Since that time, the document has stood as a cornerstone of American democracy and as a source of debate about that democracy’s key principles.

The Preamble to The Bill of Rights

Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of NewYork, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

Amendment I

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

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In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Crime and Criminals: An Address to the Prisoners in the Chicago County Jail

by Clarence Darrow

Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) was an American lawyer and civil libertarian. He defended several high-profile clients, including John Scopes, a high school teacher who was charged and fined for teaching human evolution in a public school, and the teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb. Darrow’s speech, Crime and Criminals: An Address to the Prisoners in the Chicago County Jail, was subsequently printed by the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company in 1902, and sought out multiple printings through several editions.

Preface

This address is a stenographic report of a talk made to the prisoners in the Chicago jail. Some of my good friends have insisted that while my theories are true, I should not have given them to the inmates of a jail.

Realizing the force of the suggestion that the truth should not be spoken to all people, I have caused these remarks to be printed on rather good paper and in a somewhat expensive form. In this way the truth does not become cheap and vulgar, and is only placed before those whose intelligence and affluence will prevent their being influenced by it.

Crime and Criminals

If I looked at jails and crimes and prisoners in the way the ordinary person does, I should not speak on this subject to you. The reason I talk to you on the question of crime, its cause and cure, is because I really do not in the least believe in crime. There is no such thing as a crime as the word is generally understood. I do not believe there is any sort of distinction between the real moral condition of the people in and out of jail. One is just as good as the other. The people here can no more help being here than the people outside can avoid being outside. I do not believe that people are in jail because they deserve to be. They are in jail simply because they cannot avoid it on account of circumstances which are entirely beyond their control and for which they are in no way responsible. I suppose a great many people on the outside would say I was doing you harm if they should hear what I say to you this afternoon, but you cannot be hurt a great deal anyway, so it will not matter. Good people outside would say that I was really teaching you things that were calculated to injure society, but it’s worth while now and then to hear something different from what you ordinarily get from preachers and the like. These will tell you that you should be good and then you will get rich and be happy. Of course we know that people do not get rich by being good, and that is the reason why so many of you people try to get rich some other way, only you do not understand how to do it quite as well as the fellow outside.

There are people who think that everything in this world is an accident. But really there is no such thing as an accident. A great many folks admit that many of the people in jail ought not to be there, and many who are outside ought to be in. I think none of them ought to be here. There ought to be no jails, and if it were not for the fact that the people on the outside are so grasping and heartless in their dealings with the people on the inside, there would be no such institution as jails.

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I do not want you to believe that I think all you people here are 5 angels. I do not think that. You are people of all kinds, all of you doing the best you can, and that is evidently not very well — you are people of all kinds and conditions and under all circumstances. In one sense everybody is equally good and equally bad. We all do the best we can under the circumstances. But as to the exact things for which you are sent here, some of you are guilty and did the particular act because you needed the money. Some of you did it because you are in the habit of doing it, and some of you because you are born to it, and it comes to be as natural as it does, for instance, for me to be good.

Most of you probably have nothing against me, and most of you would treat me the same as any other person would; probably better than some of the people on the outside would treat me, because you think I believe in you and they know I do not believe in them. While you would not have the least thing against me in the world you might pick my pockets. I do not think all of you would, but I think some of you would. You would not have anything against me, but that’s your profession, a few of you. Some of the rest of you, if my doors were unlocked, might come in if you saw anything you wanted — not out of malice to me, but because that is your trade. There is no doubt there are quite a number of people in this jail who would pick my pockets. And still I know this, that when I get outside pretty nearly everybody picks my pocket. There may be some of you who would hold up a man on the street, if you did not happen to have something else to do, and needed the money; but when I want to light my house or my office the gas company holds me up. They charge me one dollar for something that is worth twenty-five cents, and still all these people are good people; they are pillars of society and support the churches, and they are respectable.

When I ride on the street cars, I am held up — I pay five cents for a ride that is worth two and a half cents, simply because a body of men have bribed the city council and the legislature, so that all the rest of us have to pay tribute to them.

If I do not wish to fall into the clutches of the gas trust and choose to burn oil instead of gas, then good Mr. Rockefeller holds me up, and he uses a certain portion of his money to build universities and support churches which are engaged in telling us how to be good.

Some of you are here for obtaining property under false pretenses — yet I pick up a great Sunday paper and read the advertisements of a merchant prince — Shirt waists for 39 cents, marked down from $3.00.

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When I read the advertisements in the paper I see they are all lies. When I want to get out and find a place to stand anywhere on the face of the earth, I find that it has all been taken up long ago before I came here, and before you came here, and somebody says, Get off, swim into the lake, fly into the air; go anywhere, but get off. That is because these people have the police and they have the jails and judges and the lawyers and the soldiers and all the rest of them to take care of the earth and drive everybody off that comes in their way.

A great many people will tell you that all this is true, but that it does not excuse you. These facts do not excuse some fellow who reaches into my pocket and takes out a five dollar bill; the fact that the gas company bribes the members of the legislature from year to year, and fixes the law, so that all you people are compelled to be fleeced whenever you deal with them; the fact that the street car companies and the gas companies have control of the streets and the fact that the landlords own all the earth, they say, has nothing to do with you.

Let us see whether there is any connection between the crimes of the respectable classes and your presence in the jail. Many of you people are in jail because you have really committed burglary. Many of you, because you have stolen something; in the meaning of the law, you have taken some other person’s property. Some of you have entered a store and carried off a pair of shoes because you did not have the price. Possibly some of you have committed murder. I cannot tell what all of you did. There are a great many people here who have done some of these things who really do not know themselves why they did them. I think I know why you did them — every one of you; you did these things because you were bound to do them. It looked to you at the time as if you had a chance to do them or not, as you saw fit, but still after all you had no choice. There may be people here who had some money in their pockets and who still went out and got some more money in a way society forbids. Now you may not yourselves see exactly why it was you did this thing, but if you look at the question deeply enough and carefully enough you would see that there were circumstances that drove you to do exactly the thing which you did. You could not help it any more than we outside can help taking the positions that we take. The reformers who tell you to be good and you will be happy, and the people on the outside who have property to protect — they think that the only way to do it is by building jails and locking you up in cells on week days and praying for you Sundays.

I think that all of this has nothing whatever to do with right conduct. I think it is very easily seen what has to do with right conduct. Some so-called criminals — and I will use this word because it is handy, it means nothing to me — I speak of the criminals who get caught as distinguished from the criminals who catch them — some of these so-called criminals are in jail for the first offenses, but ninetenths of you are in jail because you did not have a good lawyer and of course you did not have a good lawyer because you did not have enough money to pay a good lawyer. There is no very great danger of a rich man going to jail.

Some of you may be here for the first time. If we would open the doors and let you out, and leave the laws as they are today, some of you would be back tomorrow.