John Baptista
Mr. Daehwab
Hist: 14
07.23.2019
Reflection #4-
Final Reflection
In the beginning, I came into this online class wanting to have a more accurate
understanding of the United States founding. I wanted to know more about the founding fathers
and their thinking when they decided to break apart from their former leader and create their own
nation. I also wanted to have a better insight into the treatment of Native Americans and the
progress towards abolishing slavery. Through this course, I was able to achieve all this with
participating in the course unique assignments and branching out to different sources when new
questions arose from previous answered ones. All of this resulted in new appreciations, new
skepticisms, and a whole new way to think. One of my many interests is to ponder about the
future advancement of human civilization and to consider it with a bio-anthropologic approach.
I do not think that anyone can ever justify how the Spanish and British Colonist/future
U.S. Citizens raped the Native Americans from their culture and homeland. At first, it may have
been social Darwinism at work, but at some point, you would think that learned men would
understand the fair treatment of all human beings and ceased the cultivation of occupied land, but
what is done is done, and we can no longer fix the blood that spilled on the nation we live on
now. Overall, I saw that Native American culture was doomed the second Christopher Columbus
set sailed across the Pacific Ocean, and when British Colonist gave birth to the new colony,
James Town. At first, some natives were hostile and posed a threat to the Colonist because of
“thievery” and the Colonist only knew how to approach this as viewing the “savages” as a pest.
Eventually, the Colonist understood that they had the upper advantage against the Native
Americans in every way and used it to take as much from the Natives as possible. This always
led me to wonder, what would happen if European explorers never found the Americas? Would
Native American culture have the oppurtunity and catch up with other developed civilizations?
We shall never know.
I was most anxious to learn more about those who took part in, what I like to call,
the Adams committee: do to the fact that they were all part of the committee that formed the
Declaration of Independence. In my opinion, these were the most forward-thinking minds of the
entire Continental Congress. Together they drew up a document that was beautifully crafted and
would change the course of modern civilization for the better, but because of the backward
thinking of the rest of Congress, much of this document was rewritten to fit the needs of all other
colonies. After having a deeper individual insight of Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin I view these
men with a better appreciation of their work and forward-thinking.
In the case of slavery and women suffrage, It allows me to understand the natural evil
within man. Both are a contradiction to the idea of a free nation and are a result of keeping the
powerful man powerful, and the rich man rich. I know it not to be a fault that exists within only
white men because world history shows that these two evils existed within different cultures all
around the globe. Slaves kept the rich, wealthy and women suffrage kept the male gender
dominant. These observations only led to more questions that the content of this class can not
answer such as, why do some men obsess over greed and power even when it equals unjust and
bloodshed, and for so long? I think everyone should have the oppurtunity to retake a history class
for the purpose of remembering the mistakes of our founding fathers and ideas that could have
worked better.