Wounded Knee Massacre Analysis

1. The Wounded Knee Massacre took place on December 29, 1890, but the tensions that led to this eruption in conflict had long been developing. For years the United States government had been seizing land that belonged to Native Americans through “trickery… deportation… and murder”, including that of the Lakota Sioux, who were the victims of the massacre. Not only that, “Americans had shown ‘democratic energy and enterprise’ in ‘driving back the Indians, or annihilating them as a race’”, demonstrating that Native American genocide was as much about stealing land as it was ethnic cleansing. Obviously, the Native Americans that remained alive but were confined to reservations, on land that was undesirable and vacant of bison (which were essential …show more content…
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1852, just after the Compromise of 1850. Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was African-American, it was a fictional novel, but addressed the very real main theme of anti-slavery. It was an impassioned piece of work that showed the harsh reality of the life of a slave. Written so soon after the Compromise of 1850, it was a controversial piece, and scandalized slavery supporters, who heavily criticized it. The Compromise of 1850 was meant to diffuse tensions between slave states and free states, as far as land acquisition was concerned. One of the five bills passed under the Compromise of 1850 was the Fugitive Slave Act, which heavily fined officials who did not arrest a fugitive slave or any person found giving aid to a fugitive slave. The act also required civilians to help slave catchers, which was a widely-disliked provision in the North. Since the plot of the novel concerns runaway slaves, it is clear why this work caused such a profound reaction and was so revolutionary and shocking for its time. The novel was stirring enough to even further incite Northern anger at the institution of slavery and in particular the Fugitive Slave Act. This anger increased tensions between the North and the South, and precipitated the Civil War, which began in 1861, less than a decade after the novel was published. Word Count: …show more content…
Racial violence became a central feature of the Reconstruction era because of the changing nature of the social and racial hierarchy. For as long as African-Americans had been present in the United States, there had been a firm racial hierarchy in place, in which whites were at the top and blacks were at the bottom, and this was reflected in their rights; whites had them all, while blacks effectively had none. But all this began to change during Reconstruction, as slavery was outlawed and laws began to change to enfranchise blacks and give them more rights as citizens, as well giving them political positions. The social and political advancement of black Americans made whites insecure and uncomfortable with their shifting position in society. Whites clashed with blacks in the political arena if a black person dared to vote against their white employer, and this led to widespread violence against African-Americans, which was thought by whites to be “a response to the ‘bad legislation, official incompetency, and corruption’ of Black politicians. The Ku Klux Klan, a group dedicated to white supremacy, emerged during the Reconstruction, and committed violent acts and assassinated Republican leaders, both black and white. The Klan was effectively “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party… and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy”. The Klan’s violent acts had the political purpose of destroying the Republican party’s infrastructure