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1. How did “Jourdon Anderson” calculate the back-pay owed him by his former owner?
2. Why did Douglass insist upon the right to vote for freed slaves?
3. Why did Douglass differentiate between a “privilege” and a “right”?
I know everyone is a bit tired at this point in the semester. I well remember my own time in college, when my habit was to study in the library till closing time at 2:00 in the morning, and afterward on my way home to my apartment go for a nightly walk in Riverside Park to inscribe into my brain the most valuable elements of what I had read about and thought about and talked about that day — and also to admire the Hudson River and the Palisades and clear my head and remind myself of the universe beyond studying and thinking and talking. Toward semester’s end all the constant conversations with friends and all the solitary walks always took longer, because unlike the rest of the semester, which felt like a time of experimentation, the end of the semester felt like a time of commitment. By commitment I mean making decisions about what had become important to me after a semester of being exposed to so many exquisite and challenging new ideas, and making decisions about what I wanted to consider and be confronted by next. For me, college changed everything every semester, but it also became part of me, new layers of bedrock.
In this course we have talked about personal identity, cultural encounter, social interaction, economic practice, political principle, and more, and I hope you have felt challenged to think about vital matters from new perspectives — that’s one of the intellectual advantages of history, and that’s some of the ceaseless experimentation of life. Think think think; re-think re-think re-think.
But I have also tried my best to leave plenty of room for you to take ownership of your own interpretation of history. Now is an apt time for you to consider commitments — i.e., what has become important to you, and what you will choose to be challenged by next.
In their own way, all of the final documents for this class do exactly this — they staked out what was important, and pointed toward an uncertain future. Lincoln’s Gettsyburg address is perhaps the most beautiful in its holding up of old and new, reality and ideal, experiment and bedrock.
4. So, this semester, what were your new experiments?....
5. And, at semester’s end, what might be your new layer of bedrock?....
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