User:Americandreamer2002/American Dream: Difference between revisions

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* The bolded terms are where I want to include links to other articles. I proposed these changes in the Teahouse because the American Dream article is protect. Until I can make those changes,if that is even possible, I have the terms bolded in my outline.

* The bolded terms are where I want to include links to other articles. I proposed these changes in the Teahouse because the American Dream article is protect. Until I can make those changes,if that is even possible, I have the terms bolded in my outline.

This is the sandbox page where you will draft your initial Wikipedia contribution. If you’re starting a new article, you can develop it here until it’s ready to go live. If you’re working on improvements to an existing article, copy only one section at a time of the article to this sandbox to work on, and be sure to use an edit summary linking to the article you copied from. Do not copy over the entire article. You can find additional instructions here. Remember to save your work regularly using the “Publish page” button. (It just means ‘save’; it will still be in the sandbox.) You can add bold formatting to your additions to differentiate them from existing content.

Article Draft

American Dream:

18th century

Historically, the Dream originated in colonial mystique regarding frontier life. As John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, the colonial Governor of Virginia, noted in 1774, the Americans “for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled”. He added that, “if they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west”. The idea of the American Dream is ever evolving and changing. When the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776, the founding fathers believed that this would ratify the role of government and society in the United States. Jim Cullen claims:

Ever since, the Declaration of Independence has functioned as the banner of the American Dream, one repeatedly waved by figures that included women’s rights activists, populists, homosexuals, and anyone who has ever believed that happiness can not only be pursued, but attained. The U.S. Constitution, which marked the other bookend of the nation’s creation, lacks the mythic resonances of the Declaration, though it takes little reflection to see that it is the backdrop, if not the foundation, for all American Dreams. Whatever their disagreements about its scope or character, most Americans would agree that their national government is legitimate insofar as it permits a level playing field of dreams. Many of us have doubts that the government does serve this function; few have doubts that it should.

The Declaration of Independence and Constitution were used as guidelines aiming to preserve the liberty, equality, and the dream of Americans; however, there was significant conflict among equality-inequality and freedom-subjection between the 17th and 19th century ^[1]. In order to gain independence, America depended on slavery ^[2].To gain support, America traded tobacco because it was a desired product, but slaves predominantly produced tobacco ^[3]. Therefore, independence greatly leaned on the work of slaves ^[4]. Moreover, nearly half of the slaves in America lived in Virginia, also where very well-known advocates of freedom and equality lived ^[5]. Presidents including George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson advocated for liberty, justice, and human rights, but owned slaves at the same time, highlighting contradictions between equality and inequality, as well as freedom and subjection in America ^[6].

American Dream:

In Turner’s thesis, the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for landed gentry who controlled most of the land and charged heavy rents. Frontier land was free for the taking. Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled “The Significance of the Frontier in American History“, delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. He won wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner elaborated on the theme in his advanced history lectures and in a series of essays published over the next 25 years, published along with his initial paper as The Frontier in American History. Turner’s emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.

While during the 19th century Turner and many Europeans may have perceived land as available to anyone, this in reality was not true. In the early 1850s, dozens of Yuki Native Americans were killed for simply being on a piece of land located in Mendocino County, California ^[7]. After California became a part of America, the Yuki natives as well as other natives faced genocide ^[8]. Not only did the Yuki natives face killings, kidnappings, rapes, and the spread of disease, they were also nearly wiped out entirely ^[9]. Furthermore, the California and State government never agreed on how to handle the violence directed towards the Yuki people, which could have put an end to these violent acts ^[10]. The genocide against the Yuki Native Americans is just one example of Native American genocide and illustrates how land in America has not been free to all. 

• The bolded terms are where I want to include links to other articles. I proposed these changes in the Teahouse because the American Dream article is protect. Until I can make those changes, if that is even possible, I have the terms bolded in my outline.