Pontiac's Rebellion: A Symbol Of Freedom

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The US is most prideful as the first nation to reject the ideas of “the society of privilege, patronage, and fixed status” of their European counterparts across the Atlantic Ocean. The nation grew rapidly with the idea of “American exceptionalism” which made the US “a symbol of freedom”. “We the People,” as the first three words of the US Constitution, had thus become the manifestation of American freedom through the eyes of many Americans, but at the same time, a complete misconception as it had referred only to white men with property and was written completely by a committee of older white men. Because of this, the US Constitution did not fully recognize any other people, like the Native Americans, white women, and blacks, free or slave,…show more content…
Josephe believed that they had been oppressed as human beings by getting exploited of land, life, and liberty instead of being treated as one of their own. He also drew upon the hypocrisy that lingered in Spanish Catholicism as they began to perform “other superstitious rites, giving the children to understand that they must all do this in the future” to question whether the true motive of the Spanish in converting them was to either changed them into civilized Catholics or simply into resources. Pontiac, the leader of Pontiac’s Rebellion, gave a different look by stating that the Native Americans were not slaves of the white people and had the same needs of white people in which they “could not live without bread and pork and beef!” He concluded that the Native Americans were just like them, only to be manipulated by economic pressures of “guns, knives, kettles, and blankets” that had made them less independent. Despite all of this, the Founding Fathers decided to not include the Native Americans. One reason was that they were portrayed more as unfit animals in which Bartolome de Las Casas noted how “the Spaniards” had “pitilessly called them lazy…show more content…
Unlike the Native Americans, they were viewed more as a tool rather than an individual since the beginning of the African slave trade. Their lives were devastated as families were split apart and their freedom was stripped away from them. Those who were enslaved soon used freedom petitions to rally to the cause of abolishing slavery, one in which revealed how they had “with other men a natural and unalienable right to that freedom which the great parent of the universe hath bestowed equally on all mankind” as they argued that it was unjust to judge people by their appearance. They believed, like white women, that every individual was given such rights as a human being as well. They believed that they were fellow brothers, but were instead ignored and harassed by white men for their own benefit. Slaves also pointed out how slavery was just an excuse for the South to continue their economic enterprise, because they needed as much labor as possible which the blacks were indeed “to be sold like beast[s] of burden” by them. There would be no other reason why the slaves would be necessary as it only existed for the greed of the white men who enjoyed profit. Within the same petition, it also addressed a religious contention that the white men are hypocritical in their faith in God. The slaves questioned why if all men were created equally

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