Primary Documents Sept. 11, 2008

This week, one of the primary documents that will be featured here is entitled "Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts", a sermon given by Bishop Secker of Oxford. In it, he argues that the time has come to aggressively spread the Christian faith among the colonies. What is most striking about his sermon is the fact that he doesn't just share his worry that Europeans in the colonies aren't getting enough of the faith. In fact, he wishes to also help African slaves and Native Americans to embrace the faith. What he proposes here is a radical alternative to what had been taking shape in the colonies from the late 17th century up until this point, especially in regard to African slaves. Bishop Secker worries for the souls of all of mankind, and hopes that in the American colonies there can be a larger presence for Christianity in everyone's lives. In order to do all of this, Secker wants to send more ministers to America from England to spread the faith, an unpopular position at the time.

I found the document doing a search for "primary documents of the Great Awakening". The website I found that contains this document, http://www.constitution.org/primarysources/primarysources.html#17, has many other primary documents relating to the founding of the United States, and could be very valuable for people doing research on that subject. The direct link to the piece that I read was http://www.constitution.org/primarysources/spg2.html.


Our second source deals with events closer to the Civil War. This source was by doing a word search by using the phrase “primary antebellum documents”. A link popped up that led to the website Territorial Kansas Online. The original source was created by Joseph Pomeroy Root, who will later on be elected as Kansas’s first state Lieutenant Governor. But, at the time was a prisoner who was present at the speech and wrote it down. The host site is sponsored by The University of Kansas and the Kansas State Historical Society. I believe that they are reliable sources, because they both have to rely on proven historical facts that have been well researched and documented.


The speech is given by David R. Atchison to the Pro-Slavery solders before they attacked the town of Lawrence; gives some very good incites to how strong and determinant they were to have Kansas as a slave state. The men that take part in the attack on Lawrence are known as Boarder Ruffians. Boarder Ruffians are men on the western boarder of Missouri who wanted Kansas as a slave state. But, men from all over the South, as far away as South Carolina, come to the call to fight for Kansas. Atchison tells the solders many times during the speech to destroy anything in there path that may hinder the pro-slavery movement. He also tells the men that they are all “true sons of the noble South” who are fighting under one flag that symbolizes “Southern Right”, and are joining together for a righteous cause. The pro-slavery supporters believe that the Northern Abolitionists have no right to be in Kansas and will suffer the consequences of their actions

http://www.territorialkansasonline.org