journal 3

“When they used the term “slavery”, however, they weren’t referring to the peculiar institution whereby many of the founding fathers themselves bought and sold African Americans as property; they referred to what they felt Great Britain was doing to their lives and livelihoods”. I picked this quote from the book The American Dream because of what is talking about. I picked it because the Americans that were trying to break away from England at that time believed that they were being treated like slaves because of all the taxes that they were being charged. In reality they were all free and please to do what they wanted. I also picked that quote because what the founding fathers were saying was contradicting with what was actually happening in reality because they owned slaves themselves but could not see that they were also doing wrong or if they did acknowledge the problem they could not do anything about because the country was not ready for that change yet.
I think that the most memorable part of this chapter would be the quote that I picked to share because of how much contradiction it has in it.
I think that the book is going pretty good so far I like some of the topics that the author brings up. I like that he brings up different ideas about the American dream and doesn’t only focus in one of them. I would say that some of the history given in the book is boring and dry because it sounds like something that I would learn in a history class but hopefully it gets better.
The whiskey rebellion was a resistance movement in what was the western part of the United States in the 1790’s, during the presidency of George Washington. During this time the United States was heavily in debt and there was high inflation and the government needed a way to raise money to pay it. The government started taxing whiskey heavily which lead to the discontent of the people. In the rebellion about 500 Pennsylvanian men attacked the house of the tax collector. The Washington administration responding by sending peace commissioners and raising a militia to put down the rebellion. When the militia did not need to use force the rebellion was put down before they arrived. This showed that the government was willing to suppress violent resistance to its laws.