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Debt peonage and Indian slavery had a lasting influence on American politics during the period 1846 to 1867, forcing lawmakers to acknowledge the fact that slavery existed in many forms. Following the Civil War, legislators realized that the Thirteenth Amendment did not cast a wide enough net, because peonage and captive slavery were represented as voluntary in nature and remained commonplace throughout New Mexico. When Congress passed a measure in 1867 explicitly outlawing peonage and captive slavery in New Mexico, they implicitly acknowledged the shortcomings of the Thirteenth Amendment. The preexistence of peonage and Indian slavery in the Southwest inculcated a broader understanding of involuntary labor in post-Civil War America and helped to expand political and judicial philosophy regarding free labor. These two systems played a crucial role in America's transition from free to unfree labor in the mid-1800s and contributed to the judicial and political frameworks that undermined slavery.
The purpose of involvement of Non-Governmental organizations (NGOs) in armed conflict resolution is to help to keep peace, protect innocent people, contribute to relief operations, to advocate, assist in the reconstruction and development programs. This action is always carried out through the NGOs grassroots mediation processes. This study investigates the prospective of implementing humanitarian programs to help and care for the young war child survivors of the 1991 to 2001 civil wars in Sierra Leone.
To explore the intervention of the NGOs activities in the civil wars in Sierra Leone, I examined three NGOs and one governmental institution as case study organizations. The NGOs include 1) UNICEF, 2) World Vision, 3) Plan International and 4) the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender, and Childrens’ Affair (MSWGCA) as government agency. The research investigates the NGOs and MSWGC’s specific services provided to children during and after the war in Sierra Leone. The specific services include: 1) the NGOs’ implementing policies, 2) who got served and under what conditions, 3) what models of services do they use, 4) what kind of government policies were put in place, 5) what were the challenges they faced, and 6) what were their strategies during and after the civil war in Sierra Leone. There were also ten Adult Survivors of Childhood Exposure to War (ASCEW) members interviewed to balance the NGOs’ claims. Based on my literature review and findings on ASCEW, I make my recommendations to allow the organizations to move forward with their humanitarian operations.
Lockean principles of liberty and individual freedoms propelled the American colonists to revolt against British dominion and establish a constitutional republic. Unlike ancient republics, usually empires or monarchies, the Founding Fathers, determined to be governed by their consent instead of the divine right of an absolute ruler, set forth a written covenant to structure their government and safeguard those liberties. Conflicting views of republican democracy led to factionalism, separatism and ultimately, war. Using the war power, the victorious North would embark upon an even more liberal project to reunite the war-torn nation, expand citizenship and individual rights to more of the nation's inhabitants and set the stage for the vast expansion of rights in the 20th Century.
Americans are deeply polarized on a variety of issues facing the United States and the divides largely fall along political party lines. Polarization in the country has significantly increased in recent decades as the parties become ideological cohesive and move away from the center. Extreme polarization has led to dysfunctional government, dehumanization of political opponents, and occasionally violence. Some political experts and historians compare the current political climate to that of the Civil War. In some ways, Americans are still fighting the Civil War. What kind of country should the United States be? Who is American? And who is entitled to enjoy the rights and protections of citizenship and personhood unencumbered by race? These questions continue to divide Americans. The study aimed to understand the role of political party identification and color-blind racial attitudes in predicting white people's beliefs about the Civil War. The authors conducted a survey which asked the respondents to express their worldviews using the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS). It then asked them to share their responses to two images: one with a man holding the Confederate Flag inside the U.S. Capitol during the January 6th insurrection and other of Black Lives Matter Protest. The results showed that while there was common ground in white racial affect among white Democrats and Republicans, our findings showed Democrats more frequently acknowledged individual acts of racism and its structural dimensions. White Democrats were more likely than white Republicans to read the brutal and racist history in the Confederate battle flag and view it as a hateful, white supremacist symbol. Republicans less frequently expressed solidarity with civil rights causes and less antipathy toward Confederate symbols. The divisions carry significant ramifications for how to forge a healthy multicultural, multiracial democracy.