1892 Borden Murders Lizzie Borden
Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her Father forty- one
At one point or another, every schoolchild typically hears this small rhyme scheme, whether to accompany a hot-scotch match or as a joke towards the macabre. The Lizzie Borden case, however, was one of America's most famous trials – like the Salem Witch Trials, The Scopes ‘Monkey' Trial, and even O.J. Simpson. All of these become iconic, yet reflect somewhat of a mirror of society and American culture of the time. Looking at these trials, we can dissect some of the social mores and cultural trends of the time, learning much about society and the very real assumptions underlying the bias and dominant cultural schemes of the time. Of course, we have the trial transcripts – quite usually far less intriguing than the books, articles, and now movies about the subject. However, we also have the unconscious testimony – what is not said or what is said in certain ways that reflect the issues that are really in context (e.g. budding adolescents in a Puritanical society in Salem, etc.).
Shaping of the Colonies in 1763 There
There have been few eras in human history possessed with more of the expectant optimism, and the grim pragmatism, than the century following first contact with the new world of North America. With an expansive landmass, the size of which more than doubled that known to citizens of any European country at the time, brimming with natural resources and lying open for exploration and settlement, many thinkers of the age shared Benjamin Franklin's fateful estimation, made in his tract America as a Land of Opportunity, which claimed "so vast is the Territory of North-America, that it will require many Ages to settle it fully." Penned and published in 1751, Franklin's treatise on the seemingly infinite riches to be reaped by the American colonies failed to fully anticipate man's overwhelming compulsion to compete for the control of land.