Over the period of the Atlantic Slave Trade, from approximately 1526 to 1867, some 12.5 million slaves were shipped from Africa, and 10.7 million arrived in the Americas.
There are several phrases associated with the Statue of Liberty, but the most recognizable is “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” This quote comes from Emma Lazarus’ sonnet, New Colossus, which she wrote for a fundraiser auction to raise money for the pedestal upon which the Statue of Liberty now sits. The poem did not receive much recognition and was quite forgotten after the auction.
In the early 1900s and after Lazarus’ death, one of her friends began a campaign to memorialize Lazarus and her New Colossus sonnet. The effort was a success, and a plaque with the poem’s text was mounted inside the pedestal of the statue
Although Locke and Rousseau wrote prominent treatises on the social contract, Thomas Hobbes introduced the idea of it. He argued that human beings were evil in nature, and thus needed to enter a contract in which everyone basically agreed not to kill each other (i.e. in his natural state, although completely free, man would always be wary of subjected to another man's brutishness. Whereas in society we are all supposedly better off-even if there are sacrifices involved-because there is an agreement binding each man into behavior that's meant to contain man's evil nature).
