Freedom we heard through the Grapevine

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African Americans were no longer slaves and had freedom in the country after the American civil war but they weren’t truly free. Groups and organizations such as Northerners and Southerners and a government system seemed too keep freedmen locked in a slavery cycle. With laws, traditional viewpoints and an existing system that was broken caused difficulties for slaves to be truly free..
When the civil war ended the government system as well as citizens now had to deal with the issues of how too handle newly free slaves. Northerners who fought against slavery and Southerners who were for slavery had see slaves as free individuals in society, which was never seen before. Northern Unionists lectured and pressured freed men into essentially thinking their way. The result of these lectures were counter intuitive towards freedmen assimilation. Instead of an educational experience it was more of slaves being talked down too. They were told that they always work for someone and be dependent; this essentially meant that they weren’t really free. The following two quotes are from a lecture by Captain Charles Soule who was a respected Northern Unionist who was giving a lesson on work ethic to recent ex-slaves. “Every man must work under orders.”1 Soule is telling people who just gained freedom that they will always work under someone and be dependent. The goal of being free was too break away from dependency and be able to work for yourself; Soule takes those dreams away and says they will never be independent. Soule goes further into the lecture and directly reasserts the identity of were better than you theory. “There must be a head man everywhere, and on a plantation the head man, who gives all the orders, is the owner of the place...Wh...

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...e civil. He blatantly says that if they are left unchecked then they would become barbaric. This is a clear sign of personal pride and for any progress to move forward then one must push aside personal pride and President Johnson shows no signs of changing anything.
After the American civil war a number of great things happened; the most important being the end of slavery in the United States. Even though slavery had ended in the United States and African Americans were free, things were not fully concrete quite yet. With the chaotic traditions passed down from generation to generation, miss guided principles and systems in place that made freedom for ex-slaves very difficult to obtain; lead to limited freedom for freedmen.

“No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.”5

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