Title America is the land of the free. From the moment of its birth to now, Americans have boasted in their country for this reason. However, at some points in history this boast can be contradictory. When national identities began to form in society, they were formed from the ideas of freedom and individuality. Some people formed an identity that supported mainly individualism and freedom, but it did not consider slavery too much to begin with. This identity is the national identity of a free man’s country. The other identity held the same values except it excluded everyone but white males. This is a national identity of a white man’s country. As time grew on, these identities grew stronger. When they finally clashed they brought along …show more content…
The writers wrote about subjects on individuality. Most of the writers wrote about the positives of individualism, however, some did write about the negatives. These included Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote The Scarlet Letter, a tale of how adultery left Hester Prynne in isolation and another Herman Melville authored Moby Dick, a story of a whale hunter dying on his voyage (America 318-319). These two authors wrote about the limitations of individualism. It is important to consider that if there are people writing counter arguments about an idea, then there must be a reason and a popular belief in that idea. So, the presence of these two works proves that the country had a national identity that was formed on freedom and individuality. These confrontations to individualism were spurred up by the flow of works coming from other writers. These writers wrote to the people who had similar mindsets, including young people and those who had left their family homes to start lives in new urban centers. Ralph Waldo Emerson started this movement. This movement was founded on believes against a market society and how it “was debasing Americans’ spiritual lives.” Emerson, along with Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Walt Whitman set out to write and influence people to self-realization and freedom (America 315-317). So, as these transcendentalists …show more content…
The domestic slave trade distributed surplus workers throughout the south. The slave trade expanded with the country. In fact, it was “crucial to the prosperity of migrating white planters because it provided workers to fell the forests and plant cotton in the Gulf States.” While it was helping the Deep South, it also "sustained the wealth of the Upper South” (America 345-347). So, slaves were necessary for the southern planters to prosper. This is another reason many people wanted the national identity to be one of a white man’s country, that way they could exploit people of color. Even the poor white men, enjoyed the idea of a white man’s country, even though they did not directly benefit from slave labor. In fact, they relished the fact that they “ranked above blacks.” A U.S. senator, when speaking about white men, claimed that “a white man “walks erect in the dignity of his color and race, and feels that he is a superior being, with the more exalted powers and privileges than others”’ (America 356). So, because of slavery, racial superiority, and control tactics African Americans were not allowed to have the same basic rights and freedoms that were asserted in a free man’s country. That is why the national identity of a white man’s country prevailed for so
...hile African Americans went through journeys to escape the restrictions of their masters, women went through similar journeys to escape the restrictions of the men around them. Immigrants further strived to fit in with the American lifestyle and receive recognition as an American. All three groups seemed to shape up an American lifestyle. Today, all three of these perceptions of freedom have made an appearance in our lives. As we can see, the transition of freedom from race equality to gender equality shows that freedom has been on a constant change. Everyone acquires their own definition of freedom but the reality of it is still unknown; people can merely have different perceptions of freedom. Nevertheless, in today’s society, African Americans live freely, women are independent, and immigrants are accepted in society. What more freedom can one possibly ask for?
For Edmund S. Morgan American slavery and American freedom go together hand in hand. Morgan argues that many historians seem to ignore writing about the early development of American freedom simply because it was shaped by the rise of slavery. It seems ironic that while one group of people is trying to break the mold and become liberated, that same group is making others confined and shattering their respectability. The aspects of liberty, race, and slavery are closely intertwined in the essay, 'Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox.'
America is a façade hidden behind its notorious past, with an even more troubling present. The land of the free, home of the brave, and one nation claimed to be united under the presence of an omnipotent power, but is it really? America profits off of the so-called dream that is sold to the hopeful and broken. This nation has been riddled with violence, persecution, hatred, and a false sense of togetherness. Racism was not the beginning, it was the ending result of a power struggle between those who wanted control and those who had it. The systematic enslavement and dehumanization of blacks resulted in the concept of a racial caste division, creating the idea of us vs. them (Wacquant, 2002). The Jim Crow laws, prisons, and the creation of ghettos
America is a nation that is often glorified in textbooks as a nation of freedom, yet history shows a different, more radical viewpoint. In Howard Zinn’s A People's History of the United States, we take a look at American history through a different lens, one that is not focused on over glorifying our history, but giving us history through the eyes of the people. “This is a nation of inconsistencies”, as so eloquently put by Mary Elizabeth Lease highlights a nation of people who exploited and sought to keep down those who they saw as inferior, reminding us of more than just one view on a nation’s history, especially from people and a gender who have not had an easy ride.
Since the beginning of slavery in the America, Africans have been deemed inferior to the whites whom exploited the Atlantic slave trade. Africans were exported and shipped in droves to the Americas for the sole purpose of enriching the lives of other races with slave labor. These Africans were sold like livestock and forced into a life of servitude once they became the “property” of others. As the United States expanded westward, the desire to cultivate new land increased the need for more slaves. The treatment of slaves was dependent upon the region because different crops required differing needs for cultivation. Slaves in the Cotton South, concluded traveler Frederick Law Olmsted, worked “much harder and more unremittingly” than those in the tobacco regions.1 Since the birth of America and throughout its expansion, African Americans have been fighting an uphill battle to achieve freedom and some semblance of equality. While African Americans were confronted with their inferior status during the domestic slave trade, when performing their tasks, and even after they were set free, they still made great strides in their quest for equality during the nineteenth century.
his own life how he wishes, even if it will damage health or lead to
After the American Revolution, slavery began to decrease in the North, just as it was becoming more popular in the South. By the turn of the century, seven of the most Northern states had abolished slavery. During this time, a surge of democratic reform swept the North to the West, and there were demands for political equality, economic and social advances for all Americans. Northerners said that slavery revoked the human right of being a free person and when new territories became available i...
Slavery is the idea and practice that one person is inferior to another. What made the institution of slavery in America significantly different from previous institutions was that “slavery developed as an institution based upon race.” Slavery based upon race is what made slavery an issue within the United States, in fact, it was a race issue. In addition, “to know whether certain men possessed natural rights one had only to inquire whether they were human beings.” Slaves were not even viewed as human beings; instead, they were dehumanized and were viewed as property or animals. During this era of slavery in the New World, many African slaves would prefer to die than live a life of forced servitude to the white man. Moreover, the problem of slavery was that an African born in the United States never knew what freedom was. According to Winthrop D. Jordan, “the concept of Negro slavery there was neither borrowed from foreigners, nor extracted from books, nor invented out of whole cloth, nor extrapolated from servitude, nor generated by English reaction to Negroes as such, nor necessitated by the exigencies of the New World. Not any one of these made the Negro a slave, but all.” American colonists fought a long and bloody war for independence that both white men and black men fought together, but it only seemed to serve the white man’s independence to continue their complete dominance over the African slave. The white man must carry a heavy
The debate over the economic advantages of slavery in the South has raged ever since the first slaves began working in the cotton fields of the Southern States. Initially, the wealth of the New World was in the form of raw materials and agricultural goods such as cotton, sugar, and tobacco. The continuing demand for slaves' labor arose from the development of plantation agriculture, the long-term rise in prices and consumption of sugar, and the demand for miners. Not only did Africans represent skilled laborers, but also they were a relatively cheap resource to the South. Consequently, they were well suited for plantation agriculture. Whi...
The idea of Individualism can be traced all the way back to England before America’s existence. As we know, individualism has been interpreted in many forms throughout history. The 19th century is no different, taking hold of its own idea of individualism, called transcendentalism. Transcendentalism suggests freedom should not be confined to those focused on money and superficial gains. Instead, people should depend on no one but themselves. This movement focused on “greater individualism against conformity” (Corbett et al.). Heavily influenced by the Romantic period, transcendentalism adopted the belief that reason was more important than logic as Benjamin Franklin has believed. Reason must also include unique emotion and spirit (Corbett et
The American Revolution was a “light at the end of the tunnel” for slaves, or at least some. African Americans played a huge part in the war for both sides. Lord Dunmore, a governor of Virginia, promised freedom to any slave that enlisted into the British army. Colonists’ previously denied enlistment to African American’s because of the response of the South, but hesitantly changed their minds in fear of slaves rebelling against them. The north had become to despise slavery and wanted it gone. On the contrary, the booming cash crops of the south were making huge profits for landowners, making slavery widely popular. After the war, slaves began to petition the government for their freedom using the ideas of the Declaration of Independence,” including the idea of natural rights and the notion that government rested on the consent of the governed.” (Keene 122). The north began to fr...
Slavery was the core of the North and South’s conflict. Slavery has existed in the New World since the seventeenth century prior to it being exclusive to race. During those times there were few social and political concerns about slavery. Initially, slaves were considered indentured servants who will eventually be set free after paying their debt(s) to the owner. In some cases, the owners were African with white servants. However, over time the slavery became exclusive to Africans and was no limited to a specific timeframe, but life. In addition, the treatment of slaves worsens from the Atlantic Slave trade to th...
Although individualism is considered to be one of the defining qualities of Western civilization, it is tainted by selfishness and egotism, as it primarily considers the desires of the individual over the needs of society. Individualism is impractical in several aspects; it does not allow for society to operate smoothly, and it may fail to spur societal progress. Societal progression cannot be achieved by the individual- it is chiefly dependant on man developing a willingness to achieve progress in unison.
To begin with, the notion of the individualism is rather ambiguous as it includes a lot of different behavioural patterns. One more difficulty about the individualism is that it can be considered on different levels of human groups - on the individual, group, societal and cultural levels in particular. What is more, one of the most popular application of the notion of the individualism is its analyses on the level of a culture as a trait of a whole society. However, in order to understand the specialities of its revelations on the societal level, it is important to consider different processes of its construction.
Slavery has been a part of human practices for centuries and dates back to the world’s ancient civilizations. In order for us to recognize modern day slavery we must take a look and understand slavery in the American south before the 1860’s, also known as antebellum slavery. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary defines a slave as, “a man who is by law deprived of his liberty for life, and becomes the property of another” (B.J.R, pg. 479). In the period of antebellum slavery, African Americans were enslaved on small farms, large plantations, in cities and towns, homes, out on fields, industries and transportation. By law, slaves were the perso...