Liberty can have multiple meanings it depends on who you ask. It is the freedom to and freedom from. Freedom to it is your right to have a personal freedom, to do as you wish. Freedom from is your right to write speak and act freely without fear of threat. Before and During the Civil War the overwhelming definition of the word liberty was one of an economic nature. After the Civil War this shifted to more social/personal definition. Economic liberty has to do with the distribution and exchange of resources. Social/Personal liberty has more to do with the independence of the individual right against overextending government or state authority. The main issue with economic liberty was the arguments of labor, trade, and property. The ideas that liberty had a lot to do with trade and labor made a lot of sense during the time period. The idea of freedom came from the idea that you work for the right to own you own property, which in turn lead to power. If you had the ability to do as you wish, especially having to do with trade and labor it opened up more opportunity. For example, if th...
Foner focuses, specifically, on how the definition of liberty has been molded over time. He describes how other factors played a role in the change of liberty using three interrelated themes. The first theme, as he describes it, covers the dimensions or meanings of freedom. The dimensions include “political freedom, or the right to participate in public affairs… civil liberties, or rights that individuals can assert against authority…[and] moral or ‘Christian’ ideal of freedom,” the freedom to act morally or ethically good (Foner xvii). It also includes personal freedom or being able to make individual choices free from coercion, and “economic freedom…[which covers how] the kinds of economic relations constitute freedom for… [individual’s working lives]” (Foner xviii). All these dimensions are looked at individually as they play a role in reshaping the definition of freedom or liberty.
In the words of President Abraham Lincoln during his Gettysburg Address (Doc. A), the Civil War itself, gave to our Nation, “a new birth of freedom”. The Civil War had ended and the South was in rack and ruin. Bodies of Confederate soldiers lay lifeless on the grounds they fought so hard to protect. Entire plantations that once graced the South were merely smoldering ash. The end of the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery, stirred together issues and dilemmas that Americans, in the North and South, had to process, in hopes of finding the true meaning of freedom.
One of the most convoluted themes in history is that of the meaning of war. The American Civil War specifically offers many differing explanations as to the true cause for which over 600,000 men dedicated and lost their lives. The Civil War was particularly so, in that there was no universal acceptance of the objectives or causes of the war from either side. Leaders from the Union and the Confederacy delineated distinctly different reasons for fighting, magnifying the hostility between the two regions both before and during wartime. The Confederacy insisted that, based on overwhelming sentiments, its secession was an inevitability that was within the bounds of constitutional law. The South justified this secession and subsequent violence by claiming that the federal government had become tyrannical and was infringing on state rights. In the years leading up to the Civil War, a matter that was pertinent for both sides was the issue of the implementation of slavery into newly admitted states as the nation expanded westward. The subject of slavery in this instance was more political than it was moral, as the issue revolved around the concept of representation in Congress. The North focused its efforts on preventing the union from dividing into separate factions. From the Union standpoint, the Civil War represented a fight to protect the union of the states and the future of democracy for the entire world. The Civil War, for both the Union and the Confederacy, was a fight for the preservation of each side’s conception of legal and natural rights as they pertain to liberty for all.
From the Age of Exploration to the Revolutionary period, many factors shaped the connotation of the word liberty. Liberty is defined as, “the quality or state of being free” (Merriam-Webster). This means religious freedoms, political freedoms, social freedoms, and many freedoms we may not think of on a daily basis. Throughout history, the word liberty has developed into a word with a positive connotation as well as a word used to describe the freedom we have today. The idea of liberty developed because of, religious persecutions, restrictions, and maltreatment during the fifteenth century through the seventeenth century.
Freedom to me is the right to do what you want to do only if it's not breaking the law. This includes the right to bear arms, freedom of speech, not being forced to join the military ( unless you get drafted). Freedom is also the people in the united states, What i mean by that is people have rights many rights that makes them a part of freedom too. With freedom there are many responsibilities too. One of the biggest responsibilities is the right to bear arms. This is probably one of the biggest responsibilities because you screw up once with guns you can be banned for a period of time or you can be banned for life if you do something really horrible even if it was not on purpose. another big responsibility law is driving, if you get over the speed limit and you caught you can get fined
The Civil War has been viewed as the unavoidable eruption of a conflict that had been simmering for decades between the industrial North and the agricultural South. Roark et al. (p. 507) speak of the two regions’ respective “labor systems,” which in the eyes of both contemporaries were the most salient evidence of two irreconcilable worldviews. Yet the economies of the two regions were complementary to some extent, in terms of the exchange of goods and capital; the Civil War did not arise because of economic competition between the North and South over markets, for instance. The collision course that led to the Civil War did not have its basis in pure economics as much as in the perceptions of Northerners and Southerners of the economies of the respective regions in political and social terms. The first lens for this was what I call the nation’s ‘charter’—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the documents spelling out the nation’s core ideology. Despite their inconsistencies, they provided a standard against which the treatment and experience of any or all groups of people residing within the United States could be evaluated (Native Americans, however, did not count). Secondly, these documents had installed a form of government that to a significant degree promised representation of each individual citizen. It was understood that this only possible through aggregation, and so population would be a major source of political power in the United States. This is where economics intersected with politics: the economic system of the North encouraged (albeit for the purposes of exploitation) immigration, whereas that of the South did not. Another layer of the influence of economics in politics was that the prosperity of ...
The definition of freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. What freedom means to me is to be able to walk outside your house and not be afraid, to be able to do what you want and not be judged, to speak your mind and to have everyone treated fair.
Leading into the Civil War, there were many different views and thoughts on the idea of our Nation dividing into two. When Lincoln was elected president in 1860, he explained the idea of being an undivided nation. This caused a ton of controversy due to the fact that many people wanted to be split into the Confederacy and the Union. The Confederacy bombed Fort Sumter which marked the start of the four-year-long war. The Civil War was definitely a war for freedom for many different reasons. The war allowed the slaves to be freed as a result of the emancipation proclamation which allowed them to fight in the war alongside all the other army members, it fought for states rights, and lastly
Throughout history freedom has had many different meanings and definitions; based on race, gender, and ethnicity. According to the dictionary freedom means the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint (“freedom” def. 1). Freedom may seem like something given to everyone however it was something workers had to fight for. Not everyone believed that workers’ rights needed to be changed, which led to a long battle between workers, employers and the government. To the working class people freedom meant making higher wages, having regulated hours, workable conditions and the right to free speech.
1865 was a huge year for our Nation. Our country was ending a war that split our nation into two, and our President was delivered his fate at a theater. April 15, 1865 Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater by a guy named John Wilkes Booth. In May the nation was united into one nation, and the Civil War came to an end. In the weekly newspaper, Christian Recorder, The article on August 12, 1865 discusses a lot about the African Americans new freedom.
Freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. In America there is numerous of choices that someone may make on a daily basis. If someone were allowed to make their own choices and were being told what to do; then they would not be free. When someone is allowed to speak when they want to, and say what they want; such as their opinion or view of something. Being allowed to have a right to speak is one of the most important characteristics of being an American. Thinking and stating your opinion in any predicament it a strong part in being a citizen because people in the United States are known for being able to think in their own ways. Freedom can stretch too many things such as being able to do as they please, they are not forced into doing anything that someone may want. The citizens of the United States are not made to do anything that one may not want to do; like
The concept of liberty stems from the system of natural law. It is highly dependent on the belief in natural law, in regards to three different aspects. First, the foundation of both concepts. The natural law has been influential in many ways, therefore concepts can be developed or derived from such a system. Secondly, the ideas found in liberty are similar to those found in the natural law in regards to the law being controlled by an entity. Finally, for protection against arbitrary offense to ensure a state of equality. This concept depends on natural law by representing similar principles on infringement of rights. Ultimately, liberty can be seen as a concept adapted from the system of natural law in order to keep the same principles and
Freedom is often spoken of in what can be referred to as a loose sense of the word. One country has more freedom than another; a twenty-one year old has more freedom than a fifteen year old. What exactly does this word mean? For different people it may mean different things, but there has to be an equilibrium that can be reached in order to determine the meaning of freedom itself. In one form, freedom can mean that a person has "exemption from an obligation."* If only the root (free) is looked at, it can be interpreted that one is "not under the control or power of another."*
What freedom means to me well freedom means a lot of things, when you think about it freedom is a big thing it allows you to do just about everything you do every day. We take freedom for granted; but the thing is every time we simply go to church a soldier fought and might have paid the ultimate price just so we can worship when we want to how we want to.
The constitution of the United States of America gives me the right to freedom because I am a United States citizen. I consider "freedom" to be my right to express myself in any way I choose. Freedom is defined as "having liberty of action or thought, independent". "Self-governed or not controlled by an outside party" is another definition of freedom. Freedom has a different meaning to each individual thus making it hard to find a clear concise definition.