The Story of American Freedom

“Freedom is the oldest of cliches and the most modern of aspirations. At various times in our history it has served as a ‘protest ideal’ and as a justification of the status quo. Freedom helps bind our culture together and exposes the contradictions between what America claims to be and what it actually is.”

While abolitionists used the language of freedom to call for emancipation, pro-slavery leaders in the South claimed that freedom meant being allowed to do as they wish with property they had legally purchased. Similarly, as workers fought for the freedom to organize during the labor struggles of the early 20th century, business leaders argued that freedom meant their ability to ban unions.

“Unburdened by the institutions—monarchy, aristocracy, hereditary privilege—that oppressed peoples of the Old World, America, and America alone, was the place where the principle of universal freedom could take root.”

Foner refers to the fact that universal freedom would be impossible in a society in which one’s status is attached to their name rather than their merit. Even though true freedom was missing in America until the 20th century, it was always possible because of the foundational concept that “all men are created equal.”

“Blacks recognized both hypocrisy and opportunity in the ideology of freedom. The most insistent advocates of freedom as a universal entitlement were African-Americans, who demanded that the leaders of the struggle for independence live up to their professed creed, thus extending the concept of liberty into unintended realms.”

While the concept of liberty was the basis for the American Revolution, it was extremely hypocritical in that slavery was so institutionalized in the colonies. African Americans saw that they could use the ideology of freedom for their own purposes by exposing that hypocrisy. The result was that the notion of liberty now had to be considered for all humans, not just those escaping British tyranny.