The Importance Of Liberty In Colonial America

In current day America, citizens either take their freedom lightly or believe they have no freedom at all. However, our ancestors thought differently in the past. The English colonist came to the New World for a number of reasons. Many came to the New World to escape bad marriages, jail terms, but many historian believe that many came to either get out of poverty or the fear of them falling into poverty. According to Brands, “Religion was a big reason for the English to come across the Atlantic”. The first colony was Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, which was not successful. After the first colony was established many more were established like New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and etc..

government has unspecified and unorganized policies, which were unprotected for Native Americans who lived in the west because of all the new coming Americans. During westward expansion, a majority of who moved were whites, who didn’t know the Native Americans who already lived in the west. The Natives felt their land was being conquered, because of the U.S government policies(Louisana Purchase & Homestead Act) and the whites not wanting them to be there, which lead to fighting between the Natives and the whites. These acts and policies such as the Indian Removal Act often resulted in violated treaties and violence. The Indian Removal Act was the removal of Native American homes and tribes. “This also confines the Indians to still narrower limits, destroys that game which in their normal state, and constitutes their principal means of subsistence.” Resulting in westward expansion, Native Americans began rapidly decreasing in the area by wars and new diseases caught by new coming

Throughout history, Americans have sought to spread the spirit of equality, which is believed to be the realization of true freedom. Before establishing this freedom, every American had only one question stuck in their head: What is freedom? Our country received it in the year of 1776 from the British through a series of difficulties and wars. African Americans defined it as an escape from slavery, while immigrants defined it as their acceptance into a new society. More yet, women of the women’s suffrage defined their freedom as their recognition into society and for their rights to be equal to that of every other man. These different perceptions of cultures/groups in America tied together to form an American view of freedom. Freedom is

From the terrifying tales of Native American attacks, Virginians learned to fear the Native Americans. They pleaded to the governor for protection from the Native Americans, but Berkeley refused to listen to their tales of Indians committing murders and thieving. It seemed to be that the Indians were the ones receiving protection from Berkeley. The Governor and his “grandees” were controlling the Indian beaver and otter fur trades, so he didn’t want to lose the profit he was making off of his business of trade with the Indians. Many white indentured servants were not happy with the Indians who had ownership rights of land, when they needed to find land to buy when their time serving was completed.

For men, and those who were not indentured servants, were provided more opportunities in the European colonies than they did at home, for the colonists, freedom meant owning land. Some people such as, Johannes Hänner, didn’t even require land to feel free in the New World, it was simply a matter of being able to live comfortably with family and friends. However, this positive outlook was not widely shared among all colonists, in Virginia for example, while

From its very inception, America has relied on the labor of slaves. When the first colonists arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, they brought supplies (tools, animals, seeds, etc.), their beliefs and cultures, and slaves. As the Revolutionary War was being fought, there was a redefinition and expansion of freedom for white men as well as a proliferation in the use of the word “slavery” because many Americans began to view their relationship with Britain as a form of enslavement . In the process of establishing America as an independent republic, the colonists were granted their freedom from the British government while slavery and the slave trade thrived. For many of the founding fathers, it was easy to justify slavery because of their racism and hypocrisy as well as the fact that their primary disagreement was with the slave trade, not slavery (the act of enslaving). As the juxtaposition between American freedom and slavery became interwoven in American history and politics, it restructured the social system and allowed for the proliferation of an oppressive race-based social system (as opposed to the former class system) and laid the foundation for the Civil War.

Americans have many ideas of freedom, which often were conflicting. The roots of these conflicting ideas were often based on race and stunted our growth as a country. Although much of the focus in U.S history has been placed the conflicting ideas of White American freedom and African-American freedom, another main conflict was between Whites and Native Americans. White Americans believed that freedom was the right to own property, economic autonomy, and the right to participate in democratic elections. The White Americans also believed that these freedoms were guaranteed only to natural-born, White Americans. The Native Americans had a much different view of freedom, which included the choice to remain nomadic, self-governance, and the

Language, like all else, changes over time. “Nice” used to mean foolish, and “awful” used to mean full of awe. This too gives context to why when democracy, or “rule by the people,” is mentioned today, the word does not have the same connotation as it did to the inhabitants of colonial North America. Similarly, the democracy of the 1800s, colloquially known as the early republic period, was different from democracy during the time of the revolution. The tradition in colonial Virginia, for instance, was that democratic voting power only applied to the aristocratic members of the clergy. In New England, only the property-holding “elect” had a say in town decisions. This tradition of not-quite equality in democracy held through to revolutionary times. As Stanley N. Katz puts it, “Indeed, during most of American history, framers of constitutions, lawmakers, and judges avoided committing the nation to the protection of individual equality.” Because of the strength of majorities, laissez-faire economic policy, and an increase in opportunity, democracy replaced tradition as the provider of political power during the early republic in the northern United States.

Throughout history, Native Americans faced atrocity after atrocity at the hands of white settlers and losing their land and most of their people was only one of them. During the nineteenth century, the United States’ population boomed, causing people to start to move west in search of riches and vast lands in the “wild west.” However, as white settlers moved west, they started to encounter more and more Native American lands. The white settlers wanted to be able to settle on their lands, claiming that they were “misusing” the land and claiming that the Native Americans were “uncivilized.” The white settlers pled their case to the United States government to forcibly remove the Native Americans and get the rights to their lands. Andrew Jackson,

(Doc 4) By the 1900s, the once-owned Native American land were all but gone, and white settlers had established dominance in the West. (Outside Info) Native Americans couldn’t stop the white settlers from telling them what to do. The settlers depicted where they lived and the Native Americans had no say in

How were American victories, significant to the American Revolution? The American Revolution was a war between America and Britain, in which the Americans fought for their freedom from Britain. The idea was proposed by John Hancock of Boston, the governor of Massachusetts, who advised to the colonies to break free from Britain and become the United States of America (Fradin). However, before the battles have begun, Paul Revere and his midnight ride warned everyone in Lexington and Concord that the British are coming. With this event, it led up to the first American victory of the American Revolution, which was the Battle of Concord, northwest of Boston from about 10:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M., on April 19, 1775. Another American victory battle was

Throughout the chapters, Foner mentions a pattern of liberty and freedom. Although it is present, it isn’t given to everyone. His main focuses are on Native Americans and African Americans. Land settlers in the seventeenth century believed that the land, now called America, was the basis of liberty. Conflicts with Native Americans brought strong feelings of superiority among the colonist. The English would end up displacing the original inhabitants more than any European empire. Soon, farther in the South the native populations were victims to slavery. The English began to launch wars against the neighboring tribes specifically for the usage of capturing and selling slaves. The founding of a new nation in time would encourage expansion. What the English desired was land; a western expansion implied

The power or right to act, speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. A word created by man to escape the bonds of tyranny to express the idea of what it means to persist one's own ambitions. Freedom. Freedom is not the absence of confinement but the will to achieve freedom when imprisoned. After carefully concluding the reading done over this semester one is able to clearly understand the confinement these early Americans felt and their decision to achieve a form of freedom. Freedom has always existed but it is the history of this nation that will define what actions freedom takes.

The document I chose to share about is Enslaved Blacks Adopt the Cause of Liberty. This document was about the process slaves had to go through to gain the freedom they obviously deserved. Their journey for freedom started in 1777 but it wasn't until 1783 that Massachusetts declared slaves free. I chose this article because like many of my other classmates slavery has always been an interesting topic for me. I think I find it interesting because all through high school history they would talk about slavery and when slaves became free but they never went indepth into the struggles they faced to get their freedom.

"On Liberty" written by John Stuart Mill is one of the major works of the liberal tradition. Everyone who gains some interest in political and social sciences can easily comment on the main issues of the work. Mill opposes the self-restraint of the individual against restrictions on freedom of the individual from society, and against restrictions on freedom of the individual and society from the state. In one way or another, the three central chapters of the Mill’s article "On Liberty" are dedicated to his general relationship of the individual, society and state in the framework of freedom. The major idea is that Mill opposes restrictions on the freedom of the individual from society, and against restrictions