Midterm Essay:

Selective Freedom in Early American History

Beth Meroski















History 1130: History of the United States
Ross Newton
01 March 2013








2
From the establishment of the first colonies to the Civil War, the political, economic,
and socio-cultural development of the United States was shaped by beliefs (and
prejudices), rhetoric, and above all: the desire for freedom and the subsequent
maintenance of that freedom. It is important to note however, that in this period of
American history the concept of freedom was controlled and defined by those in
positions of power namely, wealthy white men. Through the maintenance of the social
status quo and a biased interpretation of the founding documents, those in power
established the precedent that, in America, the supposed land of the free, the full
privileges of freedom were limited to other white men. Thus freedom in the period
from the colonial period through the Civil War was not really freedom at all, but a
selective freedom shaped by prejudices and rhetoric.
The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal,
1
but as
history shows us, in early American history skin color was regarded as a socially
acceptable, albeit prejudicial loophole to these inalienable rights. This contradictory
reading of the Declaration of Independence came to be accepted and acceptable because
it aligned with the contemporary prejudices about African Americans as second-class
citizens, and as property, not people. In the 1779 Freedom Petition, a group of African
Americans called out the state of New Hampshire on their contradictory interpretation of
the inalienable rights the United States claimed to provide to all men:
...natives of Africa, now forcibly detained in slavery, in said state,
most humbly the theweth, That the God of Nature gave them life and freedom,
upon terms of the most perfect equality with other men; that freedom is an

1 Declaration of Independence
3
inherent right of the human species, not be to surrendered, but by consent, for the
sake of social life.
2

The founding documents not only provided the basis for arguments for abolitionists, but
for pro-slavery activists as well. In the document entitled: Proslavery Petition,
November 10, 1785, pro-slavery activists presented an argument for slavery by
appealing to language in the Untied States Bill of Rights. Their pro-slavery petition states
that the United States established a Constitutionthat our Property might be secure in
Future.
3
In this statement they are citing the rights to property mentioned in the Bill of
Rights and the Fifth Amendment, which asserts that no citizen should be deprived of
life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken
for public use, without just compensation.
4
For slaveholders who considered the
possession of their slaves legally covered under the rhetorical banner of property, the
notion that their property was in danger of being deprived of them was something they
fought strongly against. Those interested in the continuation of slavery and retention of
their slaves fought for their property with both words (such as the above petition) and
weapons (the Civil War).
The term manifest destiny was coined by journalist John L. OSullivan, and is
another example of the way rhetoric helped shape the first half of American history.
Manifest destiny was the idea that the United States had a divinely appointed mission,

2
1779 Freedom Petition submitted by slaves to the New Hampshire state legislature
New-Hampshire Gazette, XXIV, no. 1233 (1790)

3
Library of Virginia. Proslavery Petition, November 10, 1785.
http://www.lva.virginia.gov/lib-edu/education/psd/nation/halifax.htm

4
United States Bill of Rights
4
so obvious as to be beyond dispute, to occupy all of North America,
5
and came to be the
rallying call of Western expansionists. Those dedicated to the pursuit of manifest destiny
envisioned the west as an area that was theirs for the taking, and regarded the Native
American residents as nothing more than impediments to their manifest destiny to
overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which providence [had] given
[them] for the development of the great experiment in liberty.
6
As the previous quotation
suggests, Americans justified their claims to the continent by appealing to what they
believed was a divinely appointed mission for spreading the ideology of freedom and
democracy. However, in many cases of western expansionism, white Americans pursuit
of their own freedom and bounty in the west spelled disaster for others; namely Native
Americans. One example of this abduction of freedom in the name of freedom occurred
following the purchase of the Mississippi Territories and Louisiana. This purchase in
particular subsequently undermined the southern Indians capacity to resist the spread of
plantation agriculture.
7
Therefore, these settlers efforts towards the purported spread of
freedom and democracy actually catalyzed increased oppression towards those their
prejudices deemed inferior or even savage.
In the same way that the rhetoric of manifest destiny provided validly to the
oppression of Americas native population, the rhetoric that distinguished domestic
slaveholding from the wider world slave trade helped legitimize the categorization of


5
Erin Foner. Give Me Liberty!, (W.W. Norton & Co., 2011) 337.

6
Ibid., 338.

7
Adam Rothman, The Domestication of the Slave Trade in the United States, The
Chattel Principle, ed. Walter Johnson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 34.
5
dark skinned people as property and not individual citizens. In The Domestication of the
Slave Trade in the United States that author Adam Rothman writes that:
In order to prevent the movement against the international trade from doubling
back against domestic slavery, reformers in southern United States elaborated a
pro-slavery worldview that distinguished between slave trading and
slaveholding.
8

In making this distinction between slave trading and slaveholding, southern slave owners
sought to prove to society (and maybe even to themselves) that their way of owning other
humans was more civilized and socially acceptable than the alternative.
It is no coincidence that our textbook Give Me Liberty organizes American
history through the lens of freedom, as American life was, and continues to be central
to American life. From the colonial period through the Civil War, defining and exercising
the concept of freedom was (and is) the central pursuit in politics, economics, and
social culture. However, as history can attest, the hegemonic beliefs and prejudices of the
times, as well as the selective interpretation of rhetoric in legal documents, tempered
American conceptions of freedom. While we judge the dominant conception of
freedom in the early years of the United States as flawed, the pursuit and maintenance
of this freedom nevertheless stimulated the development of the United States from a
colony to a symbol of independence, and, following the Civil War, an emerging world
power.



8
Ibid., 32.
6
Bibliography

1779 Freedom Petition submitted by slaves to the New Hampshire state legislature
New-Hampshire Gazette, XXIV, no. 1233 (1790)

Adam Rothman, The Domestication of the Slave Trade in the United States, The
Chattel Principle, ed. Walter Johnson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004),
32-34.

Declaration of Independence

Erin Foner. Give Me Liberty!, (W.W. Norton & Co., 2011)

Library of Virginia. Proslavery Petition, November 10, 1785.
http://www.lva.virginia.gov/lib-edu/education/psd/nation/halifax.htm

United States Bill of Rights