1. Give Me Liberty! Norton Media Library An American History
Chapter 6
Give Me Liberty!
An American History
Second Edition Volume 1 by
Eric Foner

2. I. Democratizing freedom
Challenges to hereditary privilege
Rejection of hereditary aristocracy
Radicalism of “all men are created equal”
Expansion of political democracy
Popular engagement in public debate
Unintended disruption of social order
Rise of artisans, small farmers, laborers, etc.
Rolling back of property qualifications (especially in PA)
Less democratization in the South
New state constitutions (all republican)
PA = 1-house legislature
MA = balanced bicameral legislature
Radical & conservative patriots

3. II. Toward religious toleration
Broadening of religious toleration
Weakening of anti-Catholicism
The founders and religion
Religion = public morality
Skeptical of religious doctrine
Separating church and state
Deists and evangelists unite to separate church and state
Only NY offered complete religious toleration
Jefferson and religious liberty
Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom
Rejected creationism
Jefferson’s Bible – Jesus was not divine
James Madison – U.S. was a religious / political asylum
Revolution and the churches
Challenges to church authority
Leaders encouraged virtue – sacrifice self-interest for public good

4. III. Defining economic freedom
Sharpening of the line between free and slave labor
Decline of intermediate forms of un-free labor
Indentured servitude & apprenticeship (vanished by 1800)
Causes of decline
Rise of wage workers
Points of consensus
Excessive dependency and inequality subversive to republic
America well-poised to foster liberty & equality
Points of debate
Equality of condition vs. equality of opportunity
Jefferson abolishes entail and primogeniture
Regulation of prices vs. free trade
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations – “invisible hand of free market”

5. IV. The limits of liberty
Colonial loyalists
Social profiles
1/3 of population
Similar to patriots (or rebels)
20,000 fought with the British
Motivations
Numerous in NY, PA, SC, and GA
Economic
Experiences
Suppression and assaults
Seizure of property
Oaths of allegiance
Banishment or voluntary departure 100,000
Gradual fading of stigma

6. IV. The limits of liberty
Indians
Accelerated dispossession
Wartime dilemmas and disruptions
Futile efforts at neutrality
Divided allegiances
Losses and hardships
Access to Indian land was one of the fruits of victory
Treaty of Paris marked culmination of power shift

7. V. Slavery and the Revolution
Use of “slavery” in rhetoric of revolution
In 1776, slaves comprised 1/5 of American population
As a metaphor for political status of colonists
Arbitrary governmental power
Disfranchised
As direct critique of slavery
James Otis
MP Edmund Burke
Alleged hypocrisy of slaveholders crying “slavery”
Dr. Samuel Johnson
Obstacles to abolition
Importance of slave system in the colonies
Perception of slavery as basis for white freedom
Conception of property rights as essential to liberty

8. V. Slavery and the Revolution (cont’d)
Impetus for abolition
Growing debate over slavery in America
Benjamin Rush and “general liberty”
Thomas Jefferson
Black initiatives against slavery
Invocations of freedom as universal right
Lemuel Haynes & Phillis Wheatley
British emancipators
Invitations to slaves to escape to British lines
Lord Dunmore’s proclamation
Henry Clinton’s proclamation
Magnitude of slave response
100,000 escaped to British lines
Long-term outcomes for slaves who escaped to British
15,000 accompanied the British out of America

9. V. Slavery and the Revolution (cont’d)
The first emancipation
Curbs on slave importation
Nearly every state prohibited or discouraged importation
Upper South manumissions
Robert Carter III (VA)
Richard Randolph (VA)
John and Henry Laurens (SC)
Abolition in northern states
Between 1777 and 1804, all states north of Maryland
Slow process
Emergence of free black communities
“Formed a standing challenge to the logic of slavery”

10. VI. Women and the Revolution
Participation in revolutionary cause
Deborah Sampson, Ladies’ Association, and home
Limits on access to American freedom
Maintenance of legal subordination of women
Male supremacy as element of revolutionary thought
View of women as wives and mothers, unfit for citizenship
Improvements in status of women
Ideology of “republican motherhood”
Perception of women as trainers of citizens, meriting education
Notion of “companionate marriage”

11. VII. Repercussions of American independence struggle throughout Atlantic world
Worldwide demand by locals for greater autonomy
French Revolution
Latin America

12. Map 18

13. MAPS