African American Freedom Essay

Due its prevalent nature, freedom, in general, cannot be placed in a particular category or as an idea. Rather, it has been the focus of insistent conflict in American history. The history of American freedom is an anecdote of deliberations, disagreements, and struggles rather than a set of an everlasting continuum or an evolutionary narrative toward a predetermined goal. The ideal meaning of freedom is an impacted privilege at all levels of society. If the meaning of freedom has been a frontline throughout history, so too has been the definition of those enabled to enjoy its blessings. Founded on the principle that liberty is a prerogative of all mankind, the United States, from the onset, patently deprived many of its own people of freedom. Efforts made to demarcate freedom along one or another alliance of social existence have been a persistent feature of American history. More to the point, conceivably, freedom has often been defined by its restrictions. the definition of freedom has been both deepened and transformed and the concept stretched to realms for which it was not originally proposed. The Struggles of African Americans in the United States have been a central issue in every interval of American freedom. During the colonial era, the Whigs had viewed freedom as a product of an exuberant government creating the environments for economic growth. On the other hand, Jacksonian Democrats, equally in the name of freedom, opposed government involvement in the economy as deliberating special privileges upon the advantaged few. Northerners, after Lincoln 's Emancipation Proclamation, fought for the freedom of slaves. Southerners likewise fought for freedom, which was the freedom to control their own domestic institutions sovereign of federal control and the freedom not to be deprived of their property which were the slaves. Slavery was debated by both sides in terms of freedom, one would wonder whether any practical position on any important public policy debate cannot be so defended. This is not to say, of course, that all opinions about freedom are equally conclusive. It is to say that the reason some such arguments are more persuasive than others has nothing to do with their value as arguments about freedom, but rather is attributable to the appeal of the substantive cause on behalf of which they are congregated. The southern slave owners who appealed for the freedom to take their slave property into federal territories as a basis for overturning the Missouri Compromise in Dred Scott v. Sandford were not making a theoretically flawed freedom argument. Protection of property rights against government intrusion and insistence upon the limited scope of federal regulatory power are time honored freedom arguments. The slave-owners claim was abolished in modern eras because it misapplied the concept of freedom, but rather because we no longer regard property in human beings as the sort of freedom that permits protection. Also, white Southerners who criticized Brown v. Board as an invasion of their freedom did not misapprehend the concept. The freedom of local communities to govern their own schools and of individuals to choose with whom they associate have long and respected historical pedigrees. Such freedom arguments are unpersuasive …show more content…
Douglass succeeded in convincing President Abraham Lincoln to consider the freedom of African American Slaves as an objective of the Civil War. He also fought for the right and influenced Lincoln to allow African Americans to fight in the Civil War. With this, in doing this he created a motto for recruiting the slaves. The famous slogan which was “Men of Color, To Arms.” Did indeed help in recruiting a large number of slaves to fight in the civil war. With the additional men, the Union more man power and an edge in the war. Although in the beginning the African Americans fighting in the war were treated poorly, they were later received fair treatment after Fredrick Douglass’ meetings with Lincoln. All African Americans were allowed to fight, whether they were free African American from the North, or enslaved African American liberated from the South. This, coupled with the fact that Frederick Douglass was a driving force for the Emancipation Proclamation, led to the freedom of all African Americans after the end of the war. Even though the blacks were free, they didn’t get the right to vote until the reconstruction era after the Civil