Freedom In America: Pre-Civil War

The year is 1848. A young woman and her two children sit huddled, tired, dirty, and hungry on the deck of a massive freight ship. The boat docks and hundreds of people shuffle down to the portion of the boat where they have been told to disembark. The mother files in line, holding each child by the hand, not saying a word. After getting off, taking a small ration, and signing a dirty piece of paper, the woman leaves the dock and, child by each hand, takes to the streets of Manhattan, unsure of where to go or whom to trust. The exact same day in Seneca Falls, New York, a group of 300 men and women meet to discuss the injustices laid upon American women and declare entitlement to the promises of the Revolution of 1776. Creating their own list of grievances against men and their male-dominated society, feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton proclaim that, “Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the balls of legislation, (men have) oppressed her on all sides.” Both women are American and live in the same age, yet their contrasting struggles shed light on the many limitations of freedoms that existed in America before the onset of the Civil War. Just one of the many problems facing the U.S. government in the pre-Civil War era, women’s rights is an issue which, given the progression of American culture by 1848, had not made its way into the collective public consciousness. Sadly it would be over 70 more years before national suffrage was given to women

In the midst of a social transitional period, the United States was undergoing great change, and prospering while doing so. Much like the young mother, many looking to piece together their shattered lives saw America as a beacon of hope and inspiration, a shining example of freedom in a world that was experiencing political and economic turmoil across the map. However, while the nation grew from a fiscal standpoint, many bad and unjust governmental policies remained untouched by officials, most of which being the expansion of slavery west. With an ideological foundation built on the sanctity of the most basic of human rights, the United States always advertised itself as the land of the free, where all men are created equal. Although a sorely inaccurate description of the current political situation, U.S. laws were still very liberal in comparison to the rest of the world. By the mid-nineteenth century, this reputation, coupled with the massive tracks of land still to be claimed to the west and the abundance of natural resources across the continent, made the opportunity to start anew in another country too tempting for many. Vast numbers of people hailing from across the globe, looking for their slice of the American pie, immigrated to the States in search of this promise of freedom, an idea as foreign to some as U.S. soil. Free from oppressive governmental systems that perpetuate economic strife and societal constructs that limit social mobility, this land of opportunity gave every man the chance to control his own destiny.

Henry Bellows, a leader of the American Unitarian Church who lived in New York during the pre-Civil War mass migration, wrote about the socio-economic situation that immigrants faced. He contended, “That breaking down of artificial barriers which has produced this universal ambition and restless activity in America, is destined to prevail throughout the earth.” The floodgates had officially opened. By 1860, the number of immigrants streaming into the country per decade had risen by over 2000 percent, most of which without family ties in the states and/or on the hunt for employment opportunities. A nation of many different cultures, nationalities, and ethnicities, every American, save the natives, was either at one time an immigrant in search of financial or political stability, or relatives with someone who was. Needing but a solid work ethic to make money and achieve class advancement, a laborious drive for success was a common and beneficial trait of immigrants. As more kept flocking, the work culture of successful Ð"©migrÐ"©s eventually infused itself into different crevices of a larger American culture, eventuating in a society in which one was defined more by their vocation than other, more traditionally important attributes. This new American socio-economic structure, entrancing to the removed and entrapping to the involved, is what Bellows referred to as the “American anxious spirit of gain.”

This spirit, although addressed as a simple lack of social grace and sociability by Bellows, is seen much differently by Walter Colton, judge