Freedom:

1. Freedom: “’A Little Weasel in it’”?

2. How did the ideal of freedom clash with the lived experience of many 19th-century Americans? • What are the social and civic contradictions produced by the codification of freedom in the U.S,? • What determined one’s access to freedom throughout the 19th century? • How did the idea of freedom inspire 19th century reform movements? • What were the turning points in the history of 19th century freedoms?

3. What did freedom look like from the bottom up? Children, I talks to God and God talks to me. I goes out and talks to God in de fields and de woods. Dis morning I was walking out, and . . . I saw de wheat a holding up its head, looking very big. I goes up and takes holt of it. You b'lieve it, there was no wheat there? I says, God what is de matter wad this wheat? and he says to me, ‘Sojourner, there is a little weasel in it.’ Now I hears talking' about de Constitution and de rights of man. I comes up and I takes hold of this Constitution. It looks mighty big, and I feels for my rights, but der ain’t any there. Den I says, God, what ails this Constitution? He says to me, ‘Sojourner, there is a little weasel in it.” Speech by Sojourner Truth, recollected in a letter from J. A. D., Mt. Pleasant, Iowa to the Editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard (1863).

4. Yet, Foner has argued, freedom is the “central term” in our nation’s political vocabulary. “No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom.” • Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom, xiii.

5. How, then, to explain the gap between theory and practice that Sojourner Truth identified? Revolutionary civic ideals vs.The disenfranchisement of 19th— century Americans

6. The late 18th- and early-19thcentury spectrum of servitude and freedom Chattel SlaveryLiberty of Person & Suffrage • Indentured Servitude Married Women’s Liberty of Person • Status (Law of & No Suffrage • Coverture) • "The existence of slavery has shaped our idea of freedom. Freedom is so often defined by its opposite. . . .”

7. Did the Framers seek to institutionalize inequality? Their goals: • To define the fundamental law of the federal government • To define the 3 branches of the federal government and their jurisdictions • To declare states’ rights The essential freedoms: • National freedom: protection from foreign control. • Political freedom: encompassing the rights to vote, hold office, and pass laws. • Individual freedom: the right of self-determination.

8. The Bill of Rights Ratified December 15, 1791

9. The plasticity & fragility of freedom American history shows that freedom is a “contested concept”—thus subject to expansion and contraction. “While freedom can be achieved, it may also be taken away.” Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom, xiv.

10. If freedom was and is malleable, and susceptible to increase and decrease, then we must ask: • Who was entitled to freedom, and why? (Who or what was an American?) • What were the conditions that made freedom possible? • What were the boundaries of freedom throughout the 19th century? • What were turning points in the history of 19th-century freedom?