Racism and Liberty in 19th-Century American Ideals

Introduction: Liberty Reserved for the Few

Racial divisions in 19th-century American culture excluded African Americans and Native Americans from the nation's ideals of liberty and inclusion on a fundamental level. The forced removal — and, in many cases, slaughter — of Native American tribes by the U.S. government was an exercise in Manifest Destiny (O'Sullivan 5), a concept later reframed as New Expansionism once the frontier had reached its natural limits. As for African Americans: they may have been freed by Lincoln as a wartime measure to weaken the South, but genuine inclusion was never truly on the table. Jim Crow laws emerged across the South, and racism continued to express itself through segregation and mob violence.

Liberty, in practice, belonged to the WASPs — White Anglo-Saxon Protestants who dominated the political, economic, and social establishment. No amount of noble rhetoric from Lincoln, no petitions from Native American leaders, and no words of wisdom from men like Frederick Douglass could overcome the underlying current of racism that the WASP ruling class embodied in its pursuit of Manifest Destiny — the belief that it was God's will for them to rule the New World. This paper examines how liberty and inclusion were reserved for these elites, and how others had to fight for recognition in a country where the promise of liberty was meant to be universal but functioned, in practice, as little more than lip service to an 18th-century Romantic-Enlightenment ideal that the entrenched ruling class never genuinely embraced.

African Americans and the Fight for Inclusion

The Emancipation Proclamation, which allowed enslaved people to leave the South and join the Union army, dealt a serious blow to the Confederacy, where slavery had been institutionalized for generations. Free Black men like Frederick Douglass — who had escaped bondage before the Civil War and authored an autobiography that became a widely read bestseller — had long campaigned for abolition. Through his writing, Douglass cultivated an African American identity that directly challenged the status quo championed by the WASP establishment. This was one clear example of how African Americans had to struggle actively for inclusion and liberty in a land that proclaimed freedom for all. It was not granted to them, even though the Declaration of Independence appeared to recognize that all men were created equal and possessed liberty by natural right. Men like Douglass knew better: they understood that such declarations were the very soul of hypocrisy in America, since they did nothing to address slavery — an institution only finally abolished because Lincoln saw no other way to turn the tide of war.

The Abolitionist Movement and Its Voices

With works by Douglass in circulation, activists formed the American Anti-Slavery Society, and movements like this shaped American public opinion. The push to maintain slavery sometimes provoked violent resistance, as in Nat Turner's rebellion and the armed campaign led by John Brown. Women and Black Americans — both free and enslaved — gave powerful voice to the abolitionist cause. Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were two celebrated figures who advanced the movement through their activism and writings. Julia Ward Howe was another: she wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," set to the tune of the popular ballad "John Brown's Body," composed in memory of the man who had attempted to end slavery by force. This anthem became a rallying song for Union troops, who sang it on their marches.

Conclusion: Competing Visions of Freedom

The question of liberty and inclusion was never a simple one, as racial divisions ran deep and were not perceived uniformly. J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, for example, was a Frenchman who became an "American" in the WASP mold, embracing the establishment's ideal of citizenship as an agrarian farmer, which he described in his autobiography. Yet in one significant respect he stood apart from that establishment: in his account of Charles Town, he called slavery a "physical evil" that ought to be abolished. In this, the Frenchman-turned-American had more in common with Frederick Douglass than with the WASP ruling class.

These examples demonstrate that ideas of freedom and inclusion cannot be reduced to simple categories, for at the heart of the matter lay a moral worldview — one in which genuine humanity and love for fellow human beings was either present or absent. In the wars waged against Native Americans, it was conspicuously absent. But for those same Native Americans, like Pontiac, liberty and inclusion were inseparable from the firm assertion of basic rights: the right to live as one chose, to honor one's traditions, and to fight for what was just.

Works Cited

Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John de. Autobiography. Gutenberg. Web. 26 Feb 2016.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life. Web. 26 Feb 2016.

Franklin, Ben. "Remarks concerning the Savages of North America." Web. 26 Feb 2016.

Groves, Harry. "Separate but Equal — the Doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson." Phylon, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 66–77.

Horsman, Reginald. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Harvard University Press, 1981.

O'Sullivan, John. "Annexation." United States Magazine and Democratic Review, vol. 17, no. 1 (July–August 1845): 5–10.

Pontiac. "Speech at Detroit." Web. 26 Feb 2016.