Lincoln, Labor and Liberation Essay example -- United States History L

Lincoln, Labor and LiberationThe free fag out political theory of the nineteenth century was grounded in the beliefs that Northern free labor was superior to Southern slave labor. The key factor that made this system unique was the opportunity it offers wage earners to rise to property-owning liberty. 1 It was this free labor ideology and not the republicanism of the Revolutionary War era that caused slavery to be problematic by the time of the Civil War. This ideology was comprehensiveit had economic, social, moral, and political aspects. All facets of the theory need to be explored in order to fully understand how and why slavery became such an important issue. Free labor became the center of the Republican ideology in 1852, with the foundation of the Republican Party. It was the result of the economically expanding, enterprising, and competitive society of the early nineteenth century. The word labor had slowly begun to take on refreshing meaning. Previously, it meant only those who were involved in the production of goods. Society was strictly divided into two main groups, those who worked and those who profited from the work of others. By the 1840s, the wage-earning labor class was delineate as the entire North. It was made up of those men who owned their own farms, worked their own soil, were educated, and most importantly, were independent. Free labor ideology drew few distinctions betwixt classes. A laborer was a craftsman, a merchant, a small businessman, or a farmer. Northern society offered opportunities to all who sought them, and enabled most to achieve independence and property. Northerners believed this economy would lead to a more equal distribution of wealth, rather than aid the development of a... ...onville, The Abolitionists, December 3, 200110 Foner, 11111 Foner, 23512 Richard D. Brown, Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760-1791 (Boston Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 409 13 Brown, 41014 Jo seph J. Ellis, base Brothers the Revolutionary Generation (New York Alfred A. Knoph, Publisher, 2000) 15815 Kevin Tanner, Sectionalism 1850s, lecture given at Binghamton University December 5, 200116 Brown, 27417 Brown, 28118 Brown, 28219 Ellis, 8120 Ellis, 15821 McConville, Slavery From Rebellion to Revolution, November 5, 200122 McConville, From Jacksonian Democracy to Sectional action, November 28, 200123 James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom the Civil War Era (New York Ballantine Books, 1988), 2824 Foner, 309