Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American by Evelyn Nakano Glenn

Show description

American political leaders from the time of Franklin to that of Lincoln subscribed to the notion that wage work was a temporary, not permanent condition. In Lincoln’s vision, expressed to agricultural groups and then to a national audience, the ideal was a “prudent, penniless beginner in the world,” who worked for wages “awhile,” then, thanks to education and self-discipline, became his own boss. What was radical about America, according to the historian George Fredrickson, was not its willingness to enfranchise the working classes but rather its expansive belief that virtually all white men could rise into the propertied and entrepreneurial classes.

Blacks were also denied the most fundamental right of citizens, to pursue an occupation of their own choosing; they were refused commercial licenses and shut out of certain trades. 37 Although blacks in the North constituted only about 1 percent of the region’s population, northern whites grew anxious about the black presence and took measures to prevent in-migration. Four new “free states,” Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Oregon, passed laws barring entry of blacks into their territories. Though not systematically enforced, the laws could be used to harass blacks.

Not until the 1960s did significant numbers of African Americans in the South regain the franchise. Native Americans had more recognition of their independence in the 1780s than was later the case. For several decades they were still accorded recognition as separate quasi-sovereign nations with whom matters of land and trade were to be regulated by treaty with the United States government. By the 1850s, after years of encroachment and taking of native lands and finally forced removal from “civilized” areas, Native Americans were reduced to the status of “domestic dependent nations” and were declared wards of the federal government.