Freedom does not mean Freedom
History has shown us that not everyone has been represented in an equal way. We have seen how a simple change of skin tone can drastically change a person’s history. We have also seen how a small change in a single chromosome can, yet again, change a person’s life. Not only that, but we have also seen the influence that money has on a person and everything that they do. Eric Foner, author of “A Short History of Reconstruction,” said that “No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom.” Freedom, some may say, is what has driven the United States to become the place that it is today. It has been the reason for countless attempts of social integration, the reason businesses have risen from dirt, the reason people continue their education and much more. We go through our lives making decisions everyday, changing our lives with every choice, leaving each one of our futures forever uncertain. Given that uncertainty, one thing is for sure, the freedoms we are given have a heavy effect on our live, even when they are constantly changing. Freedom is not tied down to a single definition, and what we see is that freedom changes from person to person, place to place, and from time to time.
Eric Foner, in his book mentioned earlier, describes the different consequences that emancipation had on different peoples lives and how the reconstruction era attempted to be a time for transformation in the confederate states. Throughout the book we see that freedom has a different definition for people of different skin colors and we see the effect that it has on their lives and how they decided to live them. Before the emancipation of slaves, for example, some 180,000 African-Americans enlisted to serve in the Union Army because, as it turns out, enlistment was one of the only routes that gave hopes of freedom. Freedom, in the case of the slave, was the abolishment of slavery, but it was also a lot more than that. A former slave, named Henry Adams, told his former master, “If I cannot do like a white man I am not free.”1 We see here that emancipation, on its own, was only the first true step towards freedom, showing us that equality to the white man is what meant that freedom had finally arrived for the African American. Later, in the warmer months of 1865, we saw this idea of freedom manifest when mass meetings held by former African slaves led to petitions and parades that demanded not only civil equality be an indispensable corollary to emancipation, but suffrage as well.1 We began to see African Americans grow and strive for equality, showing us that freedom was attainable, but still a long way to go.
A different form of freedom was that of the workplace. With the abolishment of slavery, we saw that African Americans were no longer tied down to a single place by force. The new sense of freedom allowed them to begin a new life and move forward once again. White Americans had a similar experience, albeit in a much easier manner without nearly the same amount of pain and suffering, with the strikes that ultimately benefitted workers throughout the entire United States. Job security has always been something that Americans believed was important to a happy life, but the abuse that came from employers in the late 1800s led workers to strike. Smaller strikes had incited earlier but to very small effects, they demanded higher wages and quickly returned to work, which was ineffective and only resulted in those that didn’t return to work being blacklisted. The fear of no change and being blacklisted was enough to deter more people from going on strike, but as the Pullman company and its employees began to disagree more and more, a strike became inevitable. The company believed that they were working to help the employees out by reducing pay rates and, as a result, increasing the amount of contracts, but the employees simply wanted a reinstatement of the previous wage scale, which did not dictate pay by the amount of products they produced.2 The biggest problem that the employees encountered was also that while their pay was decreased, the prices of their homes stayed the same, even though Pullman had control over both, leaving the employees without any sort of money to live off of.2 The disagreements between both parties led to the Pullman strike of 1894 and showed us that freedom meant that the employees did not have to settle for less.
Another definition of freedom arose in Richard W Etulain’s book, “Does the Frontier Experience make America Exceptional?,” when we learn more about the Turner’s thesis, a historical interpretation of the importance of the frontier developed by Frederick Jackson Turner. Freedom, in this case, meant that early Americans were free to move west and exploit whatever they wished because America was becoming great and showed exceptionalism. Turner describes the frontier as the point where savages first encountered civilization and allowed for settlers to progress through the west. We saw how the exploitation of animals and the exploitation of land attracted both traders and farmers alike and gave Americans the notion that as the country expanded, so did its power.3 This sense of increasing power allowed for the westward expansion to manifest itself as the destiny of Americans. This idea was accepted quickly and remained unchallenged by historians up until about a hundred years later. Historians later argued that Turner overestimated the importance of the frontier in American history and a man named Charles Beard added that he underestimated the relevance of slaves, industrialization and conflicts between workers and owners.3
In William L. Riordan’s book, “Plunkitt of Tammany Hall,” he helps us define freedom as the ability to do things that others can’t based on the amount of money one has. We see this definition most clearly with the actions of a man named George Washington Plunkitt. Early on in the reading Plunkitt tells us of the difference between an honest and dishonest graft and is careful to say that he is an example of how an honest graft works.4 As the reading progresses we learn that there really isn’t an honest graft and that both honest and dishonest graft are identical, but distinguishing between the two was up to the person in question, but only if they had money. We see this the clearest when we learn of Jimmy, a boy from Brooklyn that worked for Plunkitt. Regardless of who Jimmy was as a person, Plunkitt disowned him as a worker the day he saw him reading a Brooklyn newspaper and immediately labeled him as dishonest.4 We later see the more advantages that came with wealth when we encountered corruption within Tamany hall. Plunkitt mentions that stealing didn’t necessarily mean that newer politicians were corrupt, but rather it meant that older politicians were not able to steal anything given the fact that there wasn’t anything to steal. His attempt to justify the corruption among his eras politicians is comical at most and shows us that as more money is involved, more freedom ensues, giving them a longer list of excuses for their actions.
For George Appo, a man we learned about in Timothy Gilfoyle’s book, “The Urban Underworld in Late Nineteenth-Century New York: The Autobiography of George Appo with Related Documents,” the definition of freedom was quite literal. Throughout the book we learn of his of his run-ins with the police and his encounters with drugs, that ultimately lead him to being arrested over a dozen times and spending over a decade of lost times in at least eight different jails/prisons. We learn early on about the way that Appo lived and we see the way that pick-pocketing was first introduced to him as a way to earn money. This lifestyle of stealing, and crime, became a norm to Appo and we see that the difference in classes between the rich and poor, along with the growth of consumer advertisement, played a huge role in that development.5 It was difficult to see why a person earning a steady income from pick-pocketing would leave it, but as crime changed and as Appo was introduced to more people, we saw why he wanted to leave that life. After being arrested countless times and being in and out of jail, Appos views on crime began to change, he saw freedom from jail as the only means for happiness, but saw the difficulty in achieving it every time he tried. He said, “I and the other men always returned to a life of a crook as soon as discharged.”5
In Barton Bernstein’s essay, “The New Deal: The Conservative Achievements of Liberal Reform,” he discusses the decisions made by the government to combat the great depression. He shows us that the Roosevelt administration did not act in any revolutionary way and was consistently a servant to big businesses and power groups.6 Freedom, to Bernstein, meant that a person, such as the president, was capable of doing what they wished and he is able to show us this with the transition between Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the beginning of his essay he takes us back and tells us that Hoover was one of the first presidents to really take actions towards fighting the depression; he calls Hoover “the first of the new” as opposed to the “last of the old” presidents. We see Roosevelt go beyond even what Hoover was able to do in support of public works, but we see him resist the need to help lift the nation out of depression by spending more money and instead playing it safe. Roosevelt, as a skilled politician, was capable of splitting apart coalitions and diverting the interests of groups to instead help the nation, but was consistently excluding millions of Americans and working in the interest of corporate capitalism.6
Freedom meant many things to women, in Betty Friedan’s book, “The Feminine Mystique,” we learn about the lives that white, higher class suburban housewives lived and how some of their mindsets were changing in the second half of the 20th century. Friedan starts by describing the “duties” that these women had and mentions that after they waxed the floor, cooked meals for their husbands and families, after they cleaned the house and finally made it to bed, they lay their and asked themselves “Is this all?”7 Many women saw the situation they were living in, but grew up believing that to be there dream. In one specific case we saw that a woman turned down a science fellowship at Johns Hopkins to instead work at a real-estate office due to the fact that doing so would interfere with her dream of getting married and raising four kids in a nice suburb.7 This was quite often the opposite mentality that men had when referring to their dreams. We later read that the ability to vote, that allowed them to make major decisions in the country they lived in, and the ability to truly enjoy love was something that women desired, but did having these desires mean they wanted to be men? The short answer is no, women wanted to simply be considered human, in a world where they were trapped in a box and weren’t allowed out by either sex.
Phyllis Schlafly, a conservative activist, on the other hand believed that women had never been in a better position in the history of the United States. She saw freedom as the ability for women to live simple lives. She noted that while it took some men 30 to 40 years to feel accomplished in whatever profession they chose, women were able to attain a real sense of achievement as a young woman, when she had a baby.8 In today’s society, her opinion might be shrugged off and invalidated as soon as she made it, but in the mid 20th century, her opinion reigned supreme. Many women, as it was briefly mentioned with Friedan, believed that the epitome of being a woman meant that they could stay at home cleaning, have a family and live in a nice house in the suburbs, all while their husbands worked.8 This idea began to be challenged, but women like Schlafly were strongly opposed to that ideology. She mentioned that women being treated unfairly was not an accurate portrayal of their situation and considered it the “fraud of the century”. She saw that women had the freedom to be, what she considered, a true woman. One of her many gripes with equality was that it meant that women were subject to places that were not considered well suited for women, the most ridiculous, to her, being the draft.8 This was consistently one of her most contested points, but it showed us clearly that her beliefs were not aligned with anything that Friedan was pointing out.
Tony Horwitz, yet again shows us the flexibility in the meaning of freedom. In his book, “Confederates in the Attic,” we read about his journey, or his attempt rather, to visit places of great historical meaning throughout the civil war. He encounters a couple of civil war reenactors one morning as he hears gunshots being fired outside his house and after delving into their lives for a bit, he shows us that these people define freedom as the right to memorialize their ancestors.9 Early on we encounter how far some of these people will go to be as accurate as they can be when reenacting; people told Horwitz that they would soak their brass buttons in urine in order to give the buttons the patina-like color that was commonly seen in the 1860s on confederate soldier uniforms.9 People went through many extremes to be as accurate as they could be, but another interesting extreme that people did to further their accuracy was the research itself. Many of the reenactors had no idea that they had any connection to the confederacy, but learning about their past allowed them to look at their lives from a different lens. A man named Mike Hawkins told Horwitz that reading about the history of the civil war took him out of the world he was living in. He mentioned that the life that his great-great-grandfather’s lived felt bigger than his own the more he read about it. He compared his life as a paint mixer and told us that having his great-great-grandfather’s leg blown off was a lot more meaningful than choosing what paints to mix; reading about his past felt like an escape.9 “Hardcores” also reenacted several key events such as “Battle of the Wilderness” and although spectators were welcome, Horwitz was able to show us that the reenactment was not put on for the entertainment of spectators, but rather because it was important for them to show where they come from and what they represented.9
Freedom can not be defined simply because the definition of freedom changes so easily between people. We look at history and we see the world changing and we see how everybody has lived a different life, even when they have lived hundreds of years apart. Our lives today seem to change at the blink of an eye and so do our perceptions of it. Every day we find different problems with the way we live and every day we find solutions. Freedom has taken on a different role in our lifetime than it had not even a decade ago, and even when our lives seem uncertain, we can be sure that freedom will keep changing.