Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil WarOxford University Press, 1970 - 353 pagine Since its publication twenty five years ago, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men has been recognized as a classic, an indispensable contribution to our understanding of the causes of the American Civil War. A key work in establishing political ideology as a major concern of modern American historians, it remains the only full-scale evaluation of the ideas of the early Republican party. Now with a new introduction, Eric Foner puts his argument into the context of contemporary scholarship, reassessing the concept of free labor in the light of the last tweny-five years of writing on such issues as work, gender, economic change, and political thought. A significant reevaluation of the causes of the Civil War, Foner's study looks beyond the North's opposition to slavery and its emphasis upon preserving the Union to determine the broader grounds of its willingness to undertake a war against the South in 1861. Its search is for those social concepts the North accepted as vital to its way of life, and it finds these most clearly expressed in the ideology of the growing Republican party in the decade before the war's start. By a careful analysis of the attitudes of leading factions in the party's formation (northern Whigs, former Democrats, and political abolitionists) Foner is able to show what each contributed to Republican ideology. He also shows how northern ideas of human rights--in particular a man's right to work where and how he wanted, and to accumulate property in his own name--and the goals of American society were implicit in that ideology. This was the ideology that permeated the North in the period directly before the Civil War, led to the election of Abraham Lincoln, and led, almost immediately, to the Civil War itself. At the heart of the controversy over the extension of slavery, he argues, is the issue of whether the northern or southern form of society would take root in the West, whose development would determine determine the nation's destiny. In his new introductory essay, Foner presents a greatly altered view of the subject. Only entrepreneurs and farmers were actually "free men" in the sense used in the ideology of the period. Actually, by the time the Civil War was initiated, half the workers in the North were wage-earners, not independent workers. And this did not account for women and blacks, who had little freedom in choosing what work they did. He goes onto show that even after the Civil War these guarantees for "free soil, free labor, free men" did not really apply for most Americans, and especially not for blacks. |
Sommario
The Republicans and Northern Society | 11 |
The Republican Critique of the South | 40 |
The Constitution and the Slave Power | 73 |
Copyright | |
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Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before ... Eric Foner Anteprima limitata - 1995 |
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before ... Eric Foner Anteprima limitata - 1995 |
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before ... Eric Foner Anteprima limitata - 1995 |
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36 Congress abolitionists Adams Papers American anti-slavery Appendix April August Barnburners Boston Buren Carey Carl Schurz Charles Francis Adams Charles Sumner Chase Papers Chicago Cincinnati Gazette Civil colonization Congressional Globe conservative Constitution Convention December declared Democracy Doolittle economic election February former Democrats Francis Adams Diary free labor Free Soil party Frémont fugitive slave law George Governor Hamlin Henry Wilson Historical Society History Horace Greeley HSPa ideology Illinois immigrants Indiana insisted Iowa Israel Washburn issue James January John Julian July June Know-Nothings leaders Liberty party Lyman Trumbull March Massachusetts moderate nativism nativist North northern November October opposed party's Pennsylvania platform political publican Republican party Salmon secession Senate September Session Seward Slave Power slaveholders slavery Smith social South southern Speeches Springfield Republican Sumner Papers tariff territories Thurlow Weed tion Union University unpublished doctoral dissertation vols vote Washburn William H Wisconsin wrote York Evening Post York Tribune