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Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War
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5 Reddit comments about Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War:

u/FT_Diomedes · 22 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

This actually had nothing to do with unions at the outset. The tradition predates unions by quite a bit. It started with immense economic opportunity driven by cheap land and labor shortages. This tied with English traditions about individualism and free labor.

Unlike workers all over the world, Americans have a tradition of not being bound to one particular job or employer. At will employment benefits the workers when you live in a land of scarce labor, immense availability of land, and enormous opportunity. The conflict between free labor traditions in the North and unfree labor traditions in the South (enabled by a color-coded slave system) was one of the most important tensions between ~1820-1865.

Now, as immigration increases (more labor available) and the opportunity to get new land or new jobs goes down (no more frontier and increasing urbanization and mechanization), then at will employment now benefits employers more. But this was not the case for much of U.S. history.

Citations:
Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (available at
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Soil-Labor-Men-Republican/dp/0195094972

Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom (https://www.amazon.com/American-Slavery-Freedom-Edmund-Morgan/dp/039332494X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538998439&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=american+slavery%2C+american+freedom&dpPl=1&dpID=51h4aolAGJL&ref=plSrch#immersive-view_1538998477709)

u/kusumuk · 3 pointsr/esist

While I'm extremely confident that Kelly and Trump's civil war comments are derived from segregationist revisionism that's not based in reality, there's a crucial point that I'm surprised the Black Caucus didn't bring up regarding Republican revisionism of the party's motivations for abolishing slavery and the half hearted effort to fuse the surge in popularity of moral arguments for abolition with its more popular economic arguments that favored northern capital.

We must remember that the moral imperative as a motivator to abolish slavery was not a popular issue until soon after the publication of the emancipation proclamation, which freed only slaves who were inside the confederate states. This by no means was designed to be a moral action, and was only created to deprive the south of crucial resources that stoked its war effort.

Because there were so many voices in the Republican party at the time of the civil war the official reasons for abolition were many, ranging from economic justifications to moral ones. The southern slaveholding states viewed attempts at abolition as a violation of the constitution. The reasons for being against abolition in the south were mostly economic; while arguments over racial inferiority of slaves were used as a rationale for slavery, motivations for maintaining the status quo were always driven by the economic advantages. It's widely known that there was much anxiety in the planter class about northern capital sweeping in to replace the existing aristocracy as the primary powerhouse in the south, and this would prove to hold true when reviewing the choices that republicans made in the few short years of Reconstruction.

WEB DuBois had first revealed republican hypocrisy in 1935 in his book Black Reconstruction in America, and it was dismissed by existing academic institutions whose publications were the voice of record on the civil war and reconstruction. He surmised that the freedmen were the primary agents of change during reconstruction and not white republicans, demonstrating in remarkable detail that northern republicans were far more interested in the economic opportunities for capital in the south than pushing for equality under law. He demonstrated that republicans restored land rights and political power to the planter class, and focused on persuading southerners, both freedmen and whites, to subsidize economic projects driven by northern capital ie railroad expansion, factories, etc. DuBois noted that slavery and Jim Crow affected freedmen and poor whites alike; the only truly free classes were the planters and the capitalists. Everyone else had very little say in antebellum America.

It wasn't until the 1970's when Eric Foner revisited DuBois's work, and validated it; his book Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution that the existing narrative -- That republicans had done absolutely everything that they could to empower slaves; declaring war, abolishing slavery, reconstructing post-war southern states...and still they could not save the freedmen-- was successfully invalidated. Foner had proved most of DuBois' work was in fact spot on. He even validated DuBois' assertions on Republican motivations some time later in Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. The republican effort to make good on the moral imperative of creating equality under the law only lasted at most about 2 years, from 1866-1868. From 1867-1874 republicans had every chance to quell the rising redeemers movement -- the prelude to Jim Crow -- but instead allowed nearly all the southern republican leadership, loyalist scallawags, and community leaders of freedmen to be lynched, murdered, and run out of town. By 1877 what little effort republicans had made to stop the violence in the south had all but disappeared during the economic depression and the subsequent labor strikes in the north. Republicans decided to send union troops to quell the strikes instead of sending them to the south where southern republican leaders needed them as a matter of life and death. In the end, the push for a constitutional amendment that mandated equality under the law was given up as a quixotic venture, explaining away their failures by blaming the freedmen for their plight. This lie persisted for another 100 years.

This is a view of history that no one wants to hear. But it gives credit where credit is due. Our entire society was changed by Reconstruction, and in no small part because of the freedmen. Our view of the role of government, universal suffrage, education, labor, and political enfranchisement are all a gift from the freedmen, and with no thanks to republicans.

Source: Books. Because of Eric Foner's work, he is considered the leading voice in academia on the intellectual history of the Civil war and reconstruction. If you're wondering whose peer reviewed criticisms of ken burns' civil war are legitimate, it's Foner's. He's a heavyweight.

u/iloveamericandsocanu · 1 pointr/unpopularopinion

You should read this book.

> > Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War

If you choose to read it, I would love to have a conversation with you about it again.

u/sensualsanta · 1 pointr/IAmA

You may also want to check out Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men

u/Nick_Full_Time · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

To add a bit of background to your question I highly recommend a book that Eric Foner wrote about Republic ideology on the eve of the Civil War: (https://www.amazon.com/Free-Soil-Labor-Men-Republican/dp/0195094972). Incredibly paraphrased it states the general Republican belief was that slavery brought down American exceptionalism because we were producing materials using sub-human labor