Freedom in the 1860s

    

The Definition of the American Freedom

During the 1860's, America was in its postwar stage trying to recover and rebuild from the Civil War. In the postwar South era, there was a new definition of freedom. This freedom looked like freedom to be recognized as humans. There were many things that happened during slavery and after slavery that pushed to not recognize black people as humans in the postwar South.
This recognition would come in the form of the fight for voting rights, ownership rights, autonomic rights, and pure racism and discrimination. After the war, the South was looking to rebuild their economy, that was now down due to the new freedom that enslaved people were granted. However this freedom was not as effective as it could have been, because black people were still not granted the freedom to be self dependent. They were prevented from working, voting, owning land, and anything else that would allow them to rebuild a life and gain economic independency. 

Amend Episode 1

This episode impacted my definition of freedom during this time because it showed the aspect of society that had seemed everybody was aware that the fight for justice was beginning with the fight for economic independency. There was a lot of talk of it just being that black people's feelings were just being hurt, but it was truly a fight for economic independency, to own land, to vote, to earn fair wages, to receive equal learning opportunities, etc.

Link to Episode:

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Chapter Question:

The visions of freedom are that formed slaves and slaveholders pursued in the postwar South and were all revolving around the idea of economics, specifically the ideas of economic security and economic independences. For many of the slaves it was all about that independence, and right to vote, own land, and be able to receive an income and be able to live independently. For many of the slaveholders their visions changed from being centered around agriculture to being centered around the manufacturing economy. There were more visions of creating big corporations and excelling in the manufacturing industry as the United States was leading in manufacturing for other countries.