How Did The British Colonists Obtain Liberty During The American Revolution

During the American Revolution, colonists had many utopian ideals of freedom, representation, and independence. They fought for them through the Revolutionary War and Thomas Paine emphasised them in his book Common Sense. The british colonists kept those principles at heart when writing the Declaration of Independence and continued pursue them even until the mid 1800s with the rise of cotton in the Mississippi Valley. When the soil in the southern states proved fertile, King Cotton became the new cash crop along the Black Belt. Many Americans were drawn like magnets to the opportunity of having their part in the rising prospects of fortune. This magnetic force that brought so many to the new fertile land, was driven by the same principles
During the Revolution, colonists wanted liberty through government representation and strong states rights, while during the cotton boom, Americans wanted liberty through power brought on by money. In 1830, the Indian Removal Act whisked tribes off of their territories from Mississippi down to Florida so that the land could be free for further cotton cultivation. Slaves, delegated to clear the land in the prosperous south, traveled through brutal conditions from the coast in order to fulfill the desires of their owners. The slave owners saw liberty in the form of money from cotton, and did not let anything stand in the way of obtaining it, just as the colonists were spent on the idea of earning freedom from Britain throughout the revolution. In American culture, with more money comes more liberty. One’s ability to buy slaves, earn respect, and buy land, leads to a higher standing in society and therefore more freedom to control one’s life. With money comes power and with power comes liberty. Americans were so determined to gain money, and fast, that they rushed their families and lives over to the Black Belt despite the harsh journey. Ira Berlin, an American historian, describes the brutal travel conditions that the slaves were forced to take on when their masters demanded a move to King Cotton, “The long journey
In the form of democracy in America, representatives are chosen by the people because they are seen to have a higher ability and knowledge to make decisions for the people. With the expansion of cotton came more slaves under the ownership of white slave owners. As far as most Americans saw the position of whites and slaves, the slave owners were put in power by God because He wanted the white people to control the black slaves. James Hammond, a slavery advocate and politician, wrote in 1858, "Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race. The situation in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves.” If Hammond saw that slavery was an elevation from what God intended, he thought that God intended for the slaves to have an even worst of life than slavery and that white people were raising them from the gutters. With slavery and democracy comes the grounding ideal of meritocracy. In both instances, people are put in power because of apparent superiority: representatives are put in power because they are meant to be more capable of decision making than the average American, and slave-owners are put in power over slaves because of ‘God’s will’ as He intended. As James Hammond further describes the role of African-Americans in America at the time,