Cobbs-Hoffman Elizabeth, Blum Edward J., Gjerde Jon. Major Problems in American History, Volume I, 3 edition (ENG)
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than in some other countries. But death by actual starvation in this country is we
apprehend no uncommon occurrence. The sufferings of a quiet, unassuming but
useful class of females in our cities, in general sempstresses, too proud to beg or
to apply to the almshouse, are not easily told. They are industrious; they do all
they can find to do; but yet the little there is for them to do, and the miserable
pittance they receive for it, is hardly sufficient to keep soul and body together….
We pass through our manufacturing villages; most of them appear neat and
flourishing. The operatives are well dressed, and we are told, well paid. They are
said to be healthy, contented, and happy. This is the fair side of the picture; the
side exhibited to distinguished visitors. There is a dark side, moral as well as
physical. Of the common operatives, few, if any, by their wages, acquire a com-
petence. A few of what Carlyle terms not inaptly the body-servants are well paid,
and now and then an agent or an overseer rides in his coach. But the great mass
wear out their health, spirits, and morals, without becoming one whit better off
than when they commenced labor …. We know no sadder sight on earth than
one of our factory villages presents, when the bell at break of day, or at the hour
of breakfast, or dinner, calls out its hundreds or thousands of operatives. We
stand and look at these hard working men and women hurrying in all directions,
and ask ourselves, where go the proceeds of their labors? The man who employs
them, and for whom they are willing as so many slaves, is one of our city nabobs,
revelling in luxury; or he is a member of our legislature, enacting laws to put
money in his own pocket; or he is a member of Congress, contending for a
high Tariff to tax the poor for the benefit of the rich; or in these times he is
shedding crocodile tears over the deplorable condition of the poor laborer, while
he docks his wages twenty-five per cent; building miniature log cabins, shouting
Harrison and “hard cider.”—And this man too would fain pass for a Christian
and a republican. He shouts for liberty, stickless for equality, and is horrified at
a Southern planter who keeps slaves.
One thing is certain; that of the amount actually produced by the operative,
he retains a less proportion than it costs the master to feed, clothe, and lodge his
slave. Wages is a cunning device of the devil, for the benefit of tender con-
sciences, who would retain all the advantages of the slave system, without the
expense, trouble, and odium of being slave-holders.
Messrs. Thome and Kimball, in their account of the emancipation of slavery
in the West Indies, establish the fact that the employer may have the same
amount of labor done 25 per ct. cheaper than the master. What does this fact
prove, if not that wages is a more successful method of taxing labor than slavery?
We really believe our Northern system of labor is more oppressive, and even
more mischievous to morals, than the Southern. We, however, war against
both. We have no toleration for either system. We would see a slave a man,
but a free man, not a mere operative at wages. This he would not be were he
now emancipated. Could the abolitionists effect all they propose, they would do
the slave no service. Should emancipation work as well as they say, still it would
do the slave no good. He would be a slave still, although with the title and cares
of a freeman. If then we had no constitutional objections to abolitionism, we
could not, for the reason here implied, be abolitionists.
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND IMMIGRATION IN THE NORTH 333
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The slave system, however, in name and form, is gradually disappearing
from Christendom. It will not subsist much longer. But its place is taken by the
system of labor at wages, and this system, we hold, is no improvement upon the
one it supplants. Nevertheless the system of wages will triumph. It is the system
which in name sounds honester than slavery, and in substance is more profitable
to the master. It yields the wages of iniquity, without its opprobrium. It will
therefore supplant slavery, and be sustained—for a time.
4. Gustof Unonius, a Swedish Immigrant,
Reflects on Life in the United States, 1841–1842
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 13 October 1841
The soil here is the most fertile and wonderful that can be found and usually
consists of rich black mold. Hunting and fishing will provide some food in the
beginning, but they must be pursued sparingly, otherwise time which could
more profitably be spent in cultivating the soil is wasted. I beg the emigrant to
consider all these factors carefully and closely calculate his assets before he starts
out…. [He] will have to suffer much in the beginning, limit himself consider-
ably, and sacrifice much of what he was accustomed to in Europe…. I caution
against all exaggerated hopes and golden air castles; cold reality will otherwise
lame your arm and crush your courage; both must be fresh and active.
As far as we are concerned, we do not regret our undertaking. We are living
a free and independent life in one of the most beautiful valleys the world can
offer; and from the experiences of others we see that in a few years we can
have a better livelihood and enjoy comforts that we must now deny ourselves.
If we should be overcome by a longing for the fatherland (and this seems un-
likely), we could sell our farm which in eight years will certainly bring ten or
twelve dollars per acre…. But I believe that I will be satisfied in America.
I am partial to a republican form of government, and I have realized my
youthful dream of social equality. Others may say what they will, but there are
many attractive things about it. It is no disgrace to work here. Both the gentle-
man and the day laborer work. No epithets of degradation are applied to men of
humble toil; only those whose conduct merits it are looked down upon….
Liberty is still stronger in my affections than the bright silver dollar that bears her
image….
Pine Lake, Wisconsin, 25 January 1842
… I admit that I am no friend of the big city of New York. The shopkeeper’s
spirit is too prevalent, but to judge the American national character from that is
incorrect. I have found the Americans entirely different. We live in an industrial
era and it is true that the American is a better representative of that than any other
Gustof Unonius, “Letters from a Swedish Man,” in Letters from the Promised Land: Swedes in America, 1840–1914, ed.
H. Arnold Barton (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975).
334 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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nationality. Despite this fact, there is something kindly in his speculation for profit
and wealth, and I find more to admire in his manner than in that of the European
leaders. The merchant here is withal patriotic; in calculating his own gain he usu-
ally includes a share for his country…. [T]he universities and other educational
institutions, homes for the poor, and other institutions of value to society are de-
pendent on and supported by the American merchants. Canals, railroads, etc., are
all financed by companies composed of a few individuals whose collective fortunes
serve the public for its common benefit and profit. One must, therefore, overlook
an avariciousness which sometimes goes to extremes.
It is true that the American is a braggart…. During the struggles which rend
and agitate the countries of the Old World he sees in the progress of his peaceful
fatherland the results of liberty and equality which he considers impossible to
obtain under any other conditions. Even though I do not wish to blame him
for this, yet I do not deny that his resulting self-satisfaction expresses itself in a
highly ridiculous fashion in trivial matters.
5. A Lowell Factory Girl Describes a Week in the Mill, 1845
Much has been said of the factory girl and her employment. By some she ha s
been represented as dwelling in a sort of brick-and-mortar paradise, having
little to occupy thought save the weaving of gay and romantic fancies, while
the spindle or the wheel flies obediently beneath her glance. Others have
deemed her a mere servile drudge, chained to her labor by almost as strong a
power as that which holds a b ondman in his fetters; and, in deed, s ome have
already given her the title of “the white slave of the North.” Her real situation
approaches neither one nor the other of these extremes. Her occupation is a s
laborious as that of almost any female who earns her own living, wh ile it has
also its sunny spots and its cheerful intervals, which make her hard labo r seem
comparatively pleasant and easy.
Look at her as she commences her weekly task. The rest of the sabbath has
made her heart and her step light, and she is early at her accustomed place,
awaiting the starting of the machinery. Every thing having been cleaned and
neatly arranged on the Saturday night, she has less to occupy her on Monday
than on other days; and you may see her leaning from the window to watch
the glitter of the sunrise on the water, or looking away at the distant forests
and fields, while memory wanders to her beloved country home; or, it may be
that she is conversing with a sister-laborer near; returning at regular intervals to
see that her work is in order.
Soon the breakfast bell rings; in a moment the whirling wheels are stopped,
and she hastens to join the throng which is pouring through the open gate. At
the table she mingles with a various group. Each despatches the meal hurriedly,
though not often in silence; and if, as is sometimes the case, the rules of
Anonymous, “A Week in the Mill,” Lowell Offering, Volume V, 1845.
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND IMMIGRATION IN THE NORTH
335
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politeness are not punctiliously observed by all, the excuse of some lively country
girl would be, “They don’t give us time for manners.”
The short half-hour is soon over; the bell rings again; and now our factory
girl feels that she has commenced her day’s work in earnest. The time is often
apt to drag heavily till the dinner hour arrives. Perhaps some part of the work
becomes deranged and stops; the constant friction causes a belt of leather to burst
into a flame; a stranger visits the room, and scans the features and dress of its
inmates inquiringly; and there is little else to break the monotony. The afternoon
passes in much the same manner. Now and then she mingles with a knot of busy
talkers who have collected to discuss some new occurrence, or holds pleasant
converse with some intelligent and agreeable friend, whose acquaintance she
has formed since her factory life commenced; but much of the time she is left
to her own thoughts. While at her work, the clattering and rumbling around her
prevent any other noise from her attention, and she must think, or her life would
be dull indeed.
Thus the day passes on, and evening comes; the time which she feels to be
exclusively her own. How much is done in the three short hours from seven to
ten o’clock. She has a new dress to finish; a call to make on some distant corpo-
ration; a meeting to attend; there is a lecture or a concert at some one of the
public halls, and the attendance will be thin if she and her associates are not pres-
ent; or, if nothing more imperative demands her time, she takes a stroll through
the street or to the river with some of her mates, or sits down at home to peruse
a new book. At ten o’clock all is still for the night….
6. New Yorker George Templeton Strong Berates
the Immigrants in His Midst, 1838–1857
November 6 [1838]. It was enough to turn a man’s stomach—to make a man
adjure republicanism forever—to see the way they were naturalizing this morn-
ing at the Hall. Wretched, filthy, bestial-looking Italians and Irish, and creations
[creatures] that looked as if they had risen from the lazarettos of Naples for this
especial object; in short, the very scum and dregs of human nature filled the clerk
of C[ommon] P[leas] office so completely that I was almost afraid of being poi-
soned by going in. A dirty Irishman is bad enough, but he’s nothing comparable
to a nasty French or Italian loafer….
April 28 [1848]. Orders given to commence excavating in Twenty-first Street
Wednesday night…. Hibernia came to the rescue yesterday morning; twenty
“sons of toil” with prehensile paws supplied them by nature with evident refer-
ence to the handling of the spade and the wielding of the pickaxe and congenital
hollows on the shoulder wonderfully adapted to make the carrying of the hod a
luxury instead of a labor….
Allan Nevins and Milton H. Thomas, eds., The Dairy of George Templeton Strong (New York: Macmillan, 1952), I:94,
318 and II:197, 348.
336 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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November 13 [1854]. Met a prodigious Know-Nothing [nativist political
party] procession moving uptown, as I omnibussed down Broadway to the vestry
meeting; not many banners and little parade of any kind, but a most emphatic
and truculent demonstration. Solid column, eight or ten abreast, and numbering
some two or three thousand, mostly young men of the butcher-boy and prentice
type … marching in quick time, and occasionally indulging in a very earnest
kind of hurrah. They looked as if they might have designs on St. Patrick’s
Cathedral, and I think the Celts of Prince and Mott Streets would have found
them ugly customers….
July 7 [1857]. Yesterday morning I was spectator of a strange, weird, painful
scene. Certain houses of John Watts DePeyster are to be erected on the north-
west corner of this street and Fourth Avenue, and the deep excavations therefore
are in progress. Seeing a crowd on the corner, I stopped and made my way to a
front place. The earth had caved in a few minutes before and crushed the breath
out of a pair of ill-starred Celtic laborers. They had just been dragged, or dug,
out, and lay white and stark on the ground where they had been working, ten or
twelve feet below the level of the street. Around them were a few men who had
got them out, I suppose, and fifteen or twenty Irish women, wives, kinfolk or
friends, who had got down there in some inexplicable way. The men were list-
less and inert enough, but not so the women. I suppose they were “keening”; all
together were raising a wild, unearthly cry, half shriek and half song, wailing as a
score of daylight Banshees, clapping their hands and gesticulating passionately.
Now and then one of them would throw herself down on one of the corpses,
or wipe some trace of defilement from the face of the dead man with her apron,
slowly and carefully, and then resume her lament. It was an uncanny sound to
hear…. Our Celtic fellow citizens are almost as remote from us in temperament
and constitution as the Chinese.
7. James Bowlin, a Congressman, Marvels
at the Possibilities of Western Lands, 1846
… The public lands were a trust fund in our hands for the benefit of the people—
not to be held up by prohibitory, nor squandered by corrupt legislation; but to be
so disposed of, as would secure to them the greatest benefits—whether that was in
promoting correct principles, increasing the revenue, or in advancing the general
prosperity of the country.
Land being the true basis of all individual and national prosperity, its dispo-
sition, and the tenure by which it is held, has in every age of the world, and in
every civilized nation, engaged the most ardent attention of the statesman. There
is no subject in the whole range of political science, that so nearly and directly
interests the great body of the people, as that of the right of soil. Its disposition is
not only a question of mere utility —that changes with the passing hour—but it
is one involving great and important principles, upon which may hang the fate of
James Bowlin, speech in Congress, The Congressional Globe, July 6, 1846, 1059–1060.
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND IMMIGRATION IN THE NORTH
337
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man and governments. So intimately identified is it with the forms and systems
of government, and the political rights and privileges of men, that we are fre-
quently enabled to read the history of a nation, either for weal or for [woe],
for glory or shame, in the mere regulations of her land systems. That govern-
ment, no matter by what name it may be called, whose lands are scattered
amongst the great body of her people, and are left unfettered by law, to pass in
their natural course, from generation to generation, preserving and perpetuating
an independent yeomanry, must forever enjoy a high state of political freedom.
Whilst such a system is preserved, there is no focus around which to rally political
power to oppress. The rays of power are scattered, and can only be concentrated
over the ruins of the system itself. Upon the contrary, that government which
adopts a system, and pursues a policy, tending to concentrate its soil in the hands
of a few, to the detriment of the many, fettering its free passage from man to
man, no matter what name it may bear, its ultimate destiny is the destruction of
every vestige of equality and liberty. It is the inevitable destiny of nations to be
controlled by the proprietors of the soil, and the government is free or despotic,
just in proportion to the number of its rulers, or participants in political privileges.
If you wish to preserve and perpetuate its democratic form, you must pursue a
policy tending to disseminate the lands amongst the largest possible number of
the people of the state. Hence the great principle that lies at the foundation of
any system for the disposition of the public lands we may see proper to adopt….
The celebrated feudal system of more modern times was but a cunningly
devised scheme to rob the great body of the people of their just and legitimate
interest in the landed estate of the country, and thereby build up an aristocracy
upon the ruins of popular liberty. It was but a scheme to perpetuate political
power in the hands of the few to the detriment of the many; to make serfs of
the people and lords of their rulers…. It is this land system that constitutes the
props to uphold the monarchies of the Old World….
… [L]et us now turn our attention for a moment to the policy adopted by
the European nations in colonizing this continent, and its natural and legitimate
consequences; for it is a notorious fact, attested to in almost every page of Amer-
ican history, that they pursued a policy diametrically opposed to the system of
policy adopted at home. The monarchs of England, France, and Spain, the three
great colonizing nations of Europe, donated their lands to the emigrants in the
newly-discovered countries—the two latter in the most liberal manner. The pol-
icy of this measure was to encourage emigration and settlement in the New
World. The effect of it was to inculcate ideas of independence in the great
body of the people, elevating their moral sentiments, and arousing their innate
love of liberty, until it resulted in stretching a line of republics from the St.
Lawrence to the Rio de la Plata. Their day-dreams of empire in the New World
all dissolved at the touch of the magic wand of freedom, inculcated and nour-
ished in the breast of the people by the fact that they were the free occupants of
their own soil, and ate the bread of their own industry….
… [W]e ask no special favors to aid us in our march; we only ask that you
place no obstacle in our way—that you leave our action free; and the enterprise,
energy, and industry of the same people who subdue forests in their march, and
338 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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make the wilderness to yield abundant harvests, will make the country prosper.
The rich soil, the magnificent rivers, the mild and genial climate of the great
West, all contribute to invite emigration amongst us, and that policy would be
suicidal that would obstruct or retard it. The West needs population to develop
its great resources; and it will be one of the blessings of this great measure that it
will contribute to its increase, without impairing the best interests of other por-
tions of the Confederacy….
But the new States have another interest at stake, which appeals strongly to
the magnanimity of this Government in behalf of this measure; and that is an in-
terest which almost as deeply concerns the whole Confederacy as the new States—
and that was, their interest in bringing these lands into general occupancy and cul-
tivation, so that they might yield a revenue in support of the Government. Under
the present system the public lands are not taxed; and the States in which they lie,
and from the labor of whose citizens they derive value, can exact no revenue from
them. In the hands of individuals they would be taxable, and liable to be made,
like other lands, tributary to the support and improvement of the State.
8. Irish Americans Sing About Their
Struggles and Successes, c. 1860s
NO IRISH NEED APPLY. Written by JOHN F. POOLE, and sung, with
immense success, by the great Comic-Vocalist of the age, TONY PASTOR.
I’m a dacint boy, just landed from the town of Ballyfad;
I want a situation: yis, I want it mighty bad.
I saw a place advertised. It’s the thing for me, says I;
But the dirty spalpeen [rascal] ended with: No Irish need apply.
Whoo! says I; but that’s an insult—though to get the place I’ll try.
So, I wint to see the blaggar with: No Irish need apply.
I started off to find the house, I got it mighty soon;
There I found the ould chap saited: he was reading the TRIBUNE.
I tould him what I came for, whin he in a rage did fly:
No! says he, you are a Paddy, and no Irish need apply!
Thin I felt my dandher rising, and I’d like to black his eye—
To tell an Irish Gintleman: No Irish need apply!
I couldn’t stand it longer: so, a hoult of him I took,
And I gave him such a welting as he’d get at Donnybrook.
He hollered: Millia murther! and to get away did try,
John F. Poole, “No Irish Need Apply” American Memory, Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/amss/as1/
as109730/001q.gif.
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND IMMIGRATION IN THE NORTH
339
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And swore he’d never write again: No Irish need apply.
He made a big apology; I bid him thin good-bye,
Saying: Whin next you want a bating, add: No Irish need apply!
Sure, I’ve heard that in America it always is the plan
That an Irishman is just as good as any other man;
A home and hospitality they never will deny
The stranger here, or ever say: No Irish need apply.
But some black sheep are in the flock: a dirty lot, say I;
A dacint man will never write: No Irish need apply!
Sure, Paddy’s heart is in his hand, as all the world does know,
His praties and his whiskey he will share with friend or foe;
His door is always open to the stranger passing by;
He never thinks of saying: None but Irish may apply.
And, in Columbia’s history, his name is ranking high;
Thin, the Divil take the knaves that write; No Irish need apply!
Ould Ireland on the battle-field a lasting fame has made;
We all have heard of Meagher’s men, and Corcoran’s brigade.
Though fools may flout and bigots rave, and fanatics may cry,
Yet when they want good fighting-men, the Irish may apply,
And when for freedom and the right they raise the battle-cry,
Then the Rebel ranks begin to think: No Irish need apply!
ESSAYS
The changing northern world created a variety of challenges for its residents in the
antebellum era. Not only was migration to and within the region increasingly im-
portant, but the way people worked and where they lived was changing as well.
The majority of northerners still lived on farms. However, the proportion of
northern Americans that lived in cities and fed their families through work for
wages was larger than that in the South, and also larger than it had been in the
past. The following two essays ponder the meaning of these changes and how they
were used by political parties to mobilize their voters. David R. Roediger, a histo-
rian at the University of Illinois, concentrates on the uses of the terms white slavery
and wage slavery among northern Americans. He notes that these concerns were
utilized in particular by leaders of the Democratic Party not only to discuss the
struggles of the northern worker, but also to connect workers in the North to
slaveholders in the South. In contrast, John Ashworth, who teaches history at the
University of East Anglia, scrutinizes the rise of the Republican Party. This party,
340 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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Ashworth argues, was more comfortable with ideas of wage labor. Unlike earlier
ideologues, who connected independence with control over property, this new
group saw the possibilities of social mobility in toiling for wages. As such, these
Americans were more comfortable with the new economy of wage work.
White Slaves, Wage Slaves,
and Free White Labor in the North
DAVID R . ROEDIGER
In 1836, supporters of New York City ’s journeymen tailors papered the city
with handbills featuring a coffin. The tailors had just lost a conspiracy case and
with it their right to organize. The handbill encouraged protest and demanded
redress in strong republican language familiar since the Revolution. It appealed
to “Freemen” and to the power of “Mechanics and workingmen.” But confi-
dence that the cause of independence would prevail was at an ebb. The coffin
signified that the “Liberty of the workingmen [would] be interred!” at the sen-
tencing of the tailors. “Tyrant masters” had the upper hand, and the handbill’s
authors made a direct comparison that had been unthinkable even a decade be-
fore: “Freemen of the North are now on a level with the slaves of the South.”
The “coffin handbill” shows both the new case and the continuing hesitancy
with which white workers in Jacksonian America began to describe themselves as
slaves. Its unqualified North–South comparison is most striking, but the docu-
ment also suggests some of the ways in which white workers remained beyond
comparison with slaves. The whites, if slaves, were also simultaneously
“freemen.” If “tyrant masters” had prevailed, according to one line of the hand-
bill, another line settled for invoking the fear of “would-be masters.” Nor was it
clear that the “slavery” of the tailors was “wage slavery.” They were cast as slaves
not because they were “hirelings” but because the state had deprived them of the
freedoms necessary for defending their rights. The emphasis on the “slavery” of
the tailors in fact proved rather shortlived. After hearing of a more favorable court
decision in another conspiracy case upstate, “the journeymen’sfuryabated.”
Other instances of comparison between wage labor and chattel slavery be-
tween 1830 and 1860 were likewise both insistent and embarrassed. They could
not have been otherwise. Labor republicanism inherited the idea that designing
men perpetually sought to undermine liberty and to “enslave” the people. Chat-
tel slavery stood as the ultimate expression of the denial of liberty. But republi-
canism also suggested that long acceptance of slavery betokened weakness,
degradation and an unfitness for freedom. The Black population symbolized
that degradation. Racism, slavery and republicanism thus combined to require
comparisons of hirelings and slaves, but the combination also required white
workers to distance themselves from Blacks even as the comparisons were being
made.
From David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso,
1991), p. 65-71, 72-73, 75-77. Reprinted by permission of Verso Press.
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND IMMIGRATION IN THE NORTH
341
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Chattel slavery provided white workers with a touchstone against which to
weigh their fears and a yardstick to measure their reassurance. An understanding
of both the stunning process by which some white workers came to call them-
selves slaves and the tendency for metaphors concerning white slavery to collapse
thus takes us to the heart of the process by which the white worker was made. It
also furnishes us with an excellent vantage point from which to view the vexed
relations between the labor movement and movements to abolish slavery.
The Winding Road to Whit e Slavery
Use of terms like white slavery and slavery of wages in the 1830s and 1840s presents
an intriguing variation on the theme of American exceptionalism. US labor
historians are usually pressed to explain why American workers have historically
lacked the class consciousness said to have existed elsewhere in the industrializing
world. But if the antebellum US labor movement was exceptional in its rhetoric,
it was exceptionally militant as it critiqued evolving capitalist social relations as a
kind of slavery. France, with a revolutionary tradition that forcefully used meta-
phors regarding slavery to press republican attacks on political oppression, appar-
ently saw but slight use of phrases such as wage slavery before the Revolution of
1848. The German states, though they produced a great popularizer of the con-
cept of wage slavery, likewise did not witness frequent use of the term. Only
Britain, where the metaphoric term wage slavery apparently originated in the second
decade of the nineteenth century, rivalled the US in producing a discourse that
regarded white hirelings as slaves. But since the spread of the metaphor in Britain
was as much associated with the Tory radical politician Richard Oastler as with its
use by working class Chartists, one might regard the antebellum US labor move-
ment as exceptional in being the world leader in militant criticisms of wage work
as slavery.
Of course, concern over “slavery” was very much in the air in Jacksonian
America, whose citizens worried variously that Catholics, Mormons, Masons,
monopolists, fashion, alcohol and the national bank were about to enslave the
republic. Nonetheless, the use of the white slave metaphor for wage workers
ought not be dismissed as merely another example of the “paranoid” style of
antebellum politics. It might instead be profitable to view the paranoid style itself
as a republican tradition much enlivened by the horrific example of chattel slav-
ery and fears engendered by the growing failure of the American republic to
produce a society of independent farmers and mechanics among whites.
By the Age of Jackson, several changes had created the setting in which
white workers would begin to make and press, as well as deny and repress, com-
parisons between themselves and slaves. The rise, after 1829, of a highly visible
movement to abolish slavery evoked reexamination of the line between slavery
and freedom. Since free Blacks and slave rebels played so central a role in the
Black freedom movement, the tendency to equate blackness and servility was
likewise called into question. If abolitionism did not recruit more than a minority
of white workers, it did make clear that equations between race and fitness for
liberty were not eternal truths but objects of political debate.
342 MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
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