Essay On Women In Colonial America

Freedom has always been something that Americans greatly value. The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal”, and one of the lines in the national anthem boasts that the United States is “the land of the free”. However, looking back to when these documents were created, few statements could have been further from the truth. The treatment of many groups in America’s history proves that the country has not always been “land of the free”.

The treatment of Native Americans in colonial America was cruel almost from the beginning. While some people attempted to coexist with them peacefully, many white settlers did not treat the Native Americans as neighbors, but as pests to be driven away or exterminated. When the Manifest

Destiny began spreading across America, thousands of settlers were driven west with the goal of finding new land to settle. When Native American tribes were found living there instead, they were removed from their land that they had inhabited for years beforehand. “During [Jackson’s] presidency, it became national policy to remove Native Americans from the East by force” (History Alive 192). When the Indian Removal Act was passed, it allowed the president to make treaties that gave up Native land to settlers while the Natives gained new territory on the Great Plains. It made no mention of moving them by force, but president Jackson often met resistance with military force. When being forced off of their land, four thousand died during the long walk to new territory. They were forced off of their land with only the clothes on their back. The horrible treatment of Native Americans does not align with America’s view of freedom for all.

African Americans are another group that was horrifically oppressed between the colonial period and the Civil War. In the south, slaves a large percentage of the population. In the north, slaves were less common and eventually became illegal. Slaves were treated as property, not human beings. Since they were not seen as people, they could be beaten, sold, inherited, or given away. Many slave owners would separate slave families with no hesitation. In the eyes of the law, slaves had absolutely no rights. Frederick Douglass stated “In law, the slave has no wife, no children, no country, no home. He can own nothing, possess nothing, acquire nothing.” To keep slaves dependent on them, slave owners would forbid slaves from learning to read and would not allow them to know about the outside world. In the north, some slaves could “live out” on their own without their owner. Southern slaves compared them to free black people, with Frederick Douglass saying “A city slave is almost a freeman compared to a slave on a plantation.” In spite of this, free black people were still not equal to white people. In the south, free black people were seen as a threat that had to be controlled. They could not own guns, work certain jobs, or travel safely state-to-state. Even in the north, black people could not vote, find good jobs, and were segregated from white people. The discrimination that African Americans faced could never have even been considered “freedom”.

Despite making up about half of the population, women in America were faced with many other challenges against equality.

“Even wealthy women… started to see that women and slaves had much in common” (History Alive 248). Women were not allowed to hold office, vote, or control their own money or property. Even after the reform movement for schools had begun, many high schools and colleges did not accept women. In the south, women were taught to value being a good housewife and host over being formally educated. Very few women actually attended school in the south. In addition, there were no laws protecting wives from their abusive husbands. Elizabeth Stanton had grown up hearing women beg her father, a judge, to save them from their abusers. He would be forced to tell them that there were no laws against it. Even women with fine education and wealth were not treated fairly. In some places, women could not speak publicly. They would struggle to find jobs that would accept them. Elizabeth Blackwell wanted to become a doctor, so she learned mathematics, science, and history. However, 29 medical schools rejected her before she was finally accepted into one. Even after graduating at the top of the class, no medical facilities would work with her. The way that women were treated in the past discredits the claim that all had an equal right to

liberty.

The freedom that Americans so greatly value has not always been available to all. When the Declaration of Independence and the national anthem were written, they made bold claims that this freedom belonged to all who inhabited America. However, the way Native Americans, African Americans, and women were treated in the past was absolutely not freedom. In the period between the colonial days and Civil War, the freedom that many people boasted was mostly limited to white men. America during this period was not a “land of the free”.