The Meaning of Freedom

Freedom isn't something one clearly understands because we don't even know what it is like to be held a s a slave without permission, let alone know what it is like to be freed from all that agony. Foner clearly makes his point while discussing freedom of Blacks. It wasn't something they earned overnight and when they did they didn't have anywhere to start exploiting that freedom. Even when the Black became freed the Southerners wished they could go back to their old ways. The freedmen took it upon themselves to make their living better by accomplishing education, reuniting their families, and establishing economical systems over the same lands they were beaten on.

In the violence section of Foner’s book we can see that he believed that most of the violence from the whites to the blacks came from the whites unacceptance of the abolition and citizenship of slaves; We see this through many examples of unjustified violence towards blacks and through the unnaccepting whites’ thoughts that were very similar to those of pre-civil war.

Free or not, you'll be whipped

Violence towards blacks increased after slavery was eradicated

Hangings were still rampant.

Bibliography

• Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877..
•  New York: Harper & Row, 1988. Print