History paper. please read the attachment provided properly. the assignment should be done in minimum of two pages.

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Primary Source Assignment #1 Question

Topic: Freedom and American History

Rationale: No idea is more fundamental to American sense of self than freedom. To the United States, freedom and liberty are interchangeable and seemingly universal. However, that is misleading. Freedom is not fixed or a lone definition; rather, it is an ideal as well as a reality. With this primary source question, the meanings of freedom will be explored, as well as the social conditions that make freedom possible in the United States. In addition, the boundaries of freedom will be a focus, including the myth of freedom, and how freedom is juxtaposed off of servitude.

Question One:

Evaluate the extent of change in ideas about American independence from 1750 to 1790. Select one of the following groups: African Americans, women, or poor white men. What did it mean to be free to the group you selected? How is this freedom a myth? Which groups were more successful in their argument regarding freedom? Discuss the various ways in which the American Revolution affected the lives of the individuals within that group. On balance, did the group benefit from the American Revolution?

You are required to use at least three different documents to provide your argument for this question. You may not use outside documents for your argument. Your response will be uploaded through SafeAssign in eCampus to check for plagiarism. Any portion of your response that does not follow the directions and guidelines regarding writing, grammar, mechanics, plagiarism, or fails to answer the question will result in a zero for this portion of your exam.

Your response should be a minimum of two full pages, Times New Roman, 12 point font, 1 inch margins, and no other heading than your first and last name. Remember, all papers are uploaded in either a PDF or DOC format. No other format will be accepted.

You are required to cite all quotes and sources in MLA format. This does not count toward your minimum total length. So, your response will be longer than two pages because you need to include your citations. These citations need to be included in the text and in a works cited sheet (which is a separate sheet at the end of your response). If you do not know how to craft a works cited page, please visit the Brookhaven library. Noodle Tools is available for you to use via the library website.

Please understand that you are required to answer the questions asked. This includes college level writing and editing. There should be no first person anywhere in your response, as you were not there to witness these events.

If you have questions, ASK before the night it is due. I am available to assist you, and the history tutors are available to assist you. Do not wait until it is too late to attempt completion.

Primary Source Assignment #1 Context and Documents

Context

For two hundred years, historians have debated the consequences of the American Revolution. It certainly created a new nation-the United States of America. But how significantly did it change American culture and society? For the people living in Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, or South Carolina in the years after the Revolution, was life in the United States really very different from life in the British Empire?

White, Christian men of property in America - the Founding Fathers - clearly enjoyed new political freedom as a result of the Revolution. They no longer had to defer to the wishes of Parliament or the King. But, what about the larger section of the American population? What did the Revolution bring them?

Men of Property

Sometime around 1843, a young man named Mellen Chamberlain interviewed Levi Preston, an aging veteran of the American Revolution. Then ninety-one years old, Preston had been in his early twenties in 1775 when British soldiers marched out of Boston to search for arms and rebels in nearby Concord, Massachusetts. "What made you go to the Concord Fight?" Chamberlain wanted to know. "Young man," replied Preston, "what we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: we had always governed ourselves and we always meant to." For Levi Preston, it was just that simple. As a white, Christian man of property, he had controlled his own life before the Revolution, and he had no intention of allowing Parliament or British soldiers to change it.

For men like Levi Preston, the American Revolution confirmed their status as autonomous citizens of an enlightened state. In the decades preceding the Revolution, they enjoyed political, social, and economic autonomy, though it was often based on custom rather than law. The Revolution changed everything by replacing the unwritten British constitution, and its traditional liberties, with written constitutions explicitly stating the rights men like Preston had long enjoyed. For them, the Revolution brought a confirmation of their liberty.

African Americans

On the eve of the American Revolution, approximately twenty percent of the American population was black. The vast majority of African Americans, of course, were slaves. Slavery existed in all thirteen colonies and was most common in the South. Longer growing seasons there allowed farmers to raise labor-intensive crops, such as tobacco and rice, and seemed to justify the use of slaves by earning enough to pay for them. Slaves made up nearly forty percent of the southern colonies' total population and more than sixty percent of South Carolina's population. But northerners also found uses for slaves in their cities, homes, and industries. In fact, in sheer numbers, New York had more slaves than Georgia until after the Revolution.

Slaves had no rights. Their owners might grant them various privileges, such as days off or access to garden plots, but they could revoke such rights at any time. Legally, slaves could hold no property of their own. Their time and the fruits of their labor belonged to their owners. Their conjugal unions were not legal marriages and could be broken at any time. They and their children could be bought, sold, conveyed in wills, or used to pay debts, like any other property. Owners could also beat, rape, torture, and even kill their slaves with complete impunity.

Free blacks occupied a perilous middle ground between freedom and slavery. In general, their rights to property were fairly secure. Free blacks could usually buy and sell both real estate and personal property, including slaves, though in some cases their rights were hedged with restrictions. Boston, for example, forbade free blacks to own pigs, while Connecticut barred them from holding land in any town without the town government's permission. Despite rights to property, however, free blacks were treated as second-class citizens. They often needed passes to travel and were frequently forbidden to own firearms. They were tried by courts, but could not serve on juries. Free blacks were also taxed like other citizens, but usually denied the right to vote.

Women's Rights

Women enjoyed few rights in Anglo-America. This was especially true of married women, who in many ways ceased to exist as legal or public beings. Married women had no authority to sign contracts. Any real estate she owned before getting married became her husband's to manage, and any personal property she owned became her husband's outright. Unmarried, adult women at least retained their property rights. They could buy and sell both real estate and personal property, execute contracts, and sue or be sued over debts, and they often ran businesses, such as taverns or shops. Unmarried, adult women also paid taxes on the property they owned. Yet even as tax-payers, woman never enjoyed political rights in Anglo-America. No colony allowed them to vote, hold political office, or serve on a jury.

Colonial women often enjoyed more rights within private spheres, such as among family or in church, than they did in public spheres, although here, too, they were generally considered subordinate to men. Husbands acted as the head of the house; as such, they were expected to provide for their wives' emotional as well as material needs. In addition, husbands retained the right to "correct" — within limits — those in their charge, which included their wives. In most colonies, however, marriage was for life. Only in the Puritan colonies, where marriage was a civil institution rather than a sacrament, could women divorce husbands who were cruel or deserted them. Men also dominated most churches in the colonies. Only among the Quakers and some of the smaller Pietist groups, such as the Moravians, did women exercise spiritual power in Anglo-America.

Though not as hierarchical as England itself, Anglo-America was far from democratic. Wealth brought power in the colonies, which left poor men with little political or social clout. Political power was directly linked to wealth. Each colony wanted its voters to be "independent," by which they meant free of other men's economic control. Most colonies, therefore, required men to own land (called a freehold) or other valuable assets, such as houses or businesses, in order to vote, although a few granted the vote to men with lifetime leases rather than freeholds. No one knows for sure what percentage of the population met this test. It was certainly easier to vote in the colonies than it was in England, but most historians estimate that only about three-fourths of adult white males in colonial America owned enough property to vote. In addition, holding office usually required even more wealth. Although few laws required it, Anglo-Americans expected wealthy men to dominate elected office. In Virginia, for example, law permitted any adult freeholder to serve in the House of Burgesses. In the late colonial era, however, those elected to the House were usually three or four times wealthier than the average freeholder.

Wealth and Social Standing

One's social status was also linked to wealth, or to the trappings of wealth. How one dressed, spoke, or behaved in public — all of which were often tied to wealth — played a major role in how one was treated. Colonial Americans expected to defer to their betters, just as the English did. In England, "the better sort" were identified by a combination of wealth and birth; ancient families might retain prestige long after their money had run out. But in America, it was harder to identify a gentleman by his lineage, so money was often the only measure of social standing. Money also signified one's religious standing in many colonial communities. Among Anglicans, only wealthy men served on the vestries that governed church affairs. In Puritan colonies, where individual congregations exercised more religious authority, only wealthy men served as deacons or elders. Throughout the colonies, many churches based seating on the individual's wealth; the wealthier one was, the nearer to God.

The documents below demonstrate some of the ways in which the American Revolution influenced the lives of African Americans, women, poor men, and dissenters. The documents in the first section focus on individual African Americans, the status of African Americans in general, and the institution of slavery in the new United States. The second section focuses on white women and the extent to which the Revolution did or did not change their social and legal status. The documents in the last two sections explore how the Revolution affected the rights and social status of poor men in the United States.

African Americans

Lord Dunmore's Proclamation November 7, 1775

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h42t.html

Alexander Hamilton Supports the Use of Black Soldiers Letter to John Jay: March 14, 1779 

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Letter_from_Alexander_Hamilton_to_John_Jay_March_14_1779

Pennsylvania's Gradual Emancipation Action 1780

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/pennst01.asp

Memoirs of Boston King The Methodist Magazine: March, April 1798

http://antislavery.eserver.org/narratives/boston_king/bostonkingproof.pdf/

The Town of Sutton Responds to Massachusetts's Draft Constitution May 18, 1778

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s22.html

Petition From Amelia County, Virginia November 10, 1785