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
from the revolution. By making money off of the cotton plantation, Americans saw that they could grasp, for themselves, pieces of those ideals and wealth. The principles of liberty, control, and democracy, during the American Revolution, manifested themselves in the motivations behind the boom of King Cotton during the 1830s even if the outcome veered into new territory.
Liberty in the American Revolution was one incentive which stuck in the minds of Americans when they raced to have their share of the cotton boom in the 1830s.
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
south, spartan frontier circumstances, exhaustion, inadequate nutrition and bad weather weakened the newly arrived slaves.” The desire for liberty through was so strong that the slave owners did not care about the conditions of their slaves as americans sprinted to get their hands on money. Cotton was the new cash crop in the 1830s and Americans were racing to plant their cotton in fertile soil along the Black Belt from Mississippi to South Carolina. Cotton was a booming market and by 1820, more than four million bales were harvested per year. As Ira Berlin, an American historian, emphasises in his book, Generations of Captivity, “cotton came to dominate the southern landscape, shaping its society and informing every aspect of its culture.” The grab for wealth was incredibly strong, so much so that cotton dominated the culture and minds of all Americans along the Black Belt. One main figure who had his vision of liberty planted in Mississippi Valley was Thomas Jefferson, the president of the United States of America at the time. Jefferson’s dream for America was expressed through his “Empire for Liberty” where he envisioned a land of self-sufficient farmers, working off the land and supporting their families through wealth earned by cotton. Walter Johnson, and American historian at Harvard University explains Jefferson’s dream in River of Dark Dreams when he says, “These farmers would be self-sufficient, equal, and independent- masters of their own destiny.” If independent farmers could make a profit off of the cotton plantations, they could live a fulfilling life with the revolution’s principle of liberty at heart. Despite Jefferson’s dream not becoming a reality due to the economic greed of major American developers, it was still the drive for small and large farmers to seek out their dreams of liberty in the west on the newly cleared land.
Another archetype of the core principles from both the revolution and the era of King Cotton which justified slavery was meritocracy.
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,
“Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to [slavery] to her hand, a race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capability to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes.” As representatives are meant to know more than the common people, and the slave owners are meant to be naturally and biologically superior to the slaves, the meritocracy of slavery and democracy in America helped pro-slavery advocates to justify their cruel actions against the poor slaves. Although in practice, democracy and slavery do not seem to relate, they contain the core principle of meritocracy which was present from the colonial era, through to the reign of King Cotton.
Although the revolution was many years past, its core principles still were on the forefront of the population’s mind. Motivated by the fundamentals of the revolution which America was founded on, a southbound sprint toward the Mississippi Valley ragged on. Even in the 21st century, more the two hundred years after independence was won from England, revolutionary ideals of liberty and democracy are still in vogue and debated in politics today.