American history Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

American history - Research Paper Example s abolished more than one hundred and fifty years ago, the legacy of slavery continues to have important ramifications on the lives of African-Americans today. Accordingly, African-Americans have lower-life expectancies than their white counterparts and the insidious legacy of slavery has many ramifications. Seeking to understand the paradox of American liberty and a shameful legacy of slavery, Edmund S. Morgan does an excellent job highlighting an oft-ignored aspect of American history with ramifications on the lives of Americans today (see Williams and Tucker 2000; Morgan 3-13 ). Seeking to highlight the American history of slavery, Edmund S. Morgan demonstrates that while the United States evolved during the concept of freedom and liberty from colonial Britain, to a large extent â€Å"Americans bought their independence with slave labor† (3). Many of the founders – paternally referred to as the Fathers of Independence – were slaveholders themselves and their concept of freedom pertained only to a certain class of people. Most often, their notions of freedom were limited and excluded non-whites, women and those without property. Thus, this concept of freedom, so engrained in the American psyche and so much a part of the American historical narrative, was a limited sort of freedom which was inherently exclusionary and certainly not universal. Furthermore, when Thomas Jefferson, the world-renowned spokesperson for American freedom and liberty, discussed the abolition of slavery, â€Å"he found it inconceivable that the freed slaves should be allowed to remain in the country..† (8). Exploring racial discrimination in both England and the American colonies during the late period of British rule in the Americas, Morgan argues that the dual and polarizing concepts of slavery and freedom were both â€Å"intertwined and interdependent, the rights of Englishmen supported on the wrongs of Africans...The American Revolution only made the contradictions more