American History

America has come a long way in trying to establish the real meaning of freedom it has struggled a lot in defending what it believed to be freedom. It is from these clashing definitions that the country was able to establish its place in the world. The United States has come out victorious in many of the struggles with other states that it has considered to pose a threat to its freedom or liberty. A good example is the war with Spain. The United States was also involved in the struggle to restrain the campaign for independence in the Philippines. Both of these conflicts show that the country was struggling to take its place among the global powers. Whatever the reason, it is clear that America has come to dominance in the world. The exact nature of the influence has become a matter of dispute with various definitions. As the 21st century dawned, without doubt, the United States was the global greatest military, economic and cultural power. The institutions, processes, interests and principles that shaped the history of the United States came up as a result of global processes. In the past these processes did not make sense to people. The most recent works concerning the history of the United States have shown the development of complex understanding of Americas interaction with the rest of the world.

It is evident from the history that the United States military power, products and culture have had an impact on the rest of the world. This is the result of the freedom of the market. There has also been free movement of political ideas and concepts to the rest of the world. In achieving all this, the United States had been struggling with the idea of freedom.

There is no idea that is more basic to the unlighted states sense of being like freedom. The idea of freedom otherwise known as liberty has been associated with the history and the every day talks in the United States. It is through liberty or freedom that the United States has reached its present position. The declaration of independence in America lists freedom as the inalienable human rights. The constitution of the United States declares as its aim to protect the libertys blessings.  Examining the history of the idea of liberty in the United States, it is evident that it is a story of debates, disagreement and conflicts instead of a constant concept. Foner argues that the definition of freedom has been shaped and reshaped by social and political conflicts within America. There have been battles like the termination of slavery, women rights, trade unions, and freedom of expression among others.

The interaction of the United States with the rest of the world has had a powerful effect on the idea of freedom in that country. The same as it is the case with all other political elements liberty has been defined and redefined in relation to its supposed opposite, slavery. This is the bleak homegrown illustration of the lack of freedom that assisted in shaping the United States concept of liberty during the colonial period and all the way into the 19th century. In the past, the labor movement campaigns against wage slavery and campaigns for women rights, the state of the black Americans had an effect on how free United States natives understood their own status.

    Americans have often related threats in their own country to freedom. These include slavery, comfort and an far too powerful government. They have also looked outside their country to spot dangers to their freedom. The American Revolution, for instance, was sparked by the belief that Britain was planning to eliminate freedom in the Northern America.
The 20th century saw colossal conflicts between the free-world, centered in America and its opponents. Examples of these crises are the Nazis in the Second World War, the communists during the Cold War and the most recent terrorist activities.

The association between the United States freedom and the rest of the world operate both ways. The United States, as myth and reality has had a profound effect on the way societies around the world think of themselves. America has been regularly seen from abroad as the personification of one or another kind of freedom. In the 19th century the European Labor Organization recognized the United States as a place where the working class enjoys freedoms that were not there in the Old World. In the 20th century, the younger generation globally, selectively appropriated relics of the United States popular culture for actions of cultural rebellion. The gaining of independence by the United States from its colonies, showed the rights of freeborn Englishmen as irrelevant to the United States. The fight for independence made the idea of the United States freedom universal. During that period, the idea of freedom was unknown in Asia and Africa. It was only America that was preaching the gospel of her being a country of free men.

This sense of the United State distinctiveness was all-encompassing in the revolutionary period, in the similar way as the view of the revolution was not just an interior quarrel in the British Empire, but the entry to a new period of human history. The point was not to incite liberation protests in other countries around the world, but to show the supposed disparity between America and the rest of the human race. In confirming their uniqueness, Americans were obsessed with their reputation to the rest of the world. They, for example, felt that slavery weakened their purpose by revealing the nation to the hypocrisy from the opponents of freedom abroad.  

The Americans felt that a new nation would only be possible by a special destiny to ensure freedom and happiness of human beings. This was a view shared by David Ramsey in his book History of the American Revolution. The historians Walter Prescott, George Bancroft and Francis Parkman elaborated the views of David Ramsey. They argued that the seeds of freedom that were sowed in Puritan New England had flowered in the American Revolution.

The American expansion meant extending freedom. Therefore, those who stood in the way of this expansion were considered enemies of freedom. The ultimate territorial growth was associated with the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon race. The unique characteristics of this race made it more suitable to offer freedom to the country and the rest of the world. America was an empire of freedom as opposed to other empires like in Europe.

In the fight against slavery, the definition of freedom again brought in controversies. The abolition of slavery called for redefinition of freedom from another dimension. It necessitated the definition of freedom as a right to all human beings, not one where some categories of people could be legally excluded. Slavery was abolished in Britain before the United States revealing more genuine freedom than what was preached in the United States. The abolition of slavery enabled Britain to repossess its earlier sense as a model of liberty. After years of slavery debates, which had to some extent blemished the sense of the United States special purpose to uphold freedom, the Civil War and the Emancipation brought the reinforcement of America with the development of liberty associating the purpose like never before with the strength of the state.

The 20th century saw the United States emerge as a global actor on a global arena. The encounter with the world and other actors once again affected the meaning of freedom in America. One example of such an effect was the encounter with the Nazi Germany. This situation also brought a question concerning the division of the world into a free-world and an unfree world. Even before entering the Second World War, the mounting conflict with the Nazi Germany had broadened the awareness of civil freedoms as a basic element in the United States liberty.

For many years the social and legal systems of freedom of expression were so sensitive in America. It is in 1939 the Department of Justice created a Civil Liberties Unit. This was the first such move in the history of the United States. There were various explanations of this move. These reasons ranged from the severe suppression of the First World War to a fresh awareness in the 1930s. The introduction of the Bill of Rights a day before the United States entered the Second World War, owed a lot to the conflict of ideas against the Nazi and the appeal to freedom as a way of explaining the disparities between America and Germany from social and political perspectives.

Speeches on freedom in the United States during the war dominated the media. The then president of the United States, Roosevelt said the war was a titanic conflict between freedom and slavery. The United States had a dream of not only interfering into the freedom matters of other countries in time of crisis but getting involvement in unending affairs of other countries. At the end of the war America inherited a global responsibility. In fact the United States became hegemony. If the Second World War portended a change of American tradition with the other countries, it also reshaped its perception of the limits of liberty.  Finally, what set the United States apart from the rest of the world in the 1930s was its resolution that it would extend freedom to all regardless of race, religion or nations of origin. It was in the war period that American Creed of freedom, equality and religious brotherhood became the basis of national unity. Even today, freedom occupies a central place in the American vocabulary.

    It was out of all those conflicts clashing the meanings of freedom that the United States finally found the real meaning of freedom enabling reconstruction. Many endeavors in the United States to ensure peace and tranquility in the world are based on the current definition of freedom.
   
The United States has come a long way trying to establish the real meaning of freedom, but it seems that they are almost there finally. The quest for freedom has real transformed the United States through history. Its impact has also extended to the rest of the world. What is clear even today is that the battle to maintain its freedom is still on especially with the struggle against terrorism.