Eric Foner What Then Is The American Equality

I believe Eric Foner does a brilliant job depicting Americans’ newfound devotion to equality. He explores the ideals of equality through suffrage, slavery, religious, and patriotic freedom by various author’s excerpts. Equality is threatened and greatened after the American Revolution, but the Revolution within America was the real struggle to maintain our achieved independence. A devotion to equality doesn’t happen overnight and Americans found that out quickly. Americans had to be confused because of all these exceptions to the mission statement of the free world that is the United States. I realize humankind was anything but equal, but the first colonies had a lot of responsibility to set the groundwork for a developing nation. If I were an American at this time, I wouldn’t know whether to believe in suffrage equality

John de Crèvecœur who wrote a letter called “What, Then, Is the American?” He recounted his life in the United States through a very enthusiastic, promotional image of America. Crèvecœur had the same celebration mentality similar to other foreigners when the United States’ became an independent nation and therefore, a new society. New opportunities gave some individuals the ability to forge a new nationality from the diverse populations of Europe. He published an account of his life in the United States entitled Letters from an American Farmer where he outlined his life in both Europe and the United States. He described himself as a “new man” which was different than the diverse population of Europe. This idea was later popularized as the idea of the American melting pot. New Americans such as this French-American writer were had a devotion to being equal comparative to their past environments, but people who were racially or religiously discriminated against didn’t share the same devotion. Therefore, they were exceptions to equality and deprived of their liberties unlike successful white men in this