Stephen Kantrowitz's More Than Freedom

Dr. Stephen Kantrowitz is a professor of United States History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has written several books and done extensive research into race relations during the 19th Century, Civil War History, and White Supremacy history. His work More than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a white Republic, 1829-1889, which was published in 2013, examines black activism in the 19th Century, aiming to point out the types of activism the United States saw from the black community, particularly in Boston and the New England region, while also discussing the true desires of African Americans once citizenship was granted. Kantrowitz main argument in this piece is almost explicitly stated within the title; more than …show more content…
He argues that the fight for equal rights was born from the fight of the revolution. The nation was born on revolutionary ideas. Like the colonists just several decades before, the black community had a strong desire to be free and rid themselves of tyrannical oppression. Northern activists understood this. Their speeches, protests and demonstrations became militant, and were very up-front and confrontational. Many within the “white republic” became uncomfortable with their rhetoric and political activism, but it truly drove home their point. This leads to the strong desire of black freedmen to fight for the union. They felt as if they were fighting for the same reason the soldiers of the revolution fought England. There was a reverence of Crispus Attucks, notably the first man to be killed during the Revolution at the Boston Massacre. Bostonian activists were able to tap into this root heritage and use it to their advantage. Their arguments became ever more powerful the more they pointed out that Attucks died for rights he did not have, and was not given at the founding of the nation, because of his race. These rights, unalienable rights, that whites were given automatically, were not for the black community, legally or