Philosophy of Free Labor

Philosophy of Free Labor- Although not a term explicitly used, Zinn hints at this in his chapter Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom in his book A People's History of the United States. On p. 140 he discusses how the Northern white elites aimed for economic expansion through basically l'aissez faire economics: free markets, banking, free land, and free labor. This is directly opposed to the South's slavery, which the South needed for the economy to maintain the racist social structure they depended on for economic success rather than the economic expansion the North wanted. The South wanted more slave states as new territory was being formed., whereas the North wanted free states to support their economy. On p. 137 he uses Frederick Douglass's speech in 1853 in which he uses the term "philosophy of reforms", which is tied in with the philosophy of free labor becasue the it ties in with the philosophy of reforms. Douglass says only through struggle for reform can blacks hope to attain the free labor economy that the North espouses.