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Summary Of In The Voices Of Freedom By Eric Foner

839 Words4 Pages

During the 18th and 19th century a lot was changing in the Colonies but, one constant during a crazy time in American history was the idea of liberty. Freedom meant that you were able to choose where you wanted to live, work, and speak your mind when you wanted to, without fear of a strict government coming down on you for it. The people of America wanted to be able to feel free but have a government there to protect them and Britain was not allowing the colonies to feel free or represented. In this paper I will talk about two excerpts In the Voices of Freedom by Eric Foner. One is a letter written back home from a German immigrant who is now living in Pennsylvania. The second reading is about a trial concerning John Zenger who is being accused …show more content…

1 New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2014, 54) Here he is talking about America and how nice it is for immigrants to move there for new opportunities. Later he writes how you can do whatever work you want in America and you can choose what land you want to live on tax-free. (Forner, Voices of Freedom, 54) This shows that freedom to the people moving to the colonies was being able to freely choose your profession and also live on whatever land you wanted with no worry of paying a tithe for that land. People of this time just wanted to come somewhere where there was a lot of open country and plenty of food and opportunities to do great things. From the letter you can see that when people came to the British Colonies freedom to choose and not be taxed were what they were looking for but also what they …show more content…

Mr. Zenger, owner of the newspaper “Weekly Journal” had accused New York’s Governor of corruption and tyranny. (Foner, Voices of Freedom, 74) John Zenger was being tried for seditious libel because of the comments he made in his newspaper. He argued it was freedom of speech and press and he could not be indicted for this. Mr. Hamilton, John Zenger’s attorney, defended Mr. Zenger by saying it was against his liberty to put him in prison for his remarks in the newspaper. He also found that if what Mr. Zenger wrote was not necessarily true than, he was not slandering anyone’s name so it could not be seditious libel. It was his right to say what he wants about government officials in his

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