American Veeky Forumstory buffs...

American Veeky Forumstory buffs, what happened during the mid 19th century that turned everyone so liberal and opposed to slavery and anti womens rights? It seems like it laid the foundations of the 60's that turned everything to hell.

I know Transcendentalism was a huge backbone of these new mindsets, was there something similar in this nature before it? It was very conservative just before transcendentalists, there were literary realists like Jane Austen, so I'm asking a few stages back.

Also I imagine literary works were the most influential on culture back then.

Where did liberal works stem from and can you cite anything? Even battles

industrialization and a growing middle class

That's not specific at all? I'm talking about literary history... I guess I just mean delve into it. What does industrialization have to do with becoming liberal and not a ten cent answer

Opposition to slavery was growing well before the 19th century. Most of the North had already done away with the institution by the time of the Revolution and it was incompatible with the strict puritan morality that characterized the yankee.

Essentially everywhere that there wasn't an inarguable economic argument FOR slavery (the cotton belt) you'd find intense opposition to it.

I'm aware of the intellectual points against slavery, but to pretend this isn't part of social justice warrior movement is a little telling. The movement was impinged with fake moralisms to why we should prevent slavery.
This is much like the gender question currently.

I guess I'm wondering was this the first part of the social justice movement or was there an issue prior? I'd love any work on this as well

Most people study history look and then build their Weltanschauung from what they learn. You're so stuck on your preconceived beliefs that you don't seem willing or able to look at history for any other reason than to take from it that which confirms what you already think.

I believe the Marxist argument for both is that neither were "profitable" anymore and the abolition of slavery and the growth in support of women's rights came about because of that and not because of any moral qualms.

Well I mean I do read constantly, I'm reading a general Greek history overview right now

But even pretending that's the case, you can see it is a lens that can be objectively measured and isn't a bad lens to view from.

So even knowing I'm viewing from that lens, why can't you cross over into my lens and explain it in a fashion that can show the knowledge of your lens into mine?

Thanks, I've been meaning to read into Marxism

Are you asking someone to explain something to you from your own warped perspective to make it appeal to you?

>so liberal
>Hey guise, lets turn from outright slavery to full Apartheid, because you know, land of the free and such

>being this naiive

Slavery is opposed by many modern fields because of the economic issues it presented, solely.

I'm speaking about something more transcendent. An answer would look similar to this but preferably more in depth

Andrew Jackson appealed mostly to the lower class, and when he extended voting to all white males he both enfranchised the mob and seeded the concept of poor white males ruining the country into the cultural lexicon.

Andrew Jackson, in addition to the battle of New Orleans, was famous for things like removing the Indians from the deep south in order to make room for more slave plantations, and arbitrarily executing British subjects he found assisting the Indians. This made him a monster in the eyes of the respectable middle class, but a hero in the eyes of the lower class white male.

The original Drumpf meme, Andrew Jackass, gives us the donkey for the Democratic party which he created. The party was founded to be aggressively pro slavery and white supremacist, while as a side gig protecting Catholics from the middle class Protestant Whigs who wanted to bar their entry into the country. The Whigs one shot at a strong president failed when William Henry Harrison died and was succeeded by reactionary memester VP John Tyler. The southern aristocracy continued to run the country through the Democratic party while the liberals could not rally around a single party and were left to sit on their hands.

Andrew Jacksons protege James K. Polk started the Mexican American war, which everybody in the USA knew was plain conquest of brown people for being brown in order to create more slave states to control the Union. Northerners could not control the government but they could organize the No Territory movement which was the first big war protest in US history and would draw upon the same veins as support for Harrison had.

Uncle Tom's Cabin releases and all the ladies church groups ditch trying to fight Catholicism and start agitating for abolition. Shorty after this Abolitionism spawns feminism. Liberals unite under the Abolitionist Republicans and win an election, the south does not want to sit in the passengers seat and secedes, Civil War.

OP, the type of abolitionist sentiment you're talking about was a small minority. The majority of the North didn't want to end slavery. They wanted to end the 3/5ths compromise and/or prevent any new slave states. It all had to do with political power. The South had more house votes than the North thought it should. That being said the abolitionist movement was growing.

Thanks for putting it into those terms. Of course that explains the rise of the more right wing explanation, which is probably inherent in every culture from the dawn of time. Transcendentalism was already in full swing, which I define as crytpoliberalism, or the roots of more modern social justice. I'm more curious about the phenomenon of modern progressivism throughout history.

Did it exist prior to the Enlightenment? What were the stages it went through up to the emancipation of slaves in the US?

Abolitionists meant people who wanted to abolish slavery across the US, not everyone who was against the institution of slavery. Most notherners, while not being in favor of political and social equality for blacks, nevertheless were against the institution of slavery if not for moral and religious reasons, but for the fact that they didn't want slaves driving down wages for free white men, as seen in California and Kansas.

I get that, the historical movement and idea started out small but it had it had an outsized effect on the population. I mean we're in today arguing about gender representations which would have been absolutely mad for the earlier ages. I'm not saying modern liberalism betrays the past one, on social issues, au contraire I think it's a perfect evolution of liberalism and something you would rather expect once it gained the mainstream.

I'm extremely against this politically so I wonder what the root of it is so I can understand it and chop it off

Northern abolitionists (as well as the Transcendentalists) were descended from Puritans and Quakers. This kind of thing runs in their blood.

Even in a theoretical world where the South won slavery would be killed by the invention of the tractor, it's basically a bunch of old faggots meming about dem good old boys. Modernity marches ever on and kills everything in front of it

Thank you

Please, none of the posts in this thread has promoted the side you're talking down on. I'm simply trying to get liberal history

Literature is the vanguard of modernity, I'd advise you read novels written in the early 19th century to get your gestalt of the era, America still keeping darkies as slaves in name was quite the novelty when everyone else had moved on to white mans burden memery

I'm a huge fan of literary realism in the 1800s, the transcendental backlash was directly consecutive of realism of Bronte sisters and Austen Jane (am taking male recommendations of that genre). I'm speaking about before literary realism, and assumedly, before sensibility genre.

I believe the root is in political power as my post showed. I don't think your common abolitionist or SJW thought of thinvs in those terms, but that they are useful idiots in collecting votes. The same argument can be made about almost any ideology though.