Problem
Assess the promise and the reality of the free-labor ideals developing at this time and the long term significance of these ideals for the American people. By the mid-nineteenth century, how was the free labor ideology being used by its practitioners? Who promoted it or benefited? Who was negatively impacted by it? Who or which groups were its greatest opponents and why? How and why was the free-labor economy becoming more associated with America? What did that portend for the contrasting "bound-labor" economy of the Southern states, if anything? If you argue that free labor ideology was not contrasting, explain why. What legacies from the free labor ideology do you still see today?