Since the first shots rang out at Lexington and Concord, signaling
the beginning of open war between the colonies and England, America
has been credited with a singular conviction, a concern for
military veterans' and others' economic and political rights. The
idea of America as a promised land of economic opportunity, social
mobility, and political freedom has not always flourished.
Historians have both given it reality and shaken its substance as
they exposed an undercurrent of greed, class conflict, and
corruption.
In this book Harold Hyman explores the question of American
singularity, using the Northwest Ordinance, the Homestead and
Morrill acts, and the G.I Bill to measure individual access to
land, education, and law.
The Northwest Ordinance, enacted in 1787 to encourage settlement
of the nation's untamed territories, mandated the establishment of
public schools and stable property rights in newly settled
lands--specific terms which enshrined the basic liberties secured
by the Revolutionary War. Hyman shows that through the Homestead
and Morrill acts of 1862, legislators sought to preserve the values
of the Union and to prepare for the entrance of the black man into
citizenship. Equal access to public lands in the West and to state
land-grant universities, countered the economic and social
injustices blacks and poor whites would face after the Civil War.
Finally, Hyman asserts that the G.I. Bill preserved beneficial
social programs forged during the depression, carrying into
post-World War II America a widespread concern for education and
housing opportunities.
Examining the legislation that emerged from three periods of
conflict in American history, Hyman reveals a consistent pattern
favoring equal access to land, education, and law--a progression of
singular, if sometimes flawed, attempts to embody in our statutes
the values and aspirations that sparked our major wars.
General
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