The story of the American Freedom Chapter 1-2

If religious liberty meant obedience to God,

"Civil liberty' rested on the obedience to law.

It did not say that Britons could not own slaves, since for most of the eighteenth century,

almost no one seemed to consider African entitled to the rights of Englishmen.

Imperial wars against Catholic France and Spain

as struggles between liberty and tyranny.

Until the 1700s, most colonist believed themselves part of the

freest political system mankind had ever known.

Tension between freedom as the power to participate in public affairs and freedom as a collection of individual rights required protection against governmental interference

help define the difference between two political languages that flourished in Angelo-American world

British freedom

incorporated contradictory attitudes about political power

Power and liberty were widely believed to be natural antagonist

is above law

British North America defined freedom

less as a political or social status than as a spiritual condition

Political liberty meant the right to participate in public affairs, civil liberty protection of one's person and property against encroachment by government;

personal liberty freedom of conscience ad movement; religious liberty the right to Protestants to worship as they choose

Christianity enshrined

the idea of liberation

Freedom meant abandoning this life of sin

to embrace the teaching of Christ.

Virtue

understood in the eighteenth century not simply as a personal, moral, quality but as a willingness