Assembly of Freemen

(noun)

An Assembly of the Counties of Maryland that functioned as the colony's revolutionary government from 1774 to 1776.

Related Terms

  • House of Burgesses
  • Limited Suffrage

Examples of Assembly of Freemen in the following topics:

  • Powers of the Assemblies

    • Assemblies were elected and were called the House of Delegates, House of Burgesses, or Assembly of Freemen.
    • The colonial Assemblies had a variety of titles, such as House of Delegates, House of Burgesses, or Assembly of Freemen.
    • Taxes and government budgets originated in the Assembly.
    • The Massachusetts Assembly suggested a meeting of all colonies to work for the repeal of offensive Acts, and all but four colonies were represented.
    • The House of Burgesses was the first assembly of elected representatives of English colonists in North America.
  • Governors and Assemblies

    • The governor had the power of absolute veto and could prorogue (i.e., delay) and dissolve the assembly at any time.
    • The colonial assemblies had a variety of titles, such as House of Delegates, House of Burgesses, or Assembly of Freemen.
    • Assemblies were made up of representatives elected by the freeholders and planters (landowners) of the province.
    • In practice, this was not always achieved, because many of the provincial assemblies sought to expand their powers and limit those of the governor and crown.
    • The House of Burgesses was the first assembly of elected representatives of English colonists in North America.
  • The Rise of the Assemblies

    • Each colony had a system of governance including a governor, a council of officials appointed by the governor, and an elected assembly.
    • Enfranchised voters elected the General Assembly; by 1750, most free men of property could vote.
    • The Assemblies had a variety of titles, such as House of Delegates, House of Burgesses, or Assembly of Freemen.
    • The colonial assemblies' official role was to make all local laws and ordinances, ensuring that they were consistent with the laws of England.
    • However, it is important to note that these assemblies were mostly representative of the privileged and mercantile classes.
  • The Dorr Rebellion

    • By 1829, 60 percent of the state's white men were ineligible to vote (as were all women and most non-white men), meaning that the electorate of Rhode Island was made up of only 40 percent of the state's white men.
    • The charter lacked a procedure for amendment, and the Rhode Island General Assembly had consistently failed to liberalize the constitution by extending voting rights, enacting a bill of rights, or reapportioning the legislature.
    • At the same time, the state's General Assembly formed a rival convention and drafted the Freemen's Constitution, which made some concessions to democratic demands.
    • Late in that year, the two constitutions were voted on, with the Freemen's Constitution being defeated in the legislature largely by Dorr supporters.
    • In September of 1842, a session of the Rhode Island General Assembly met in Newport and framed a new state constitution, which was ratified by the old, limited electorate and proclaimed by Governor King on January 23, 1843.
  • The Massachusetts Bay Colony

    • The structure of the colonial government evolved over the lifetime of the charter.
    • The government began with a corporate organization that included a governor and deputy governor, a general court of its shareholders, known as "freemen," and a council of assistants.
    • The council of assistants sat as the upper house of the legislature and served as the judicial court of last appeal.
    • Although its governors were elected, the electorate was limited to freemen, who had been examined for their religious views and formally admitted to their church.
    • Hutchinson's major offense was her claim of direct religious revelation, a type of spiritual experience that negated the role of ministers.
  • Bacon's Rebellion

    • When they returned to the colonial capital at Jamestown, they found that the House of Burgesses had passed a number of reforms that limited the powers of the governor and expanded suffrage among freemen.
    • Governor Berkeley still refused to act against Native Americans, however, and Bacon and his army issued the "Declaration of the People of Virginia," which accused Berkeley's administration of levying unfair taxes, appointing friends to high places, and failing to protect frontier settlements from Native American attacks.
    • John Ingram took over leadership of the rebellion, but many followers drifted away.
    • His forces defeated the small pockets of insurgents spread across the Tidewater.
    • Portrait of Nathaniel Bacon, Engraving by T.
  • Wilmot Proviso

    • After the capture of New Mexico and California in the first phases of the Mexican War, political focus shifted to how these new territories would be divided between slave and free states.
    • For many Southerners, the Wilmot Proviso forced the issue of slavery as a central component of the Mexican War.
    • Calhoun, Southern slaveholders claimed that the federal government had no right to curtail the spread of slavery into any new territories, claiming that it was each individual state’s right under the principle of state sovereignty to determine whether or not its territory would be free or permit slavery.
    • For Wilmot and other Whigs, slavery was a fundamental threat to the United States not because of its brutality or coercive structure, but because it encroached on the rights of white freemen to labor and cultivate new lands in the West.
    • In other words, for most Northern politicians, the concern was to protect free yeoman farmers’ access to land and socioeconomic opportunities in the West from the slave states of the South that sought complete domination and infiltration of any new territory in order to perpetuate plantation agriculture.
  • The Politics of Slavery

    • In the early nineteenth century, the cultivation of a new strain of short staple cotton, coupled with the invention of the cotton gin that made processing the crop easier, created a cotton boom.
    • Some even believed that the abolition of slavery would be detrimental to their economic interests, whether by slowing the supply of slave-produced raw materials from the South or through increased job competition as thousands of freemen flooded the northern markets.
    • William Lloyd Garrison of Massachusetts distinguished himself as the leader of the abolitionist movement.
    • Many of its supporters turned to the Free-Soil Party in the aftermath of the Mexican Cession.
    • Discussion of slavery-related issues was prohibited on the floor of the U.S.
  • Economic Growth

    • With the emancipation of the southern slaves, the entire economy of the South had to be rebuilt.
    • The end of the Civil War was accompanied by a large migration of new freed people to the cities.
    • The large population of slave artisans during the antebellum era had not translated into a large number of freemen artisans during the Reconstruction.
    • Over a fourth of Southern white men of military age—meaning the backbone of the South's white workforce—died during the war, leaving countless families destitute.
    • By the end of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century, the South was locked into a system of poverty.
  • English Administration of the Colonies

    • The governor was invested with general executive powers and authorized to call a locally elected assembly.
    • The governor's council would advise the governor and sit as an upper house when the assembly was in session.
    • Assembly members included representatives elected by the freeholders and planters (landowners) of the province.
    • The governor had the power of absolute veto and could prorogue (i.e., delay) and dissolve the assembly at will.
    • Over time, many of the provincial assemblies sought to expand their powers and limit those of the governor and crown.
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