ABSTRACT
The ideas of liberalism, remarkably resilient, controlled the important debates of the nineteenth century. Most men remained faithful to the liberal heritage and transformed the slavery issue, framing it as a liberal issue, one concerning property, power, and liberty. Framed as a liberal debate, the slavery debate thus became a racist debate. In both the North and South men struggled to preserve their liberalism, which, they believed, depended on the supremacy of whites. That liberalism became the hostage of racism revealed that its strengths could also be its limits, that the faith in people and property could in the time of Jackson thwart the aims of Biddle, and in the time of Lincoln deny the rights of blacks. Although liberalism matured somewhat in the hands of the Jacksonians, the liberals had reason to fear an active government–had more reason than before, in fact, for they held that government would always be active in behalf of big business.
