What are some quotes from The Story of American Freedom by Eric Foner?

Eric Foner's The Story of American Freedom is a look at American history through the lens of the struggle for and celebration of freedom. Quotes important to the book discuss freedom, American history, and Foner's connections between the two as he shows how the desire for freedom drives the history of America.

Foner writes "No idea is more fundamental to Americans' sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom." This is essentially his thesis for the entire book. He goes on to explain that the word appears in some of our most valued texts, including the Constitution. Foner also cites the Civil War and the Cold War as being fights to obtain and defend our freedom. 

Foner goes to on say that his "approach to the history of freedom centers on three interrelated themes: the meaning of freedom; the social conditions that make freedom possible; and the boundaries of freedom—the definition, that is, of who is entitled to enjoy it." Understanding his approach to history can help a reader better approach the connections he makes between historical events and freedom throughout the book.

To set the stage for the American Revolution and to show that it was sparked by the desire for an American kind of freedom, Foner writes:

Of course, the idea of freedom as the natural condition of mankind was hardly unknown in a nation that had produced the writings of John Milton and John Locke. But British freedom was anything but universal. Nationalist, often xenophobic, it viewed nearly every other nation on earth as "enslaved"—to popery, tyranny, or barbarism. 

He also explains how the peerage system in England was incompatible with what came to be the American ideal of freedom. 

Foner says that freedom is an idea that shows "the contradictions between what America claims to be and what it actually is." For example, we claim to be a nation devoted to freedom, but many Americans owned slaved. In order to live up to the ideal, the Civil War had to occur. 

Forner also writes:

Americans have sometimes believed they enjoy the greatest freedom of all—freedom from history. No people can escape being bound, to some extent, by their past. But if history teaches anything, it is that the definitions of freedom and of the community entitled to enjoy it are never fixed or final. We may not have it in our power, as Thomas Paine proclaimed in 1776, "to begin the world over again." But we can decide for ourselves what freedom is. No one can predict the ultimate fate of current understandings of freedom, or whether alternative traditions now in eclipse—freedom as economic security, freedom as active participation in democratic governance, freedom as social justice for those long disadvantaged—will be rediscovered and reconfigured to meet the challenges of the new century. 

This is important for several reasons. First, it lays out the different definitions of freedom that Foner believes Americans have worked for at different times in history. It also shows that different forms of freedom can be cycles that reemerge when needed (instead of appearing once and disappearing forever). Foner admits that the quest for true freedom isn't complete but clearly believes that America will continue to work toward it, one way or another.