In the Father's House
In the Father's House
On October 25, 1858, William H. Seward of the fledgling Republican Party addressed a large crowd in Rochester, New York about slave labor in America. He predicted that either the sugar plantations of Louisiana would employ free men or the wheat fields of the North would be tilled by slaves. Seward's forecast was supported by Northern preachers, abolitionists, free labor advocates, and unionists, who denounced slavery because it was incompatible with free government and healthy capitalism. Two days later, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt gave birth to a boy whom she and her husband, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., named Theodore. Theodore Jr. was the child of the house of Roosevelt, a member of the eighth generation of a family born in the United States. Virility, faith, science, and race were his enduring preoccupations. The heterodox creed common to Roosevelt Jr.'s youth was Unitarianism, a faith that, along with Transcendentalism, challenged the traditional structures of orthodox Christianity.
Keywords: slavery, William H. Seward, New York, slave labor, America, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Unitarianism, Christianity
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