Before we can determine whether Northern wage earners were capable of exercising liberty, we must know what liberty is. According to www.dictionary.com, freedom is the power of self-determined attribution to the will; or the quality of being independent, the power or right to act, think or speak, without hindrance or restraint. Wage laborers may have worked long hours for low pay, but they were more than capable of choosing and making decisions for themselves and their conditions were not that bad. “Worker republicanism inherited the idea that the conception of men perpetually sought to undermine freedom and to “enslave” the people. Chattel slavery was the ultimate expression of the denial of liberty” (Pg 341). What the book is trying to say is that people have always wanted to take away their freedom and enslave them, but the enslavement of black people took that to an extreme level. Compared to slaves, wage workers had great freedom. Slavery might have had better conditions like: clothing and medical care, according to the New York Historical Society, but wage laborers could quit their jobs and leave....