Slavery and the American Revolution

It is widely believed by many Americans that the so-called “founding fathers” of the United States were morally and politically opposed to slavery. The fact that some of the founders were themselves slaveholders is often interpreted as an unfortunate by-product of their circumstances. The popular narrative suggests they simply lived in a society and period of time where the practice of slavery was part of a historical legacy that was commonly accepted. Other interpretations of the relationship between early American political leaders and slavery imply that their own slaveholder statuses, or failure to abolish slavery during the course of founding the United States, simply reflects ironic defects or limitations within their otherwise admirable characters. Yet the actual historical record shows that this is not an accurate interpretation of the role of slavery in the American Revolution and the founding of the United States. The new nation created by the founders was established in part to protect slaveholder interests. 

Nearly every American is taught as part of their early education that the American Revolution came about as a result of severe injustices that were imposed on the thirteen colonies by the British crown. Commonly cited examples of this include the Stamp Act and various allegations of supposed “taxation without representation.” In the mainstream, popular narrative the founding fathers and colonial revolutionaries are depicted as having broken away from a tyrannical English monarchy, and established a new society based on such lofty principles as “liberty and justice for all.” Yet a review of the views of the early American political leadership, and most of the opinions of white Americans generally during that time, shows this was hardly the case. 

To be sure, the American Revolution brought with it a number of monumental changes to the American society of the time. These changes likewise indicated a significant departure from many of the institutions and norms of European societies of the era. Among the most obvious of these were the abolition of the monarchy and the hereditary nobility, along with the provisions for church/state separation found in the U.S. Constitution. However, on questions of race and slavery, the founders of the United States and early American political leadership were often even less progressive in their thinking than their European counterparts. Many Americans are today unaware that, for instance, a legal decision was rendered in England in 1772, a mere four years before the colonies declared independence, that carried with it profound implications for the future of slavery in the British Empire. 

In 1771, a slave named James Somersett escaped while he was under the ownership of Charles Stuart, an English customs official. Somersett had previously been purchased by Stuart while the latter was in the colony of Massachusetts in North America. Somersett was subsequently recaptured, and Stuart intended to have him transported to Jamaica to work on the slave plantations in the English colony on the island (Usherwood, 1981). However, advocates for Somersett and English lawyers committed to the cause of abolishing slavery appealed to the British courts seeking to challenge the legality of slavery under English common law. 

The legal argument advanced by Somersett’s British attorneys claimed that Parliament had never enacted legislation allowing for the legalization of slavery. Further, there was no identifiable provision in the common law for upholding slave ownership as a form of private property. The lawyers for Somersett also pointed out that, under English law, contracts must have the consent of all parties involved, which in turn precluded slavery contracts. Slaves who were under physical coercion could not consent to such a contract, and British law prohibited the selling of one’s self into slavery (Nadelhaft, 1966). It was also argued that Somersett had been purchased as a slave in the colony of Massachusetts and the laws of the colonies were not applicable in English courts. 

The case of Somersett was heard by Lord Mansfield. It was the ruling of Mansfield that slavery was illegal under British common law. Mansfield made the following observation in his ruling: 

The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore, the black must be discharged (Usherwood, 1981).

Following the Somersett case, slaves in some of the American colonies began to file petitions for their freedom in American courts. Slaveholders in the colonies became concerned about the future legality of slavery in the realm of the British Empire (Wiecek, 1974). Evidence indicates that the American Revolution which began just a few years later was motivated in part by the desire of slaveholders to become independent of English law as they were concerned that the illegalization of slavery in England itself. 

Statements made by various founders of the United States which seem to speak disparagingly of slavery are often cited as evidence of their disapproval and moral revulsion as its practice. For instance, George Washington said in an April 12, 1786 letter to Robert Morris: "There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it." Likewise, Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1821 autobiography: "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free." Statements such as these would indeed seem to indicate strong disapproval of slavery on the part of American revolutionary leaders (George Mason University, 2002).  

However, the early American leaders were often much harsher in their treatment of their personal slaves than what the above statements would seem to indicate. Bosher (2004) points out that Washington created a set of false teeth for himself by having his personal dentist remove teeth from the mouths of his own slaves. Jefferson’s sexual dalliances with his slave mistresses, involving women who would have been under his direct physical compulsion, are well-known to historians as sexuality and slavery often went hand-in-hand. Further, while the founders of the United States may have been intelligent men who understood the abolition of slavery was a likely future event, they were also very concerned about the potential loss of the perceived economic benefits of slavery. It was also true that even those founding fathers with more liberal (for the time) views on the question of slavery were dependent on the support of slaveholders and pro-slavery forces for their political careers. Becoming an open abolitionist would have been political suicide for any one of them. And the ranks of the founders also included many figures with rather uncompromisingly pro-slavery attitudes such as James Monroe, Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry Lee, all of whom engaged in either the slave trade, the flogging of slaves as a method of control, or the suppression of slave revolts (Bosher, 2004). 

The continued existence of slavery in the American republic following the revolution is often regarded as an unfortunate but inevitable compromise that had to be made given the context of the times. It is sometimes suggested that while many of the revolutionary leaders may have personally opposed slavery, it was also necessary to compromise with slaveholder interests for the sake of carrying out the revolution successfully, and subsequently forming a new nation. It is also often assumed that zealously pro-slavery attitudes were dominant primarily in the South, and that Northern opinion ordinarily expressed strong disapproval of slavery. Compromises were made, so the common narrative goes, for the sake of ratifying the Constitution and avoiding sectional conflict. Meanwhile, it was supposedly hoped by many that slavery would eventually be abolished through the process of social evolution and abolitionist agitation. The actual historical record is not especially favorable to this conventional narrative. Van Cleve (2010) observes that both racism and pro-slavery sentiments were far more prevalent in the colonies, and in the post-revolutionary period, than what the conventional narrative will often recognize. Van Cleve regards the protection of slaveholder interests as a primary and essential component of the events leading up to the revolution, and the subsequent task of writing the Constitution binding the newly independent colonies to one another. Far from expressing disapproval or moral opprobrium at the practice of slavery, Northerners during this era were largely indifferent to the practice. They regarded it as the South’s issue and nothing with which they should be overly concerned. Abolitionist sentiments among Northerners and white Americans generally were often themselves predicated on severe racist attitudes. Black slaves were viewed as competitors to free white labor. Slave migration to the Western territories and free states was often frowned upon out of a desire to retain the total separation of the races. Indeed, it would appear that both racism and large-scale indifference to the plight of the slaves were core aspects of the social fabric of late eighteenth and early nineteenth America. 

References

Boser, U. (2004). The founding fathers’ dark legacy. US News and World Report, January 4, 2004. Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/040112/12slave.htm

George Mason University (2002). What the founders said about slavery. George Mason University economics faculty website. Retrieved from http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/quotes/slavery.html.

Nadelhaft, J. (1966). The Somersett case and slavery: Myth, reality, and repercussions. Journal of Negro History, 51 (3), 193–208.

Usherwood, S. (1981). The black must be discharged: The abolitionists' debt to Lord Mansfield. History Today, 31(3).

Van Cleve, G. W. (2010). A slaveholders’ union: Slavery, politics, and the Constitution in the early American republic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wiecek, W. M. (1974).  Somerset: Lord Mansfield and the legitimacy of slavery in the Anglo-American world. University of Chicago Law Review, 42 (1), 86–146