Transcript Document 7564581

Rise of Antislavery Sentiment
in late 18th Century
Fueled by
• Spread of Enlightenment ideals/
revolutionary ideology
• Evangelical Christianity – all men equal in
eyes of God
Thomas Jefferson on
Virginia’s Early Antislavery Movement
“In 1769, I became a member of the legislature by the
choice of the county in which I live, & continued in that
until it was closed by the revolution. I made one effort in
that body for the permission of the emancipation of
slaves, which was rejected: and indeed, during the regal
government, nothing liberal could expect success.
“Our minds were circumscribed within narrow limits by an
habitual belief that it was our duty to be subordinate to
the mother country in all matters of government, to direct
all our labors in subservience to her interests, and even
to observe a bigoted intolerance for all religions but
hers.”
Jefferson’s Autobiography
Virginia House of Burgesses
to the King, April 1772
“The importation of Slaves into the Colonies from
the Coast of Africa hath long been considered
as a Trade of great Inhumanity, and, under its
present Encouragement, we have too much
Reason to fear will endanger the very Existence
of your Majesty’s American dominions.”
Virginia on the Eve of Revolution
Total Population: 567,614
Enslaved Persons of African Descent:
270,762 (48 percent)
Address of Virginia House of
Burgesses, 1772 (cont’d)
“We are sensible that some of your majesty’s subjects in
Great-Britain may reap Emoluments from this Sort of
Traffic, but when we consider that it greatly retards the
Settlement of the Colonies with more useful inhabitants,
and may, in Time, have the most destructive Influence,
we presume to hope that the Interest of a few will be
disregarded when placed in Competition with the
Security and Happiness of such Numbers of your
Majesty’s dutiful and loyal subjects.”
Thomas Jefferson
“A Summary View of the Rights of
British America” (1774)
• Prepared as instructions for Virginia’s
delegates to the First Continental
Congress
• Jefferson cited the King’s veto of anti-slave
trade legislation as a prime example of his
“shameful abuse” of power.
Jefferson’s “Summary View of Rights of
British America” (1774)
“The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of
desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily
introduced in their infant state. But previous to the
enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary
to exclude all further importations from Africa; yet our
repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by
imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition,
have been hitherto defeated by his majesty's negative:
Thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few
African corsairs to the lasting interests of the American
states, and to the rights of human nature, deeply
wounded by this infamous practice.”
Making the Case for
American Independence & Revolution
Jefferson warned that the American colonists risked
enslavement at the hands of a King who had shown no
moral scruples over the continuation of the international
slave trade or the perpetuation of domestic slavery in the
British American colonies.
“Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the
accidental opinion of a day,” he wrote, “but a series of
oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and
pursued unalterably through every change of ministers,
too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of
reducing us to slavery.”
American Revolution
April 1775 – Outbreak of war
June 1775 - Virginia’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, takes
asylum aboard ship in Yorktown
August 1775 – Dunmore initiates unofficial policy of
soliciting slaves to augment his military guard
October 1775 – “Lord Dunmore sails up and down the river,
and where he finds a defenceless place, he lands,
plunders the plantation and carries off the negroes.”
November 1775 – Dunmore issues proclamation
establishing martial law.
Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation
(Dec. 7, 1775)
“I do require every Person capable of bearing Arms, to
resort to His MAJESTY'S STANDARD, or be looked
upon as Traitors to His MAJESTY'S Crown and
Government, and thereby become liable to the Penalty
the Law inflicts upon such Offenses; such as forfeiture
of Life, confiscation of Lands, &. &. And I do hereby
further declare all indented Servants, Negroes, or
others, (appertaining to Rebels,) free that are able and
willing to bear Arms, they joining His MAJESTY'S
Troops as soon as may be, foe the more speedily
reducing this Colony to a proper Sense of their Duty,
to His MAJESTY'S Crown and Dignity.”
Virginia’s slaveholding
patriots respond
Colonial propagandists urged slaves to cast their lot with
their Virginia masters, “who pity their condition, who wish
in general to make it as easy and comfortable as
possible, and who would willingly, if it were in their
power, or were they permitted, not only prevent any
more negroes from losing their freedom, but restore it to
such as have already lost it.”
Virginia colonial authorities made an official “offer of mercy”
to those slaves who had been “seduced” into taking up
arms for the British.
Lord Dunmore’s
Ethiopian Regiment
• Estimates vary on numbers of runaway slaves
enlisted – probably only about 800
• Relocated as British American “loyalists” to Nova
Scotia after war
• Veterans of Dunmore’s regiment joined other
freed slaves in establishing private British colony
of Sierra Leone (1792)
Declaration of Independence
(1776)
Jefferson’s draft includes this indictment of King George:
“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself,
violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the
persons of a distant people [Africans] who never
offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery
in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in
their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the
opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the
Christian king of Great Britain, determined to keep open
a market where MEN should be bought and sold; he has
prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative
attempt to prohibit this execrable commerce …”
Jefferson’s draft revised
to eliminate refs to slave trade
The Continental Congress, meeting behind closed doors in
Philadelphia, voted to delete all but the most oblique
references to slavery from the final draft of the
Declaration. As Jefferson later explained in his
autobiography:
“The clause . . . reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of
Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina
& Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the
importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary still
wished it to continue. Our northern brethren also I
believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho'
their people have very few slaves themselves yet they
had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”
Declaration of Independence
Jefferson’s rough draft (cont’d)
“ . . . and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact
of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people
to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of
which he has deprived them, by murdering the people
upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off
further crimes committed against the liberties of one
people, with crimes which he urges them to commit
against the lives of another.”
Declaration Endorses People’s Right to
Rebel in Defense of God-Given Liberties
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happinesses;
that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;
that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those
ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles,
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their safety and happiness.
U.S. Constitution (1787)
• Strengthened the political power of the
slaveholding states by adopting the three-fifths
clause for purposes of representation
• Mandated that fugitive slaves who crossed state
lines be returned to their owners
• Extended African slave trade by no less than
twenty years
• Pledged full power of the federal government to
put down slave insurrections
Jefferson’s Notes (1785)
“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when
we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in
the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift
of God? That they are not to be violated but with his
wrath?
“Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is
just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that
considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a
revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of
situation, is among possible events: that it may become
probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has
no attribute which can take side with us in such a
contest.”
Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, Query 14, “Laws”
Jefferson’s Notes (1785)
“There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the
manners of our people produced by the existence of
slavery among us. The whole commerce between
master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most
boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on
the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.
Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is
an imitative animal…”
Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, Query 18, “Manners”
“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is
a good thing, & as necessary in the
political world as storms in the physical.
Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally
establish the encroachments on the rights
of the people which have produced them.”
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
Paris, January 30, 1787
Jefferson on Virtues of Rebellion
“I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like
a storm in the Atmosphere.”
Jefferson to Abigail Adams,
Feb. 22, 1787
Jefferson on the French Revolution
“In the struggle which was necessary, many guilty persons
fell without the forms of trial, and with them some
innocent. These I deplore as much as any body, & shall
deplore some of them to the day of my death. But I
deplore them as I should have done had they fallen in
battle. It was necessary to use the arm of the people, a
machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs, but blind
to a certain degree…
The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue
of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so
little innocent blood?”
Jefferson to William Short
January 3, 1793
Jefferson on French Revolution
“It is unfortunate, that the efforts of
mankind to recover the freedom of which
they have been so long deprived, will be
accompanied with violence, with errors, &
even with crimes. But while we weep over
the means, we must pray for the end.”
Jefferson to François D'Ivernois
Feb. 6, 1795
Haitian Revolution
“Haitians were the first, and remain the only,
enslaved people in human history to have
overthrown slavery and established an
independent polity rule by former slaves in
place of one controlled by their masters.”
--Historian James Sidbury
Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)
• Began in 1791 with slave uprising in
French West Indian colony of Saint
Domingue
• Culminated in 1804 with establishment of
independent black nation-state of Haiti