Race, Gender, and Citizenship:
The Making of a
“White Man’s Country”
Prof. French
AAS 101
Thursday, Oct. 21
Lecture Outline
• From Servitude to Slavery: The Evolution
of Virginia’s Black Codes
• Race, Rebellion, and Revolution
2.
From Servitude to Slavery:
The Evolution of Virginia’s
Black Codes
How, in the course of a century, did the words “Negro”
and “Slave” come to be interchangeable?
How did the black codes reshape class relations and
gender roles?
The Planters’ First Labor Source:
White Indentured Servitude
For the first three quarters of the seventeenth century,
Virginia tobacco planters relied on white indentured
servants from Europe to fill the bulk of their labor needs.
• Master paid for cost of trans-Atlantic transportation for
servant
• Servant agreed to provide labor for fixed period of
indenture (typically seven years).
This system of labor was subsidized by the British crown,
which awarded the planters a "headright" or land
allotment of 50 acres for each servant imported.
Legal Status of
Indentured Servants v. Slaves
• Like slaves, indentured servants were considered the
chattel property of the masters who had purchased their
indentures and could be bought, sold, and inherited.
• Unlike slaves, indentured servants enjoyed basic rights
shared by all of the king’s subjects. Their children were
considered free. Also, at the end of their terms, servants
received “freedom dues,” which included land, farming
implements, etc. Many went on to become small
freeholders.
The Charter Generation
The status of the first generation of Africans to
arrive in Virginia – sometimes called the “charter
generation” -- is somewhat ambiguous.
The first mention of “Negroes” in colonial records
appears in 1619; the first mention of “Negroes”
in Virginia law does not appear until 1630.
There is evidence that African laborers – still few in number
-- held a status similar to that of white indentured
servants in the early decades of English settlement.
Free persons of African descent could demand payment,
gain their freedom, legally marry, own property, and even
import servants of their own (including white ones).
• Anthony Johnson: five servants – headrights of 250
acres
• Richard Johnson: two servants…headrights of 150 acres
But there are some clues that persons of African
descent were viewed and treated differently than
those of European descent by Virginia
authorities.
Censuses taken in 1624 and 1625 reveal the early
subordination of Africans within Virginia society.
– last names absent
– appear at the end of lists
– no place of origin or date of arrival
Early Virginia Black Codes
1630: Hugh Davis to be soundly whipped … for abusing
himself to the dishonor of God and shame of Christians,
by defiling his body in lying with a negro…
1639: All persons except Negroes are to be provided with
arms and ammunition or be fined at the pleasure of the
governor and council.
1640: Robert Sweet to do penance for church according to
laws of England, for getting a negroe woman with child
and the woman whipt.
Other clues to subordinate status of
African-Americans
As early as 1643, African American women were
declared “tithables,” subject to taxation, whereas
Anglo-American women were not.
Defining Negro Women as “Tithables”
1644: It is declared that because there shall
be no scruple or evasion as to who are
and who are not tithable, it is resolved by
the General Assembly that all Negro men
and women, and all other men, from the
age of sixteen to sixty shall be adjudged
tithable.
Historian Kathleen Brown on the significance of
these taxation laws:
“Virginia lawmakers began in 1643 to define the
social meaning of racial difference by reserving
the privileges of womanhood for the masters
and husbands of English women. In a colony
where many English women worked regularly in
tobacco fields, creating a legal identity that
would distinguish them from enslaved women
was crucial to maintaining traditional English
family roles.”
Cultivating Tobacco in Virginia, 1798.
(Sketched from life near Fredericksburg)
Beginning in 1661, a series of Virginia laws
fixed the status of Negroes as slaves for
life and systematically eliminated many of
the avenues to freedom enjoyed by the
Charter Generation. Moreover, these laws
made slaves of all children born to slave
women, regardless of the father’s status.
Virginia Laws
Make Racial Slavery Hereditary
1661: "Be it enacted . . .that all Negroes or other slaves
already within the province and all Negroes and other
slaves to be hereafter imported into the province shall
serve durante vita (duration of life) and all children born
to any Negro or other slaves shall be slaves as their
fathers were for the term of their lives."
1662: Children got by an Englishman upon a Negro woman
shall be bond or free according to the condition of the
mother …
1667 Colonial Virginia Law
Removes Christian Conversion
as Path to Freedom
“Whereas some doubts have arisen whether
children that are slaves by birth, and by the
charity and pity of their owners made partakers
of the blessed sacrament of baptism, should by
virtue of their baptism does not alter the
condition of the person as to his bondage or
freedom; masters freed from this doubt may
more carefully propagate Christianity by
permitting slaves to be admitted to that
sacrament.”
Prohibiting private
“manumission” of slaves
1691: A great inconvenience may happen to this country by
setting negroes and mulattoes free, by their entertaining
Negroes from their masters’ service, or receiving stolen
goods, or being grown old bringing a charge upon the
country... it is enacted that no Negroes, or mulattoes be
set free by any person whatsoever, unless such person
pay for the transportation of such Negro out of the
country within six months after such setting free, upon
penalty of ten pounds sterling to the church wardens …
1723: “No Negro or Indian slave shall be set free upon any
pretense whatsoever, except for some meritorious
service to be adjudged by the governor.”
1691 Virginia Law
Bans Interracial Marriage
“And for the prevention of that abominable mixture and
spurious issue which hereafter may increase as well by
Negroes, mullatoes, and Indians intermarrying with
English, or other white women, it is enacted that for the
time to come, that Whatsoever English or other white
man or woman being free shall intermarry with a negroe,
mulatto, or Indian man or woman bond or free, shall
within three months after such marriage be banished and
removed from this dominion forever …”
1691 Law Condemns Mixed-Race Offspring
of White Women to 30 Years of Servitude
“If any English woman being free shall have a bastard child by any
negro or mulatto … she [shall] pay the sum of fifteen pounds
sterling, within one month after such bastard child shall be born, to
the Church wardens of the parish where she have delivered of such
child … such bastard child [shall] be bound out as a servant by the
said Church wardens untill he or she shall attaine the age of thirty
years … In case the English woman that shall have a bastard is a
servant, she shall be sold by the church wardens (after her time is
expired) for five years, and the child serve as aforesaid.)”
Note that these anti-miscegenation laws
discouraged consensual relationships between
blacks and whites, yet at the same, rewarded
the exploitation of enslaved black women and
indentured white women by white men.
The “mixed race” child of an enslaved black
women and a white man (whether her master or
not) became the property of the slave woman’s
master. The master, in effect, profited from his -or any white man’s --violation of the law.
How did these anti-miscegenation laws serve the
interests of the white ruling class?
• RACE: Creation/policing of a bifurcated racial
order that excluded “mixed-race” persons from
rights of Englishmen and privileges of whiteness
• CLASS: Creation/policing of sexual relationships
between members of white and black laboring
classes
• GENDER: Policing of white women’s sexuality/
Virginias Planters Shift from
Indentured Servitude to Slave
Labor in late 17th C.
In 1668 white servants outnumbered black
slaves more than 5 to 1 in the
Chesapeake Region.
By the 1700, the ratio had been reversed.
Why?
Beginning in the 1680s, planters began turning away from
indentured servitude to slave labor, particularly in the
Chesapeake colonies.
1.
A steep decline in white immigration from England, as
economic conditions improved and new provisions
were made for the poor.
2.
A sharp increase in the availability of enslaved
laborers, thanks to British domination of the African
slave trade and the establishment of the slavetrading
Royal African Company.
3.
Rising life expectancy/declining mortality rates made
slaves a better investment
4.
Competition from other colonies for European labor
Cultural Impact
As the demand for slaves in the Chesapeake
region increased, the primary source of slaves
shifted from the West Indies to the African
interior. As a result, a larger and larger
proportion of the slaves transported to the
Chesapeake region were born in Africa.
African Immigrants
to Virginia and S.C. in 18th C.
25
20
15
10
5
0
1700s 1720s 1740s 1760s 1780s
VA
SC
Ira Berlin on the “Africanization” of
African-American Culture
“Men and women with filed teeth, plaited hair, and
ritual scarification were everywhere to be seen.
Their music -- particularly their drums -- filled the
air with sounds that frightened European and
European-American settlers. Their religious
practices -- probably polytheistic although
sometimes Islamic -- were dismissed as idolatry
and devil worship by the established clergy.”
Description of Runaway
Slaves in Virginia
• Virginia Gazette
(Purdie & Dixon), Williamsburg ,
January 14, 1773.
Three Hundred Pounds Reward. RUN away from the Subscriber, in St.
Stephen's Parish, South Carolina, about fifteen Months since, two
Negro Fellows and a Wench, namely: WILL, GEORGE, and
SYLVIA. Will is a Cooper and rough Carpenter, about twenty five
Years of Age, five Feet eight Inches high, of a yellowish Complexion,
slim made, a little knock-kneed, his Teeth filed, and has his
Country Marks in his Face. George is about twenty Years of Age,
five Feet five Inches high, of a dark Complexion, is very artful, and
has been used to take Care of Horses. Sylvia is a likely young
Wench, about five Feet five Inches high, of a yellowish Complexion,
her Teeth filed, and has attended in a House.
Examples of Filed
Teeth and
Country Marks
from
Trinidad, ca.
1830s
LINK
2.
Resistance, Rebellion, and
Revolution
Defining “Resistance”
To some historians, resistance applies to all
acts of non-cooperation/disobedience on
the part of the slaves.
Everyday Acts of Resistance
-- feigning illness
-- stealing/”taking” from master
-- poisoning
-- sabotaging the crop
-- destroying tools
-- mistreating animals
-- arson
-- running away/running around
Resistance v. Non-Cooperation?
Historians Christopher Lasch and George
Frederickson question whether individual,
unorganized forms of “non-cooperation”
constitute “resistance.”
Lasch and Frederickson define “resistance” as a
political concept – that is, “collective action
designed to subvert the system, to facilitate and
regularize escape from it, or at the very least, to
force important changes in it.”
Slave Revolts as Political Action
Lasch and Frederickson describe slave
revolts as “the most rudimentary form of
political action.”
What makes these upheavals political is that
they rest on some sense of collective
victimization. They require, moreover, at
least a minimum of organization and
planning.
What makes them rudimentary is that they do not
aim so much at changing the balance of power
as at giving expression to apocalyptic visions of
retribution. In most cases, they are directed at
particular individuals rather than at larger
systems of authority.
The weakness of early slave revolts, Lasch
and Frederickson argue, lay in the
absence of a revolutionary ideology linking
individual grievances to collective
victimization and a vision of social and
political change.
The Age of Revolution – particularly the
American (1776), French (1789) and
Haitian revolutions (1791) – fundamentally
transformed the ideological context of
slave rebellions.
By the end of the 18th century, historian
Eugene Genovese argues, the historical
content of slave revolts had shifted
decisively. What had been sporadic,
localized attempts to secure freedom
became linked to a worldwide antislavery
movement, aimed at abolishing slavery as
a social system.
Insurrection Anxieties
That the white ruling elite of colonial Virginia
feared rebellion among the indentured
servants and enslaved “Negroes” is
evident from the passage of increasingly
repressive laws throughout the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:
1638. Act X.
All persons except Negroes are to be provided
with arms and ammunition or be fined at the
pleasure of the governor and council.
1680: “Whereas the frequent meetings of considerable
numbers of Negro slaves under pretense of feasts and
burials is judged of dangerous consequence, it is
enacted that no Negro or slave may carry arms, such as
any club, staff, gun, sword, or other weapon, nor go from
his owner’s plantation without a certificate and then only
on necessary occasions; the punishment twenty lashes
on the bare back, well laid on.
“And, further, if any Negro lift up his hand again any
Christian he shall receive thirty lashes, and if he absent
himself or lie out from his master’s service and resist
lawful apprehension, he may be killed and this law shall
be published every six months.
1682: “Whereas the act of 1680 on Negro insurrections has
not had the intended effect, it is enacted that church
wardens read this and the other act, twice every year, in
the time of divine service, or forfeit each of them six
hundred pounds of tobacco, and further to prevent
insurrections no master or overseer shall allow a Negro
slave of another to remain on his plantation above four
hours without leave of the slave’s own master.”
1691: “An act for suppressing outlying slaves covering
divers subjects, states whereas many times Negroes,
mulattoes and other slaves lie hid and lurk in obscure
places killing hogs and committing other injuries, it is
enacted, that the sheriff may raise so many forces from
time to time as he shall think convenient for the effectual
apprehending of such Negroes. If they resist or runaway
they may be killed of destroyed by gun or otherwise
whatsoever, provided that the owner of any slave killed
shall be paid four thousand pounds of tobacco by the
public.”
Major American Slave Revolts of the 18th C
1712: New York – About 25 Indian and black
slaves upset over ill-treatment rebelled, killing 9,
wounding 6. Some of the alleged conspirators
were tortured and hanged; others were burned
at stake. Led to passage of restrictive laws.
1739: South Carolina – some 20 slaves living near
the Stono River seized guns and ammunition,
killed 25 whites, destroyed white-owned stores.
Rebel forces grew to hundreds; most were
captured or killed, their heads posted on
fenceposts in city of Charleston. Led to passage
of both restrictive and ameliorative laws.
Genovese notes that African-born slaves dominated both
the New York and S.C. revolts.
The New York rebels espoused traditional African religions,
as they understood it, and called for a war on the
Christians in a manner suggestive of the early Caribbean
obeahmen.
The religion of the rebels at Stono appears to have been
more clearly syncretic: Angolan slaves with at least a
formal adherence to Catholicism sought an alliance with
the Spanish in Florida.
Why so relatively few slave revolts of note
in British Colonial North America as
compared to Caribbean and South America?
In his book From Rebellion to Revolution
(1979), historian Eugene Genovese
underscored the conditions favorable to
rebellion in the Caribbean and Brazil and the
unique obstacles to the organization of
successful slave rebellions in the American
South.
General conditions favoring slave rebellion
in Caribbean Islands and South America
•
Depersonalization of master-slave relationship; cultural
estrangement of whites and blacks
•
Economic distress and famine
•
Large slaveholding units averaging one hundred or two
hundred slaves
•
A divided ruling class
•
Blacks heavily outnumbered whites
General conditions favoring slave rebellion
in Caribbean Islands and South America
• African-born slaves outnumbered those born into
American slavery (creoles)
• Social structure of slaveholding regime permits
emergence of autonomous black leadership
• Geographical, social, and political environment provided
terrain and opportunity for the formation of colonies of
runaway slaves (maroons) strong enough to threaten the
plantation regime. (Quilombos of Palmares)
Conditions unfavorable to
slave rebellion in America South
•
Economic depression did not have same effect on slaves
in U.S. that it did in the Caribbean islands (I.e., no
widespread famines)
•
U.S. slaveholding units were much smaller than those in
sugar colonies, where slaveholding units averaged 100200 slaves.
•
Slave society in Old South provided less room for the
development of advanced strata of black leaders than in
Caribbean Islands and Brazil
Conditions unfavorable to
slave rebellion in America South
(cont’d)
•
Little dissension within white ruling class. Slaveholders
of U.S. had no metropolitan capital in Europe to answer
to and shared power effectively in Washington. When
faced with threat of slave revolt in early 19th c., they
suppressed internal divisions and established political
consensus by eliminating the slavery issue and settling
other issues.
•
Blacks remained a minority in U.S. South except in
restricted areas (such as South Carolina rice-growing
regions)
Conditions unfavorable to
slave rebellion in America South
•
Maroon activity in the U.S., while by no means trivial,
could not spark general revolt as readily as it could
elsewhere. The terrain of the Old South put unsual
difficulties in the way of would-be maroons. With the
exception of Florida, the very geographic isolation and
limited means of subsistence drastically reduced both
the possibilities for large-scale maroon concentrations
and for decisive military-political interventions.
Conditions unfavorable to
slave rebellion in America South
• The closing of international slave trade (1808)
demanded improvement in material conditions of slave
life in order to guarantee adequate rate of reproduction.
This, in turn, removed one of the prime conditions for
revolt.
• Development of paternalist ideology undermined
solidarity of slaves by emphasizing personal
relationships between individual slaves and masters.
Slaves were led, increasingly, to an accommodation with
the regime. Viewing revolt as suicidal, they centered
efforts on forms of resistance appropriate to their
survival.
Paternalism
For Genovese, paternalism describes a
world in which masters and slaves -- like
lords and serfs of the earlier times -"faced each other with reciprocal demands
and expectations.“
Masters and slaves had to work out an
arrangement that they could both live with -- a
kind of truce -- that would minimize open hostility
and ensure some measure of stability within the
plantation community.
Though slaveholders held immense power over
slaves, that power was never absolute. And
slaves seized every opportunity to win
concessions from slaveholders and improve
their individual and collective lots.
Genovese on Paternalism’s
Consequences for Slave Resistance
Wherever paternalism exists, it undermines solidarity
among the oppressed by linking them as individuals to
their oppressors.
Paternalism created a tendency for slaves to identify with a
particular community through identification with its
master; it reduced the possibilities for identification with
each other as a a class.
At the same time, racism undermined the slaves’ sense of
worth as black people and reinforced their dependence
on white masters.
Genovese argues that both blacks and whites
accepted paternalism, but with radically different
interpretations.
• Masters embraced the ideology because it
allowed them to justify their subordination of the
slaves.
• Slaves embraced the ideology because it
afforded them some measure of bargaining
power and, ultimately, affirmed their humanity.
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
Upper South:
liberalization of Black Codes and
increase in manumission slaves
New England and mid-Atlantic:
gradual abolition of slavery
A Revolutionary Era
Change of Policy on Tithables
1769: The law which declared all free Negro,
mulatto, and Indian women and all wives of free
Negroes to be tithable is found very burdensome
to such Negroes, and moreover derogatory of
the rights of free-born subjects. It is therefore
enacted that all free Negro and Indian women,
and all wives, other than slaves, of free Negroes
and Indians are exempt from being tithables,
and from the payment of public or parish levies.
Early Virginia colonial law defined free blacks as
pariahs and imposed strict conditions on private
manumission to discourage the growth of the
free black population.
1691: A great inconvenience may happen to this country by
setting negroes and mulattoes free, by their entertaining
Negroes from their masters’ service, or receiving stolen
goods, or being grown old bringing a charge upon the
country... it is enacted that no Negroes, or mulattoes be
set free by any person whatsoever, unless such person
pay for the transportation of such Negro out of the
country within six months after such setting free, upon
penalty of ten pounds sterling to the church wardens …
1723: “No Negro or Indian slave shall be set free upon any
pretense whatsoever, except for some meritorious
service to be adjudged by the governor.”
A Revolutionary Era
Shift in Policy on Manumission
1769: Thomas Jefferson prevails upon Richard
Bland to introduce in Virginia’s colonial
legislature an initiative to ease restrictions on
private manumission. The measure, pushed by
Southern Quakers and Methodists, is soundly
defeated.
1782: Virginia state legislature enacts liberalized
manumission law: “It is lawful for any person by
last will or other instrument in writing, seal and
witnessed, to emancipate his slaves.”
Delaware and Maryland passed similar laws
shortly afterward. By 1790, manumission was
slaveholders’ prerogative throughout the
South, except in N.C. Even there, many
masters (particularly Quakers) flouted the law
and allowed slaves to simply “go free.”
Excerpt from
George Washington's Last Will and Testament ,
in which he manumitted 124 slaves.
<Ite>m Upon the decease <of> my wife, it is my
Will & desire th<at> all the Slaves which I hold in
<my> own right, shall receive their free<dom>.
To emancipate them during <her> life, would,
tho' earnestly wish<ed by> me, be attended with
such insu<pera>ble difficulties on account of
thei<r interm>ixture by Marriages with the
<dow>er Negroes, as to excite the most
pa<in>ful sensations, if not disagreeabl<e
c>onsequences from the latter.
Wholesale private emancipation (manumission)
released thousands from bondage in Upper South.
By the first decade of 19th century, there were more
than 100,000 free blacks in the Southern states – 5
percent of the free population and nearly 9 percent of
the black population.
Regional variation:
Upper South: masters indiscriminately granted
freedom
Lower South: much more selective
Source: Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters
Motives for manumission
• ideological – revolutionary doctrine of human
rights
• religious – Great Awakening/evangelical
egalitarianism – “all men equal in sight of God”
• personal – freedom to offspring of white
planters, slaves deemed worthy by virtue of
“meritorious service
Question: Why were free blacks tolerated in the
South when they so clearly challenged the
“natural” racial order (i.e.: white=free,
black=slave)
Whites in a slave society viewed free blacks as a
valued supplementary labor source
free blacks who did not own land worked as
sharecroppers or tenant farmers, domestic
laborers, or hired hands, a pattern more
generally adopted after emancipation
Also a source of tax revenue – free blacks were
taxed. What happened if they defaulted?
Reenslavement/apprenticeship of children
Growth of Free Black
Population in Virginia, 1780-1810
1780: 1,800
1790: 13,000 (609 percent increase)
1800: 20,000 (58 percent increase)
1810: 30,500 (59 percent increase)
Percentage of Free Black
Population in Virginia
1800
1790
White
Slave
Free Black
White
Slave
Free Black
Growth of Free Black Population
1790-1810 in South
100,000
90,000
80,000
70,000
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0
Upper South
Lower South
1790
1800
1810
Growth of Free Black Population
1790-1810 in U.S.
200,000
180,000
160,000
140,000
120,000
100,000
80,000
60,000
40,000
20,000
0
Percentage Growth:
1790-1800 – 82.5 percent
1800-1810 -- 72 percent
1790
1800
1810
Backlash: Virginia Clamps Down on
Manumission and Growth of Free
Black Population
1806: If any slave hereafter emancipated
shall remain within this Commonwealth
more than twelve months after his
freedom, he shall forfeit such right, and
may be sold by the overseers for the
benefit of the poor.
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.”
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.”