American Revolution & slavery

[eschereal]

Some while ago, it was suggested to me that the American Revolution was because, slavery.

A quick look turned up Sometset v. Stewart, which is pretty strong evidence in favor of the claim.

Now, I am reluctant accept that slavery was the primary cause of the Revolution, but it seems reasonable that it was a significant driving factor. After all, without the support of the slaveholding colonies, the US never could have succeeded in defeating the royal army.

Is “freedom” a questionable refrain to use when speaking of the American Revolution?

[Bayaker]

I don’t know how much any issues in Britain regarding slavery might have generally influenced American colonists, but I don’t think your cited case would mean much. The number of slaves owned by Americans and taken all the way to England would have been infinitesimal, and the ‘once in England, always free’ ruling would have affected almost no one.

[eschereal]

Nonetheless, English law could have been seen to be eroding the property rights of slaveholders. Britiain “technically” ended chattel slavery decades before the US Civil War (though the genuine end to practical slavery in Britain was at least a century later). The contention is that the colonies were at least anxious about British Common Law encroaching on the property rights of slave owners.

[Little_Nemo]

The problem is the timeline. The independence movement in the colonies was already well established years before the Somerset case was decided in 1772. The Somerset decision may have caused a few people to join the movement but it didn’t create it.

[MEBuckner]

In this debate I see a lot of assertions about the effects of Somerset on support for independence in the Southern colonies, but I don’t see much hard evidence. When a bunch of slave owners indisputably rose up in a rebellion for the perpetuation of slavery and white supremacy 85 years after the American Revolution, they left behind ample evidence of what they were fighting for: angry accusations that their opponents had “denounced as sinful the institution of slavery”, unabashed proclamations that their declaration of independence was “thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery”, political speeches proudly proclaiming slavery and white supremacy to be the “cornerstone” of their new government.

Where are these pro-slavery declarations from the American Revolution? Instead of open defenses of slavery and proclamations of its centrality to the Revolutionary cause, we have the declaration by the earlier rebels 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 Happiness”–claims that if taken seriously would be fatal to slavery; and claims that the later rebels of the would-be Confederate States explicitly repudiated.

From A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union:

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights ; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

And from Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens “Cornerstone Speech” (linked to above):

Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition.

As already noted, the timeline simply doesn’t work–the Southern colony of Virginia denounced the Stamp Act, and proclaimed the principle of “no taxation without representation” seven years before the Somerset case. South Carolina–in many ways the most Southern of the Southern states–participated in the Stamp Act Congress, an important forerunner of the later Continental Congresses which would lead to the Declaration of Independence. Again, the Stamp Act Congress was years before the Somerset case.

The American Revolution certainly did not have upholding slavery as one of its public ends–to the contrary, the officially proclaimed philosophical basis of the Revolution was extremely damaging to slavery, and in fact the immediate effect of the Revolution was to weaken slavery. Immediately after the Revolution, many of the new states began moving to eliminate slavery, in their constitutions, by legislation, and by court decisions based on their new state constitutions. The Congress of the Confederation passed laws banning slavery in territories of the new republic.

Unfortunately this post-Revolutionary process of abolition eventually ground to a halt, a sharp geographical line between “free states” and “slave states” was eventually laid down, and the country was nearly destroyed by another would-be revolution that was most definitely fought for the perpetuation of slavery.