Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox — Key Notes
The Central Paradox
The rise of liberty, democracy, and the common man ran parallel to the rise of oppression, exploitation, and slavery from the 17th to 19th centuries; both developed simultaneously.
The paradox: a people boasting freedom and equal rights still built and sustained a system that denied liberty to a large part of its population.
Free ships doctrine and foreign policy depended on slave-labor-produced goods (notably tobacco) for leverage on the world stage; independence was in part bought with slave labor. of the population at the Revolution were enslaved Americans.
Virginia, the epicenter of slaveholding, contained a large share of enslaved people: at the time of the first U.S. census (1790) Virginia produced the most eloquent advocates for liberty who were themselves slaveholders, e.g., Washington, Madison, and Jefferson. (Jefferson) embodied the paradox: champion of liberty yet slaveholder.
The Political and Intellectual Context: Commonweathmen and the Idea of Liberty
English liberty ideals were imported by American colonists through the commonwealthmen (e.g., Harrington, Locke, Ferguson, Hutcheson, Fletcher).
These thinkers prized independent, property-owning citizens as the basis of liberty; they distrusted dependency, monetary debt, and the free urban poor as threats to republican government.
Jefferson’s liberty was rooted in individual independence, not in government-delivered rights; debt threatened independence and republican virtue. He opposed debt because it bound a person to another and undermined the citizen-soldier ideal who owns land.
Jefferson’s other fear: the landless urban worker who could be free in name but not in fact, since dependence on others eroded liberty. He viewed artificers (manufacturers) as particularly dangerous to independence, unlike rural farmers who owned land.
The Debt, Land, and Fear of Dependency
Jefferson’s debt aversion and his land-distribution program reflected a broader Republican logic: a republic required free, independent, property-owning citizens; debtors risked tyranny.
He proposed abolition of primogeniture and entail; land for the living; and generous land grants to ensure independence.
Jefferson’s distrust extended to urban laborers; he feared “dependance” and believed it bred subservience and venality.
The republican creed linked liberty to economic independence, not merely political rights.
Slavery and the Commonwealth Vision: The Role of the Poor and the Idle
The nineteenth-century democratic ideal ran counter to eighteenth-century anxieties about idleness; commonwealththinkers proposed corrective measures that often trafficked in coercive labor schemes.
Locke’s successors debated methods of “liberating” the poor from idleness: some proposed public labor institutions; others proposed harsh penalties or even slavery as a remedy for idle vagrants.
Andrew Fletcher of Scotland argued for making idle poor into slaves to property-holders; Jefferson later cited Fletcher’s concern about idle poor in a crisis of abundance and land scarcity.
The fear of an ungovernable, idle, free poor helped shift the nation toward slave labor as a non-debtor form of dependence that preserved the liberties of the propertied.
The Virginian Economic and Demographic Context: From Jamestown to 1700
Early Virginia depended on indentured servants; mortality was extremely high; life expectancy and risk shaped society.
Immigration surged between 1625 and 1640: population around in 1640; by 1640 the colony had perhaps residents, with thousands more arriving.
The shift from servant to free labor and land ownership created a growing class of freedmen, many of whom were landless by the mid-to-late 17th century. By 1676, about of Virginia’s freemen were without land.
Laws increasingly restricted movement and extended service for runaways; penalties and hair-cropping were used to identify and discipline revolting or idle servants.
The combination of high mortality, land hunger, and a growing class of landless freedmen created pressure for a more controllable labor force.
The Emergence of Slavery: Why Virginia Turned to African Slavery
As the late 17th century progressed, slave labor became more profitable than indentured labor due to longevity and the cost of importation. By 1700 slaves likely constituted a majority or near-majority of the labor force in Virginia.
The choice to enslave Africans rather than continue to import white laborers stabilized English liberties for the propertied class while reducing potential challenges from freedmen.
Barbados’ slave codes and English officials’ attitudes reinforced a legal framework that treated black slaves differently from white servants, legitimizing harsher punishment for slaves and enabling a segregated system.
The slave system was advantageous not only economically but also as a social control mechanism: slaves were unarmed, disorganized, and clearly marked by color, making collective resistance more difficult to mobilize than among free laborers.
Slavery allowed a large landholding elite to preserve political power, while the lower strata of white freemen shared the burden of liberty without the fear of large-scale mobilization by the freed poor.
The Baconian and Post-Baconian Era: Repression and the Political Balance
Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) exposed the fragility of the colonial political order and the danger of ungoverned free labor and frontier unrest.
In the aftermath, Virginia shifted toward a system that preferred discipline of the poor and reliance on slave labor to stabilize labor and social order.
The rise of slavery coincided with the decline of the colonial council’s dominance and the rise of the elected House of Burgesses, linking liberty rhetoric with a political economy built on slavery.
The Long-Term Paradox: Union of North and South and the Revolutionary Dilemma
Slavery’s integration into the political system helped forge a republican framework in Virginia that later connected with New England’s commonwealth tradition.
The Revolution intensified the paradox: colonists proclaimed liberty and natural rights while expounding rights for Englishmen that were denied to Africans.
Morgan argues that slavery helped create a kind of political culture in Virginia that could produce a republican political language — a language of rights and representation — that later allowed Union between North and South, even as it underpinned slavery.
Key Takeaways (Essential Concepts for Quick Recall)
The American paradox: liberty and slavery arose together; one fifth of the population was enslaved at the Revolution; Virginia held a large share of enslaved people. , of US slaves in Virginia around the Revolution, and Virginia contained a substantial share of enslaved people.
The liberty ideal relied on economic independence and land ownership; debt and dependence threatened republican liberty.
Commonwealthmen mixed advocacy of liberty with acceptance or justification of slavery and the coercion of the idle poor; their ideas shaped American political culture.
Virginia’s social order shifted from indentured servants to enslaved Africans as a way to stabilize labor and protect the liberties of the propertied class. By 1700, slavery was dominant enough to shape public policy, law, and politics.
The Bacon’s Rebellion episode and subsequent laws show the move to restrict freedoms of the poor and to entrench a slave-based labor system as a means of maintaining social order and political power.
Hakluyt’s vision of English liberty abroad and the colonial project in Virginia helped fuse liberty with empire, using slavery as a tool to sustain English privileges and influence.
The Revolution sharpened the contradictions: Virginia’s republican ideals coexisted with a slave society; the experience of slavery contributed to a political culture capable of embracing, and later contesting, those same rights on a broader, national scale.