Slavery and the American Revolution — Comprehensive Notes

Overview

• Slavery in America’s colonies formed the economic base even as revolutionary rhetoric proclaimed liberty. The speaker frames slavery as an “extraordinary goose that laid the golden egg” and notes that the revolution carried new hope for the enslaved, making it clear that liberty was in the air while the country’s founding rested on slavery. The paradox is emphasized: a nation that declares itself founded on human freedom still relies on enslaved people. The narrative argues that for enslaved people, liberty was a direct freedom struggle, not just a theoretical ideal.

• The central questions raised include how enslaved people heard the rhetoric of liberty, and how they might ignite their own freedom movements even as they faced violent repression.

New York City, 1741: Quack and the Spark of Alarm

• Quack, enslaved to a house painter, is married to the governor’s cook (both enslaved) and is barred entry to Fort George by governor’s orders.

• Quack hints at arson in defense of his wife; when Fort George and other buildings burn, the chorus is raised: "The Negroes are rising! The Negroes are rising!" The fires are interpreted as a slave-led conspiracy across New York City.

• The prior Stono uprising (in South Carolina) looms in memory, fueling panic about organized slave rebellion.

• White New Yorkers arrest virtually every adult Black male over age $14$ and imprison them as inquiries proceed.

• Caesar, a slave of a baker, is the first marched to the gallows; his body is displayed publicly; a conspiracy trial accuses dozens of slaves and a few whites of plotting to burn NYC and foment rebellion.

• The trial reveals brutal details about enslaved life: overwork, scant clothing and fuel, prohibitions on gathering, and the central grievance of being denied the ability to visit loved ones.

• The period’s legal framework treats enslaved people as property—a patent fiction that society laboriously enforces. The text notes: “the law of slavery deemed that persons who were patently human beings were not in fact persons. They were not persons at law. Rather, they were deemed property.” The speaker calls this a patent fiction.

• Early in the proceedings, Quack is accused of burning Fort George. He and $12$ other Black men are burned at the stake; $17$ are hanged; $4$ whites are also hanged. After each rebellion, societies tend to pass more repressive laws, creating an upward cycle of violence as slave repression begets slave action.

The 18th-Century Slave Trade and Economic Power

• By the $1750s$, about $5{,}000$ Africans per year arrived at American docks in crowded, filthy ships; people were chained for weeks, sometimes dying, and corpses were thrown overboard into the ocean.

• By $1750$, roughly $250{,}000$ enslaved people supported vast wealth for their masters; slavery is depicted as an economic engine.

• Plantations like Shadwell (Virginia Piedmont) sustain slave families and labor relations; Jupiter (an enslaved boy) grows up alongside Thomas Jefferson, who would become president.

• Jupiter becomes Jefferson’s personal valet; he receives education in psychology and power, and he learns that a boy his age will become his owner and master.

• The Jeffersones’ privilege is contrasted with the harsher, more common conditions of enslaved workers: endless sun-up-to-sun-down labor, corporeal punishment (e.g., ear-cutting), and devices to prevent running away.

• Enslaved people negotiate within the bounds of domination, securing small allowances to work on their own gardens or trade produce—“the dance of domination and subordination.”

• Cultural exchange emerges: enslaved Africans preserve religious and cultural beliefs, creating an internal universe separate from white authority; at the same time, a new mixed culture forms on farms and plantations (e.g., African drums and European stringed instruments; the fiddle and the banjo; the claim that the banjo is an African instrument often made from a gourd).

• The slave quarter becomes a center of family life, where love, hate, friendship, and kinship flourish despite oppression; families form networks that later enable an internal slave trade and frequent cross-plantation separations, creating a kinship map across the region.

• Runaway ads reveal a search for kin: roughly half of runaway notices cite desire to see loved ones (kinfolk).

• The footpaths and waterways across plantations and along the Atlantic become crucial communications and trading networks.

Titus: A Young Slave in Monmouth and a Local Guerrilla

• Titus grows up in Monmouth County, New Jersey, during the early 1770s; he works beside his quick-tempered owner, John Kies, amid rising protests against British restrictions.

• As Titus turns $21$ in $1775$, he becomes inspired by the trend of freeing enslaved people by various groups (e.g., Quakers). He finds opportunity in independence rhetoric and the mounting conflict.

• Titus learns survival trades (e.g., navigating waterways, markets for animal skins and produce) and gains a practical education that enables escape and resistance.

• The timing coincides with the Revolution’s onset, when liberties rhetoric begins to challenge slavery as an impediment to freedom.

Mumbet (Elizabeth Freeman) and the Massachusetts Road to Freedom

• In rural Massachusetts, Mumbet and her sister Lizzy work in the Ashley household; Colonel John Ashley owns most of the town’s assets, including Mumbet.

• An incident with Mrs. Ashley uses a coal pan to threaten Lizzy; Mumbet intervenes and bears a long scar, publicly displaying it to signal the price of change: “Purchased at the price of change and slavery.”

• Mumbet is increasingly aware of revolutionary rhetoric and the colony’s resistance to British taxation and control; she attends Ashley House meetings where a rights-based position is drafted, echoing “every citizen is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (Locke’s influence and the Declaration’s language).

• The Reverend language and revolutionary rhetoric become tools for enslaved people to hear that “natural liberty” exists and that all people are endowed with inherent rights; enslaved people hear that they too should enjoy liberty, differing from the rhetoric of not being slaves but progressively recognizing universal rights.

• In early $1773$, a petition is presented to Governor Thomas Hutchinson signed by a slave (Felix): “We shall never be able to possess and enjoy anything… We have no property. We have no city, no country.”

• Three months later, petitions by four enslaved men—$Peter Bestus, Chester Joy, Felix Holbrook, and others—arrive, demanding answers and challenging the notion that liberty can exist while slavery persists; these petitions are dismissed.</p></li><li><p>Slaves observe a paradox: Thomas Jefferson, while advocating equality and liberty, is a Virginia slaveholder with hundreds of slaves; the nation’s leader writes about equality while maintaining a system of bondage. The narrator emphasizes the contradiction between “We hold these truths to be self-evident” and the reality of slavery.</p></li><li><p>After the war’s onset, slaves fight on both sides: in the North, approximately$5{,}000$Black soldiers join all-Black regiments and participate as minutemen; Washington initially resists arming Black men but relents due to southern pressure and the British offering freedom to enslaved people who join their side (Dunmore’s Proclamation).</p></li><li><p>In$November$, Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s royal governor, proclaims freedom for enslaved people who side with the British and join the Ethiopian regiments; this proclamation has a profound effect and spreads to other colonies.</p></li><li><p>Dunmore’s offer spurs Titus to escape; he later returns to the New Jersey countryside, leading a guerrilla band of Black and white raiders known as Colonel Tye; they raid, seize cattle and clothing, and free enslaved families; Colonel Tye is wounded in$September 1780$and dies soon after at age$26$.</p></li><li><p>The mass exodus to British lines during the war is enormous: tens of thousands of enslaved people flee from southern plantations; the escape routes involve perilous crossings by small boats toward British ships, often with dangerous mock-ups (e.g., some boats hoax-patted with a British flag to lure people aboard, only to capture and return them).</p></li><li><p>Slaves who reach British lines are subjected to arduous labors and miserable camps, with high mortality from conditions like smallpox.</p></li><li><p>At war’s end, thousands of former slaves escape to freedom with the British; many others win freedom by fighting for the Patriots. The text notes that no other event before the Civil War would liberate so many slaves, underscoring how the Revolution became a freedom struggle for Black people, whether they joined Patriots or British forces.</p></li></ul><h4 id="5b5cd3f0-ea73-4902-85a0-1dbc896f7429" data-toc-id="5b5cd3f0-ea73-4902-85a0-1dbc896f7429" collapsed="false" seolevelmigrated="true">The Founding, the Constitution, and the Slavery Dilemma</h4><ul><li><p>As the war ends, new state constitutions articulate rights: “All men are born free and equal.” In$1780$, Massachusetts drafts a constitution proclaiming natural rights and the blessings of life; the document becomes a reference point for later legal challenges.</p></li><li><p>Mumbet, now Elizabeth Freeman, sues for her freedom against Colonel Ashley; Attorney Theodore Sedgwick (whom she had met at Ashley House) leads the case; the court rules in$1781$that she is free and she becomes Elizabeth Freeman.</p></li><li><p>This victory helps pave the way for emancipation in Massachusetts, leading to broader abolition across the North.</p></li><li><p>In$1787$, enslaved people wait outside Independence Hall as delegates debate the new Constitution; the issue of slavery becomes a central political question, but most delegates, North and South, postpone abolition to avoid undermining the creation of the United States; the Constitution then contains indirect references to slavery without using the word itself.</p></li><li><p>Key provisions include: a clause that the slave trade would not be abolished for at least$20$years; a “fugitive slave” clause that prevents a slave from escaping to another state to seek freedom; and, most politically impactful for the South, the Three-Fifths Clause, which allows states to count three-fifths of their slave population for purposes of representation in Congress. This provision grants greater political power to slaveholding states but means enslaved people themselves receive no representation or rights in the new republic. The Three-Fifths compromise is a central political outcome of this period.</p></li><li><p>The text notes that, apart from the Three-Fifths Clause, the Constitution does not address slavery directly; slaves are not represented; and the republic’s creation comes at a political price that will haunt the nation for generations.</p></li><li><p>Despite the constitutional framework, Black people—both enslaved and free—continue to organize: in northern cities, freed Black communities form; in the South, Black artisans gain some freedom; a broader emancipation movement begins to emerge, facilitated by the First Black Christian churches, the Great Awakening, and other religious and social currents that bolster Black leadership.</p></li><li><p>The Great Awakening’s democratic and expressive Christianity influences Black religious life and public activism; some enslavers begin freeing enslaved people in response to the movement’s ideals, though not Thomas Jefferson, who publishes Notes on the State of Virginia.</p></li><li><p>Notes on the State of Virginia (the 1780s) presents a stark contradiction: Jefferson critiques race-based inequality but simultaneously claims that Black people are inferior in reason yet equal in memory; the text shows his nuanced and contradictory position on emancipation and colonization (removal to Africa) rather than immediate abolition in the U.S.; many freed Black Americans reject colonization as a path to true freedom.</p></li><li><p>Jefferson’s arguments on colonization reveal another split: some free Black leaders oppose colonization, insisting on rights and citizenship in the United States; they point to the legacy of Revolutionary service and family ties as grounds for full participation in American life.</p></li><li><p>The late 18th century thus shows both expansion of rights and deep contradictions—foundational documents that claim universal rights while enabling or tolerating slavery and racial hierarchy.</p></li></ul><h4 id="0202f8fc-263b-49dc-9909-1def42eae7b0" data-toc-id="0202f8fc-263b-49dc-9909-1def42eae7b0" collapsed="false" seolevelmigrated="true">The Emergence of Black Abolitionism and Militant Thought</h4><ul><li><p>1780s–1830s: a generation of Black abolitionists emerges in the North and among free Black communities, laying groundwork for more organized resistance.</p></li><li><p>David Walker (born in the 1790s in the South, raised in North) becomes a central figure. By$1820s–1829$, Walker moves to Boston and engages with abolitionist networks. He writes and circulates powerful anti-slavery arguments; in$1829$, he publishes An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (the “Appeal”).</p></li><li><p>Walker’s Appeal positions Black people as a political force with a shared destiny and a right to freedom; it is described as perhaps the first explicit Black nationalist document dedicated to Black self-determination in the United States. He directly critiques Jefferson and American hypocrisy: the Declaration’s promise of equality contrasts with systemic slavery.</p></li><li><p>Walker argues: “America is more our country than it is the whites” and asserts that Americans must confront the Constitution’s failures to live up to its stated ideals. He contrasts Biblical and constitutional language to demand a more honest reckoning with the nation’s founding values.</p></li><li><p>Walker’s Appeal is widely distributed across the Atlantic seaboard and reaches runaways and Black communities in the South; slaveholders respond with bounties, looking to capture Walker and suppress his message.</p></li><li><p>Mariah Stewart (a free Black woman in Boston) emerges in the early 1830s as a potent voice for Black leadership and women’s political engagement. After her husband, James Stewart, dies, she evolves into a public speaker and organizer.</p><ul><li><p>Stewart becomes a leading orator, challenging both Black men and women to engage in political action and to “uplift the race.” She argues for independence and rejects passivity, urging Black people (and especially Black women) to act as agents of change.</p></li><li><p>She uses Biblical rhetoric to critique oppression, asking why “the fair daughters of Africa” must bear a heavy burden and urging Black people to rise up (e.g., “Throw off your fearfulness and come!”).</p></li><li><p>Stewart explicitly addresses Black women’s conditions and roles, highlighting the special oppression faced by Black women (e.g., “How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles?”).</p></li><li><p>Her leadership style is controversial: she challenges Black men to be bold and active, insisting that “the highest form of obedience to God is political protest.” She argues for self-reliance, leadership, and active participation in defining a political future for Black people.</p></li></ul></li><li><p>The text frames Walker and Stewart as foundational figures—“founding father” and “founding mother”—who help shape a Black national consciousness and set the stage for more militant abolitionist generations to come.</p></li><li><p>The overarching insight is that the struggle against slavery in the United States would not be achieved by moral suasion alone or by political lobbying; rather, emancipation would require decisive and often confrontational action, including the possibility of armed resistance or mass resistance in some contexts. The narrative emphasizes the continuity from abolitionist arguments to the idea that only mass action or war could bring emancipation for Black people.</p></li></ul><h4 id="26096da4-b9e2-41b0-b56e-3b35c189d489" data-toc-id="26096da4-b9e2-41b0-b56e-3b35c189d489" collapsed="false" seolevelmigrated="true">Key Concepts, People, and Dates to Remember</h4><ul><li><p>1741: New York City uprising rumors and the Quack affair in Fort George; widespread fear of slave revolt.</p></li><li><p>$14$: Age threshold for adult Black males arrested in the inquiry.</p></li><li><p>$1739$: Stono Rebellion (referenced as a prior uprising that influenced coastal New York’s fears).</p></li><li><p>$1746$: Runaway notice of$Steven Thusley$, a 16-year-old described in runaway ads.</p></li><li><p>$12$: Number of Black men burned at the stake as part of the New York trial aftermath;$17$men hanged;$4$whites hanged.</p></li><li><p>$5{,}000$: Africans arriving annually by the$1750s$.</p></li><li><p>$250{,}000$: Enslaved population in America by$1750$, fueling wealth for masters.</p></li><li><p>$1741–1760s$: Periods of intensified slave laws and resistance.</p></li><li><p>$16$: Steven Thusley’s age at runaway (example of individual stories from ads).</p></li><li><p>Jupiter: Enslaved boy at Shadwell who grows up as Jefferson’s valet; example of intimate master-slave relationships. His world includes music (banjos) and cross-cultural exchange.</p></li><li><p>$21$: Titus turns$21$in$1775$, a turning point for his decisions and actions.</p></li><li><p>$1775$: Open warfare begins; enslaved people begin choosing sides in the Revolution.</p></li><li><p>$5{,}000$: Black soldiers in the North joining all-black regiments (minutemen) at the war’s start; White colonists reluctant to serve.</p></li><li><p>$1775$: Dunmore’s Proclamation (Lord Dunmore) offering freedom to enslaved people who joined the British.</p></li><li><p>$1776-1783$: Revolutionary War period when enslaved people fight on both sides; many are freed by the British or by military service.</p></li><li><p>$1781$: Mumbet wins her case; becomes Elizabeth Freeman.</p></li><li><p>$1780$: Massachusetts Constitution drafted; life, liberty language echoes Locke; later used to argue freedom claims for slaves.</p></li><li><p>$1787$: Constitutional Convention; slavery largely avoided direct abolition; Three-Fifths Clause established; fugitive slave clause included; Constitution does not use the word “slave.”</p></li><li><p>$90 h$: Percentage of Black people still enslaved after independence; northern freed Black communities and southern Black artisans begin to acquire freedoms in limited forms.</p></li><li><p>$1780s-1830s$: Emergence of abolitionist thought in Black leadership (David Walker, Mariah Stewart).</p></li><li><p>$1822$: Denmark Vesey’s planned rebellion is betrayed and Vesey is executed.</p></li><li><p>$1829$: David Walker publishes An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World.</p></li><li><p>$1830s$: Mariah Stewart’s public activism; first American woman to address a mixed audience about political issues.</p></li><li><p>$1791-1804$$: Haitian Revolution influences Black abolitionist thinking.

• The central lesson: Slavery and discrimination were not going to die simply through moral suasion or political means; the historical record shows that emancipation was driven, at times, by force, mass movement, and strategic political action.