Slave Nation

by Alfred W. Blumrosen

  By 1819 and 1821, when the correspondence between them quoted above took place, their views on slavery had diverged. Jefferson was for states’ rights, and the “diffusion” theory of slavery—let it expand to the west, where it will be spread out so thin that it will fade away. Adams was opposed to this theory, and did not want to see slavery in Missouri.

  Adams knew that publishers would be interested in his correspondence with Jefferson, and that these letters would reach the public in the future.57 Knowing this, Adams may have wanted to disclose his agreement to protect slavery at the beginning of the revolutionary struggle in order to distinguish it from his view in 1821. This would not be surprising, given his concern about the writing of history and his well-known propensity for telling the blunt truth.

  In 1774, with Boston occupied by the British, the bargaining power of the South as compared to the North was overwhelming. Had Adams, or any northerner, raised the issue of the legitimacy of slavery, the South could simply have walked away from Philadelphia and allowed Massachusetts to sink under the weight of the British forces then in possession. What real choice did John Adams have at that time? When he was old, and opposed to the expansion of slavery, he may have had a wish to, while he was still alive, explain 1774 actions.

  The Marquis de Lafayette, the French nobleman who served as Washington’s aide during the Revolution and who led a charge at Yorktown, certainly felt that way:

  I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery.58

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  The Colonies Claim Independence from Parliament

  * * *

  The issue of slavery was presumably resolved to the satisfaction of the slave-holding colonies at the First Continental Congress in the first few days of September, 1774. At that point the Congress began to discuss how to stop British incursions into colonial affairs. As historian Jack Rakove has observed, the authority of the delegates arose from the ways that they had been selected and then instructed on what to do or say at the Congress. Many of the colonies instructed their delegates to support whatever policies the Congress chose to adopt, thus conferring on a majority of the colonies present the power to bind the other colonies.1

  Virginia did not so casually surrender its freedom of action to a majority vote in the Congress. Rather, it instructed its delegates specifically with a date when a boycott of British goods and an embargo on sales to Britain should begin. Beyond that, the delegates were urged to “cordially cooperate with our sister colonies in general congress in such other just and proper methods as they, or the majority, shall deem necessary for the accomplishment of the valuable ends.”2 This allowed the delegates to pass judgment on whether the proposals were “just and proper” methods to the valuable end. This drew a critical comment from Jefferson, who noted that it “totally destroys that union of conduct in the several colonies which was the very purpose of calling a congress.”3 From another perspective, it gave the Virginia delegates broad discretion to choose among possible conflicting proposals, and to help shape those that would serve Virginia’s interest. Virginia, having been very specific that the assemblies of each colony possessed “the sole right of directing their internal polity,” would not surrender that authority to a group whose direction, at that point, was unknown.

  The provisions discussed and adopted by the Congress included a petition to the king to redress grievances, the endorsement of the Suffolk Resolves calling for preparations for war, the boycott of British goods, the forming of an association to enforce the boycott, a ban on the foreign slave trade, and plans for a future meeting if the grievances were not resolved.4 These techniques were all familiar. They had been used successfully during the earlier taxation crises. As a consequence, they caused but limited controversy.5

  A declaration of rights was another matter. The relations between the colonies and Great Britain had worsened greatly since the Coercive Acts of the Spring of 1774, when Britain closed the port of Boston, sent troops to occupy it, appointed a military governor, and reduced the power of the legislature. Until those acts, the colonists had largely based their grievances on their rights as Englishmen. But the Coercive Acts demonstrated that Parliament would exercise the power it had claimed in the Declaratory Act of 1766 to govern the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” In the Coercive Acts, it demonstrated that it could and did redefine their rights as Englishmen. Parliament’s view was that the colonies had only such rights as it chose to grant—or take away. Some of the colonists were now ready to deny Parliament such extensive control over their destiny.

  John Adams was at the center of this controversy. He believed that the union of the colonies depended on its outcome.6

  Adams described that these were the questions before them:

  What authority we should concede to Parliament: whether we should deny the authority of Parliament in all cases; whether we should allow any authority to it in our internal affairs; or whether we should allow it to regulate the trade of the empire, with or without any restrictions.7

  There were sharply differing views on these issues. Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina favored total separation from Parliament. The Virginia instructions, while seeking independence in matters of internal policy, favored continuing the navigation acts by which Britain controlled colonial commerce by requiring that raw materials be exported to Britain, and excluded foreign ships from carrying goods to or from the colonies. Men from the middle colonies, such as Joseph Galloway from Pennsylvania and James Duane from New York, sought to retain the existing relation with Britain, but to guarantee that Britain could not regulate without colonial consent.

  The language that challenged parliamentary supremacy over the colonies included Virginia’s August, 1774, instructions to its delegates that claimed for the colonies “the sole right to direct their internal polity,” and gave them discretion to accept or reject proposals by the Congress.8

  John Rutledge of South Carolina, a careful proponent of slavery, drafted a more comprehensive resolution for the Congress in early September. His resolution combined the southern concern for internal liberty with the northern emphasis on freedom from taxation by England:

  They [the colonists in the several colonies] are also entitled to the [immunities] and privileges which have been from time to time granted to them respectively by royal charters; and to a free and inclusive power of legislation in all cases of taxation and internal policy.…They cannot be altered or abridged by any authority but our respective legislatures. (emphasis added)9

  This resolution combined the northern preoccupation with unfair taxation with the southern desire for freedom for each colony concerning internal affairs—including slavery. Rutledge’s contribution consisted of linking these two issues at the Congress.10 This linkage forged the common cause that generated a sense of the “united states.”11 The connection was expressed three times in extensive proposals drafted by Rutledge.12

  The language combining taxation and internal affairs would became Article IV of the Declaration of the Rights of the Colonies.13 It was drafted in early September, 1774, during the first week of the Congress, in a subcommittee of the Committee on Rights and Grievances.14 This subcommittee agreed on a recommendation to Congress except for one provision that concerned the authority that should be conceded to Parliament. Following a long debate, Rutledge asked John Adams to prepare a draft that might resolve the issue. Adams described what happened:

  Mr. John Rutledge of South Carolina, one of the committee, addressing himself to me was pleased to say, “Adams we must agree upon something; you appear to be as familiar with the subject as any of us, and I like your expressions the necessity of the case and excluding all ideas of taxation external and internal. I have a great opinion of that same idea of the necessity of the case and I am determined against all taxation for revenue. Come take the pen and see if you can produce something that will unite us.” Some other
s of the committee seconding Mr. Rutledge, I took a sheet of paper and drew up an article. When it was read I believe not one of the committee were fully satisfied with it, but they all soon acknowledged that there was no hope of hitting on any thing in which we could all agree with more satisfaction. All therefore agreed to this, and upon this depended the union of the colonies. The subcommittee reported their draught to the grand committee, and another long debate ensued.…The articles were then reported to congress.15… The difficult article was again attacked and defended.16 Congress rejected all amendments to it, and the general sense of the members was that the article demanded as little as could be demanded, and conceded as much as could be conceded with safety, and certainly as little as would be accepted by Great Britain; and that the country must take its fate, in consequence of it. When Congress had gone through the articles, I was appointed to put them into form and report a fair draught for their final acceptance.

  This experience was another demonstration of the working relations between Adams and the southern gentlemen. Here is the language of Article IV that resolved the “great issues” identified by Adams. The boldface language challenges the authority of Parliament over the colonies, while allowing a circumscribed power to the king. The language in italics provisionally consents to Parliament’s authority over external trade.17

  The foundation of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council: and as the English colonists are not represented, and from their local and other circumstances, cannot properly be represented in the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed.

  But, from the necessity of the case, and a regard to the mutual interests of both countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British Parliament, as are bona fide restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members excluding every idea of taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue of the subjects in America without their consent.18

  Political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic understood the import of the boldface language. Thomas Jefferson had challenged the Declaratory Act of 1766 where Parliament claimed to control the colonies “in all cases whatsoever” in his “Summary View.”19 John Adams had raised the same issue in the debate with Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts.20 Both Rutledge and Adams were aware that the assertion of colonial rights in Article IV contained the seeds of a possible treason charge, because it constituted a direct challenge to Parliament.21 This may explain the paucity of written records concerning this issue at the time.

  Lord Mansfield, in England, analyzed the colonial declaration of 1774 in exactly the same way. In November of that year, he wrote:

  The Congress sum up the whole of their grievances in that passage of the Declaratory Act which asserts the right of Great Britain to make laws which bind them in all cases whatsoever. They positively deny the right, not the mode of executing it. They would allow the king of Great Britain a nominal sovereignty over them, but nothing else.22

  George III himself recognized that the declaration created a “serious crisis” in relations with the colonies in a long memorandum sent to Lord North. The king declared:

  There is no denying the serious crisis to which the disputes between the mother country and its North American colonies are growing, and that the greatest temper and firmness are necessary to bring matters to a good issue.…Had the Americans in prosecuting their ill-grounded claims put on an appearance of mildness it might have been very difficult to chalk out the right path to be pursued; but they have boldly thrown off the mask and avowed that nothing less than a total independence of the British legislature will satisfy them.

  This indeed decides the proper plan to be followed, which is to stop the trade of all those colonies who obey the mandate of the Congress for non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption, to assist them no further with presents to the Indians, and give every kind of assistance to those who conduct themselves other ways; which will make them quarrel among themselves. Their separate interests must soon effect this, and experience will then show them that the interference of the mother country is essentially necessary to prevent their becoming rivals.23

  Thus, on both sides of the Atlantic, two years before the Declaration of Independence and a year before hostilities broke out, American and British leaders agreed that the issue of parliamentary control raised in Article IV of the declaration was the crucial issue separating the mother country and the colonies.

  Article IV is the origin of the states’ rights doctrine that would protect southern slavery for 86 years and racial superiority for 104 more. The assertion that legislative power rested in the individual colonies laid the foundation for a weak national government. It asserted that sovereignty over internal affairs would lie with each colony. Under these circumstances, southerners would be free to maintain slavery, even as they agonized over the difficulties of ending it.24

  The boldface language follows the Virginia instructions, Jefferson’s “Summary View,”25 and reflects Rutledge’s draft of early September, 1774. It declares independence in all cases of taxation and internal polity from British Parliament, and locates all such power in the “several provincial legislatures.”

  Thus it embodied the deal to preserve slavery as the price of revolution. The agreement was hardly incidental, but was a response to the demand for internal freedom for the colonies that came specifically from the South.26

  As noted earlier, the British actions against Boston in 1774 that had already occurred by the time the First Continental Congress met in September aroused such colonial anger that the southerners did not have to publicly assert their desire to preserve slavery. The South cloaked that desire within the general demand for colonial liberty and the protection of property—concepts which were broad enough to encompass both the commercial interests of the North and the slavery interests of the South.

  Northerners and southerners could both seek independence in their internal affairs, with the northerners viewing liberty as the right to engage in commercial activity and to be taxed only by their own representatives, while the southerners insisted upon liberty primarily to maintain slavery. Both of these ideas fit under the common banner of independence for the colonies in their internal affairs.

  By breaking from Parliament, the colonies also broke from their traditional assertion of “rights as Englishmen.” Parliament had amply demonstrated how easily it could destroy those rights by the Coercive Acts and the occupation of Boston. What then was the foundation for the colonial claims? Adams said that Galloway and Duane would only look to the British Constitution and the American charters and grants, while he urged that the colonies look to natural law “as a resource to which we might be driven by Parliament much sooner than we were aware.”27 Events after the Continental Congress proved him right.

  Some historians minimize the significance of the Declaration of Rights and Grievances of 1774, and conclude that other actions taken by the Congress were more serious, particularly the boycott and the local associations formed to enforce it. All these actions were ambiguous. They were negotiating tactics similar to those that had succeeded in securing repeal of the Stamp Act and the Townshend taxes on imported glass, paint, lead, and tea. The Townshend taxes of 1768 had been withdrawn in 1770 under pressure of a boycott. All of these tactics held the prospect of terminating as soon as particular colonial demands were met.

  But Article IV was different. For the first time, the colonists struck at the heart of British rule. This was not a temporary negotiating position. It called for abolition of the
existing relations with Britain. All British relations with the colonies would in some way relate to internal activities of the colonies. The claim in Article IV was—and was seen as—a major step toward total independence.

  Historian Merrill Jensen made this point clear: “By 1774, the American and British positions on the power of Parliament were irreconcilable.”28 English historian Lawrence Henry Gipson wrote, “Here was the real American revolution.”29 Historian Theodore Draper concluded, “the Declaratory Act was the true causus belli of the American Revolution.”30

  The Declaratory Act of 1766, claiming parliamentary power over “all cases whatsoever” in the colonies, in conjunction with the Somerset decision, was an assertion of parliamentary power to destroy the southern economy and the social conditions built upon slavery. The southerners had to insist that Parliament have no control over internal affairs and policies. This challenge to the jurisdiction of Parliament, according to legal historian John Phillip Reid, made war inevitable, because:

  If the Americans had acknowledged an abstract supremacy, Parliament could then have devised a constitutional mechanism to check any threat from the crown should the colonies provide the king with revenue. But the Americans could not acknowledge [that supremacy] without risking their constitutional security to the whims and changing politics of some future parliament.31 The controversy, therefore, became too legal not in an abstract sense, but because the procedures or mechanics of constitutional advocacy provided no opportunity for a political solution unless either the British or the Americans surrendered a constitutional principle they thought essential for their constitutional liberty. …American liberty—the right to be free of arbitrary power—could not be secured under parliamentary supremacy. British liberty— the representative legislature over the crown—could not be secured without parliamentary supremacy.32