Confederate "Heritage" Month 2023, April 20: About the pro-slavery part of the American Revolution
I quoted historian David Waldstreicher in my April 9 post summarizing the view of Gerald Horne on the pro-slavery impulses behind the American Revolution.
Waldstreicher, however, is more sympathetic to the general view of The 1619 Project than the historians I’ve been quoting here with approval. In a 2020 essay about the then-new conversation over that effort, he positions that discussion within long-standing historical controversies about the history of slavery and white racism in the US.
On the question of slavery during the Revolution, he cites Robert Parkinson as one of several historians who:
…have shown just how concerned the revolutionaries were, in both the North and the South, with slaves as an internal enemy. Perhaps most important of all, newer histories show how Africans and their children themselves forced the issue onto the agenda of the revolutionaries and the empires competing for dominion, especially in wartime. If we were talking about any other revolution or civil war, we wouldn’t be surprised that enslaved people fought on both sides, depending on which side seemed more likely to improve their condition.1
Waldstreicher gives a somewhat restrained version of the argument that Dunmore’s Proclamation inspired Americans North and South to support the Revolution:
[I]n 1775, … Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, followed through on his threats to arm slaves—threats that had earlier been voiced on the floor of Parliament. Then suddenly the patriots spoke openly and often about slaves—as the enemy. No one ever had to say, “let’s rebel to keep our slaves” because they could say, and did say in Boston as well as in Virginia—at the very same time as the more famous battles of Lexington and Concord—let’s rebel because slaves are being armed against us. [my emphasis]
But this has to be seen in the context I described in the April 7 post. Dunmore’s proclamation was a response to the armed rebellion that had already begun. And there was some recruitment of slaves to fight in the Revolution in exchange for emancipation, including in North Carolina.
But he is clearly overreaching when he argues, “The final Declaration of Independence … didn’t mention slavery explicitly, but the liberation of slaves by the British provides its ultimate justification.“
Yet Waldstreicher also seems to come down in favor of the idea that the historical effect of the Revolution had an antislavery result:
Revolutions are measured by results as well as intentions, by effects as well as causes. And here too the record is mixed—in some regards the war only strengthened slavery, and in others it did indeed open new paths for dismantling it. Emancipation in the North was only conceivable with the revolutionary transfer of sovereignty to states that could, and in some cases quickly did, emancipate or legally permit voluntary emancipation. This development, along with the thirty to hundred thousand Africans who became free during the war years, created free black communities that ultimately formed the mainstay of an abolitionist movement that destabilized U.S. politics and inspired a slaveholders’ revolt and a civil war. [my emphasis]
Since results are ultimately more important than ideas or ideology, that’s a reasonable summary.
He also suggests that it’s helpful to think “of the first century or so of United States history as two revolutions, two civil wars, two emancipations, two reconstructions, and a lot of not-so-great compromises.”
Waldstreicher’s following summary may be a bit Mugwumpy. But it’s reasonable as far as it goes:
So it is all the more important to push back critically against the voices who would insist that the American Revolution and the Constitution were innocent of slavery—but also against the notion that they had no antislavery implications whatsoever. It remains important to question the myth that the founders never thought about slavery politically and that black people were not “central” actors of the period. Similarly, we should interrogate the debatable but equally problematic notion that no white person with power ever really meant that all men are created equal. The Revolution was a triumph and a tragedy precisely because it was an emancipation and a betrayal of its egalitarian potential. Denying the radicalism or the reaction against it is to deny that the American Revolution actually was a revolution. [my emphasis in bold]
Waldstreicher, David (2020): The Hidden Stakes of the 1619 Controversy. Boston Review 01/02/2020. <https://bostonreview.net/race-politics/david-waldstreicher-hidden-stakes-1619-controversy> (Accessed 01/02/2020).