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| The Impact of the Revolution on Slavery | Previous | Next |
| Digital History ID 4571 |
The Revolution had contradictory effects on slavery. The northern states either abolished the institution outright or adopted gradual emancipation schemes. In the South, the Revolution severely disrupted slavery, but ultimately white Southerners succeeded in strengthening the institution. The Revolution also inspired African-American resistance against slavery.
During the Revolution, thousands of slaves obtained their freedom by running away. Thomas Jefferson estimated that 30,000 slaves fled their masters during the British invasion of Virginia in 1781. Some 5,000 slaves in Georgia and 20,000 slaves in South Carolina--perhaps a quarter of their slave populations--gained freedom as a result of the conflict. By the 1790s, however, the slave population was growing again and was beginning to spread into new lands in what would become the cotton belt.
Inspired by the natural rights philosophy of the Revolution, free blacks agitated against slavery. They petitioned Congress to end the slave trade and state legislatures to abolish slavery. They repeatedly pointed out the contradiction between American ideals of liberty and equality and the base reality of slavery.
Slaves began to speak the language of natural rights. In 1800, a group of slaves in Virginia plotted to seize the city of Richmond. Led by a man named Gabriel, the insurrection was inspired in part by the slave revolt that began in the French colony of St. Domingue (Haiti) in 1791. It was also motivated by the ideals of liberty that had led the American colonists to revolt against Britain. About 30 of the accused conspirators were executed, and many others were sold as slaves to Spanish and Portuguese colonies.
Here, a visitor to Virginia describes why one of the slaves had decided to participate in Gabriel's revolt.
"In the afternoon I passed by a field in which several poor slaves had lately been executed, on the charge of having an intention to rise against their masters. A lawyer who was present at their trials at Richmond, informed me that on one of them begin asked, what he had to say to the court on his defence, he replied in a manly tone of voice: "I have nothing more to offer than what General Washington would have had to offer, had he been taken by the British and put to trial by them. I have adventured my life in endeavouring to obtain the liberty of my countrymen, and am a willing sacrifice in their cause: and I beg, as a favour, that I may be immediately led to execution. I know that you have pre-determined to shed my blood, why then all this mockery of a trial?"
President Thomas Jefferson recognized that the Virginian slaves had been motivated by the same ideals that had inspired white colonists to revolt against Britain. In a letter to the U.S. Minister to Britain, Jefferson proposed that a group of the insurgent slaves be deported to Sierra Leone in West Africa, where an English abolitionist organization had established Freetown as a home for former slaves. Jefferson told the minister to assure the British that the rebel slaves were not criminals, but men aspiring for freedom.
The negotiations with the British were unsuccessful, and most of the accused conspirators were sold as slaves to Spain and Portugal's New World colonies. For Jefferson, Gabriel's Conspiracy reinforced his view that race war could be avoided only if emancipation were tied to expatriation--what came to be called colonization.
Thomas Jefferson, July 13, 1802, to Rufus King, U.S. Minister to Britain:
"[The slaves in question] are not felons, or common malefactors, but persons guilty of what the safety of society, under actual circumstances, obliges us to treat as a crime, but which their feelings may represent in a far different shape. They are such as will be a valuable acquisition to the settlement already existing there, and well calculated to cooperate in the place of civilization."
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Founding of Liberia, 1847
The founding of Liberia in the early 1800s was motivated by the domestic politics of slavery and race in the United States as well as by U.S. foreign policy interests. In 1816, a group of white Americans founded the American Colonization Society (ACS) to deal with the “problem” of the growing number of free blacks in the United States by resettling them in Africa. The resulting state of Liberia would become the second (after Haiti) black republic in the world at that time.
Joseph Jenkins Roberts, First President of Liberia
Prominent Americans such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Randolph were among the best known members of ACS. Former President Thomas Jefferson publicly supported the organization’s goals, and President James Madison arranged public funding for the Society. The motives for joining the society were vast as a range of people from abolitionists to slaveholders counted themselves members. On the other hand, many abolitionists, both black and white, ultimately rejected the notion that it was impossible for the races to integrate and therefore did not support the idea of an African-American colony in Africa. Still, the ACS had powerful support and its colonization project gained momentum.
In 1818 the Society sent two representatives to West Africa to find a suitable location for the colony, but they were unable to persuade local tribal leaders to sell any territory. In 1820, 88 free black settlers and 3 society members sailed for Sierra Leone. Before departing they had signed a constitution requiring that an agent of the Society administer the settlement under U.S. laws. They found shelter on Scherbo Island off the west coast of Africa, but many died from malaria. In 1821, a U.S. Navy vessel resumed the search for a place of permanent settlement in what is now Liberia. Once again the local leaders resisted American attempts to purchase land. This time, the Navy officer in charge, Lieutenant Robert Stockton, coerced a local ruler to sell a strip of land to the Society. The Scherbo Island group moved to this new location and other blacks from the United States joined them. The local tribes continually attacked the new colony and in 1824, the settlers built fortifications for protection. In that same year, the settlement was named Liberia and its capital Monrovia, in honor of President James Monroe who had procured more U.S. Government money for the project.
Lieutenant Robert Stockton
Other colonization societies sponsored by individual states purchased land and sent settlers to areas nearMonrovia. Africans removed from slave ships by the U.S. Navy after the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade were also put ashore in Liberia. In 1838 most of these settlements, with up to 20,000 people, combined into one organization. The settlers attempted to retain the culture they had brought from the United States and for the most part did not integrate with the native societies. Today, about 5 percent of the population of Liberia is descended from these settlers.
The U.S. Government had provided Liberia some financial support, but Washington expected Monrovia to move toward self-sufficiency. Commerce was the first economic sector to grow in the colony. However, French and British traders continually encroached upon Liberian territory. As it was not a sovereign state, it was hard-pressed to defend its economic interests. The U.S. Government lent some diplomatic support, but Britain and France had territories in West Africa and were better poised to act. As a result, in 1847, Liberia declared independence from the American Colonization Society in order to establish a sovereign state and create its own laws governing commerce.
Despite protests by the affected British companies, London was the first to extend recognition to the new republic, signing a treaty of commerce and friendship with Monrovia in 1848. Because of fears of the impact this might have on the issue of slavery in the United States, Washington did not recognize the nation it had played a role in creating. In the meantime, a mass exodus of African-Americans to Liberia never materialized. Though President Abraham Lincoln was open to promoting the idea, several abolitionists in his cabinet opposed it, some for moral considerations and others for the more practical reason of retaining sufficient labor and military forces for the future. The United States finally established diplomatic relations with Liberia in 1862, and continued to maintain strong ties until the 1990s.