Title: The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution: 1770-1823
Author: David Brion Davis
Year of Publication: 1999
Thesis:
Essentially argues that the end of slavery was by far a foregone conclusion rooted in the paradoxes of the U.S. Constitution. Even those who abhored slavery, such as Jefferson, considered foremost his "self-preservation," (12). His work was able to use Englightenment ideas to justify freedom based on landholding, and slavery based on the supposed natural inferiority of Africans and African Americans. Economics and these concepts of freedom explain why prejudice against African Americans (especially in Jefferson's proto-scientific racism) and slavery endured for so long, and why ideas couldn't, on their own, force its end. He does credit abolitionists with providing a way to force the issue into the public consciousness.
Time: 1770-1823
Geography:
Organization:
Preface to the New Edition
- Jefferson and cause against King George III
- Jefferson's fear of slave revolts removed from Decl. of Indep.
- Debate over Dunmore (forces Jefferson to try & defend slavery, as manumission becomes an issue of inciting insurrection)
- Believes Jefferson really did condemn slavery (yet pits it against "self-preservation" (12)
- Shift in public opinion over slavery (in previous book) important & foments social movements (13)
Preface
- This follows his intellectual history - w/same title except "in Western Culture"
A Note on Terms
A Calendar of Events Associated with Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Emancipation, 1770-1823
One: What the Abolitionists Were Up Against
- Aristotle - enslaved people as low-level-virtuous, butu they borrow this from connection to/extension of master (39)
- Hegel - the identity of the master is shaped by and dependent upon the enslaved (in their recognition of master's authority) (40)
- Resistance is always present, and therefore makes this theory continue to have to try & adapt (40-41)
- Slavery is "adaptable" shown by slave-produced products as well as its survival after the American Revolution. (83)
- American Rev. does help foment antislavery in the North. (83)
- This chapter really charts a shift of multiple folks who don't like slavery but don't do anything fundamentally to challenge the system to folks who were more amenable to "antislavery ideology" (82)
Two: The Seats of Power, I [BR, FR, North Am]
Three: The Seats of Power, II [BR, FR, North Am]
[4&5: "What effect did the ideals of the Enlightenment and of the evangelical revival have in plantation societies, especially in the American South? How did a social structure dominated by plantation slavery respond to antislav- ery ideals? Conversely, what social groups in England and in the North became involved in organized antislavery activity? What significance can we attach to the Quaker antislavery initiative? The purpose of Chapters four and Five, in short, is to explore some of the social circumstances which either limited or reinforced the effect of antislavery doctrine." (16)]
Four: The Boundaries of Idealism
Five: The Quaker Ethic and the Antislavery International
[6-9: "Chapters Six through Nine form the core of the study and contain its prin- cipal themes. They are concerned, essentially, with the ideological functions and implications of the British and American antislavery movements. Since these functions and implications were very different in the two countries, and since I examine the subject in some detail, I have chosen to treat the countries separately, except for brief and periodic comparisons. The meaning of "ideological functions and implications" should become clearer as I proceed. For the moment it is sufficient to say that in these four chapters I move from the cultural dimension, as analyzed in The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, to points of intersection between ideals and social action." (16)]
Six: The Emancipation of America, I
- Begins with critique of Jordan, whom he believes is too optimistic about how it might have been possible for a the American Revolution to have both emancipated enslaved people but also to have offered them a head start in heading off social Darwinism arguments. However, Davis argues Jordan fails to understand just how intractable the forces governing slavery were. He points to several of these issues - but they boil down to economic dependency on goods produced by enslaved people and the difficulty in mindset that mistrusted centralized power. Even so, Davis argues there was value in the debate that sowed seeds. (256)
Seven: The Emancipation of America, II
Eight: The Preservation of English Liberty, I
[9-10 - human/divine law (17)]
Nine: The Preservation of English Liberty, I
Ten: The Preservation of English Liberty, II
Eleven: The Good Book
Epilogue: Toussant L'Ouverture and the Phenomenology of Mind
Index
Type:
Methods:
Sources:
Historiography:
Winthrop Jordan
Keywords:
Ideology - "an integrated system of beliefs, assumptions, and values, not necessairly true or false, which reflects the needs and interests fo a group or class at a particular time in history." (17)
Interest - "anything that benefits or is thought to benefit a specific collective identity." (17)
Abolitionist - Militant/immediate reformers (21)
Antislavery - nonspecific/gradual (21)
Themes:
- American Colonization Society debates
- Paradox of slavery - treating people as property, "animalizing" them, but also recognizing they resisted
- The intractability of racial prejudice
- Internalization of "anti-Blackness"
- Emancipation never a given (requires both war and abolitionist efforts and still returns in many attempts)
- Rationalization of slavery by thinkers all the way back to Plato;
- Gradual Emancipation
- Enlightenment/natural rights/slavery can co-exist as long as Black people are considered innately incapable of self-rule. Or, for example, if slavery had rendered them such, the idea still worked in favor of oppression.
Critiques:
Questions:
Curious what the underpinnings behind undoing the order to grant formerly enslaved people land. Did it have to do with principles Jefferson, et. al. had set forth about African Americans' ability to reason?
Quotes:
"Indeed, I would argue that there was a kind of uncon- scious collaboration even between abolitionists and their opponents in defining race as the ultimate "reality." If my suspicions are valid, then a preoccupation
with racial conflict, as the ultimate reality, may only help to obscure more fundamental issues of ideology and power." (17)
"If Plato and Aristotle provided an ideology for masters, the Cynics, Sophists, and Stoics provided an ideology for slaves. Externally, the servant might be the instrument of his master's will, but internally, in his own self-consciousness, he remained a free soul. And he could affirm the truth of this subjective reality by denying the importance of the world of flesh and human convention. Physical constraint could never bar a man from true virtue. Hence the master, imagining him- self to be free and omnipotent, might well be the true slave—at least in the eyes of the slave." (42)
"The Revolution could not have opened avenues toward general emancipation unless the slaves themselves had become involved as a significant military force. Historians have too often underestimated the economic strength of slavery during the Revolutionary period, exaggerated the force of antislavery senti- ment in the Upper South, and minimized the obstacles that aboli- tionists faced even in the northern states. The American colonists were fighting, after all, for self-determination. And it is now clear that slavery was of central importance to both the southern and national economies, and thus to the viability of the "American system." (256)
"A free society, in other words, was by no means incompatible with dependent classes of workers. Its central prerequisite was a large class of freeholders, unencumbered by feudal, military, or political obligations. Liberty required independence, and independence required freehold property." (259)
"Clearly there was nothing novel about the freedom and independence of some men depending on the coerced labor of others. What distinguished American colonists was their magnificent effrontery. They rejoiced to find their ideals of freedom and equality reflected in the actual social order, but resolutely denied that the social order rested on a "mudsill" of slavery, as Southerners would later acknowledge. Yet like their English contemporaries, the American colonists equated social responsibility with independence, and independence with land ownership." (261)"
Notes: