Slave Nation

by Alfred W. Blumrosen

  After some days of sounding out each other, John Adams and the Virginians forged a friendship. Adams wrote: “These gentlemen from Virginia appeared to be the most spirited and consistent of any.”20 Richard Henry Lee reciprocated his admiration, and thus was formed the “Adams-Lee junto,” an alliance between Virginia and Massachusetts that would be important for years to come.21 The initiation of that friendship had come a year earlier when Lee wrote to John Adams to introduce himself. When Adams first met Lee face to face, he wrote: “He is a masterly man.”22 Lee’s friendship with and admiration for the spartan qualities of the New Englanders would grow in the years ahead.23

  The southerners knew that Massachusetts had led the opposition to British taxes of the 1760s with great success. But this movement had dissipated as soon as the taxes were repealed. Some southern delegates may have noted that, under Massachusetts leadership, the northerners appeared to be more concerned with avoiding taxes than with freedom from Britain.

  Slavery, although legal, was much less prevalent in the northern colonies and northern attitudes toward slavery were uncertain.24 The southerners needed to understand the Massachusetts view of slavery. Southerners would have heard that radical lawyer James Otis’s argument before the Superior Court of Massachusetts in 1760 against “writs of assistance” included an attack on slavery as a violation of natural rights.25 In 1764 he wrote: “The colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white or black.”26

  Southern leaders would not join with the North to seek revolution without assurance that slavery would be left alone by the newly constituted free country. The southerners were concerned with problems that went far beyond the issues that were to be decided at the First Congress. Their need to protect slavery would continue as events unfolded after the Congress had finished its work.

  In this atmosphere, the southerners, faced with the assault of the Somerset case, would seek separation from Britain only with the explicit understanding that slavery would be recognized and protected by the other colonies.

  This was the view of Virginia historian Hugh Blair Grigsby, writing in 1855 describing the dominant view of the moderates in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1776. With reference to slavery, he considered that these men, “however prompt in resisting aggression from without, were cautious in remodeling the domestic policy of the state when a civil war was raging in the land.”27

  The southerners also tested the views of the delegates. Among the most dogmatic on the necessity for independence was Christopher Gadsden, a major plantation and slave owner in South Carolina. A constant replenishment of slaves was needed there because slaves died young in the malaria-ridden swamps, which they cleared for rice production.28 Adams reports that Gadsden was:

  violent against allowing to Parliament any power of regulating trade, or allowing that they have any thing to do with us. Power of regulating trade, he says, is power of ruining us—as bad as acknowledging them a supreme legislative in all cases whatsoever. A right of regulating trade is a right of legislation, and a right of legislation in one case, is a right in all.29

  Adams wrote that he disagreed with Gadsden’s conclusion, but spent considerable time with him, and with Thomas Lynch, also of South Carolina.

  After studying John Adams, the southerners decided they had found the man they could trust. Adams was no abolitionist. Long after Adams heard James Otis’s declaration that “all men, white or black” are free born, he wrote:

  Not a Quaker in Philadelphia, or Mr. Jefferson of Virginia ever asserted the rights of Negroes in stronger terms. Young as I was, and ignorant as I was, I shuddered at the doctrine he taught; and I have all my lifetime shuddered, and still shudder, at the consequences that may be drawn from such premises. Shall we say that the rights of masters and servants clash, and can be decided only by force? I adore the idea of gradual abolition! But who shall decide how fast or how slowly these abolition shall be made?30

  In his later life, Adams sounded exactly like his “southern friends” of 1774 when he described his attitude toward slavery:

  The turpitude, the inhumanity, the cruelty, and the infamy of the African commerce in slaves has been impressively represented to the public by the highest powers of eloquence, that nothing that I can say would increase the just odium in which it is and ought to be held. Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States. If, however, humanity dictates the duty of adopting the most prudent measures for accomplishing so excellent a purpose, the same humanity requires that we should not inflict severer calamities on the objects of our commiseration than those which they at present endure by reducing them to despair, or the necessity of robbery, plunder, assassination, and massacre, to preserve their lives, some provision for furnishing them employment, or some means of supplying them with the necessary comforts of life. The same humanity requires that we should not by any rash or violent measures expose the lives and property of those of our fellow-citizens who are so unfortunate as to be surrounded with these fellow-creatures, by hereditary descent, or by any other means without their own fault.31

  This is essentially the position taken in the 1770s by Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and the other Virginians as we saw in Chapter Three.

  By agreeing to protect slavery in the new nation Adams would live up to his promise to bring help to Massachusetts. In cementing his relations to Virginia, he supported Peyton Randolph of Virginia for president of the Continental Congress in 1774 and nominated Virginian George Washington to command the Continental Army in 1775.

  During the Revolutionary War, Adams effectively buried a letter to Congress relating to a bill to free Negroes in Massachusetts. When the Massachusetts legislature tabled the bill to abolish slavery in the state, Adams was pleased. “We have causes enough of jealousy, discord, and division, and this bill [to free Negroes] will certainly add to the number.” In August, 1776, a New Jersey official proposed a black unit to serve as a home guard, but Adams objected. “Your Negro battalion will never do. S. Carolina would run out of their wits at the least hint of such a measure.”32 Historian Henry Wiencek has concluded, “Adams was always concerned over the potential southern response to the use of black troops or emancipation proposals.”33

  Adams shared the view that Congress should not be asked to pay salaries to boys, old men, Negroes, and others “unsuitable for service.”34 Early during the war, at the end of 1775, a congressional delegation from South Carolina and Virginia, along with Ben Franklin, met with civilians from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island and concluded that Negroes, slave or free, should be “rejected altogether” from military service.

  Historian Donald Robinson says the primary factor in the decision to reject new black recruits was “the effect such a policy would have in other colonies...not an animus against Negroes, out of a desire for a strong national union in the effort against England.”35 The petition of blacks who had served at Bunker Hill and the demands of war caused a change in this policy later in the Revolution, but the policy itself was a reflection of northern acceptance of the southern view concerning blacks.

  Adams made clear in later life that he had deferred to the southerners on the issue of slavery: “I constantly said in former times to the southern gentlemen, I cannot comprehend this object. I must leave it to you. I will vote for forcing no measure against your judgments.”

  This statement makes clear that the southerners had questioned Adams on his view of the slavery question. John Adams knew, when he gave his answer, that the “southern gentlemen” intended to protect the foundation of their society—slavery. Their resolve was spelled out in the instructions from Virginia to secure full control of their internal affairs so that, among other things, they could maintain slavery.36 Adams’s statement to Jefferson is evidence that the most influential colonies—Massachusetts, Virginia, and the slave colonies—agreed to protect colonial slavery when they first met in 1774. Protecti
ng slavery was such an important issue that it was resolved in favor of the South early in the first session of the Continental Congress. As a result, there was never a discussion of it on the floor of Congress. Such a discussion did not take place until many years later when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were both retired.

  Adams’s “confession” that he had accepted the South’s position on slavery was part of his late-in-life correspondence with Jefferson, who had been his political enemy in earlier years. Jefferson had defeated Adams for the presidency in 1800, and Adams had been bitter. Benjamin Rush arranged a reconciliation between the two, taking three years to accomplish it, between 1809 and 1812.37

  From that time forward they exchanged elegantly composed correspondence drawing on their current interests, their recollections of their exciting past, and their problems of aging, wondering if their prodigious efforts had been worthwhile. Their correspondence about slavery began in 1819, the first year of the conflict over admitting Missouri as a slave state. The issue of whether a state should be “free” or “slave” had up to that time been avoided by admitting states in pairs—one free for one slave state. This meant that state equality in the Senate had been maintained. Northerners attempted to block Missouri’s admission as a slave state, and southerners held the admission of Maine hostage to block that effort. The issue was resolved by admitting Missouri as a slave state, Maine as a free state, and extending, to the west, the line between slave and free territory that had been drawn in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.38 But before the compromise was reached on March 3, 1820, Jefferson and Adams began an exchange of letters that included the following:

  Adams wrote to Jefferson, November 23, 1819, listing a series of issues facing the new Congress, including “the Missouri Slavery,” writing, “Clouds look black and thick…threatening thunder and lightning.”39

  Jefferson to Adams, Dec. 10, 1819: Jefferson dismisses the other issues:

  They are occurrences which like waves in a storm will pass under the ship. But the Missouri question is a breaker on which we may lose the Missouri country by revolt, and what more, God only knows. From the battle of Bunker’s Hill to the treaty of Paris, we never had so ominous a question.40

  Adams to Jefferson, Dec. 21, 1819:

  The Missouri question I hope will follow the other waves under the ship and do no harm. I know it is high treason to express a doubt of the perpetual duration of our vast American Empire and our free institutions…but I am sometimes Cassandra enough to dream that another Hamilton, another Burr might rend this mighty fabric in twain.41

  Jefferson to Adams, Jan. 22, 1821, after the adoption of the Missouri Compromise:

  What does the Holy Alliance, in and out of Congress, mean to do with us on the Missouri question….The real question, as seen in the states afflicted with this unfortunate population is, Are our slaves to be presented with freedom and a dagger? For if Congress has the power to regulate the conditions of the inhabitants of the states, within the states, it will be but another exercise of that power to declare that all shall be free. Are we then to see again Athenian and Lacedemonian confederacies? To wage another Peloponnesian war to settle the ascendancy between them? Or is this the tocsin of merely a servile war? That remains to be seen, but not I hope, by you or me. Surely they will parley a while, and give us time to get out of the way.42

  Adams to Jefferson, Feb. 3, 1821:

  Slavery in this country I have seen hanging over it like a black cloud for half a century. [He then alludes to a vision of] armies of Negroes marching and counter-marching in the air, shining in armour. I have been so terrified with this phenomenon that I constantly said in former times to the southern gentlemen, I cannot comprehend this object. I must leave it to you. I will vote for forcing no measure against your judgments.43

  This statement, made in 1821, explains his actions supporting the South on slavery issues at the First Continental Congress in 1774, and continuing in the following years.44 Older histories emphasized the unity of the colonies, not their differences. Twentieth century histories continue to minimize the influence of slavery on the Revolution.45

  Modern historians Joseph Ellis, Richard Brookhiser, and David McCullough have minimized Adams’s “confession.” Ellis assumed that there had been an “unspoken promise” to Adams that the South would engage in gradual emancipation. An unspoken promise, if there can be such a thing, sounds at most like wistful thinking by an Adams who needed the South to join the move against Britain. The Virginians’ position that slavery was an evil that would be addressed some time in the future was certainly no promise. South Carolina would never have made such a promise. The idea that the southerners would have left the issue of slavery in the South an open question to be resolved through “unspoken promises” ignores both the intensity of southern interest in the issue, and the high quality of southern lawyers, who would have insisted on clarity on this issue.46

  Brookhiser believed that John Adams had “absolutely clean hands” on the slavery issue. He even quotes Adams’s statement to the southern gentlemen that he would “leave it to you. I will vote for forcing no measure against your judgments” in support of his proposition. Brookhiser’s explanation is that Adams engaged in wistful thinking about letting slavery die a “natural death.”47 David McCullough, in his John Adams, also quotes the statement, but contends that Adams had no solution to the slavery issue.48 Obviously, Adams did have a solution—he supported “the southern gentlemen,” thus assuring that Massachusetts would have the support of the wealthiest and most important of the colonies.

  Edward Cody Burnett, a compiler of letters of members of the Continental Congress, did note the potential issue of counting slaves for purposes of state contributions to the federal treasury.

  Should the criterion for contributions be population or wealth? If wealth, should it be land values or some broader measure of property values? If population, what about slaves? Should they be counted as part of the population or as property? Though the determination of the latter question may not have seemed so vital a consequence as that of voting, nevertheless, here, at the very beginnings of the nation was sounded an alarum bell that may well have roused the deepest slumber. It would ring out again and more insistently when the Federal Convention should assemble, and yet once more a few years later, even “as a fire bell in the night.”49

  The phrase “fire bell in the night” comes from Jefferson’s letter to Congressman John Holmes relating to the Missouri Compromise in 1820 that extended the slave-free area of the country, established in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, beyond the Mississippi to the west. To Jefferson it was “like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I consider it at once as the knell of the Union.”50 By quoting his “fire bell” letter, Burnett made clear that, to him, the slavery issue raised its head in 1774.

  Most modern historians who write about the First Continental Congress in 1774 mention slavery only with respect to the issue that Burnett addressed, and some quote or summarize Thomas Lynch’s statement in July, 1776, that if it were to be debated if slaves were property, the confederation would be at an end.51 Others speak only about the various and usually failed antislavery activities in the North, and include the banning of the international slave trade long proposed by Virginia for its own interests.52 Jack Rakove, in his highly influential Beginnings of National Politics, does not mention slavery at all in connection with the First Congress. He treats Virginia during that period as a subordinate player on a field dominated by northern and middle colonies.53

  Some historians have challenged the “majority view” that slavery was not an important issue in the period from 1774–1787. Staughton Lynd, in “Class Conflict, Slavery and the United States Constitution,” and Gary Nash, in Race and Revolution, emphasized the choices that were made at the Constitutional Convention regarding slavery-related issues. Other authors who have addressed the slavery issue directly include Donald Robinson (1771), Duncan MacLeod (1974), and Donal
d Fehrenbacher (2001). Fehrenbacher develops the experiences in the First and Second Continental Congress to a greater depth than the others, but the bulk of his concern is with events occurring after the Constitutional Convention.

  It appears that the limited number of written materials concerning the decisions made in the early 1770s has led historians, critical of the decisions concerning slavery at the Constitutional Convention, to accept without serious challenge the older analysis that slavery was essentially irrelevant to the earlier period of the Revolution.

  John Adams was afraid that something like this would happen.

  He wrote to Benjamin Rush in 1806:

  The secret of affairs is never known to the public until after the event, and often not then.…And very often, the real springs, motives, and causes remain secrets in the breasts of a few, and perhaps one, and perish with their keepers.54

  In 1815, he raised the same question in his correspondence with Thomas Jefferson.

  Who shall write the history of the American Revolution? Who can write it? Who will ever be able to write it? The most essential documents, the debates and deliberations in Congress, from 1774 to 1783, were all in secret, and are now lost forever.55

  Jefferson replied,

  Nobody, except merely its external facts. All its councils, designs, and discussions having been conducted by Congress with closed doors, and no member, as far as I know, having even made notes of them, these, which are the life and soul of history must be forever unknown.56

  Was Adams, in his letter of 1821, telling Jefferson about his early relations with the southern gentlemen, revealing one of those secrets “in the breasts of a few” that might otherwise have perished “with their keeper”?