30. Adams, “Letter to William Tudor, June 1, 1818.”The Works of John Adams, 315.
31. Adams, “Letter to Robert Evans, June 8, 1819.”The Works of John Adams, 380. Frederick M. Binder, The Color Problem in Early National America as Viewed by John Adams, Jefferson, and Jackson, (The Hague: Mouton Press, 1968) 11–31, discusses Adams’s views in considerable detail, but does not mention the quotations in the text.
32. See Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution, (Chapel Hill: University of NC Press, 1961) esp. 47n53.
33. Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003) 215.
34. Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 217
35. Robinson, Structure of American Politics, 114–115
36. See Chapter 4 note 17
37. Brodsky, Benjamin Rush, 352-356
38. Discussed in Chapters 10 and 11
39. Cappon, Adams–Jefferson Letters, 548
40. Ibid. 549
41. Ibid. 551
42. Ibid. 569–70
43. Ibid. 571. This attitude explains his compiler’s comment that Adams seemed disinterested in the slavery issue. Robert J. Taylor, Ed., Papers of John Adams, Vol. III, May 1775–January 1776 (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1979) xvi–xvii. Historian Theodore Draper’s view was that the American elite “wanted freedom from British subjugation without social travail and transformation,” Draper, Struggle for Power, 516
44. See Nash, Race and Revolution, 25–50
45. Lester H. Cohen, “Creating a Usable Future: The Revolutionary Historians and the National Past,” in Jack P. Greene, Ed., The American Revolution: Its Character and Limits ( New York: NYU Press, 1989) 309–330
46. Ellis, American Sphinx, 267, suggests that Adams’s position presupposed a reciprocal obligation on the “southern gentlemen” to effect a policy of gradual emancipation. The existence of such an understanding seems unlikely in the Revolutionary years, and was explicitly denied by General Pinckney of South Carolina at the Constitutional convention. “General Pinckney thought himself bound to declare candidly that he did not think S. Carolina would stop her importations of slaves in any short time, but only stop them occasionally as she does now.” Rutledge of South Carolina agreed. “If the convention thinks that N.C., S.C., and Georgia will ever agree to the plan, unless their right to import slaves be untouched, the expectation is vain. The people of those states will never be such fools as to give up so important an interest.” Farrand, Records, Vol. 2, 373, Aug. 22, 1787.
47. Richard Brookheiser, America’s First Dynasty, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002)198
48. McCullough, John Adams, 545, describes Adams as “the farmer’s son who despised slavery,” in contrasting him to Jefferson, and also quotes Adams’s “confession” that he had deferred to the South on the issues of slavery, at 633, but does not draw any conclusions from that “confession” about Adams’s role concerning slavery during his active years.
49. Burnett, The Continental Congress, 225-227
50. “Letter to John Holmes, April 22, 1820,” in Ford, Works of Thomas Jefferson, 158
51. Jensen, Articles of Confederation, 146–47
52. Morgan, Birth of the Republic, 96–97
53. Rakove, National Politics, 3–20
54. John Adams, to Benjamin Rush, July 23, 1806. John A. Schultz and Douglas Adair, Eds., The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805–1813 (San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1966) 61
55. Cappon, Adams–Jefferson Letters, 451, July 15, 1815.
56. Ibid. 452
57. Ibid. 455.
58. Quoted in Fritz Hirschfeld, George Washington and Slavery: A Documentary Portrayal (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1997) 121
CHAPTER 6
THE COLONIES CLAIM INDEPENDENCE FROM PARLIAMENT
1 Rakove, National Politics, 27–35
2. “Instructions for the Deputies appointed to meet in General Congress on the Part of this Colony, 6 August 1774,” Commager, Documents of American History. http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related/instr.htm
3. Rakove, National Politics, 33
4. The Suffolk Resolves were prepared by Joseph Warren in a convention in Suffolk County condemning Parliament and a “licentious minister,” declaring all British appointed officers who did not resign enemies of the people, calling for armed militias, and stoppage of all commerce with Britain. They were approved by the Congress around September 16, as an expression of “wisdom and fortitude.” See Draper, Struggle for Power, 429
5. Draper, Struggle for Power, 426–440. Ferling, Leap in the Dark, 109–122 describes in more detail the action at the Congress. The Declaration adopted on October 14 is available on the web at the Avalon Project of Yale Law School, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/resolves.htm
6. Butterfield, Diary and Autobiography, Vol. 3, 310
7. Butterfield, Diary and Autobiography, Vol. 3, 308-310.
8. See Ch.4
9. Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 44. The editorial note establishes that the document is either John Rutledge’s proposed resolution to the committee, or James Duane’s notes on a Rutledge proposal. This suggests that the linkage of the two concepts originated with Rutledge, and was taken up by Duane. It had earlier been believed the draft was by Duane. See Morgan, Birth of the Republic,65
10. Draper, Struggle for Power, 265. The initial combination of “internal polity and taxation” appeared in the Virginia House of Burgesses’ petition of 1764, repeated in the Virginia resolves of May 29, 1765. Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, Eds., The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of NC Press, 1962)
11. See Richard Barry, Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pieve, 1942) for an account that identifies qualities of political sagacity in Rutledge’s actions.
12. Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 39,40, 42. See Morgan, Birth of the Republic, 65
13. Butterfield, Diary and Autobiography, 308–310
14. The committee to state the rights of the colonies was established by the Congress on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 1774. JCC, 26. On Wednesday, Sept. 7, the Congress appointed two from each colony for the committee. On Friday, Sept. 9, the committee, “met, agreed to found our rights upon the laws of nature, the principles of the English Constitution & charters & compacts; ordered a sub. comee. to draw up a state of rights.” Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 56. On Sept. 14, the subcommittee met, and reported to the Great Committee which appointed the next morning, the Sept. 15 for a consideration of the report.
15. It appears that the Great Committee considered the report on rights on Sept. 15, 16, 19, 20, and 21, and reported to the Congress on Sept. 22. Sept. 24, 26, and 27 were devoted by Congress to developing the nonimportation principle. Thus, as of Sept. 28, when Galloway’s plan was presented, Congress had before it the report of the Great Committee which included the language which Adams had drafted.
16. Adams may have intended to include the presentation of Galloway’s Plan of Union, proposed on Sept. 28, as an attack on his draft.
17. This provision is essentially in accord with the Virginia instructions to its delegates to the Continental Congress. See Chapter 4
18 Adams suggested that the italicized language was the critical issue, by indicating that it was the point of Rutledge’s interest. This language would not have been disputed by New York commercial interests who wished to continue British control of shipping, or by those like Galloway who preferred to retain British dominated legislative jurisdiction over the colonies, as much as the boldfaced language declaring independence from Parliament.
19. See Chapter 2
20. See Chapter 5
21. There is evidence that Adams was aware of Rutledge’s proposal at the time he prepared Article IV. Rutledge’s proposal consisted of three paragraphs. The short middle paragraph contained one sentence: “We do not how
ever admit into this collection [of English statutes and common law] but absolutely reject the statutes of Henry the VIII and Edward VI respecting treasons and misprisions of treason.” Adams’s diary for Sept. 13, 1774, the day before the subcommittee report was submitted to the great committee, notes, “ 1 & 2. Phil. & Mary. C. 10. ss. 7.” The editors note: “The British statute cited is ‘An acte whereby certayne offenses bee made tresons,’” Butterfield, Diary and Autobiography, 1554–55. The references of both Rutledge and Adams to treason in connection with what became Article IV suggest that they understood the risks that the adoption of the Article entailed. “Direct evidence,” in the form of writings by the delegates concerning their desire for independence in 1774, does not exist, and for a good reason. The delegates were concerned about being prosecuted for treason. John Adams’s diary, on Tuesday, Sept. 13, the day this deal was struck with Rutledge and the sub-committee, contains a citation to the British treason statute, as does Rutledge’s own proposal.
22. Hugh Williamson, “The Plea of the Colonies on Charges Brought Against Them by Lord Mansfield and Others in a Letter to His Lordship” (London, 1775) 8. Williamson in a paper printed in London in early 1775, argued against the idea that “an abstract theorem, a general declaration, [the Declaratory Act] has given more offense to the Americans than all the injuries they have received.” He pointed out that “as members of the British empire, they have enjoyed, till the beginnings of the present controversy, (a few impolitic and unprofitable restrictions excepted) as much liberty as was consistent with civil government, or as much as they could possibly expect under a new form.…What would tempt such people to become independent?” (at 16-17)
He concluded that “life and property were at the disposal of men who knew them not, who were not touched by their calamities; of men who were to gain by their loss and prosper by their adversity,” (at 13-14) and that taxation without representation was the “sole cause” of the present war (at 27).
23. Don Cook, The Long Fuse: How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760–1785 (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995) 199
24. We observed the same approach among white southerners in Louisiana in 1961 with respect to racial segregation, and white South Africans in 1987 concerning apartheid.
25. See Chapter 4
26. Jensen, Articles of Confederation, 118–19, says that this nascent “states’ rights” position was shared in 1776 by both “radicals” and “conservatives.”
27. Butterfield, Diary and Autobiography, 309
28. Merrill Jensen, Commentary to Randolph Greenfield Adams: Political Ideas of the American Revolution; Britannic-American Contributions to the Problem of Imperial Organization, 3d Ed., (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1958) 24
29. Laurence Henry Gipson, The Triumphant Empire, Vol. XIII (New York: Knopf, 1974) 198
30. Draper, Struggle for Power, 518
31. A Parliament that, for example, might abolish slavery, as the British Parliament did in 1833.
32. John Phillip Reid, Constitutional History
33. See Ferling, Leap in the Dark,116–120, reporting Galloway’s speech and analyzing his plan.
34. The jurisdiction is described by Galloway. Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 118
35. Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 118. There is an inconsistency in Galloway’s referring to the “present constitution and powers of regulating and governing its own internal police in all cases whatsoever.” In 1774, the term “present constitution and powers” of the colonies were subject to invalidation under two circumstances: (1) if the British Parliament exercised its jurisdiction under the Declaratory Act and (2) if they were not consistent with the common law, which included the Somerset decision. The phrase “in all cases whatsoever” is the language of the British Declaratory Act of 1766, which claimed total parliamentary authority over the colonies. It was precisely the matter at issue between the colonists pursuing the Virginia instructions and the empire. Galloway’s use of both phrases in the same sentence may have been intended to patch over this basic difference without resolving it, or to appear to give enhanced powers to the colonial legislatures, while leaving them subject to both the king and Parliament.
36. The wedding of the British and American parliaments might also have made more certain that English common law would apply in America.
37. See Wills, Inventing America, 36–39
38. See Chapter 4 note 17
39. This is from John Adams’s notes of the debates, Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 109,111; Patrick Henry comment on 111
40. It is ironic that a strong central government, in which U.S. senators were to be selected by state legislators, was proposed by Virginians at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
41. This point is noted, though not explored in relation to slavery by John Ferling, The Loyalist Mind: Joseph Galloway and the American Revolution (University Park, PA: Penn. State University Press, 1977) 30
42. Two other provisions of the declaration of 1774 also conflicted with the Galloway Plan. Article VII provides that the colonies are entitled to “all the immunities and privileges…secured by their several codes of provincial laws.” This is a demand for recognition of provincial laws, including the slave codes, as the kind of “positive law” referred to by Mansfield in Somerset. It is inconsistent with any supervisory legislative power in any parliament, privy council, or the courts.
Article X of the declaration states that “the exercise of legislative power in the several colonies, by a council appointed during pleasure, by the crown, is unconstitutional, dangerous, and destructive to the freedom of American legislation.” Burnett characterizes this clause as “in effect, a criticism of a principal feature of the Galloway plan of union.” Burnett, The Continental Congress, 54
43. Draper, Struggle for Power, 429–30. Galloway had been a follower of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s Albany Plan of Union in 1755 failed because the colonies thought it gave them too little discretion, and the British thought it gave them too much.
44. Butterfield, Diary and Autobiography, Vol. 2, 140. Note 1 on 141, “To this first intimate contact between John Adams and his fellow delegates on the one hand, and the silent member from Virginia [Washington] much has been attributed, probably justly. With little doubt it markedly influenced Washington’s view of the conduct of the leaders of the patriotic movement in Massachusetts.”
45. W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig, Eds., The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, Vol. 10 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995)161, 171–72
46. Butterfield, Diary and Autobiography, 151. It was a little surprising that Massachusetts was divided since John Adams drafted the article and his cousin Samuel Adams was also a delegate, unless Massachusetts was staying in the background as Rush had suggested.
47. Butterfield, Diary and Autobiography, Vol. 1, 152n2
48. Galloway’s complaints appear in Smith, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 113-117
49. John Locke, Two Treatises on Government (Original, 1690., New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, 1947)
CHAPTER 7
THE IMMORTAL AMBIGUITY: “ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL”
1. Mayer, Son of Thunder, 249–257
2. http://collections.ic.gc.ca/blackloyalists/documents/official/virginia_response.htm
3. Miller, Origins of the American Revolution, 478. It also confirmed that many slaves were aware of the Somerset decision, and believed that the British were telling the truth when they offered freedom.
4. Samuel Johnson, Taxation No Tyranny: An Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress (1775)
5. Rhys Isaac, Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom, 3–15
6. http://collections.ic.gc.ca/blackloyalists/documents/official/virginia_response.htm
7. Maier, American Scripture, 13
8. Draper, Struggle for Power, 459–479
9. Maier, American Scripture, 63
10. Ibid. 98–105
1
1. Jefferson, “Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, May 8, 1825,” in Ford, Works, Vol. 16, 118
12. See Chapter 3
13. See Rutland, Papers of George Mason, cxi-cxxvi
14. Maier, American Scripture, 87
15. Maier, American Scripture, 269n62. Rutland, Papers of George Mason, 274
16. Tarter, “Appendix, Monday, May 27, 1776,” Revolutionary Virginia, Vol. VII, Part I. 271, 276. Maier, American Scripture, 133–35, suggests that this is the language that Jefferson modified in drafting the Declaration of Independence.
17. Tarter, Revolutionary Virginia, Vol. VII, Part 2, 454
18. Mays, Edmund Pendleton, 121
19. Mays, Edmund Pendleton Vol. II, 121
20. Maier, American Scripture, 269n62, “The Committee draft, it seems, was far more widely circulated and more influential than that finally adopted by the Virginia Convention.”
21. Ibid.
22. Published in Philadelphia on June 12. Maier American Scripture,126
23. Memo of H. Carrington, 9 Sept. 1851. Tarter, Revolutionary Virginia, 454
24. The Convention sat as a committee of the whole. This description of the process of adoption of the Virginia Declaration of Rights relies heavily on Tarter, Revolutionary Virginia, Vol. VII, part 1, 276 and Vol. VII, part 2, 454–455. See Maier, American Scripture, 193
25. Tarter, “Appendix, Monday, May 27, 1776,” Revolutionary Virginia, Vol. VII Part I, 271, 276
26. Ellis, American Sphinx, 55–56. Maier, American Scripture, 125–26
27. Maier, American Scripture, 99
28. Ibid. 100
29. Mayer, Son of Thunder, 205–206.
30. Maier, American Scripture, 135–136, suggests otherwise. “The opening assertion of ‘self-evident’ truths concern men in a ‘state of nature’ before government was established.” But the establishment of a government is an exercise in political judgment, not a philosophic treatise. The same is true of Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Both documents speak to present political principles. Pendleton’s addition of the qualifying phrase “when they enter a state of society” was understood as carving out an exception from these principles, so that they would not apply to black slaves.
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