Volume 4, Chapter 78, Elimination of Feudalism and the Beginnings of the Abolition of Slavery
The American Revolution brought about an important smashing of feudal elements in land ownership
and their transformation into a far more liberal land structure.
Land monopoly was transformed by the opening of free and virgin land in the West,
Virginia's thwarting the designs of the speculative land companies, the liquidation of huge British proprietary estates and quit rents in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, the confiscation and resale of crown lands and through the confiscation, subdivision and resale largely to tenants of huge Tory estates, especially in southern New York, one other anti-feudal
The most prominent leader of the assault on these remnants of outright feudalism was Thomas Jefferson, who summarized his goals in this struggle with his customary eloquence.
In the earlier times of the colony, some provident individuals pursued large grants.
and desirous of founding great families settled them on their descendants so that they could not be alienated.
The transmission of this property from generation to generation in the same name raised up a distinct set of families who, being privileged by law in the perpetuation of their wealth, were thus transformed into a patrician order.
From this order, too, the king habitually selected his counselors of state. To annul this privilege, and instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of wealth and talent, which nature has wisely provided, for the direction of the interest of society, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic.
It is true, as recent historians have emphasized, that end tales and promogenitor were not extensively
employed in Virginia or the South, their abolition remains important as a principle.
Furthermore, the arch-conservatives, led by Edmund Pendleton and Landon Carter, felt intensely
enough about abolition that they fought it almost to a standstill. Carter, indeed, had
and the effrontery to call Entail a severe interference with an owner's right to control and dispose of his property a basic component of the right to do as we please with our own property.
Entail was abolished in Virginia in 1776 and in South Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania during the Revolution.
North Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey and New York followed in the years after the war.
Primogenitor was slower to fall, but was abolished in Georgia in 1777, and in Virginia, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and the Carolinas during the 1780s.
By the mid-1780s, all but two states had abolished entail, and all had eliminated primogenitor by the early 1790s.
One critical element of coercion and of land monopoly remaining in American life after the revolution was Negro slavery.
The relatively cheap and coerced labor provided by slavery made large plantations for such products as tobacco and rice profitable,
which would not have been viable on the free market.
This was true because the simplicity and easy supervision of field work on a single crop made slavery particularly adaptable to plantation labor.
Furthermore, the concentration of slaves on plantations had already brought about fundamental sectional divisions in America.
Divisions that were, of course, exacerbated once the colonies became independent and united.
While in the North, Negroes, some of whom were free, constituted less than 5% of the population, in the South, Maryland and below, they formed 40% of the population, virtually all of them slaves.
During the revolution, the northern states began to move against slavery within their borders.
The first steps were taken against the slave trade, against the importation of slaves into the state.
Since existing slavery was considered by too many people as a property right, even though in human beings, that could not be violated.
In 1776, the Delaware Constitution prohibited the importation into the state of slaves for sale, and Massachusetts outlawed the slave trade.
John Adams, however, effectively killed a Massachusetts bill for emancipation in 1777, and it took the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 for slavery to be abolished there.
Or so the Constitution was eloquently construed in the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1781 in the notable case of Commonwealth versus Geneson.
and Geneson. Chief Justice William Cushing decreed that the Constitution's declaration
that all men are born free and equal and are entitled to liberty clearly made slavery unconstitutional.
In his construction, Cushing was undoubtedly influenced by the brief of the lawyer Levi
Lincoln, later Attorney General of the United States under Jefferson, to the opposing argument
In an argument that slavery was sanctified by the custom and usage of the country,
Lincoln pungently replied that custom and usage against reason and right were void.
Vermont directly prohibited slavery in its Constitution of 1777,
a bill drafted by radical leaders Thomas Paine, George Brian, and Charles Wilson Peel,
Gradually abolishing slavery passed the Pennsylvania Legislature in 1780, but it freed only children
of existing slaves upon reaching the age of 28.
The New Hampshire Constitution of 1784 prohibited slavery and Connecticut and Rhode Island decreed
its gradual abolition in 1784.
The Rhode Island action came after years of prodding by the prominent Quaker merchant
Moses Brown. New York, New Jersey, Delaware and the southern states remained with slavery
unchecked by the end of the revolution. New York City delegates, headed by John Jay, had
urged a gradual emancipation law in 1777 but lost by a close vote. It was vetoed by the
The Council of Revision of New York, however, because it denied the freed Negroes the ballot,
and thus would create a group of half-citizens.
The staunchest and most principled libertarian in the New York legislature was New York assemblyman
Aaron Burr, who not only argued persistently for the Negroes' right to vote, to be a witness
New York did liberate all the slaves of its tories, and New Jersey liberated the slaves who had become state property by its confiscation of tory properties, but while slavery was being largely liquidated in the north, it was being cemented in the south.
Despite the staunch opposition of such men as Jefferson, indeed the states actively encouraged slavery.
North Carolina passed a law in 1777 restricting the voluntary manumission of slaves,
while South Carolina and Georgia paid out slaves as part of the salaries of soldiers and state officials.
During the war, however, every state except Georgia and South Carolina either severely restricted the slave trade or prohibited it.
This was not a particularly idealistic action by the Upper South, however, since the value of domestic slaves would inevitably rise after prohibiting their further importation.
And then, Virginia and Maryland, where slave labor was becoming less profitable, could breed slaves to replace foreign imports as a source of new slaves to the Lower South.
Fearful of slave defections to the British in the light of their wholesale flight to Lord Dunmore's forces early in the war, the southern states placed especially severe controls upon the slaves during the war.
Slaves were herded to points far from British-occupied zones, special patrols were set up to prevent escape, and executions of slaves attempting to flee were stepped up.
And yet, despite the harsh treatment and the resale into slavery in the West Indies suffered by the Negroes in British hands, many tens of thousands of slaves escaped to the British lines.
Thus 4,000 escaped Negroes sailed away when the British evacuated Savannah and around 6,000 sailed with the British from Charleston.
In 1782, nearly 3,000 sailed with the British from New York City, probably as many as 100,000 slaves or nearly one-fifth of the slave population succeeded in escaping during the Revolutionary War.
Many slaves also became known as maroons, fugitives fighting in inaccessible areas, and waging guerrilla war against slaveholders. Maroon activity abounded in Georgia and the Carolinas, and a slave named Bill was hanged in 1781 in Prince William County, Virginia, for leading other ex-slaves in attacks upon plantations. One group of 300 determined ex-slaves
The British slaves decided not to evacuate Savannah with the British.
Instead, they stayed in the swamps at Bear Creek as self-styled King of England's soldiers,
engaging in guerrilla raids on Georgia plantations.
It took four years, and the combined militia of Georgia and South Carolina to finally rout this band.
Plots of slave revolts were diminished during the war by the opportunities to escape offered by the Revolutionary Conflict.
Still, several plots were uncovered, the most important being a planned revolt of the slaves of Pitt, Craven and Beaufort Counties in coastal North Carolina.
The plot was betrayed by two slaves on the eve of the uprising in July 1775, and scores of slaves were arrested throughout the counties.
They were punished by numerous lashes and ear croppings.
Slaves rebelled on Tybee Island, Georgia in early 1776.
A Negro restiveness was noted, starting at about the same time in Albany, New York, in Elizabethtown in Somerset County, New Jersey,
New Jersey, and in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Restiffness among the nearly 4,000 slaves
in Albany County continued for several years, including organized escapes and a plot to
destroy the slave owners and burn Albany to the ground. Virginia was beset by several
slave revolts or threatened revolts during the war. In Boetocourt, Halifax, in Akomak
Black Counties, and Williamsburg, where in December 1781 the slaves set fire to governmental
and other buildings in the town.
One other escape route for several thousand Negro slaves was enlistment in the revolutionary
armed forces, for in many cases where the states permitted, masters offered freedom
to Negroes who enlisted.
These enlistments could not begin until mid-1776, for until then, Negroes were barred from
the Army.
In Congress, this prohibition was led by the Rutledge's of Georgia, but the ban also prevailed
in the separate state militias, including Massachusetts, the rest of New England and
all the middle states.
Tightened war conditions, however, as well as Dunmore's call for Negroes to escape, reversed
First American Policy and Permitted Slave Enlistments
In early 1776, Congress reversed its previous decision to bar Negroes from the armed forces,
and the towns and states followed later on.
The enthusiastic expectations of the enlisted Negroes were reflected in the surnames many
of them now gave themselves, including free man, liberty, freedom and free.
South Carolina and Georgia, however, despite the ardent pressure of Henry and John Laurens
and of William Henry Drayton, refused throughout the war to allow their Negroes to enlist and
made it clear that they preferred defeat in the war to allowing that sort of subversive
license.
The stubbornness of these two deep south states prevented what might have been a severe
blow to the entire structure of slavery in the south.
Most of the Negro soldiers served in the Continental Army rather than in the short-term state militia, and the bulk of them was furnished by the New England states, despite their relatively small Negro population.
Negroes served in fully integrated units, but few were selected for the higher status service of cavalry or artillery.
Most were infantry privates, often in menial service, servants, orderlies, waiters, cooks, teamsters, drummers, rather than in arms-bearing functions.
Even so, Negroes, happy to be slaves no longer, generally enjoyed higher morale than the other soldiers who were eager to return to the freedom and higher living standards they had been used to in civilian life.
in Life.
In contrast to the Army, the American Navy, continental, state and privateer, welcomed
Negro sailors from the very beginning of the conflict, partly because Negro sailors were
already familiar to colonial America.
They were often used as pilots, and even the South Carolina and Georgia navies used Negro
sailors.
By no means all of the Negro soldiers and sailors of the Revolution received their freedom
Many were enlisted involuntarily by their masters, but the vast majority, several thousand
Negroes, were set free by the enlistment process.