RUTHFULLY YOURS

‘I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Those were the words of John Adams in a letter to his wife, Abigail, after the Continental Congress’s approval of the Declaration of Independence. In predicting that America’s Independence Day would be celebrated in epochs succeeding his, he was mostly correct, but he was wrong on a couple of things. First, he was referring to July 2, when the Congress voted on the resolution on independence, not July 4, the day of its signing that we celebrate instead. Second, while most people in the country give proper due to the heroism of the Founding Fathers, some choose to denounce them. Their chief complaint is that Adams and the others did not do enough to outlaw slavery from the country’s outset. This grievance is pretty solid. Slavery is a moral abomination, and our country’s dereliction is our original sin.

But to say that the American Revolution was a mistake because of it, as did “3 Reasons the American Revolution Was a Mistake,” a notorious piece from Vox, is ill-advised and discounts the abolitionist fire already burning in the nascent nation. A main thrust of the argument is that America should have remained under British tyranny because the Crown outlawed slavery throughout the Empire in 1833, more than 30 years before the 13th Amendment in the United States. The factual basis for the claim is true, technically — but certain American states made tremendous gains for abolition in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, which set the course for the country as a whole in the clash yet to come.

Indeed, there is evidence that many attendees of the Continental Congress (though certainly not all) were upset that Britain would not allow them to restrict slavery as much as they wanted. In the 1950s, Professor Julian Boyd of Princeton reconstructed an “original rough draft” of the Declaration of Independence, which contained a condemnation of slavery. In his list of grievances against King George III, Jefferson condemned that “he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere.” Jefferson also laments the king’s “suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.” Although the feeling was not universal, many in the colonies saw Britain as hindering efforts to abolish slavery, and the Revolution was one way to initiate its elimination. Unfortunately, in a grievous capitulation to slave-owners in the southern colonies, Congress struck the passage from the final draft.

Nevertheless, Founding Fathers with abolitionist tendencies remained undeterred in their mission. The Declaration’s principles of natural rights and equality before the law swept through the northern parts of the country. The first newly emancipated state to live up to those ideals was Pennsylvania, whose legislature passed the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1780. Although it was only gradual and not immediate, it was a massive step for its time, as well as the first instance in all of human history where an elected legislature passed a law explicitly prohibiting slavery. In the preamble to the act, its draftees included their justification for passing it. “When we contemplate our abhorrence of that condition to which the arms and tyranny of Great Britain were exerted to reduce us . . . we conceive that it is our duty, and we rejoice that it is in our power to extend a portion of that freedom to others, which hath been extended to us,” they wrote. They also acknowledged that “by the assumed authority of the kings of Great Britain, no effectual, legal relief could be obtained” for slaves. Their mistreatment at the hands of the king made them cognizant of others who were in a state of unjust subordination, and their victory in the Revolution inspired and enabled them to, in their words, “add one more step to universal civilization.”

A year later, Massachusetts followed suit with various legal decisions. The state’s new constitution, in the spirit of the Revolution, declared, “All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property.” In 1781, two slaves, Elizabeth Freeman and another named Brom, successfully sued for their freedom under that clause. The same year, another slave, Quock Walker, sued an abusive master using the same arguments. The case, in which Walker’s master countersued, appeared before the Massachusetts Supreme Court. In his instructions to the case’s jury, Chief Justice William Cushing said that, while the British gave slavery to the colonies for economic benefit, “a different idea has taken place with the people of America, more favorable to the natural rights of mankind.” He then concluded that “the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and [our own state’s] Constitution.” The result of the case was the end of slavery in Massachusetts, and other northern states joined in the effort to make the country live up to its promises of freedom and equality.

It is no coincidence that these developments were absent in pre-revolutionary America but went into motion almost immediately after its independence. Fat George was no friend to enslaved black people, but many of the patriots who revolted against him were. It was our country’s devotion to its founding ideals of freedom and natural rights that allowed it to improve and to erase the stain of slavery that appeared on its soul. For that reason, let us take Adams’s advice and, rather than condemn his deeds and those of his companions, sound the bells of liberty — in commemoration of the great men whose actions in 1776 rang out to bring freedom to the people they served — for all time.