Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies and Sparked the American Revolution [Hardcover]

Alfred Blumrosen (Author), Ruth Blumrosen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2005

This carefully documented, chilling history presents a radically different view of the profound role that slavery played in the founding of the republic, from the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution through the creation of the Constitution. The book begins with a novel explanation about the impact slavery had on the founding of the republic. In 1772, a judge sitting in the High Court in London declared slavery "so odious" that it could not exist as common law and set the conditions which would consequently result in the freedom of the 15,000 slaves living in England at that time.

This decision eventually reached America and terrified the predominantly southern slaveholders because America was then a collection of British colonies and as such were subject to British law, and they feared that this decision would cause the emancipation of the slaves here. Thus, to ensure the preservation of slavery, the southern states joined the northern colonies in their fight for "freedom" and their rebellion against England.

This decision was codified in the First Continental Congress in 1774 when John Adams promised southern leaders the support of their right to maintain slavery and drafted a Declaration of Colonial Independence from Parliament. What follows is a fascinating account of the role slavery played in the drawing of the United States Constitution. It was only in the end, when the northern states threatened to walk out over the issue of slavery, that the southern states agreed to the prohibition of slavery north of the Ohio River, embodied in the Northwest Ordinance which created the largest slave-free area in the world. This would eventually give birth to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which codified Benjamin Franklin's affirmative action plan.

Features an introduction by Congresswoman Elanor Holmes Norton, and an in requiem poem by Barbara Chase-Riboud.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Two law professors make slavery the motor driving the Revolutionary period in this provocative if not always convincing study. Southern colonists, they contend, feared that British court rulings against slavery in the motherland and newly assertive British claims of legislative supremacy over the colonies meant that Britain would restrict or abolish slavery in America; they therefore took the lead in pushing for outright independence and demanded assurances from Northern colonies that slavery would be protected in the new nation. Slavery also dominated the Constitutional Convention, which only succeeded, the authors argue, because of an informal grand compromise giving the South the three-fifths clause (counting slaves toward a state's House representation) in exchange for the Northwest Ordinance banning slavery north of the Ohio River--and implicitly permitting it to the south. Blaming spotty records and backroom deal making, the authors often build their case on speculation, circumstantial evidence and interpretations of Revolutionary slogans about "liberty" and "property" as veiled references to slavery; they must often argue around documentary evidence showing Revolutionary leaders' preoccupation with other controversies that did not break down along North-South fault lines. Their reassessment of the centrality of slavery during the period is an intriguing one, but many historians will remain skeptical. Agent, Ronald Goldfarb. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In a startling and necessary book, one of the most important publications on the topic of black history to appear this season, the authors, both law professors with backgrounds in civil rights, chart a bold course through the history of the revolutionary period in American history and arrive at nontraditional but effectively expressed and well-defended conclusions. Their basic premise is that slavery cast its shadow over the founding of the republic, not simply the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention. The Blumrosens peer further back than that convocation in Philadelphia, convened to revise the union of former colonies, and discover within the early provenance of the movement toward revolution--the movement toward one united nation free and independent, that is--the southern colonies' fear that Britain would outlaw slavery and the northern colonies' acceptance of the continuation of slavery where it previously existed. Although this work is not for the casual reader, the serious student of history will come away informed and challenged. See also Steven M. Wise's Though the Heavens May Fall (p.936) for another historical account of the issue of slavery within the British Empire. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Sourcebooks (February 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402204000
• ISBN-13: 978-1402204005
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #649,189 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revolting for Slavery, June 18, 2005

By 

William Meyers (Point Arena, California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies and Sparked the American Revolution (Hardcover)

Slave Nation sheds new light on the role of slavery in the creation of the United States of America. The theory that the Somerset case of 1772 had an influence on the American Revolution is not new. In London Lord Mansfield ruled that slavery did not exist in England and that anyone stepping on English soil became free, in particular slaves from English colonies. However, the relative lack of mention of the slavery issue in the written record of events leading up to the Declaration of Independence in 1776 has led most historians to argue that this case, and slavery, were not important causes of the American Revolution. The Blumrosens make a strong case that Somerset was not a secondary cause, but the primary cause of the Revolution. The book should be required reading for all students of American history (and of how history can be warped for political purposes). Its demonstration that in 1772 there was little support for independence, but that the Somerset case propelled the Virginia elite - drug lords, slavers, and usually lawyers as well - to create the Committees of Correspondence, is a great piece of historical detective work.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The influence of the Sommerset case on the Revolution, February 6, 2005

By 

John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies and Sparked the American Revolution (Hardcover)

Studying the American Revolution in isolation can be misleading, and it is important to see the overall context, especially the English one. This book expands this context, and is an entirely remarkable new perspective on the role of slavery in the American Revolution and it is remarkable also that the recently published 'Though the Heavens May Fall' by Steven Wise about the Sommerset case in England seems the perfect introduction to this account (howver, this book amply summarizes the key issues). One could recommend the two together. This case and its pivotal trial resulted in the de facto emancipation of slaves in England. Few histories of the American Revolution properly delineate the sequence of events in the American colonies following this case which in effect established a precedent that sooner or later would effect the status of slavery in colonial America. The cruel irony is that these developments were a crucial factor influencing the Southern slaveholders in their support of the Revolutionary War, not quite the standard version of how it all happened. This interpretation is obvious once pointed out, and requires rethinking almost everything one has read here.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The "intent of the framers" of the Constitution was to preserve legal slavery, November 6, 2005

By 

J. Young - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies and Sparked the American Revolution (Hardcover)

Slave Nation should be required reading in the areas of American history and constitutional law. To reply to one Amazon reviewer's comment, the British high court decision in the matter of James Somerset did not free the slaves in the colonies. It determined was that slavery was not lawful in Britain under the British Common Law because slavery was an unnatural and odious condition, and could only exist as a property right in jurisdictions where it had been legislated into existence. Because no law was ever enacted in Britain to create that right, James Somerset became free when he stepped onto British soil. However, the colonial legislatures had legalized slavery in their jurisdictions. This is the origin of the "sacred" principle of "state's rights"-- invented by the politicians who made the American Revolution and authored the Constitution in order to bring the southern colonies into the revolution and keep them as part of the new United States.

Slave Nation brilliantly and clearly describes the economics of slavery in colonial and post-Revolution America, and--very important--shows how the Constitutional Convention was held at the same time as the Continental Congress which was negotiating the terms of the Northwest Ordinance. That law determined the allocation new states to be created from the (then) Northwest Territory into free and slave state jurisdictions.

While Slave Nation is necessarily less detailed as it moves nearer in history from the time of the founders and framers, it certainly documents the truth that Lincoln so clearly admitted in his Second Inaugural Address: slavery was (and its relics are) a source of national guilt, not just a sin of the South. The revolutionary leaders from the North made a deliberate devil's bargain with the South as the incentive to a unified cause. That bargain created the principles held holy by the Confederate States in the 1860s and the Confederacy's conservative heirs in 2005.

The leaders and slaveholding class of the southern colonies in 1773, the year of the Somerset decision, had hoped for the integration of the colonies into Great Britain, with Americans taking their places in Parliament and the House of Lords. This is the meaning of "representation" in the phrase "no taxation without representation." After Somerset, that hope, if fulfilled, would have put the colonies under the Common Law, making slavery illegal. The Somerset ruling destroyed Southern hopes for union with Britain. It also, in part by describing slavery as an "odious" institution, warned of the eventual abolition of slavery in all the British colonies. Without Somerset (and the forces in Britain behind that view of slavery), the generally pro-Tory American South of the time would never have joined the Revolution.

Nor would the southern states have stayed in the United States without a constitution which protected their right to legislate the existence of slavery and defend the human property rights of slave owners. (An examination of the affirming decisions written in the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court as well as the writings showing the legal principles used to justify the secession of the states of the Confederacy in 1861 will show the "state's rights" element of the 1773 Somerset decision as a guiding common law principle permitting the states to create nationally enforceable property rights for human slavery.)

Slave Nation is an important book, long needed. It is a strong caution for those who might be misled by rhetoric which tries to sanctify the "intent of the framers" of the Constitution. The dark compromise made by politicians to protect their newborn and vulnerable country was a terrible price which was paid, not a guiding principle to be revered.