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

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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.

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.

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.

Slave Nation opens your mind to the possibility that slavery was the main issue regarding the American Revolution at least in the South. I believe more research needs to be provided to the laymen historian with regards to any discussion in Parliment relating to the Somerset decision. I find it difficult to believe that the British Parliment would have allowed slavery to "not exist" in the colonies. Doing so would have adversely affected commerce between Britain and the colonies. I personally find it difficult to believe Parliment would have allowed the Somerset decision to eventually eliminate slavery in the colonies and in doing so raise the cost of raw materials to be exported to Britain. If the Virginians perceived the Somerset to be a threat to their commerse I would like more proof. If the British parliment accepted the Somerset decision as a means to end slavery in the Colonies I would like to read the discusions on the floor of Parliment regarding this matter. Slave Nation is a thought provoking thesis which will inspire citical thinking

Alfred W. Blumrosen is a law professor at Rutgers specializing in Labor and Employment law as it relates to civil rights enforcement, and the late Ruth G. Blumrosen was also a law professor with a history of civil rights compliance: the two have created a monumental survey in Slave Nation; How Slavery United The Colonies And Sparked The American Revolution. Slavery helped found the republic: when a 1772 London judge banned slavery in England, his edict rippled through the colonies and assured the southern states joined the northern colonies in the 'right for freedom' against England which was as much a fight for the freedom to have slaves as for other political concerns. A lively history ensues, pairing political decision processes with insights on the eventual war between the states, Slave Nation is a work of painstakingly thorough scholarship combined with a thoroughly "reader friendly" text that is completely accessible to the non-specialist general reader and a welcome, enthusiastically recommended addition to any personal, community, or school library American History collection or supplemental studies reading list.

I had reached tentative conclusions similar to the authors from my own readings and induction. I had hoped that the Blumrosens would present the sorts of primary references that would indisputably support the pattern I thought I had detected.

The question I asked myself is: why would the rich and successful plantation owners of the South support the rebellion? The main answer I could find was the preservation of slavery.

Unfortunately,this book makes the argument, but it lacks the evidence. As another reviewer notes, the authors weaken their own case by their methods. (I find particularly unacceptable phrases such as "must have" when trying to ascribe motivations to individuals or groups. Are the authors psychics? If it isn't on record you can't make the assumption)

My own opinion is that it is difficult to imagine that the book's argument is not correct; but that is my opinion, it is not history. Though definitely worth reading, "Slave Nation" is also not good history.

Before the national issue in America in the middle 1800s concerning owning African slaves, a century earlier England had 15,000 of their own slaves from the West Indies. An application to Parliament in 1766 concerning their 'property' or 'commodity' was of great commercial conern to the slave owners who, no doubt, being British called them 'servants.'

"On June 22, 1772, nearly a century before the slaves were freed in America, a British judge, with a single decision, brought about the conditions that would end slavery in England. His decision would have monumental consequences in the American colonies, leading up to the American Revolution, the Civil War, and beyond. Because of this ruling, history would be forever changed. This book is about that decision and the role of slavery in the founding of the United States." In 1749, a nine-year-old boy growing up in a West African village was kidnapped and transported 'via the infamous Middle Passage' to America where he was bought by Charles Stewart of Norfolk, Virginia. He was a young Scottish-born merchant who was drawn to the tobacco industry and trained 'Somerset' as his own personal servant and business assistant, always at his side as a young man. After twenty years of co-dependence, Charles Stewart sailed to England with Somerset to help raise his sister's children after the death of her husband. The servant had never known such freedom as an adult and insinuated himself into "a black community of thousands of former slaves and free persons, mainly from the British West Indian colonies."

After two years in London, he left Stewart's home and refused to return. Since leaving his master, he had "insulted his person," caught and set to be deported to Jamaica to be sold as the slave he'd been for 23 years. "Some London blacks were free. Some, like Somerset, were slaves to colonials living in London. Some had been freed by their masters. Some worked; some were beggars known as the "St. Giles Blackbirds." Some were popular artists and singers. Some were seamen or servants. Some had been runaways whose owners had given up looking for them."

Lord Mansfield, the chief justice of the Court of King's Bench, ruled in favor of Somerset who then became a free man. Stewart's lawyer had argued "that freeing the fourteen or fifteen thousand slaves in England would produce profound disruption and that the owners would suffer a loss of 700,000 life or an average of 50 life per slave." It is documented that Mansfield was prejudiced when he "decided that a slave could not be held captive by his master. This, he said, would effectively abolish slavery in England." In the end, James Somerset merged into the black community of London, but his case lived on. 'Somerset never knew that his private quest for freedom was the spark that helped start the American Revolution and that has haunted the nation down to the present day."

Thus, the American Revolution when the southern states joined the northern colonies, to rebel against England's domination and the First Continental Congress was formed in 1774 by John Adams. Thomas Jefferson supported the end of international slave trade as distinct from slavery itself. By 1776, we had a United States Constitution which encompassed ten new states in the Northwest Territory, half slave, half free, "hardly a republic anyone could call united." The Articles of Confederation were adopted in November, 1777, with the help of John Rutledge of South Carolina and Thomas Burke of North Carolina. "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."

It took the War Between the States and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to settle the issue of slavery once and for all. "Ultimarely, the Civil War resulted from the southern decision to try for a second time to preserve slavery by seceding from a government which challenged it. Secession from Britain had worked the first time, extending slavery an additional thirty years beyond its abolition in the British Empire. This dream of a souther slave empire fueled the secessionist movement. The dream ended at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in early July, 1863, the anniversary month of the Declaration of Independence. Of the nearly 180,000 black troops that served in the Union Army during the Civil War, at least 138,000 were former slaves." The end of the Civil War meant the end of formal slavery in the United States, but race subordination perpetuated the inferior position of the former slaves and their descendants for a century.

This book convincingly argues its unflattering central thesis: that a slavery-limiting London court case inspired southern slave owners to join forces with independence-minded Massachussets firebrands. (Despite being only a limited and technical ruling that fugitive slaves could not be arrested in Great Britain). The authors overreach at times--they are lawyers, not logicians--but demonstrate the decisive importance of slavery to the southern leadership, including specific delegates attending the congresses and committees they consider.

One significant contribution is their thesis that the Northwest Ordinance was a southern concession to the interests of northern abolitionists, made to preserve the union. This is accompanied by proof that the Ordinance did not "implicitly" legalize southwestern slavery, as sometimes contended, because that was already explicitly legal.

The authors argue that the Northwest Ordinance was in fact proposed to resolve the (well-documented) north-south impasse that threatened an end to the Union. They prove that southern Congressmen were in the right places at the right times to make this physically possible within the known timeframes. They also endeavor to deduce who was most likely by temperament to propose the compromise and to carry it to Congress. While that speculation is only an interesting aside, the demonstration that the proposal could have been proposed at the Convention is vital to their important thesis of a southern effort to avoid northern secession.

Readers will also be interested in the portrait the book draws of Jefferson laboring carefully to exclude the right to property from his Declaration of Indepence, specifically to inspire the eventual liberation of slaves (albeit at a date too late to affect his own economic interests).

I will not elaborate here my opnion (because, namely, it is that - an opinion); however: is it just me, or is a one-paragraph thumbnail sketch of this text's premise more convincing *after* reading this text than *before*? I've read about sixty monographs and maybe half that many secondary sources on this topic, so I'm certainly no scholar; but the evidence (and by that word I mean "data," not "proof") enclosed here does more to negate the premise than support it. Were it not the reputation garnered by the authors, I would had certainly commended them for slyly suggesting that the information available for supporting their notion - that slavery was a major factor in unionizing the States - is more or less unfounded. I read most of this book in one reading, and was honestly expecting an assertion of "GOTCHA" in an epilogue. But this never happens, and as a result I just have to wonder how convinced the authors are of their suppositions laid out here. Perhaps, *perhaps*, this book needed to be edited, and what was left on the cutting room floor (if indeed there is such a thing in the book editing industry) was important manna; and if this is the case, I certainly owe the authors an apology for supposing the absurd. Indeed, they have done their scholarly rounds. I simply feel uneasy about their conclusions.