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he Revolution had contradictory effects on
slavery. The northern states either abolished the institution outright or
adopted gradual emancipation schemes. In the South, the Revolution severely
disrupted slavery, but ultimately white Southerners succeeded in strengthening
the institution. The Revolution also inspired African American resistance
against slavery.
During the Revolution, thousands of slaves
obtained their freedom by running away. Thomas Jefferson estimated that 30,000
slaves fled their masters during the British invasion of Virginia in 1781. Some
5,000 slaves in Georgia and 20,000 slaves in South Carolina--perhaps a quarter
of their slave populations--gained freedom as a result of the conflict. By the
1790s, however, the slave population was growing again and was beginning to
spread into new lands in what would become the cotton belt.
Inspired by the natural rights philosophy of the
Revolution, free blacks agitated for against slavery. They petitioned Congress
to end the slave trade and state legislatures to abolish slavery. They
repeatedly pointed out the contradiction between American ideals of liberty and
equality and the base reality of slavery.
Slaves began to speak the language of
natural rights. In 1800, a group of slaves in Virginia plotted to seize the
city of Richmond. Led by a man named Gabriel, the insurrection was inspired in
part by the slave revolt that began in the French colony of St. Domingue
(Haiti) in 1791. It was also motivated by the ideals of liberty that had led
the American colonists to revolt against Britain.
About 30 of the accused conspirators
were executed, and many others were sold as slaves to Spanish and Portuguese
colonies.
Here, a visitor to Virginia describes why one of the slaves had decided to participate in Gabriel's revolt.
"In the afternoon I passed by a field in
which several poor slaves had lately been executed, on the charge of having an
intention to rise against their masters. A lawyer who was present at their
trials at Richmond, informed me that on one of them begin asked, what he had to
say to the court on his defence, he replied in a manly tone of voice: "I
have nothing more to offer than what General Washington would have had to offer,
had he been taken by the British and put to trial by them. I have adventured my
life in endeavouring to obtain the liberty of my countrymen, and am a willing
sacrifice in their cause: and I beg, as a favour, that I may be immediately led
to execution. I know that you have pre-determined to shedmy blood, why then all
this mockery of a trial?"
President Thomas Jefferson
recognized that the Virginian slaves had been motivated by the same ideals that
had inspired white colonists to revolt against Britain. In a letter to the U.S. Minister to Britain,
Jefferson proposed that a group of the insurgent slaves be deported to Sierra
Leone in West Africa, where an English abolitionist organization had
established Freetown as a home for former slaves. Jefferson told the minister
to assure the British that the rebel slaves were not criminals, but men
aspiring for freedom.
The negotiations with the British
were unsuccessful, and most of the accused conspirators were sold as slaves to
Spain and Portugal's New World colonies. For Jefferson, Gabriel's Conspiracy
reinforced his view that race war could be avoided only if emancipation were
tied to expatriation--what came to be called colonization.
"[The slaves in question] are not felons, or
common malefactors, but persons guilty of what the safety of society, under
actual circumstances, obliges us to treat as a crime, but which their feelings
may represent in a far different shape. They are such as will be a valuable
acquisition to the settlement already existing there, and well calculated to
cooperate in the place of civilization."