Madison and Jefferson by Nancy Isenberg, Andrew Burstein Page A
Authors: Nancy Isenberg, Andrew Burstein
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that all Dunmore really had in mind was to lure slaves on board his ship and then sell them for profit to plantations in the West Indies. This was not true, but it served Pendleton’s purposes.
General Washington, stationed outside a besieged Boston, shared in the moral confusion and outright indignation. Dunmore was the “Arch Traitor to the Rights of Humanity,” he charged, and if his movement was not quickly crushed, it would have a “snow Ball” effect; for Dunmore knew how to grow his army through a combination of “fear” and “promises,” most notably among the “Negros,” who otherwise had no reason to be tempted. He too understood that race relations constituted Virginia’s Achilles’ heel. 30
Just a few weeks earlier Washington had appealed for a discontinuation of black enlistments in New England. He was uncomfortable with the number of blacks under arms and their easy camaraderie with white soldiers. But the slow pace of recruitment caused him to acquiesce at least to the reenlistment of free blacks. The commander of Continental forces was not alone: in Congress, John Adams echoed Washington’s concern, empathizing with the white southern troops who arrived in Massachusetts only to encounter this strange situation.
Lord Dunmore’s words and actions ensured that slavery remained central to how Virginians thought about their future prospects. The members of the Virginia gentry felt that their backs were to the wall. Whether or not the Continental Congress acted en masse, the colony’s elite was getting closer to declaring Virginia’s complete independence from Great Britain. 31
“The General Inconvenience of Living Here”
Americanness had been forced upon the Virginians. Despite their good educations and their country seats, the English persistently portrayed themas clumsy provincials. In 1770 less than one-tenth of Virginia’s white males owned one-half of the colony’s land, while their slaves—human beings designated as property—accounted for nearly 40 percent of the population. Under such circumstances, late colonial Virginia would hardly seem to possess the building blocks of a healthy republic.
Madison and Jefferson were passive beneficiaries of a severely hierarchical system. Virginia’s landowners had overborrowed to maintain their opulent lifestyle. There is no better proof of the Virginians’ rank among the colonies than the fact that their most important product, tobacco, represented some 40 percent of the thirteen colonies’ combined exports to Great Britain. And it was declining in value. Financial worries intensified feelings of mistreatment by a Parliament that insisted on taxing the colonies. In short, the Virginians who exercised power at home felt dangerously exposed abroad. 32
Slavery could not but define them. North of Maryland most slaves were house servants, playing a far less decisive role in the economy. To feed the commercial engine of the South, slavery had been made cruelly efficient. It had to be energetically maintained, policed by communities, and encoded in laws; otherwise it would not thrive. As a result, the Virginia gentry upheld inherently contradictory ideologies in the 1770s. They proclaimed their love of liberty, appealed to philosophy and literature, and exhibited a genteel and increasingly sentimental appreciation for the human potential. Admitting slavery’s corruption of whites’ morals, they did not, however, abandon the old compulsion to mix kindness with violence in dealing with their human property.
Were they helpless, born wrapped in an economic straightjacket? Or were they spineless? That is history’s problem to solve. In 1773 Patrick Henry, writing in a style that belies both Jefferson’s and Wirt’s descriptions of his intellectual limitations, told a Quaker who had educated and then freed his own slaves what Jefferson, Madison, and their compeers all felt in varying degrees: “Is it not amazing,” wrote Henry, “that at a
General Washington, stationed outside a besieged Boston, shared in the moral confusion and outright indignation. Dunmore was the “Arch Traitor to the Rights of Humanity,” he charged, and if his movement was not quickly crushed, it would have a “snow Ball” effect; for Dunmore knew how to grow his army through a combination of “fear” and “promises,” most notably among the “Negros,” who otherwise had no reason to be tempted. He too understood that race relations constituted Virginia’s Achilles’ heel. 30
Just a few weeks earlier Washington had appealed for a discontinuation of black enlistments in New England. He was uncomfortable with the number of blacks under arms and their easy camaraderie with white soldiers. But the slow pace of recruitment caused him to acquiesce at least to the reenlistment of free blacks. The commander of Continental forces was not alone: in Congress, John Adams echoed Washington’s concern, empathizing with the white southern troops who arrived in Massachusetts only to encounter this strange situation.
Lord Dunmore’s words and actions ensured that slavery remained central to how Virginians thought about their future prospects. The members of the Virginia gentry felt that their backs were to the wall. Whether or not the Continental Congress acted en masse, the colony’s elite was getting closer to declaring Virginia’s complete independence from Great Britain. 31
“The General Inconvenience of Living Here”
Americanness had been forced upon the Virginians. Despite their good educations and their country seats, the English persistently portrayed themas clumsy provincials. In 1770 less than one-tenth of Virginia’s white males owned one-half of the colony’s land, while their slaves—human beings designated as property—accounted for nearly 40 percent of the population. Under such circumstances, late colonial Virginia would hardly seem to possess the building blocks of a healthy republic.
Madison and Jefferson were passive beneficiaries of a severely hierarchical system. Virginia’s landowners had overborrowed to maintain their opulent lifestyle. There is no better proof of the Virginians’ rank among the colonies than the fact that their most important product, tobacco, represented some 40 percent of the thirteen colonies’ combined exports to Great Britain. And it was declining in value. Financial worries intensified feelings of mistreatment by a Parliament that insisted on taxing the colonies. In short, the Virginians who exercised power at home felt dangerously exposed abroad. 32
Slavery could not but define them. North of Maryland most slaves were house servants, playing a far less decisive role in the economy. To feed the commercial engine of the South, slavery had been made cruelly efficient. It had to be energetically maintained, policed by communities, and encoded in laws; otherwise it would not thrive. As a result, the Virginia gentry upheld inherently contradictory ideologies in the 1770s. They proclaimed their love of liberty, appealed to philosophy and literature, and exhibited a genteel and increasingly sentimental appreciation for the human potential. Admitting slavery’s corruption of whites’ morals, they did not, however, abandon the old compulsion to mix kindness with violence in dealing with their human property.
Were they helpless, born wrapped in an economic straightjacket? Or were they spineless? That is history’s problem to solve. In 1773 Patrick Henry, writing in a style that belies both Jefferson’s and Wirt’s descriptions of his intellectual limitations, told a Quaker who had educated and then freed his own slaves what Jefferson, Madison, and their compeers all felt in varying degrees: “Is it not amazing,” wrote Henry, “that at a
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