Slavery - Was an End in Sight?

Apologies regarding the institution and use of slavery have been sweeping America in recent years, and many people have been casting criticisms towards the founding fathers, questioning why they did not free their own slaves and end slavery when America was first founded, instead of waiting almost one hundred years for it to be ended with the Civil War. However, was the end of slavery really a plausible thing in the late 1700’s?

A house at Hot Water Settlement, an example of what free blacks would have lived in after the Revolutionary War

Colonial America relied on its slaves in many ways, especially in the south. Apart from their obvious use as field hands for harvesting crops to sell, they were a sign of wealth. Money wasn’t in banks; it was in the form of human beings, in the forms of the slaves. The number of slaves you had showed your wealth, more than your tobacco harvest ever could. Freeing slaves was like burning money – it was just gone, there was no refund. This connection between slaves and wealth was especially evident in the upper classes, where how much you owned was important. When people like Robert Carter III didn’t seem to care about their wealth, and when they freed their slaves it upset the gentry classes, because the social order was no longer as clear as it once had been, and was potentially worthless. (Andrew Levy)

Thomas Roderick Dew, in his speeches and writings, gave reasons relying on logic that ended talk of gradual abolition. First of all, no one knew what to do with the slaves after freeing them – throw them out of the state? Out of the country? And, what would the slaves themselves do once freed? Dew argued that they wouldn’t have a good chance at making their own way in the world, as they were lacking many of the advantages whites had. Finally, there was the pressing economic argument. Abolishing slavery would mean major price inflation, and that would be hard on America, being the brand new country that it was. (Alfred Brophy)

It’s like Abraham Lincoln said in his “Gettysburg Address”: “…a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” America has always been dedicated to the idea that all men are created equal, but even close to one hundred years after the founding of America the country still struggled greatly with the abolition of slavery. If the much more stable nation of the 1860’s barely made it, I don’t think it is fair to expect that from the brand new nation of the late 1700’s.


Sources: Andrew Levy, “The Anti-Jefferson”; Alfred Brophy, “Considering William and Mary’s History with Slavery”