The Counter-Revolution of 1776 Contents

THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION OF 1776 CONTENTS Preface Introduction 1 Rebellious Africans: How Caribbean Slavery Came to the Mainland 2 Free Trade in Africans? Did the Glorious Revolution Unleash the Slave Trade? 3 Revolt! Africans Conspire with the French and Spanish 4 Building a “White” Pro-Slavery Wall: The Construction of Georgia 5 The Stono Uprising: Will the Africans Become Masters and the Europeans Slaves? 6 Arson, Murders, Poisonings, Shipboard Insurrections: The Fruits of the Accelerating Slave Trade 7 The Biggest Losers: Africans and the Seven Years’ War 8 From Havana to Newport, Slavery Transformed: Settlers Rebel against London 9 Abolition in London: Somerset’s Case and the North American Aftermath 10 The Counter-Revolution of 1776 Notes Index About the Author PREFACE It was January 2012 and I was ecstatic—and with good reason. I had been working on the book at hand for some time and had traveled extensively. However, building renovations had prevented my access to the New York Historical Society in Manhattan until my tardy arrival in early 2012. However, as it turns out, my wait was rewarded amply 1 when I encountered the richly informative Daniel Parish, Jr. Slavery Transcripts, which cover extensively colonial slavery in North America—and beyond.1 Unfortunately, this treasure trove is not organized adroitly, which may account for its relative absence in the footnotes of scholars —and also sheds light on the nature of my references to it. Still, my research peregrination has convinced me that this collection should be better known to scholars seeking to unravel the complexities of the 1776 revolt against British rule.2 For it is the argument of this book that slavery permeated colonial North America, underpinning the pre-1776 economy, in terms of not only agriculture but insurance, banking, shipbuilding, and the like. Yet the enslaved resisted fiercely, as we will see, and did so quite often, at times with the aid of competing colonial powers, notably Spain and, to an extent, France. Their resistance helped to drive settlers from the Caribbean to the mainland, particularly in the years leading up to 1776. The sprawling land mass of the mainland—versus the limited land mass of the Caribbean—allowed European empires to more easily bump into one another, for example, on the Georgia-Florida border, causing sparks to fly.3 The crucial turning point for North America—and arguably, the British Empire as a whole— emerged in 1688 with the so-called Glorious Revolution, which, inter alia, caused the monarchy to retreat and led to the ascendancy of a rising class of merchants. This, in turn, empowered the “private” or “separate” merchants—entrepreneurs—who wished to enter into the lushly lucrative market in enslaved Africans,4 to the detriment of the Royal African Company. These entrepreneurs descended maniacally upon Africa, igniting a quantum leap in the slave trade which at once developed immensely the economy of the Americas—and, likewise, engendered ever more angry resistance from the enslaved, causing ever more anxious settlers to migrate to the mainland. The year 1688, with its simultaneous launching of vast economic transformation —particularly in North America—and a riotous instability driven by enslavement, is the hinge moment in the creation of what is now routinely referred to today as modernity. As the economy developed on the mainland, thoughts of “independency” grew accordingly— along with slave resistance. The latter was manifested most dramatically in Manhattan in 1712 and 1741 and South Carolina in 1739. It is an error to view the history of colonial British North America as simply “pre-U.S. history” in a teleological manner. It is likewise useful to integrate events in the Caribbean into our contemplation of the mainland. Though London’s provinces in the Americas may not have been wholly unitary, it remains true that North Americans had been trained to regard the southern mainland colonies as part of an extended Caribbean region that was a primary source of wealth.5 Put simply, London realized that massive slave uprisings in Jamaica and Antigua, most particularly, could portend the collapse of the Caribbean colonial project as a whole, as Africans strained to assert themselves forcefully, if not rule altogether: such rebelliousness made London more susceptible to sweet reason—and, ultimately, abolition —as it considered the further expenditure of blood and treasure that could have gone to bolster British India or territories elsewhere. At the same time, slave rebelliousness caused settlers— particularly on the mainland—to dig in their heels, hastening the split between province and metropolis. This slave resistance was aided immeasurably not only by the indigenous but also, as noted, by competing colonial powers. As London jousted with Madrid in the Americas, both came to rely 2 upon armed Africans, and this crucial factor, along with the substantial resources that had to be expended in order to maintain a slave system, inexorably helped to spur a nascent abolitionist movement. Increasingly, the development of the economy on the mainland—including the ability to engage in mutually profitable trade arrangements with French settlers in Hispaniola— along with apprehension about the presumed anti-slavery tendencies of the British Crown, evidenced by the notorious edict of Lord Dunmore in November 1775 in Virginia, helped to push the colonists into open revolt by 4 July 1776. Though it may be hard to imagine at this late date, my conclusion in this book is that many Africans had different plans for the destiny of colonial North America that decidedly did not include a starring role by the now famed Founding Fathers and their predecessors but, instead, contemplated a polity led by themselves in league with the indigenous and, perhaps, a compliant European power. As such, the ongoing persecution of descendants of mainland enslaved Africans is—in part—a continuing expression of what tends to befall those who are defeated in bloody warfare: often they are subjected to a heinous collective punishment. In essence, simply because Euro-American colonists prevailed in their establishing of the U.S., it should not be assumed that this result was inevitable. History points to other possibilities, and contemplating them may shed light on—at least—why Africans suffered so grievously in the aftermath of the founding of the republic: strikingly, as London was moving toward abolition, the republic was supplanting the British isles as the kingpin of the global slave trade.6 Hence, this book diverges sharply from the consensus view of the origins of the post-1776 republic—a view which has united a stunningly diverse array of scholars.7 In short, unlike previous analysts, I do not view the creation of the republic as a great leap forward for humanity —though I concede readily that it improved the lives of a countless number of Europeans. More than this, I believe that—perhaps understandably—there has been a desire to create an uplifting anti-colonial narrative to explain and undergird the fruits of 1776. The problem is that— irrespective of the diverse ideological persuasions of the creators—this narrative serves to obscure the point that as 4 July 1776 approached, Africans had been involved steadily in the poisoning and murdering and immolating of settlers, creating (at least) a yawning deficit of trust between Africans and Europeans. Portraying the Africans as bit players supporting a revolt in 1776 dominated by Europeans—as the uplifting narrative tends to do—not only distorts and caricatures the historical record but also obscures a trust deficit that may still be of relevance today. Hence, 1688 gave rise to a “cousins’ war”8 but also a continuing civil war that was evidenced not only in 17769 (when Africans largely sided with the Crown) but also in 1836 (when Texas split from Mexico, with the abolitionism of the latter being a signal factor) and then 1861–1865, when—finally—the Africans were able to escape bondage. In sum, 1688 delivered a promise of modernity or bourgeois society or what has been called of late “the end of history” in the form of capitalism dripping in the blood of Africans who involuntarily provided the impetus for the takeoff10 and the republicanism which helped to unite Europeans in this enterprise11 in the Americas in the face of perpetual sedition and liquidation plots from this rambunctious labor 3 force. However, this was an exceedingly elongated process that took decades to lurch toward a sort of justice in 1865 (or, perhaps, 1888—a precise two centuries after the tumult in London— with abolition in Brazil). To the extent that 1776 led to the resultant U.S., which came to captain the African Slave Trade —as London moved in an opposing direction toward a revolutionary abolition of this form of property—the much-celebrated revolt of the North American settlers can fairly be said to have eventuated as a counter-revolution of slavery.12 To the extent that the tumultuous events leading to 1776 tracked the accelerated decline of the Royal African Company of the sceptered isle and the rise of newly empowered slave traders in the new republic, 1776 can fairly be said to have eventuated as a counter-revolution of slavery. Defenders of the so-called Confederate States of America were far from bonkers when they argued passionately that their revolt was consistent with the animating and driving spirit of 1776.13 Slavery fueled a rising capitalism. However, ironically, breaking the bonds of slavery was necessary if capitalism was to realize its full potential, not least since enslaved Africans were fiercely determined to destroy the wealth they were creating, along with the lords of the lash. Contradictorily, slavery was both a boost for nascent capitalism and ultimately a fetter on its productive force.

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