Slavery and the founding of the USA
Slavery and the founding of the USA
A comprehensive, realist, progressive, and patriotic perspective
Most of the American Founders believed that slavery would die a natural death. There was good reason for this assumption. In general terms, as agriculture became more technically advanced, slaveholders/landholders have an economic interest in investing in the newly emerging methods of agricultural production and converting their slaves into wage laborers. In the long term, waged labor mechanized agricultural production was destined to replace slave plantations, because the former would be more productive and more profitable.
At the time of the founding of the American Republic, slavery was a central part of the economies of the thirteen colonies only in two regions, Virginia and Charleston, with slaves producing tobacco for exportation in the former and rice for exportation in the latter. In formulating the Declaration of Independence, the inclusion of an article on the abolition of slavery would have been consistent with the proclamation that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. But it would have undermined the necessary unity of the struggle for independence, given that plantation owners in Virginia and Charleston were not in a position to accept the immediate abolition of slavery.
In practical terms, the abolition of slavery was an issue separate from independence. And except for the morally indignant, it is a complicated matter. A well-conceived program of support to ensure the economic and personal development of the emancipated slaves has to be developed and implemented with a united political will. And attention to the economic interests of the ex-slaveholders has to be developed, in order to ensure their active engagement in the new order being constructed. The American Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Constitution of 1787 were clear signs that the days of slavery were numbered, but the time for emancipation had not yet come.
It turned out that the Founders were mistaken in their optimistic assumption concerning the pending natural death of slavery. Beyond their horizon, the world-economy was beginning a period of extensive territorial expansion, on the basis of the conquest and colonial domination by rising European nation-states of vast regions, including South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf region, and Africa. The territorial expansion of the European-centered world-economy extended the life of forced labor—albeit with particular characteristics different from African slave labor in the Caribbean, Brazil, Virginia, and Charleston—primarily involving military force and coercive taxing by colonial states. In addition, the expansion of the world-economy and consequent economic growth created new markets for a wide variety of consumer goods in the center of the world-economy, including textiles manufactured from cotton.
At the same time, the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 made possible the mechanized separation of cotton seeds from cotton fiber, resulting in the expanded use of slave labor for the planting and harvesting of cotton for local cotton gins, with the processed cotton destined for textile manufacturing centers in Great Britain. By 1860, cotton was grown throughout South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana and in parts of Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida. The number of slaves grew from less than 700,000 in 1790 to more than 2 million by 1830 and to nearly 4 million by 1860, constituting one-third of the population of the South.
These dynamics implied an indefinite postponement of the natural death of slavery. And they established a regional division of labor between North and South with respect to their functions in the rapidly expanding world-economy. The South was rapidly incorporated into the periphery of the world-economy, with forced and cheap labor (black slavery and white tenant farming) producing raw materials (cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar) for exportation to the manufacturing and commercial centers (in Great Britain and the USA). Such characteristics of forced labor and raw materials exportation were prevalent in all the vast peripheral regions of the modern world-economy since the sixteenth century.
With respect to the North, the northeastern region of the English colonies in North America had been playing a semi-peripheral role in the world-economy prior to 1790, involving the selling of food and animal products to Caribbean slaveholders and the buying of manufactured goods from England. With the changing dynamics of the world-economy in the first half of the nineteenth century, the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions of the newly constituted USA would have the possibility of developing their manufacturing capacity for the sale of manufactured goods to the South, which had very limited manufacturing capacity, but with an elite class that possessed resources from the sale of cotton and other raw materials.
The emergence of a peripheral region in the adjacent South, combined with the profits accumulated from the Caribbean trade from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, made increased Northern investment in manufacturing almost inevitable. And it was consistent with the vision of some of the Founders concerning the desirability of expanding manufacturing, without their being conscious of the central role that slave labor in the South would play in the process.
Thus, during the first half of the nineteenth century, the United States, led by the expanding Northern manufacturing, was ascending from the semi-periphery to the core of the world-economy. This implied, of course, a profound ideological divide between North and South, with fundamentally different understandings with respect to slavery and the rights of blacks.
The peripheralization of the South in the first half of the nineteenth century and the corresponding expansion of slave labor meant that the abolition of slavery and the incorporation of the emancipated slaves into full citizens were now going to be far more difficult undertakings than had been imagined in 1790. These difficulties were reflected in the sustained conflicts from 1860 to 1965, a period that was tragic not only for many persons but also for the project of the American Republic.
But it is not reasonable to blame the Founders for the tragedy. These developments were anticipated by no one at the time. In addition, it takes a perverse form of myopia to not see the significant gains toward the establishment of a democratic republic with respect to race since 1965, based on the principles and the structures created by the Founders. Indeed, from their place in the cultural heritage of the nation and the world, the Founders called the people to rectification, in no small part because they themselves were invoked by important leaders of the African-American movement during the course of the twentieth century.
When the New Left formulated in the 1960s a critique of the post-World War II order, it appropriated the insights of the civil rights, black power, student, and anti-war movements. Its political activity resulted in the consolidation of fundamental transformations in law and custom with respect to race. But the New Left failed to deepen and sustain the process of change on the basis of the insights of the Founding Fathers. It thereby left the ideological terrain open to various forms of myopic conservatism and toxic leftism, from which the nation and the people today have to somehow recover.
In the context of the conflicts of the period of 1860 to 1965, three important constitutional amendments were ratified. Amendment XIII (ratified in 1865): “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude. . . shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to its jurisdiction.” Amendment XIV (1868): No State shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Amendment XV (1870): “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In the context of the unfolding conflicts during the period 1860 to 1965, laws for the effective implementation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were not implemented until the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, complemented by the twenty-fourth amendment prohibiting a voting poll tax (1964). These reforms inaugurated a great change in laws and customs with respect to race in the United States, as indeed was occurring in the world as a whole.
In this context of worldwide change with respect to race, the central issue is not historic racism nor residual forms of racism, but the characteristics of the new order being constructed. What new forms of domination and exploitation are being developed?
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A note on gender
In an article on the Website of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution, Tiffany J. Miller, Associate Professor at the University of Dallas, points out that the U.S. Constitution is a gender-neutral document. It refers to “persons,” and it uses the pronoun “he” only in the generic sense. It does not bar women from voting, and it left the question of eligibility for voting almost entirely to the discretion of the states. In reality, the states restricted voting to men, beginning in 1807 in the case of New Jersey. But this was a result of the Constitution’s recognition of the partial sovereignty of the states; it was not required by the Constitution.
The woman’s rights movement, which originated in a gathering in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, struggled for the removal of sexual qualifications for voting in the states and territories. In 1869, the Wyoming territory permitted women to vote, and when it became a state in 1890, it was the first state since New Jersey prior to 1807 to legally mandate voting by women on an equal basis with men. By 1920, thirty-states and one territory allowed women to vote in at least some aspects in the elections for President and the Congress.
An amendment to the U.S. Constitution to protect the right to vote in all states was first introduced in the federal Congress in 1869. Subsequently, a U.S. Senator from California, Aaron A. Argent, introduced in 1878 a proposal that would be approved, without any change in wording, by the Congress in 1919 and ratified by three-fourths of the states in 1920, in accordance with the procedures for constitutional amendments stated in the Constitution. The nineteenth amendment to the Constitution stated: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
An Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), with the intention of providing equal legal rights for all citizens regardless of sex, was proposed to the Congress in 1923. It was opposed by some influential women and men, on the grounds that it could mean the elimination of special protections for women.
In 1971, the Supreme Court extended the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to include discrimination based on sex. In the same year, Representative Martha Griffiths reintroduced the ERA in the House, and it was approved by the House in 1971 and by the Senate in 1972, thus fulfilling the necessary requisites for ratification by the states, in accordance with constitutional requirements. However, by 1977, the ERA was ratified by only thirty-five of the necessary thirty-eight states.
In the mid-1970s, the ERA had seemed destined for ratification. But a movement against the ERA was mobilized by conservative women, who argued that such an amendment could eliminate protections granted to women, including exemptions for a military draft, alimony protections, the general expectation that women should have custody of children in cases of divorce, and protections for women in labor law. As a result of the anti-ERA movement of conservative women, five states rescinded their ERA ratifications. Subsequently, in the context of “fourth-wave feminism,” three new states ratified the ERA, but the proposal remains short of the required 38, and the deadline for its ratification has passed.
The failure of the ERA was due to a lack of societal consensus with respect to the meaning of full legal gender equality in relation to the family and the complementary natural differences between men and women. The lesson that ought to be drawn is the importance of full, educational public dialogue seeking consensus with respect to difficult questions.
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The way of the constitutional amendment
As is evident from the above, progressive forces from 1865 to 1965 used the strategy of the Constitutional Amendment to secure voting rights and equal treatment under the law for blacks and women. In doing so, they advanced the development of republican democracy beyond the limitations of the Constitution, which reflected the ideological and political limitations of the revolution for republican government in the late eighteenth century. At the same time, the strategy of the constitutional amendment constituted an affirmation of the founding documents of the nation, adhering to the concepts and principles established by the founding documents, in particular the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers. The constitutional amendment strategy, therefore, provided for both continued progressive reform plus continuity with the past, reinforcing the legitimacy of the founding and subsequent governments.
In the post-World War II era, two further elements of progressive social reform emerged. The first involved the concept of social and economic rights, which was reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, emitted by the United Nations in 1948. In addition to twenty articles that pertain to political and civil rights, the Declaration includes nine articles that express the social and economic rights that all human beings possess.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes the following socioeconomic rights.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality. (Article 22)
Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (Article 23)
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (Article 25)
Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” (Article 26)
This embracing of the concept of socioeconomic rights was expressed in the African-American movement, particularly in the period 1966 to 1968. It was declared that in the aftermath of the gains represented by the Civil Rights Bill and the Voting Rights Act, the movement had to advance to a new stage of struggle, with emphasis on the socioeconomic rights of all citizens. This turn was shown in King’s emphasis on conditions in the black communities of the urban north in 1966 and in the development of a multi-ethnic Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. The notion was retaken in the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson in the 1980s, which called for a Rainbow Coalition, seeking political empowerment to address socioeconomic issues among various sectors of the people.
The second important element of progressive social reform in the post-World War II era was the emergence of the principle of the right of self-determination of peoples and nations, involving the rejection of imperialist interference in the internal affairs of states. The Non-Aligned Movement was founded on this concept in 1961, and by 1974, it was able to attain passage of a UN General Assembly resolution endorsing a New International Economic Order, which would be characterized by mutually beneficial trade among nations. After a period under the influence of accommodationist political actors, the Non-Aligned Movement returned to its classic agenda in the twenty-first century, proclaiming the need for a more just and democratic world order, speaking in the name of 120 states of the Global South. These tendencies are reinforced by the emergence of regional organizations, BRICS, and Chinese foreign policy, all of which are in agreement with the need for an anti-imperialist construction of world peace based in mutually beneficial trade and cooperation among all nations, independent of their political/ideological orientation.
In this same vein, Dr. King in 1967 had pointed to the importance of the revolutions among the poor peoples of the planet, and he called upon to United States to adopt a foreign policy of support for these peoples’ revolutions of the world. Similarly, presidential candidate Jesse Jackson in 1988 called for a foreign policy of North-South cooperation, casting aside the Cold War concept of East-West confrontation.
Taking into account the ideological and political evolution of world progressive forces from the 1960s to the present, and taking into account the repeated use of the strategy of the constitutional amendment by U.S. progressive forces from 1865 to 1965, it is reasonable to think that the necessary road for the U.S. left beginning in the 1970s ought to have been proposing and explaining constitutional amendments that would affirm the social and economic rights of all citizens and that would require a foreign policy that respects the sovereignty of all nations. In addition to giving strategic and theoretical direction to the cause of social justice, the strategy would have provided the structural foundation for the patient education of the people. And it would have provided continuity and unity with respect to the democratic construction of the American Republic.
Our slogan should have been: Building the American Republic toward a democratic republic, in cooperation with the neocolonized peoples of the earth.
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