Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Black History Salutation: Slavery Wasn’t Inevitable Transcript:
In honoring Black History Month, I begin with America’s beginning—the Declaration of Independence. We all know it as America’s preeminent document, where the Founding Fathers boldly declared their freedom from British rule in July 1776. But have you ever stopped to wonder about the 27 grievances outlined in the Declaration of Independence, particularly where they called England’s King George III a tyrant for abolishing “our most valuable laws”? What valuable laws were abolished, and why did King George III do so? The answers are both provocative and illuminating.
Firstly, in the Declaration, when the Founding Fathers accused King George III of being a tyrant for abolishing “our most valuable laws,” they were referring to laws that conferred them economic power and protected their socioeconomic systems—namely, their slave codes. Duncan MacLeod, in Slavery, Race, and the American Revolution (1974), argued that the colonial elite justified the Revolution’s rhetoric of liberty while maintaining slavery through positive racism. This racism became foundational in shaping post-revolutionary attitudes and legal structures. Similarly, Eugene Genovese, in The World the Slaves Made (1974), highlights how colonial slave laws ensured that colonial-born Blacks, who were Englishmen by birth, were permanently classified as property. These slave codes formed the legal basis for hereditary enslavement, restricted fundamental freedoms, and preserved racial control, particularly in colonies like Virginia, which served as a model for others.
MacLeod and Genovese’s views suggest that the reference to “most valuable laws” in the Declaration included laws maintaining slavery, hereditary enslavement, and mechanisms to control enslaved populations. These laws were seen as economically and socially crucial to many colonial elites. Britain’s abolition of slave codes ultimately found its way into the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Secondly, the British imperial government enacted the American Colonies Act of 1766, also known as the Declaratory Act, which reaffirmed Parliament’s supreme legislative authority over colonial lawmaking. This act abolished, “for all purposes whatsoever,” all colonial laws that denied or questioned Parliament’s supreme legislative power. Colonial America’s slave codes were abolished because they violated Parliament’s English Bill of Rights (1689), English common law, and parliamentary sovereignty. Furthermore, in 1772, the British High Court ruled in Somerset v. Stewart that slavery was not allowed under the law of the kingdom unless Parliament explicitly authorized it—which it had not.
Colonial elites viewed the British Empire’s actions, such as the Declaratory Act of 1766 and the Somerset Decision, as direct threats to their extralegal control over Black colonials. They knew that British legislation had abolished their mechanisms for maintaining slavery, posing a significant threat to the social and economic systems they relied on. Without delving into the broader debate about whether the Revolution was primarily about slavery or broader self-governance, it is clear that the grievance about abolishing “our most valuable laws” refers to slave codes and the legal right to enslave others.
This grievance serves as direct and powerful evidence that enslaved Black colonials were not legally enslaved under English law when the Declaration proclaimed independence. This fact is important today because the fight for freedom, equality, and justice is ongoing. It destroys the myth that white colonials owned Black colonials as chattel property under English law.
Please share this video and visit our website at the Ida B. Wells Center on American Exceptionalism. Stay tuned for future videos in this series.