Featuring: Larry Kenneth Alexander
Transcript:
American slavery has been shrouded in a haze of legal ambiguity, perpetuated by polemical works that fervently justify its existence. Pro-slavery advocates rely on colonial slave codes and Negro laws, asserting that these frameworks legally enshrined the practice. Conflicted anti-slavery voices have lacked the conviction to shatter these arguments outright, framing slavery as legal but morally wrong. Even the admission of the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence that the British Imperial government had abolished their laws has been overshadowed by historical distortion and resistance to justice.
Yet the truth remains. Colonial slave codes and Negro laws were legislatively abolished in 1766, as Parliament passed the American Colonies Act, also known as the Declaratory Act of 1766, which abolished these slave codes and Negro laws for all purposes whatsoever because they denied and questioned Parliament’s supreme legislative authority throughout the kingdom. This act obliterated any legal foundation for slavery in the American colonies. Six years later, in the landmark case of James Somerset versus Charles Stewart, Lord Mansfield delivered a ruling that echoed like a thunderclap. Slavery had no standing under the laws of the kingdom. Lord Mansfield’s declaration, “Let justice be done though the heavens fall,” was not posturing; it was a judicial reckoning. The Somerset decision established that slavery was not legally authorized and could only exist if explicitly authorized by positive law, a power reserved solely for Parliament.
No colonial legislature, no slave code, and no local custom could override this fundamental principle. Mansfield affirmed that slavery was not merely immoral—it was unlawful. However, what followed this legal and moral victory was not the abolition of colonial American slavery. Instead, the patriots, particularly those in rebellion, turned their backs on the rule of law. The Declaration of Independence, a document celebrated as a beacon of truth, carried within it a dispositive grievance: the denouncement of King George III as a tyrant for abolishing “our most valuable laws.” Why is this profound truth so often neglected in our retellings of history? Why are the revolutionary aspirations for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness uncritically celebrated while the darker motives of those aspirations are overlooked?
Too frequently, revisionist narratives glorify the quest for independence without acknowledging that, for many, it was also a quest to preserve the institution of slavery. The cry for liberty in some quarters was not a call for universal freedom but a desperate bid to retain control over legally free Black Englishmen. History demands honesty. It is not enough to revere the founders while ignoring their moral compromises. It is not enough to laud their vision while overlooking the injustice they perpetuated. A complete reckoning with our past requires us to confront the contradictions embedded within our founding documents—the ideals of liberty coexisting with the reality of criminal enslavement.
The Somerset decision was a watershed moment, not just for its legal significance but for its moral clarity. It declared in no uncertain terms that slavery was odious and incompatible with the rule of law in Britain and its colonies. It was a moment when the tide could have turned decisively toward justice, a moment squandered by those who chose rebellion over reform, self-interest over equity. Let us heed Lord Mansfield’s call for justice, not as a relic of the past, but as a clarion call for the future. Let us rediscover history and reclaim the ideals that have been tarnished. Only then can we truly honor the principles of freedom and equality.
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